yonmei

12:07 pm: Mislaid Camera
I had not noticed/used my camera for um, some time - two or three days, I think, which is a long time in my terms! - but I had also been very sleepy and tired and only occasionally thinking that "Ooh, want to take that photo!"

But today when I really wanted to find my camera so I could take it with me to the Close Guantanamo Bay demo and take some pics... I couldn't find it.

I even walked down to work just in case what had happened was I'd left it behind on my desk at work (and it had got covered in papers, as happens - they breed on my desk). I'm there right now, contemplating the fact that I appear to have lost my camera. Well, temporarily mislaid it, I'm sure it's still somewhere, I just can't figure out where.

So if any of you can suggest any new places to look... that would be terribly much appreciated. *is sad*

I'll go to the demo anyway. Closing down Guantanamo Bay is not on Obama's list of Things To Do, but it bloody well better get there.

Tags: camera disaster, evil american politics, nonphotos

06:58 am: Nose and camera
At the end of May my GP told me I would probably have to wait six months for an appointment with a consultant: but I got a letter last week offering me an appointment today at 10:30 in Lauriston Place.

The letter was fairly unspecific about what the appointment would entail - but I think (and so I warned my manager) that it'll be a nasal endoscopy. ( Ugh )

In other news: the viewing screen of my camera has again been damaged while inside the protective case. It's not unusable, but it will mean I won't be able to see the pics I was taking properly until I upload them - especially not any effects of light or dark. It's like a shadow lying over the screen.

I'm not going to spend over a hundred pounds on getting a new screen put in - really not worth it, unless I can get Canon to acknowledge their protective case is faulty and issue an improved version (last time, they just told me - politely - that they were sure I was lying about the camera being in the protective case when the screen broke). And I certainly don't want to buy another Canon, and I'd been thinking that I wanted to treat myself to an improved camera with a higher pixel rate, if I could - so: any recommendations, in the £150-£200 level pocket-size?

Tags: camera disaster, nonphotos, nose of a nose

12:45 pm: Being known
Today at the farmer's market I walked briskly through the market, as usual, noting which stalls were here and which were not, and stopped at the coffee stall at the far end (I usually do: the Torchwood coffee stall at the end nearer Princes Street is always the one with the longer queue). There was only one person ahead of me, and by the time I'd bought a copy of The Big Issue (Doctor Who! Captain Jack!) there was no one. The woman looked at me thoughtfully and said "Double latte, skimmed milk, medium size?"

I was slightly gobsmacked, but pleased, and nodded. "Yes."

She didn't remember whether or not I liked chocolate sprinkles. That was a relief. (I'll drink coffee with chocolate sprinkles, but I prefer it without... er, unless they're the really really posh sort that are just grated chocolate, in which case, yum.) It would have been somewhat disturbing if she had remembered even that. My last coffee till Monday morning.

I bought autumn oak leaf wine and elderflower wine, and the Arran cheese stall was offering 4 cheeses short-dated at £10 for 4, which is a total bargain so I bought them - which meant not buying a round of their chilli cheese, since although the cheeses will be good into May, that's definitely as much as I need probably until I leave for Germany. That's life. I did have a bag of the Crisp Hut's crisps with chilli-and-lemon, and ate half sitting down with a horseshoe cake from Falko and the remainder of my coffee. The horseshoe cake was delicious, almondy and chocolate: you can buy a markedly inferior drier version in packets, but this is how it's meant to be. Well worth it.

I also bought kamut wheat flour from Real Foods - a small batch of kamut sourdough is rising as we speak.

We drank autumn oak leaf wine at my sister's birthday dinner - I brought the bottle to share, and it was good. (We ate at the Coconut Grove at Tollcross, a Mexican restaurant I didn't even know was there, but it was delicious - recommended.)

On the way back, I took photos for my planned project of documenting the Leith Walk Themed Obstacle Course.

Tags: bread, coffee, eating some delicious food, nonphotos

04:23 pm: Today’s photograph that I didn’t take
The slate stepping stones on my lawn, seen from the top step.

The slates are just leftovers from the last roof-repair, grey slate, the sort of stones you see on almost every old roof in Edinburgh.

Against the complex green of the lawn - clover, grass, daisies, dandelion and thistle leaves - the grey slates lie like calm grey pools, stone puddles in the rough live green.

Tags: clover lawn, glarmamo, nonphotos

10:23 am: Today’s photograph that I didn’t take
River high after the weekend's rain, but the surface is almost smooth, reflecting the sky and sun and clouds and buildings. Seen it like this before, but never before with so much dirt caught on the surface, as if it’s a mirror in a disused room in a vast house, a room no one's been into for months, perhaps for years: draw back the curtains so the light leaps into the room and strikes a mirror, an old warped mirror that never shows a true reflection, and the dust clinging to the surface is made visible. Old warped mirror river.

Tags: glarmamo, nonphotos

03:01 pm: Today’s photograph that I didn’t take
A green bucket full of clear water, leaves and stems swimming in the water, their live green a clear contrast to the dead green of the plastic. Green swims in green. In the middle of the green water and the green leaves, small crooked bubbles of red wax, poured hot into the cold water, turning and freezing as the hot wax flowed, into fragile wax bubblechains, candlespawn, weird shit.

The background to this nonphoto: last night there was heavy rain, and I put the bucket out to catch the water as it poured off the roof. It was full by the time I went to bed, and I blew the candles out in the sitting-room, and realised I should pour off some of the wax in the big chestnut-scented candle with the three wicks. I tipped it into the bucket of water at my front door, and there it was in the morning light, when I went down to the garden in the rain to pick herbs for my scrambled eggs, and mint for hot tea, and two or three stalks of lettuce for salad with my lunch. I looked at the bucket and saw a photo I couldn’t take.

Tags: glarmamo, nonphotos

06:25 pm: Today’s photograph that I didn’t take
A basement area in the New Town, rain-wet stone (the familiar stone that all of Georgian Edinburgh is built with), with green growing up and out from every crack in the stone, swimming out over the wet sandstone in puddles of leafy green, the entire area from wall to wall greened over with just a few uncertain areas still stone. The walls wet stone till they meet the green floor. A door, battered wood, painted black, which has not been opened in years, as many years as it takes this green to grow. Unroofed outdoor stonebridged room, floored in green.

Tags: glarmamo, nonphotos