Retained my camera bag all day!

A morning coffee meeting with an ex-colleague who has just retired. He was full of gossip news about all the folk we used to work with. Good to catch up. And a good coffee, too.

From there I came home to waste an hour of my life on the phone to my internet/broadband/TV provider. I use the mobile phone as it's free, but the thing with a (my) mobile phone, is when they say 'You now have 5 options... blah blah', I press the number, and listen to the next 'You now have 5 (more) options, blah blah' and I put it to my ear again with the keypad on, because I need to use it, and my ear presses 7, 6, 4, 8, - whatever, and they're asking for my pin number and saying 'I don't understand... press the second number of your pin...' But you just have to hang on and eventually they realise there's an idiot on the line who needs to speak to a person.

I did get through eventually to a chap who sounded as if he was at a party (he denied this) but he had a strong regional accent and I had to keep asking him to repeat what he'd said. I was following complicated instructions to change settings on my computer when suddenly it said 'You are not connected to the internet' I relayed this news to him, in a panic, and the call ended. Maybe my ear touched something... I did NOT want to go through the whole thing again, so I switched everything off, left it and then turned it on again. Seems all right.

I then went to visit Uncle A, and took the bus down town, carrying my camera bag and tripod. But my new system is to put the camera bag on first, so that I don't need to take it off. Ever. In fact, I came home with all my kit!

I went to get a new watch battery. I went to the shop that I know does my kind of watch. The shop was empty.

'There's a two hour backlog for battery replacements.'

There was nobody at the battery replacement desk.

Now, a battery takes about 3 minutes to put in. By my working out, that would be about 20 an hour, so about 40 in two hours. There were 40 other watches needing batteries replaced? I think not. And if so, why was the repair desk empty?

Gave up and came out, and noticing a nice evening, I suddenly decided to go up Calton Hill. Now, it is quite a hike. Lots of steps. The light was fading. Fast. I have never gone up there quicker. I was fair gasping! No need for a workout in the pool today.

I set up my tripod, walked away a couple of metres to take a photo for some tourists with them in it, came back and there was a man standing in front of my camera with a big camera taking photos. I asked him if he was a blipper. He ignored me. He fiddled around with his settings and took a couple more photos, examining each one. I then asked him if he was going to be long (the light was fading). No answer. What a rude man. I then noticed he had headphones in! Not a rude man at all. Not a blipper either.

So this is my offering tonight. Just about made it. I'll go up a bit earlier next time.