 |
| I am sure that guy is watching me! |
With my 40th birthday fast approaching and sailing in the Argolic Gulf beckoning as a reward for surviving this long, we flew from Bristol to Barcelona to stay with Clare’s brother and sister-in-law, Pat and Elena for a couple of days before getting on with the serious business of loafing in the sunshine.
I say Barcelona because that is what Ryan Air calls Girona, overlooking the minor detail that it is 40 miles away. You make that mistake once, whatever the Ryan Air destination you select. After the angry red dawn of indignation, the day light of realisation reveals that 12 euros cannot be a money making fare between Bristol and Bath, let alone a destination nearly 1,500km away. Sometime soon, someone will realise this and Easy Jet, Ryan Air and a host of others will simultaneously implode in a cloud of straw donkeys. Until then, the improbable financial equation will balance and we will continue to travel a significant proportion of the earth’s surface for less than the cost of cinema ticket.
Sadly, Pat and Elena had to work during the day, but in keeping with our form for ruthless exploitation of friends and relatives over the last few months, they bought us a delicious dinner at their new haunt, 'El Melic'. This may translate to 'The Belly Button' in Catalan, but as we loosened our belts after the starters, I was seriously considering sneaking back in the night and rearranging the letters to spell 'El Gastric Bando'.
Or at least I would have, had all Catalunya's heavy lifting equipment not been fully engaged on other more pressing civil construction projects at the time, such the widening of the Llobragat high street to accomodate my pendulous girth as we swayed home, full of great wine and excellent food.
The following day, my 35mm camera having only recently been discharged from intensive care following the Otway Light Station Coffee Tsunami (Day 39), I went to the camera shop to buy a replacement. It was only fair to put anyone within earshot, out of their misery. I had bleated on about doing it, ad nauseam since Otway. I had extracted more than generous birthday cash on the explicit understanding that I would. My pictures were becoming increasing indecipherable on account of the dried coffee on the inside of the lens. It was a no brainer.
No surprise then, that I ummed and ahhed, paced and scratched my chin and generally gave a master class in the art of indecision whilst agonising over whether it should be the Cannon EOS 550D or the Nikon 5100.
Eternal thanks then to Clare, as Pat was rocking gently in the corner, weeping quietly, and the sales assistant was bleeding from the eyes whilst trying manfully to answer my increasingly arcane questions about which was less likely to slide of a yacht deck in a force 4. The sudden and burning desire to possess the Cannon may have had something to do with the sudden and burning pain in my ear as Clare first grasped and then twisted it further than anatomically wise, whilst calmly but vehemently whispering comparative advantages of the Cannon's 18.2 megapixel sensor.
Decision made, we went home, only to discover instruction manuals in Portugese and Spanish only. Fortunately, the unthinkable consequences of jamming the rotator cuff mechanism into the flange assembly aside, it all seemed pretty straight forward. Within the hour I was taking equally bad pictures, only in 18 megapixels rather than 4.
Boarding the plane for Athens, more than one traveller must have arrived home, wondering whether they were under surveillance, so diligent was my snapping in the terminal.
Instead, it was my Truman Show moment as we boarded. Mr Bleeding Eyes from the camera shop was checking boarding cards at the gate as his Friday job. A dead likeness of Adrian (anchorman) was sitting to Clare's left on the plane and Simon's doppelganger (sail trimmer) brushed past as drinks were being served.
Are there cutbacks at the studio?
No surprise then, that I ummed and ahhed, paced and scratched my chin and generally gave a master class in the art of indecision whilst agonising over whether it should be the Cannon EOS 550D or the Nikon 5100.
Eternal thanks then to Clare, as Pat was rocking gently in the corner, weeping quietly, and the sales assistant was bleeding from the eyes whilst trying manfully to answer my increasingly arcane questions about which was less likely to slide of a yacht deck in a force 4. The sudden and burning desire to possess the Cannon may have had something to do with the sudden and burning pain in my ear as Clare first grasped and then twisted it further than anatomically wise, whilst calmly but vehemently whispering comparative advantages of the Cannon's 18.2 megapixel sensor.
Decision made, we went home, only to discover instruction manuals in Portugese and Spanish only. Fortunately, the unthinkable consequences of jamming the rotator cuff mechanism into the flange assembly aside, it all seemed pretty straight forward. Within the hour I was taking equally bad pictures, only in 18 megapixels rather than 4.
Boarding the plane for Athens, more than one traveller must have arrived home, wondering whether they were under surveillance, so diligent was my snapping in the terminal.
Instead, it was my Truman Show moment as we boarded. Mr Bleeding Eyes from the camera shop was checking boarding cards at the gate as his Friday job. A dead likeness of Adrian (anchorman) was sitting to Clare's left on the plane and Simon's doppelganger (sail trimmer) brushed past as drinks were being served.
Are there cutbacks at the studio?
No comments:
Post a Comment