Pig Sty Avenue

Molly Millenium Bridge , originally uploaded by Pig Sty Avenue . I put this into DMU , because I've not played that game for ages, and, frankly, I wanted to make a rather audacious return. It's become a shadow of its former self. Little more than a silent lane for view whores to get a few hundred punters. Whereas, of course, DMU should be far cleverer than Mornington Crescent. Or something. There was a spin off. A Normal digital numpty said, "Don't like those top two corners". Which alerted me to them, and to the possibilities of vignetting, and maybe the physics of it. Isn't the top left corner an echo of the top right? Or of the dark bottom right? OR (and this is the really interesting possibility): Are all the corners echoing one-another?

This wee camera has big potential. Holga? Schmolga! This is the only properly exposed photo - there was a bit of shade here. The rest are rather over exposed. Yet I was using 50ISO film. That was with the aperture set to "cloudy". And there's a deal of camera shake on many of them. That means the shutter speed probably IS quite slow - maybe 1/30 [?]. Be worth seeing what you could do in low light with HP5, pushed. Or Delta 3200, even. Anyway, I'm well pleased with that as a first roll. Here's a link to the rest of this roll . Ages in the wardrobe, trying to get the roll on the spool. Dropped the bliddy film on the wardrobe floor three times. Don't know what I was doing wrong - need to sacrafice a roll of both 35mm and 120 to get the hang of it. Job in Glasgow coming up, and a move to Saltcoats. This camera will love it there, and so will we all. The lobby press under the stairs will make a better darkroom, too.

"Shooting with a rangefinder, without a light meter, is a liberating experience". Or so some numpty wrote somewhere on Flickr, though a quick shufty at his photo stream showed that he was hiding the lights of his liberation under a bushel; or talking bollocks. Whatever: the idea is a good one. The guessing at settings can lead to happy accidents. Or something. Remember that even a dimwit's brain is more sophisticated by an almost unimaginable factor than the smartest light reading technology in the most expensive cameras. And that the "happy accident" might actually be your huge subsconscious sussing out the available light and taking a photo your conscious mind is subsequently pleasantly suprised at. Like this one. I had no idea about those two pools of light. My conscious eye/mind was on the distant Tyne bridge, which has turned into nothing more than a nice background detail.  

Cattle Egrets nesting in the UK . I used to watch little egrets flying over, high up, when I was in Libya. Brilliant white birds.

XPRO-FED2-1 Molly in Union Rooms 2 , originally uploaded by Pig Sty Avenue . She had become fascinated by a fly on the inside of the window. We christened him Freddy. This is one of a roll I'm uploading - first xpro I've done with the FED2, and I put a yellow filter on, just for the hell of it.

Spool winding calamities aside, this Ilford Dev Chart was very handy.

At least with my Ilford thermometer I can get the temperature right. Thought it's going to take a bit of trial and error with regard to how long the 1 litre of ID11 and 500ml of fixer need to be in the University's Hall of Residence freezer to bring them down from room temperature of 75F to the optimum of 68F. (Though, incidentally, the Ilford thermometer has 65F marked in red, as if that was the optimum... Perhaps it was in pre-central heating times. It's pure social history, this retro photography lark.) [EDIT 9.30PM: I made a right arse of that. The roll stopped winding on, and in in the confined space of a halls of residence wardrobe, I was getting very hot and stressed. I thought I had most of the roll on, and it wouldn't hurt to sacrifice a few frames from the end... So I snipped it off. Which was a blunder because only the first ten or so exposures were wound on, and I lost most of the film when I opened the wardrobe door. Bastardo! The roll's hangi...

For some reason, I've been posting about this here . Fuck knows why. Anyway, the bad news is, you get the front of it opened up, and... the shutter still sticks, and there's no obvious way to sort it. One reason for that is, everything is really very basic - and some minor part gets a wee bit bent, say, and there's not much you could do. The phrase "no user serviceable parts" springs to mind: not because it't too hi-tech, like the back of a plasma telly, but quite the reverse - it's knocked out in a factory using cheap materials, and when it's goosed, it's goosed. The good news is, although I've learned that it can't really be fixed, I've also learned why, which means I understand the beast. And I've got another one on the way from eBay, (£2 this time, not 20p). It really is as basic and as lo-tech a piece of work as you could wish for beyond a Brownie or a pinhole. Lovely. Considering how basic it is - a pressed aluminium b...

This is brilliant. All the times you see a ship going by, and wonder, What's she? Where's she going? Well, here's the craic for when you're looking across at Arran .

It had been an option. I mean, I know it's not posh, exactly, but in so far as I belong to any geographical location, well it's probably Hedworth. At least I'd be amongst my own folk, people I'd been at school with... Worth thinking about. Or perhaps not.

I've gotten a Ricoh and an Ilford Sportslite flash gun through eBay. The Ricoh, helpfully, (kind of) had a battery still in it - an Ever Ready B122, (which also fits the Ilford, whose instruction book leaflet describes the battery as a hearing aid type). The Ilford recommends a PF1 or PF5 bulb. I went into Jacobs in town to see if they could point me in the right direction, but got only blank looks and a recommendation that I look on the internet. (Oh, really? The internet? I hadn't thought of that, because, clearly I'm a stupid old blighter.) I'm beginning to think as I become more determinedly retro I should avoid camera shops all-the-gether. Anyhoo, the battery is quickly found at Small Battery Company. Bit pricey, but hopefully it'll last a while. The bulbs are a little more elusive. I want PF1s for indoor black and white. Cress photo is an American site which has them - though they seem a bit pricey, (I love the way something selling a retro product...

They want helpers 1st week in August . I was all ready to volunteer, but that's a crucial week for the MA, so I need to be sure I can fit it in. That's why I'm blogging about it here, to remind myself.

Woman drinking from a whiskey bottle (the cleaned up version) , originally uploaded by nyctreeman - . nyctreeman wrote to me: one of my flickr friends in the Netherlands did a smashup job re-doing that photo you blogged . Indeed. That Fickrpal is zapdelight . And it was a pleasure to see that people just do stuff, for the fun and pleasure of seeing something done. Unlike the arsehole at the Fix My Pic pool on Flickr (no, I'm not giving the twat a link) who gave nyctreeman a mysterious bit of grief when he posted this lady in the pool. Anyhow, the evolved humans usually win-out over their reptilian forebears. Cheers!

I've just heard this on the Today Programme for this morning, can't find any other links, and I'm rushing to get to work now, but I was so angered by this story that I've got to mention it now, and I'll back to it later. The BBC has learned that staff at the Hard Rock café in London are on base salaries of just over £2 an hour, and that the company relies on tips to raise the wages to the legal level. Our employment correspondent Martin Shankleman reports. So you get your cup of coffee for £2-odd and you leave 20p or so for the waiter, and you think, well, s/he's getting the minimum wage but the tips could make it not-bad... But oh no. These fuckers use your tips that you give to staff to make up the wages from £2-something an hour to the level of the minimum wage. And the people who decided on that as a policy did so without a blush, perhaps dreamt it up on a 1st class flight over the Atlantic, or whilst tipping in a posh restaurant where they'd just pai...

Alexander , originally uploaded by Pig Sty Avenue . One day he's having his first legal pint, and the next he's off to a Pacific island.

I didn't win those cameras . Some experienced eBayer upped the bid 5 seconds before the auction ended. I was impressed at their dedication - hope they use the cameras. But it got me thinking about using eBay as a kind of lending library for cameras - buy them, use them, sell them. AND I will have a go with a Brownie in due course. It'll be an experience. I'll flog the Kodak 66. And Alexander's going to Vatuatu for his gap year. I haven't got the full story from him yet. I'll give him the D50 and suggest he opens a Flickr account.

"I don't think I've ever actually eaten goulash."

"...So I ran into the room and killed one, ran out and slammed the door. Ran in and killed another one, ran out again."

I don't know why, I must stop it, but I'm bidding for a Voigtlander Bessa Folder - I'll go up to a tenner - because there's something about it, and I'm really attracted to the 6x9 thing. Anyhow, IF the bid succeeds (and I'm not going any higher), well then the seller will include a Six-20 Popular Brownie . Alright, alright, I know it's a Kodak, but I'd do a couple of rolls through it... To know how it felt. But, as its name suggests, it takes 620 film, so here's a link that tells you how to put 120 onto 620 . I got that photo here . From the not-very-good pic and description on eBay, I've worked out that the model going free with the Voigtlander is the one on the right there. Incidentally, Herself is going to go mad if I start accumulating cameras. Given that we don't have a big house, her attitude wouldn't be unreasonable. But here's the beauty of the thing. With eBay, you can buy old cameras cheaply, give them some tlc if n...

I needed her frequently in Libya, where she sat on the table where I blogged and studied. I love icons like this, with the infant Christ as a scaled down ten-year old. Surely, they must have been able to get models with newish babies? Anyway, I've scanned her tonight because I've got the scanner out, ready for the negs I was going to dev. And then realised I was missing a can-opener and scissors. I can do developing in my room at Leeds if I get into the wardrobe, but I'll need to re-visit a pound shop first.

Back by popular demand ! Photo circa 1900 , originally uploaded by nyctreeman - . Click on the photo to get some of the story. I suppose that was taken with a box brownie - perhaps a little later than 1900, if that was the case. Not much later, judging by her dress, (which, is slightly translucent, if you go to the original). As it was taken in an age of formal portraits, it's one of the most intriguing photos I've ever seen. Who was she? Who was the photographer? What was their relationship? What had they been doing that day to inspire this? One my favourite old photos. Ever.

A bit of a surprise to see Johnny Ingles' (called "The Golden Lion" if you're not from Jarrow) was in the national press . Pity it was for a bairn's wake. God rest him.

I need to get back to Jarrow. The Old Man's going chicken mad. The Rhode Island Reds he hatched in the incubator are approaching maturity now, which means they can start to pay for themselves. There's also Rambo, who'll peck at anything that moves, the sole survivor of eighteen Barred Plymouth Rock eggs he bought from some chancer, who had given him a dodgy phone number. (Undeterred, he drove up to Hexham and found the bugger, who agreed to give him some BPR chicks - though you've got to doubt that they are BPRs, which seem to be unfathomably hard to get hold of). Young Rambo's teamed up with a maternal seeming young hen, of uncertain parentage, which is thought to have a career as a clucker in due course. Mam's called her Buttercup, though naturally we'll keep that one under our hats when having a pint in the Long Bar. In addition, a number of odds and sods. He seems to accumulate chickens as I do cameras. A man in Dumfries is sending him half a doz...

I'm not quite sure wtf Catherine Bennett is blabbering on about here: It's only words, maybe. But we must take care of our language . If you want to write an article complaining about use of English, you really need to take a little more care in writing clearly. Reading between the lines, perhaps she was just annoyed when the removals men couldn't understand her when she was saying, "Be careful with that vase!" Or something. I love these middle class rants about language, the general drift of which is a feeling of deep unease, a feeling that if things go on like this, people will be reduced to grunting. I suspect that the drive behind these fears is the continuing decline of RP's authority, and the quickened pace of Standard English's evolution caused by globalisation. And this thing about undergraduates being unable to communicate is caused (again, I'm guessing here, mind), by piss poor typing skills in an age where email is becoming inescapable...

Here.

So said Mike Ashley, this time in the financial pages . He's actually saying something, inadvertently perhaps, that tells us a lot about the way things are going now. There are rich people, a small number but they are comparatively richer than at any time in living memory. They are the ones who "want the latest products". The rest of us are after "extreme value". And the middle ground is, indeed being murdered. That was most of us, by the way: the employed working class, all but the wealthiest of the middle class. Nobody could have predicted just how fucking weird things would turn out in the way we live. We 60s kids grew up with the notion that inequalities were gradually eroding. Many of us wanted revolution, wanted it now , but there was always the underlying hope that things were evolving nicely anyway: the poor were getting better-off, the rich more like us, less outrageously rich. Selfishness and greed became acceptable, even praiseworthy in the 8...

trees cleared for the new tyne tunnel , originally uploaded by Pig Sty Avenue . This is going to be the site of the new Tyne Tunnel. They cleared all the trees back in February, which is when this was taken. It was my Dad's theory, and it seemed cogent, that they did it then before birds could nest in them. But the birdlife of Jarrow was not to be so easily prevented from causing trouble. That white building in the middle distance, near the bottom left hand corner, is the pub where the herring gull is having a laugh. It's been closed for years now. Pity it's being demolished because it's a lovely old building, and must have been there since before Jarrow Palmers was called Jarrow Palmers. The Gas Light is its most recent name. When I was crawling the pubs of Jarrow it was The Tunnel Tavern. But it's original name, I'm told, was The Commercial. There is a story that when Jobling 's body was surreptitiously cut down from where is was hangin...

I'm blogging here from one of the self-contained wee rooms for 1st year undergrads at Leeds. There's an abandoned cemetery outside and a big horse chestnut growing right up to the window. During the two weird weeks of visa limbo a thought that kept me going was Guinness and a read of The Guardian (a proper paper one you can hold in your hand). Which I've just had. Yesterday morning I was in Libya. Everything with the new job seems to be going as expected. Except that there's a shisha cafe within spitting distance of my room. Will I never be free? I haven't tried it yet, but that's only because creeping jet lag has overcome the burning need for a big old blast of mint flavoured tobacco.

Assuming I can start taking better photos with the FED2, I could do worse than move on to Voigtlander. I'm staying up late to finish off the last of my opened baccy and carbon. I'm going to need nicotine patches, I can see.

I thought I'd take loads. The fact is, I don't really like the whole street candid thing, I've decided. It's overrated, and potentially a bit creepy. So you ask people if you can take their photo, and they stand up straight and put on a phoney grin. Or look offended and say no. And taking photos of women here could be seriously bad for your health. Instead, I've taught myself B&W dev, bought and learned to use a rangefinder, and bought a Sporti for low fi. And I've spent a lot of time on Flickr, looking and asking questions. Lots more time thinking about photography. A read of this blog would tell you that. One of the reasons for not taking so many photos here is, it's not my culture. Any you need to know a culture to know when to take photos, and to get yourself into situations when it's good to take them. I could never do that here, and would constantly risk cultural blunders. So that's the next step, get into situations when it...

Got my visa, got my eticket. Almost on my way now, back to Yorkshire puddings, pubs, cricket, ASBOs, rain, a Guardian I can hold in my hand to read, chavs, churches, cheddar cheese, repossessions, Radio 4 without the internet, University libraries, staffordshire bull terriers, cleavages, people complaining about the rain, buses, trains, working mens' clubs, starlings, pig-ignorant shop assistants, eye-contact barmaids, wine with dinner, Newsnight Review followed by Jools Holland... Well, you get the picture. I don't usually get homesick, but the last couple of weeks have been hard on the nerves, and I need some of my own culture to soothe them. I still love Libya, but we're at a mature stage in our relationship, and can go off and do our own things for a while. What I've learnt: don't take a job until you've checked out the company, back to front. It's easy for your prospective managers to make airy promises and talk bollocks. What counts is their prof...

The camera I've "won" on eBay is actually an Ilford Super Sporti. The good news is that it has an extra setting for dull weather. The bad news is that it has a modification to prevent double exposures. The photo in the corner there is the one that went with the eBay listing. (It makes you think that cameras are often sold on eBay by car-boot sale wallahs rather than photographers. Fair play to them. I nearly chose that as a profession myself, once, and wouldn't rule it out in the future). Boiling down the information found on photomemorabilia about the Super Sporti, it has three settings. "Sunny" is f11, and photomemorabilia speculates a shutter speed of 1/50, (though that seems very slow to me). "Light cloud" is f9 at the same shutter speed. And "dull" (and flash) is also f9 but at a slower shutter speed, (the author of the photomemorabilia page on the Sporti speculated 1/25. Those shutter speeds seem awfy slow to me. The ...

This is a note to myself to check this out later . Saltcoats!

I managed to get another few hundred words done on the Learner Attitude research. It's sort-of planned out mentally now. It will be done by the deadline of 15th August. The next Module is an optional one. I was thinking of Teacher Education, but now I'm more inclined to Educational Management. The inspiration for this will be the all the things I've learned from watching utter wankers "manage" teachers and learners. And I've seen a few of them: incapable of listening; absorbed in unjustified self-importance; unable to think ahead and take control; sitting in endless meetings, talking shite and achieving nothing. Not that I'm bitter, or anything, oh no, as I stare at the suitcases that have been packed for two weeks.

After telling me Wednesday, management now blithely deny saying that, and are talking about Thursday or even Friday. No, no, no - as Amy Winehouse would no doubt say. I suggested in rather strong terms that they were not obliged to accept the word of their man-who-deals-with-visas (and gets paid for it) that this "is a two day process", just like that. More meetings, more meetings arranged for tomorrow. IF my passport can be retrieved from the ministry in the morning, early, I could go tomorrow. But that's unlikely. Wednesday, though... I have made promises.

Enforced idleness and a not-bad internet connexion have led me into spending more time than I otherwise would on Flickr. Exploring the possibilities of the FED2 and the Sporti has led me into all sorts of people's photostreams, (they both have eclectic and rather charming ownerships, I'm pleased to say). One thing I noticed though, was how many groups some people are in, and how many groups they'll put a single image into. What's all that about, then? View whoring? Anyhow, I went about a ruthless pruning of my own Flickr groups, cutting them back to three adminned, and thirty-something others. Each one of them is significant in some way. And that number is manageable: I can now spend time going through their pools, where you can find the occasional unexpected wonder. Or something.

I had intended to spend the morning on the 'phone cajoling and threatening (c&t) in order to get onto a flight later today, or at least tomorrow, rather than the Wednesday being suggested by management. But all the c&t of yesterday has left me emotionally drained. Going to the Embassy seems to have smartened things up somewhat, I doubt that more input from me will have any effect. No doubt management regard me as a pain-in-the-arse to be gotten away asap, and any thoughts I have that my departure will be delayed out of spite are, perhaps, paranoid. And I really don't want to arrive for this new job in a state of high anxiety. My hapless colleagues there will perhaps be feeling that way, my sustained late arrival causing them all sorts of headaches. I need to arrive able to calmly soothe the fevered brows and sort out any problems, (I'm refusing to call them "challenges"). So, I doubt the departure will be today. Fingers crossed the c&t of yeste...

I loved my wee flapper weatherpixie. But something's gone horribly wrong. She's not working. Click on the link, and you'll time-out; google weatherpixie , and then click on the links to weatherpixie.com, and you'll time out. I miss her. Sitting in the sauna of a Tripoli summer night, it was strangely comforting to know Saltcoats was getting lashed by a gale off the Atlantic.

This morning I nearly lost the plot when one of the "managers" told me he understood I'd get my visa by the end of the week, but that it was out of his hands. I phoned the British Embassy in Tripoli and they seem to have stirred things up somewhat. Phone calls were made and my passport is now said to be in the appropriate Government department to get its rubber stamp. The bastard manager is saying that I won't get out until Wednesday - if the will were there I could be away tomorrow, but I'm still partly in the hands of petulant incompetents. At least Wednesday is there as an end date. I might just save the job that's withering on the vine in England. At least I've been able to say to them, "Thursday at the latest". Maybe before. Maybe tomorrow or the next day.

One of the beauties of the internet is that you can easily spot the shallowness, opportunism and cannibalism of the press. This, for example, is being touted as a news story about research into psilocybin . I don't know which media outlet started it, but plenty of others have picked over the bones of it, today there are 317 hits for the story in Google news. Well, it is an interesting story, I suppose, so I decided to have a shufty at the research via Google Scholar, and... It was published exactly two years ago today . Hardly hot news, then, eh? (Go straight to the full text PDF of the original research paper here. ) One of the news reports I read quoted a tame psychonaught who expressed the belief that psilocybin may have had a significant role in our evolution. He may be right. Robert Graves, in The White Goddess , considers a similar idea, in his typically maddening and opaque way. Three or four years ago, you could buy mushroom growing kits online, and it was quite le...

It's just getting silly now . And I'm not even going to get started on the whole Barton fiasco .

I've been well outbid on that Ilford Prentice . No doubt somebody's prepared to pay good money to have a camera he (it will be a he,) can put on a shelf and take photos of with his DSLR. So I'm going to bow out of that. Not so the Ilford Sporti, which doesn't have the same porn appeal, no doubt, but which will probably give me a lot more fun. I've even put in for another Sporti, described as having a faulty shutter, which is going for pennies to be used for spares or repair. (Get two if they're cheap and old, as the sailor said to the duchess).

It's good to see the Tories in London getting their arses kicked over Boris Johnson's appointment of a thorough wrong 'un as his deputy. Meanwhilst, in Glasgow East, Labour continue to take the piss out of the people there by selecting, in apparent desperation, a part-timer . I foresee an arse-kicking here, too. Labour are the party of the Establishment in that part of the world, and they've taken Glasgow's working class for granted for generations. They are amongst the most remarkable people in the world, I know. But taking the piss is not recommended. And as for the so called management of my (soon! please!) ex-employer, if ever an arse kicking was needed... They don't seem to get it. If you keep saying, "nothing, I can do... out of my hands... blah blah blah" then the question is asked: What are you getting paid for? Twats.

Sunderland-supporting Louise Taylor has managed to write a report without an overwhelming anti-Newcastle bias in The Guardian.

I managed to get a good morning's work with the SLA paper for the MA: wrote the introduction and an outline. It feels do-able. I've confronted the beast and he looked sheepishly at the carpet. And the Assistant Course Director from the job I should be doing in England sent me placement test results, and I was able to sort the students into classes. I heard from another University about pre-sessional work in August, too. These hopeful signs notwithstanding, I feel rather frazzled by the waiting. My colleagues here were going for a meal tonight but I made an excuse, feeling like Dead Man Walking. The people I should be working for, they've all been so kind and patient and pragmatic, I hate the thought of letting them down further, if this fandango goes on into next week. And, which I don't usually blog about, I'm missing Herself and The Bairn more intensely by the hour.

I know it's daft. My Kodak 66 was made in the early 60s, and it's a very nice camera, from a simpler age. But Kodak is an avowed friedmanite greed beast now , and the name makes my hackles rise. Or maybe it's not so daft. The subtext of getting away from a DSLR and into old Russian rangefinders and odd cameras that you'll find on eBay or in a charity shop is an anti-capitalist one. You buy a bottom of the range DSLR and you're in danger of being sucked in. I was, nearly: fantasizing about getting something reassuringly expensive . There'll always be something in development by The Company, more megapixels, more functions... And you've paid good money for the glass you can use, so they've got you by the pocket, perhaps for life. But you buy an old camera, and the capitalist has been and gone, he's not making anything out of this one. (Well, paypal make a buck or two. And if you buy it in a charity shop, you're fueling the NGO gravy-trai...

To summarise a story all over like a rash (300 something hits in Google news), an American Equity Fund has been sniffing around Newcastle. Ashley said the price is £420 million and they said no. Some reports claim he showed them the books. According to most online news outlets who bother to give sources, the Telegraph , for example, the story is said to have originated with The Sun, though if you go to their site, ( here's a link , if you're a masochist or a twat), and search "Ashley" you just get some old story about the wages bill. It's kind of interesting, if there's any truth in it. It shows we're perceived as a potential rising asset. It also shows that Ashley sets considerable value on the club. IF there's something in it. There could be wheels within wheels here.

I was trying to avoid digging-out anything packed, but I'm going to have to find a novel to read, I'm nearly finished No Mean City . I have a copy of JG Ballard's Super Cannes in the suitcase, and I'll need to get it tonight. Which is piling weird on weird, because I'm living a Ballard novel here. Almost everything is packed: books, clothes, cameras. All that's left out is shoe polish and brushes, bathroom things. The clothes I intend to travel in are hanging up, ready to be put on once I get the call. My good suit is next to them, waiting to be the final item packed because I don't want it too creased when I go straight to the new job. This laptop will be hand luggage. And I have a shirt, a teeshirt, two pairs of underwear, two pairs of socks, a pair of tracksuit bottoms and an Arab nightshirt, which I cycle through, washing and drying the set that I'm not wearing. The best indicator of the passage of time is the need to go out and buy more shis...

One leader learned to pucker up, the other didn't. The first is still in his palatial tent, the other took the long drop for the benefit of phonecams. His country, meanwhile was beaten unconscious and gang banged . His contemporary's own oil rich country has escaped such brutal treatment, but it's still going to get fucked, consenting or not. There are no police to call, so you leave quietly, embarrassed and ashamed.

It seems to be that you can get good vignetting with a Sporti. Apparently, it can depend on the film you use, and the light, too, perhaps.

Here's the weekend, so it won't be here before Sunday. I need to go into the office Sunday, and, as Tony Soprano would say "get my arms around this thing". I'll have 48 hours first, though, when nothing can happen, and I can get back to the MA. I had a dreadful meal tonight with Dan, who once ran an MA programme in Thailand, and got a big wake-up call from him. He reckons a lot of people fall by the wayside at this stage in their MA. Another thing I need to get my arms around. So I've unpacked some books. Tomorrow and Saturday, I need to bash out a thousand words or so, make a definite start with the limited resources I've got. But back to the dreadful meal, which was in a cafe restaurant which will serve as a metaphor for this trip to Libya. First time we went there, in a kind of suspended upper floor, it was really good. Clean, good service, good choice of food and the meal was very good. The next time, there was no vinegar in the condiment set...

Zebra , originally uploaded by Karolina Krzyzanowska . OK, this is the kind of thing I was thinking about . That's with a Holga - I don't know what sort of flash those things have. Of course, the person who took this no doubt goes to more parties than I do. I mention that because the Sporti/flash combination I have in mind will clearly be a party animal.

I got something from Beebo , via Digg , and had a shufty. Was taken aback to see I'd been a member of Digg since 2005. Anyway, it's back on the sidebar. There was probably a reason why I didn't stick with it three years ago, but that's an awfy long time in cyberspace, and much will have changed.

I know I said I wasn't, and if I hadn't been so bored and disorientated by the current weird situation, I probably wouldn't have. But I also said "if", and the conditional must carry with it the possibility that the condition will be met. Or something. Well, I've bid for a Sporti on eBay, anyway. £1. I'll go a bit higher, but not too much. No one could call me tight-fisted, I like to think, but there's something immensely satisfying about getting hours of fun, and maybe taking photos which will outlive me, for less than the price of a pint. And it looks like it will be fun. Very straightforward . Flash. Now here's a thing. I used to hate flash. But with B&W, say 100ISO? With the flash being over the top, an integral and avowed element of the photo? A touch of Weegee , forsooth.

"It's absurd. In other countries they look to see whether you have marijuana in your cigarette, here they'll look to see if you've got cigarette in your marijuana." Funny, I was thinking earlier how a big fat one would make this visa limbo easier to bear.

Desperately clinging to the job I should have already started by doing as much organising as I can remotely by email. It might work for a while, but sooner or later they're going to want me there. Fortunately, late arrivals and improvisation are factored into summer schools. Theoretically, I can still get there for the teachers' induction day on Thursday if the visa arrives first thing tomorrow, and I can get to the BA office in Tripoli to book the flight, and then get to the airport in time to check in. But that's the triumph of hope over expectation. I'm completely packed now. Even my FED2 is in its uneasy-open case, and then in bubble wrap in the middle of a suitcase. I'm working with a bare minimum of clothes, washing one set every day. Luckily, it's so hot in Libya they dry in an hour. This is a very strange situation. Character building. Or something.

IF I was going to go lo-fi, (I'm not, but IF I was) then I wouldn't go for a Holga . Join what Pierre recently called the magenta hair holga bigpants brigade ; (Flickr's a great thing - the Bolshevik laughs at the Neocon's joke, as in a dream). One of the reasons his remark was so funny was that I knew exactly the sort of bigpants person he meant. Someone who thinks they're being chic and trendy by paying £50 for a bit of plastic. Whereas, if I ever need to feel chic and trendy, I'll pay a couple of quid for an Ilford Sporti . It has as much photo-taking potential as a Holga. But then, I really can't be buying anymore hardware at the moment. Not with most of my worldly goods in three suitcases, being "between jobs", more or less. And with a house move in a month from now. Apart from that, I don't get a chance to use the cameras I have already. The trouble is, I've gotten into photography now, in my late forties. But I don't ...