All behind like a cow's tail, and a quandary.

Tom remarked that Box Elder is looking very boring, with nothing new for the last eight days. I reminded him that we haven't had any internet for pretty well four of those. Our idyllic and reclusive mode de vie does have disadvantages, notably that your internet can go AWOL at the drop of a hat. If this happens midweek, as it did, it's not so bad, since the odd commercial interest like the suspended ceiling factory up the road whom I rang for confirmation that it wasn't just us, may protest about it, and there will be people employed to fix it.

If, however, it's over the weekend, as it was the second time, then it's just tough shit, and you have to wait till someone wanders in on Monday morning and notices that the little light that signifies the environs of our village is not on and sticks the relevant plug back in its socket. Or however it works. I am woefully ignorant of the workings of the internet beyond my immediate orbit. I'm quite cheerfully ignorant of them within my orbit come to that.

So now I am hopelessly behind with everything requiring me to be on-line, though I'm admittedly quite well up with things like organising pieces of work-related paper, brushing the dog etc.


Yet once I was once more enmeshed within the tissue of the web once more, I felt somehow paralysed,

and, rather than catching up with pleasant or useful matters such as your good selves' blogs, putting something on my own or studying the next module of my on-line business English teaching course, I frittered and wasted the afternoon hours I had available today in trying to find a means on their website to berate Orange for their lack of service and threaten to withdraw our custom from them - a futile endeavour since they make sure you can't complain by e-mail, and anyway, all the internet service providers available here are overpriced and rubbish, and as my good friend said, better the devil you know.

The other thing I've been wasting time on here is vacillating uselessly between Canon's website, various photography forums and camera-repair place websites, and other forums, reviews and Flickr pools dedicated to lauding and honouring the superior virtues of the Panasonic Lumix FZ28. Because, brothers and sisters, the camera has croaked. My first response to this was that I would do without it for a time, use the cheap compact occasionally, and virtuously edit, sort and maximise the potential of all the backlog of photos I have already, then either get it repaired or replace it. But, I decided, I would go to the camera shop and ask their advice. The camera shop wasn't open (it was Monday, which is the New Sunday here), but peering through the double metal grills and shutters over their windows (an oddity in a place where bank cashiers sit in cheerful open plan spaces behind nothing more than flimsy formica desks, no grills no glass, and people have vegetable patches full of sumptuous comestibles unfenced next to the road without fear of their being raided...) I saw the Panasonic. At a very good price, which so far I have not seen the equal of even on-line.

What to do? The Canon is probably reparable, which would cost rather less, though probably rather a lot compared to what it's worth, and things are tight and getting tighter, with the exchange rate and all. But it has had motor trouble (which this seems to be) before, when it was still under guarantee, is there any point in repairing what is clearly a fragility. I would have to send it off or take it the other side of Rennes to get it looked at, even before deciding whether it was worthwhile. It is a little over three years old, it is outmoded, it would be exciting and interesting to upgrade... but it is only a little over three years old, it's appalling that I should have to replace it!

Taking good photos is little to do with the equipment, as everyone tells me, but comes from within, I should not be beguiled... but it is clearly a superior beast, I know I would take better photos with it... I am being seduced into the evils of unnecessary consumerism, but for goodness sake, I consume so little, I never buy new clothes, I scarcely eat red meat, I don't even own an I-pod or any other MP3 player, I have no children ... I would grieve for the Canon, not just as a departed friend that's been through much with me, but also in that fashion I remember Dave writing a poem about once, as the only form of grief peculiar to the modern, consumer, throwaway and built-in-obsolescence world, the grief that comes from the sense of waste, of knowing that something has gone before it should have, it should have died hereafter...

If we went through Rennes, we would probably stop and have a Japanese or Indian meal which would be a treat, but would add to the expense...

Help me, sisters and brothers, what would you do?????

~~~

(The photos are nothing much to do with anything, just backlog. Tom says this agonising about the camera is pretty boring too, since it's already decided ...)