'moan then big maaaan....

Politics? It only leads to arguments and ultimately violence as these two cherry-pickers outside the McParliament can confirm. At least neither of them were tooled up.

I really should be doing something productive with the two hours of me-time I get on Wednesday evenings when Nicky is out. Instead I have (as last week) been alternately watching some downloaded telly, blip-choosing and blip-text-thinking instead of hanging up washing, replacing the bits of newspaper inside my slowly-drying trainers (new ones fit a treat though so there's no rush), preparing stuff required for the weekend and so on. I had a walk after work but wanted to get this posted then head out again when I can just enjoy the outside without having to fret about finding a portion of it to trap and preserve.

It was that sort of thought which led to me thinking about the whole diary/blog/blip/record/journal thing, especially in the light of a few "don't know how much longer I can keep this up" or "hope to at least do a year's worth for the record" sorts of post in recent days/weeks. When I grow old and forgetful I'll have a fairly full record of what I've seen on Flickr from the twelfth of April last year. On blip I'll have a similar thing with sparser imagery but increasing amounts of accompanying babble from July 2006 onwards. What is starting to concern me is the period leading up to that. I was my original intention to start my own little photobloggything starting with such pictures as exist which were taken when I was a baby (second child - I suffered from the usual thing where the parents lost interest and didn't take nearly as many pictures of me as there are of my sister) and continuing through the pictures in various photo albums in a box in the wardrobe (when I get the time to get round to scanning (erk) and sorting (eek) them all) until the near-past when everything is suddenly nicely labelled with the exact second when the picture was taken (give or take the odd hour where I've forgotten to adjust camera-time to local-time). There's a sudden glut of pictures from 1989ish onwards when I got my first SLR which gradually tail off as I find other things to spend my meagre teenage funds on with a brief resurgence in 1994 when I came up here but then which gradually tail off again to nothing between 2001 and 2003 when I didn't have a working camera before gradually increasing to the at-least-one-shot-per-day of the last year. It's that bit between 1995 and 1999ish which bothers me; I did a hell of a lot of changing and growing in that time but there's very little record of what I was doing or thinking during it bar a few songs, a few pictures and a few bits of paper covered in spidery handwriting. Anyway, the point is that it's maybe better to start trying to recall and record what happened now rather than later (as in years later) when it's that much fuzzier and more distant and much harder to recall with any accuracy. I might start trying to scan at least one or two old pictures a day so that they're at least sortable and dateable for easier annotating and describing and uploading at some other (probably much later) point. They're probably a lot safer on disc than in a box, too.

Anyway. I'm not going to get round to that this evening so I'll just describe today before I forget it.
Monday's concerns about the strange springtime wardrobes of my fellow humans were remembered this afternoon when I spotted this guy at the bottom of the Playfair Steps. Sacrificing comfort for the sake of style indeed. It's people like him who wear too many clothes, lose a certain degree of endothermic capability then whine to the people who control the heating in their office that they're too cold with the result that the thermostat is wound up and people like me have to suffer dry sinuses and a sweaty back throughout the spring, summer, autumn and winter when it would be fairer to leave the heating off and make people who are cold put the cats, scarves and glubs on inside if they're so keen on them. The very sight was enough to drive me to seek the temporary shade and coolness of the dank world beneath. Which would have been better-caught with a tripod. I've been going to and from work this week with just the camera and 50mm f/1.8 in the weebag to save on space and weight and leaving the tripod and other lenses and bigbag for evening-walks when I don't have my schoolbag as well. A second instance of should-carry-all-stuff-everywhere came today at the bottom of St Leonard's Bank where the tree covered in flies would have been much more efficiently recorded with my macro lens. Still, the flies and tree will be there again tomorrow unless whatever was on the tree which attracted them washes away overnight.