Camera, ii

 

I should have started this an hour ago when I pressed the 'complete your order' button at the John Lewis site—it went through, I had my camera coming next Thursday morning, and the world was beautiful.  Except for a few light skirmishing thoughts at the edge of consciousness—things like you moron, you bought the top of the line just in CASE you start morphing back into a photo geek like with what TIME??  Did you or did you not ring the latest in what is becoming a SERIES of potential voice teachers, asking her to be sure to include you on her schedule in the new year?*  You'd've been FINE with the next model down from the top, you wouldn't have learnt everything THAT one had to offer**.  YOU'RE NOT GOING TO BE ABLE TO USE THIS THING.  YOU'RE GOING TO USE IT AS A POINT AND SHOOT BECAUSE YOU'RE GOING TO BE TOTALLY INTIMIDATED BY IT.***  The manual is going to scare you to death, you're going to waste a lot of time reading it and WEEPING, and then you'll have a very expensive point and frelling shoot that weighs too much and won't fit in your pocket.†  Oh, and how many months have you decided you can't buy books to make up for the EXCESSIVE COST OF THIS CAMERA YOU'RE NOT GOING TO BE ABLE TO USE PROPERLY????

            Thoughts like that.  Sigh. 

            But an hour ago the world was still beautiful.  Because I'd DECIDED and deciding is GOOD because now YOU DON'T HAVE TO DECIDE ANY MORE.  And I was going to have a camera again.  But now . . . I pressed the 'order' button and I did the little tap dance of confirmation with my credit card†† and all was well.  Except it's not well.  I still haven't had my email confirmation.  Oh gods.  They just sold the last one and have discontinued carrying this model.  The SWAT team is even now bearing down on me††† to whisk me away to a Safe Containment Facility for people who buy expensive pieces of kit that are way beyond them.‡   Where I will be treated gently and fed nourishing, rush-of-blood-to-the-head-combating food‡‡ and as soon as I promise to cancel my order, go to the nearest pharmacy and buy a disposable camera they will let me go. . . .

            NOOOOOOO!  I WANT MY FABULOUS BELLS, WHISTLES, TRUMPETS AND GRAND PIANOS CAMERA!!!

            It's all Peter's daughter and her husband's fault.  I could have gone on dithering for weeks yet.‡‡‡ 

            Peter and I had an adventure today.  We went to visit them.  They mostly live in London—she's a publisher, he's a nurse§—but about, um, at least two years ago and maybe three, they bought a flat on the Hampshire coast, sort of midway between an aerodrome for her (she flies) and a marina for him (he sails).§§  It's an utterly glorious flat, just by the way:  it's one of these developments created out of the falling-down ruin of a lot of deserted harbourside warehouses and so on—brick walls and enormous old wooden beams bigger around than I am, with all the mod cons slapped on over.  I have, to my shame, never visited;  I've always got lost easily, driving stresses me out and if I get too stressed the ME shuts me down—which means if I'm driving somewhere I don't already know I'm hitting maximum stress levels before we leave, and Peter doesn't drive at all any more, so if I have an unscheduled morph into prevertebrate limbless sludge, we're kind of in trouble.  And then there are the hellhounds, whom I don't dare leave more than a few hours. . . .  So Peter's gone without me a few times, hitching a ride with one or another offspring or taking the train (which takes the long way, sort of via Glasgow).  Peter's daughter had hopefully sent us their schedule for being down there over the holidays, and I was doing my pressing myself in a corner and whimpering trick . . . and then the weather solved everything, we were staying home, at least till I get yaktrax for Wolfgang.

            This week the weather stopped solving everything.  And I thought OH FRELL THIS, and suggested today.  Given the number of times I've almost gone and pulled out at the last minute they probably blinked once or twice before they said, why . . . of course.  But they did say why-of-course, and the dogminder said she'd be happy for a little extra Saturday duty . . . and we went.§§§

            Among the topics of conversation were cameras.  Peter's son in law# is in fact the original photo-geek friend who took me round to various London photo-geek shops when I was newly over here and newly going mad taking increasingly fancy rose photos.  I asked him what he recommended, and he said without a moment's hesitation, whatever the latest Panasonic is.  That he's liked the Panasonic digital compacts pretty much from the beginning.  He also said that while all the flap about image quality is perfectly true in the rarefied atmosphere of extreme photo nerddom, out here in the real world, in the hands of someone who is going to spend more of her time ringing bells than pushing her camera to its limits, the Panasonic will be just fine.  And . . . I'm always a sucker for a demo . . . they both have them.  And I held one in my hot little hands and thought yesssssssss.  And then I came home and . . .

             Erm.  Maybe I'll go try to track my order.  I want my camera. 

             Stay tuned. 

* * *

* Yes.  I did. 

** Well . . . this is actually one of the reasons I didn't buy it.  I didn't like one or two of the choices it had made for me about what I needed my camera to do so I didn't have to. 

*** I'm already totally intimidated by it.  And it won't even be here till Thursday.^ 

^ I hope it will be here on Thursday.  Thursday morning!  Before 10:30 am!  The fact that this means I'm going to have to be up, dressed and coherent by 9 am is well worth the £10 special-delivery charge OF KNOWING WHEN THE THING'S ARRIVING.  Yaay John Lewis.  http://www.johnlewis.com/ 

†  Well . . . it is faster than the old IXUS.  I should get more and better hurtling hellhound photos even if I don't learn how to use it.  

†† You're buying WHAT?  And it costs WHAT?  And you say you're WHO?  Prove it.  What do you mean you don't remember any of the answers to any of the idiot identification questions we made you make up answers to when you signed up with us?  No, we do not accept hellhound pawprints as ID.  Oh, very well, we'll accept a sample manuscript page.  You're right, no one could imitate that handwriting.  And the blood spots are a nice touch. 

††† Using the new super-sensitive echo-location finder by which they can home in on the raised pulse of someone who has just spent way too much money on a camera.  Your heart thudding (reverberantly) against your ribs is not just a phrase, you know. 

‡ And golly, are those Safe Containment Facilities full.  

‡‡ Lots of BROCCOLI 

‡‡‡ Well, probably.  I might have lost it and gone out and mugged a journalist for their camera. 

§ Yes.  I like his stories better. 

§§ Yes.  Very scary.  But neither of them rings bells.  

§§§ And in fact the driving and navigating were not too bad.  Poor Peter got more stressed than I did, worrying about me.  But I could probably even do it again, on a good day with a following wind. 

# I am so indoctrinated into the idea that everybody but Peter and me has an alias on this blog I can't bring myself to use their real names, but since aliases are supposed to be for some modicum of privacy and anyone can find out in about twenty seconds who Peter's kids are . . . I am suffering a lack of congruence, which might also be called more dithering.