A New Camera

Original Routemaster Bus

I thought I might do something a bit different this week. Those of you who know me and/or follow this blog regularly, will have picked up that I like my little traveller’s tales.

A London Icon

I like being a tourist in my own town. I can make even the most mundane of everyday journeys sound interesting.

The "Walkie-Talkie" Building that goes out at the top

 

The other thing I very much enjoy, is taking photos.





 

St Paul's Cathedral amongst its modern companions

 

 

Every photo that has ever appeared on this blog is one of mine, and my walls are filled with pictures of my travels.

 



St Brides Church

 

I’m not an expert though. My favourite camera function is the one called “intelligent-auto”. It lets me do what I like best, which is frame the shot and click. I don’t have to worry about all the technical stuff like aperture and shutter speed; the camera does that for me.

 



An old building  sandwiched between two new ones

 

Anyway, I digress. The point is that I treated myself to a new camera which I played with, as my scooter and I trundled from Fenchurch Street, past St Pauls and along Fleet Street to Covent Garden.

Ballet Dancer statue near The Royal Opera House

 

There are so many interesting points to capture along the way. I thought I’d share a few of them.

 

Red Telephone Boxes

 



February 29th

That extra day we get every four years that we let pass by and barely notice. And yet it’s a very important day. It delays the aging process. There’s another day between you and the birthday clock notching up another year.

By the time you get to twenty-eight, you’ve had a whole week of extra days, two extra weeks by fifty-six, and by eighty-four you are three weeks younger than you would have been had there been no February 29ths. Instead of being eighty-four and three weeks, you are only eighty-four. Think what you could have done with that time if only you had noticed.

And what if you’re born on February 29^th? You get an extra three years between each birthday. So by the time you reach your twenty-first, you have squeezed in eighty-four years’ worth of experience.

If you really want some fun, you can cross the International Date Line on February 29^th. You don’t just play with time, you confuse direction. If you travel eastwards across it, you leave the Far East and end up in The West, and you time-travel to twenty-four hours ago, giving you the same day again. You can double-book yourself into two hotels in two continents on the same night and sleep in both. If you do that on February 29^th you don’t just get one extra day; you can have two.

Of course if instead, you went from west to east by heading west, you’d time-travel forward and skip a day. Unless the day you skip is February 29^th, because for three years out of four that day doesn’t exist anyway. So you could lose a day without actually losing a day.

But where’s the fun in that? Go the other way. It’s much more exciting!

Confessions of a Professional Plant Killer

My Grandad’s green fingers, whilst reaching down to Mum, have not extended to me. If you buy me a plant, it’ll be dead within a fortnight. But my reputation as a professional plant killer is being threatened.

My Christmas Poinsettia is still alive in February. It looks a bit thin I admit, but it’s growing new leaves.

And a fuchsia cutting that broke off a garden plant, which I stuck in a glass of water on the window sill, is sprouting roots and a bud.

What is going on?

I’ve not completely lost my touch though. I killed the mint!