I was in England recently. Overall I had a good time, although I could have done without all the car and airplane time that was involved with the trip. By now most of the people that read my blog often will know the bad news about my camera. It is lost. It is still possible to recover it, but I have lost nearly all hope of ever seeing it again.
I thought that I took some really cool pictures, I thought they were good even if others wouldn't agree. I left nearly all of them on my camera so that it would be easier to mobilize them than on a computer. My logic was that if I left the photos on my camera it would be much more of an instant way to show anyone that requested to see them. This was a mistake.
The events that led to my losing possession of my camera happened like this.....
I was staying in a hotel that was about 10 miles from a small village in England. Now this village was over 100 miles away from London. Being from the United States, my family and myself were very used to driving on the right side of the road, but this is not how the English do their driving. Neadless to say, we were disorientated a bit by the change of driving methods, and as such, we found that is was much harder to navigate the roads and intersections. The roads are much more narrow there, and the traffic moves in a vastly different manner than we were used to.
Now, it is very common knowledge that London is a very large city, and therefore, can be expected to have the traffic problems that accompany a plethora of cars on the road. Understanding that the traffic and roads would be difficult for my family to travel about, we opted to take the train from Peterborough to the King's Cross Station in London. This worked like a charm as they say, and decided to do it twice. The second time we went to London I had my camera around my neck the whole day. I took over 100 photos that day, and was constantly looking around at things that I could take photographs of, and thinking about photography nearly 11 hours or so.
So at the end of our adventureous day my parents and sister were waiting for the first train that was available for us. I learned my lesson from the 3 previous train journeys, they are boring. Being wise as I often am, I snatched a "free" newspaper from the street newspaper guy to cure my boredom. I believe that I am fairly notorious for having a sweet tooth, and have even been called "candy boy" by some. I needed one more thing for the train ride, and went to the store with my lil sis to get some candy or a drink [and got both].
We had a swell time on the train reading about the English celeberities, and the sports stars, and movie reviews, et cetera. Wearing a camera around your neck takes a toll after an extended amount of hours, and it began to rub my neck raw and red. As I sat on the train with the strap around my neck I thought it silly to keep it around my neck as I sat there not moving, and removed the strap. I set my camera between my sister and myself on the seat. We read the papers, and ate the candy and drank our soft drinks. When we arrived at the station we were informed that we were at the end of the line, and that all passengers must exit. I had some rubbish to put in the bin, and some souvenirs as well, so I made sure to get them all to the places they needed to go. I even picked up a paper that was left behind by another passenger to help the cleaning crew out with thier job.
I was walking to the car thinking about how I wouln't really want to clean a train, and about the various coins that I had collected for a friend that wanted them. I got into the car and we started to leave the station. We drove for a few minutes when I thought that I would like to look at the pictures that I had taken earlier that day, and that is when it hit me that I had lost my camera. We then turned back to go retreive the lost camera. The search never made it to the train. I thought that the cleaners would surely turn in a camera, but I was mistaken (at least as far as we can tell).
I have just presented evidence that shows that you shouldn't clean up your own trash, and especially the trash of others. This can only lead to losing your valuable possesions. In fact, I will argue that if you make extra trash you will probably have amazing windfalls and good fortune. Don't expect photos from me.
