Birds!

Okay, so anyone who has ever met me has heard my rant on digital photography. My biggest issue is that digital is changing the essential nature of the photo album. There are no bad photographs anymore, no more mistakes (and the mistakes are often the most beautiful images) and very few hardcopy photoalbums. My boy has had his digital camera for about four years and how many times has he printed photographs? Once! Our photoalbum is one sided!

I always said that I'd only get a digital camera once it had something to offer me but until then I was blacklisting them. The day came when I realised that I'd not been shooting any colour images. I put a roll of colour film into my camera and then promptly took it straight back out because I didn't want to miss out on getting an image in black and white.

So I purchased a digital camera to take some colour images. I'm not at all happy with the results however the immediacy of being able to have hard copy images so soon after taking the image is somewhat of a novelty (after having to process film and then print each image).

See, nothing spectacular there. But I'll pay the immediacy for sure.

I have two more things to talk about. One is Lorraine. Had the most fantastic day with her on Saturday (its been so long). We went to West End for tea and cake and then back to her place to meet her family. Now I adore Lorraine and I should be spending this entire blog listing her many virtues however animal nut that I am, I'm going to talk about Spooky. I had heard much about Spooky - grumpy, one eared, biter, former feral, generally not all that nice to be around. Oh how Lorraine lied!

Perhaps the highlight of my day was three german shepherds.

I grew up with german shepherds - two of the best dogs a person could ever hope to share time with. There is something amazing about being able to wrestle a big dog; they are so physical and so demanding. Seeing Freddy, Chinner and Princess brought back so many memories of Sheba and Sasha. I remember that we used to live up in the mountains on 22 acres of land and we had lots of dams. No matter what time of year, every single morning when we let Sheba out of the house she ran straight to the dam for a swim. It could be 5 degrees and she'd run straight to the water. I remember that whenever they had bones Sheba would dutifully bury hers and Sasha would follow closely behind (but not too closely to arouse suspicion) and dig them up.

We are amazingly fortunate to be able to spend part of our lives with these animals. A few years ago all of my childhood pets (Dominique, Sasha, Sheba, Sophie and Goo) grew very old and had to be put down - all within the space of a year. It was a devastating time but also a beautiful one because I was able to get more animals to share my life. We share our lives with our animals for ten, fourteen years. We treat them like kings then they die peacefully and we are able to look after more.

I said in the first paragraph that anyone who knew me knows my rant about digital. Anyone who knows me will also know that it would only take two blogs to do this:

the Alderley crew

I encourage you to visit Tales of Your Local Animal Shelter and the RSPCA.

One last thing! New Showbread album tomorrow. Quite excited.

So seeing the dogs made me think of ten years ago and my dogs, which made me think of Pet Politics by Silver Jews. Thanks to Bradley's Almanac for the live version.

One last image to leave you with. The evil illi.




Silver Jews

Visit Silver Jews at their My Space

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Listen to Silver Jews Pet Politics

Showbread

Visit Showbread at their My Space

Buy Showbread at Missing Link

Listen to Showbread Oh Emetophobia!