Reward

It has been over three months since I returned from my seven-week trip to Australia and I was booked to give a talk about it to our church Ladies' Group on Thursday evening.

I've done this sort of thing before, but never with so much material from which to choose. Every day was an adventure; I did and saw so much and, yes, I took lots and lots of photographs. How to compress that into a talk, make it interesting and keep it to a reasonable length? 

Apart from anything else, it was time I made a start in culling my photographs - ah, the beauty (or the curse?) of digital photography - to remove all the duplicates, the blurred images, the "why did I take that one?" photographs and such like. Then to index and title them and finally to choose which ones would form the basis of my talk. (And then, of course, writing the notes for the talk to accompany said pictures.)

Well, I made it. After many hours at the computer spread over a couple of weeks, I finished preparing my talk with 30 minutes to spare - thankfully the church is only ten minutes down the road.

All went well - a few very minor hitches but not bad for a first run - and, as a 'thank-you' present, I received a very welcome and much-appreciated bottle of wine (Australian too!) and box of chocolates.

Makes it all worth while. Thanks ladies!