I didn't want to know

I've always wondered why tourists elect to use video cameras instead of still cameras, especially when they so often appear to be filming a street corner or a completely static telephone box.

Maybe this bloke would claim that he was really just filming the parliament in case it suddenly slipped over, netting him a cool $250 from the American equivalent of You've Been Framed. Hopefully he was filming the people on the hill half an hour later when it started pissing it down; some of them scurried downwards to their cars whilst the rest magically produced yellow ponchos from their pockets. Then waddled down.

I had been planning to leave the house with smallbag and 50mm but read a note on Flickr just as I was about to leave that the Gay Pride march was on today. Still, if I hadn't repacked longer lens I'd have missed the Ear Vendor and the Man Who Mistook His Child for A Dog who wasn't on the march but just happened to wander into view when I was waiting to cross the road. I also got loads of blurry shots of policemen attempting to look hard by chewing gum, sticking their jaws out and speaking into their chin-mounted microphones slightly more often than was necessary.

Went for a little wander and eventually ended up in a secondhand bookshop. I only had a couple of pounds on me so quickly chose one book and joined the queue. After five minutes it became apparent that the customer at the till really was insisting that the shopkeep researched how much it would cost to mail a certain poundage of books to the States so I managed to replace the book, visit a cashpoint four hundred metres away and return before he had completed his transaction. He said he might return on Monday to pick up the rest, implying that he and his assembled family had the luggage capacity to transport his purchases back overseas which did make me wonder why he was faffing so much in the first place, especially when the apparent £32 shipping cost exceeded the value of the purchases.

Then I went for a sit to have a read and spy on people.