The Botanist; the ruinous cost of deving in Chelsea; more fun with flash and x-rays

The doorman at The Botanist tonight wouldn't let me smoke a cigar outside the front of the pub because people didn't like the smell, "neither do I", he said, even though he'd just been smoking a cigarette himself.  I asked the two young Frenchmen standing there if they objected, and they seem nonplussed at the very idea.  He made me stand around the corner, where two City blokes seemed unhappy with the cigar, unlike the Frenchmen. It was annoying, but more interesting as an example of arbitrary use of power.  I think his accent was eastern European, and I'm normally resident in China, and we find our way to Sloane Square to have this dispute.

At Snappy Snaps on the King's Road, I learned that it costs £9-something to dev a roll of 120, and the same again to scan it.  So the roll I've got in the camera will wait until I get back to Shanghai, as will any others I shoot here.  That roll in the camera has been through the x-ray on the Shanghai subway, Pudong, KL and Heathrow airports, and it'll go through Heathrow and Pudong again.  Which is a good reason for not spending nearly £20 on deving it.  It's also an experiment.

The Hard Rock Cafe in KL charges 20-odd ringgit for a beer, which is about £4.  There were some pseudo bikers in there, and one of them threw up all over the floor with the drink.  He must have spent the equivalent of a working class local's wages for a month to get into that state.  Whilst there, though, I got an idea for using the flash for portraits.  Watch this space for the results of that, and the x-rays.