Careful now.

Protesters native to the Canary Islands rally against new oil rigs being built close to their coastline

I was trying to get a shot of the black gloves against some of the neon advertisements on the buildings around Sol. I was crouched, then, to get the angle. The light was fading so I was constantly widening the aperture and cranking the ISO to adjust. Looking through the lens I saw the crowd of people start to back towards me, so I moved with them, not taking my eye from the view-finder.

Suddenly more space opened up, so I got close and crouched again. Once more the gloves grew in my lens, and the people moved back. As I lowered my camera I realised had inadvertently joined in with some sort of choreographed movement- the people were moving in and waving their hands, chanting something before moving back, waving their hands again.

I did this a few more times, looking around in bewilderment, before I decided to stop. It was as if I was trying to infiltrate the group by blending in.

I did rather well I think. And I pride myself on blending in with groups but that particular skill- adjusting your personality depending on the social situation- doesn't come without its flaws. Especially if, like me, you sometimes find yourself compromising your principals on certain topics for the sake of avoiding awkwardness or maintaining conversation.

Last night I went to a gathering organised by people online, the idea being that most of the people there would be randoms who wanted to meet other randoms in the area. I enjoy this kind of thing and it is the most efficient way of widening a friend group in a new area.

But I've grown so tired of my introductory speech that before I went last night, it did occur to me that I could pretend I was someone else. Not Jake from Inverness for a change but Brian from Thessaloniki, or something interesting like that. Or I could see how far I could get with my American accent in a room full of Americans.

I decided against it in the end for obvious reasons. It'd be hard to snap back into my normal character half way through the night while simultaneously trying to convince people I wasn't, in fact, a complete radge.