Cropredy

Yesterday I attended the last day of the Cropredy Festival. Usually I attend all three days but this year my colleague, May, has been on holiday in South Africa so I couldn’t take the Thursday and Friday off.

Anyway, it was a pretty good, and indeed busy, Cropredy this year. Not only were there more people in the field than I’ve ever seen before (there seemed to be no space left unused) but the company kept me busy as well. I became a sort of fashion consultant for both Lindsey (who now calls me “the father of my skirt”) and Lindsey’s friend Steve Howe’s daughter, Leila (for whom I did three shopping runs which turned her from a very conservatively dressed trouser wearing girl into a hippy woman). All this shopping excitement too most of the day.

I did managed to do a little bit of photography and play with the camera a bit. You can see the results here. At least one of these shots I would definitely not have been able to do using my old camera due to its slow start-up, focus and shutter times. With the new camera from power off to fully auto-focused and picture shot can be about half a second.. that’s fast and allows for the grabbing of “moments” as they happen. The old camera would take about 4 seconds from power off until it was ready to shoot, then about another 2 seconds to auto-focus and finally, about a 0.25 second lag between hitting the shutter button and the picture being taken.

In the evening, after all the shopping activity, I basically sat on my tarpalling while other members of the group, mostly sisters of the clan Hunt, used my chair with Leila sitting next to me. Late in the evening I became a mobile cushion. Apparently, my shoulder’s very comfortable. At the end of the evening Leila suggested that it might be a good idea to advertise myself for teenager pillow, however, I replied that it would probably not be a good idea seeing as it would be (a) weird and (b) a bit creepy. She took the point, but said that at least the wierd bit would be true. And this from a 15 year old who hisses at her brother like a cat and who wants to breed parrots and cats. Hmm…

Anyway, after all this excitement I managed to get home at about a quarter to 2am this morning. I’m now recovering from the lack of sleep. Hopefully, I will be in a fit state for work in the morning.