July 7. Day 189. I've got my eye on you

People are, I think it would be fair to say, endlessly fascinating. You can never know exactly what makes them tick or what it's like to walk in their shoes but that doesn't mean watching and wondering isn't a sport in itself. The trick in people watching is to make it look like you are doing anything but. In this a couple of canines are especially helpful. It is easy to appear like your attention is not on the people when you have pooches. A flashy camera also helps although you might assume the opposite. As long as you are not pointing it at anyone in particular it explains your presence without a word so people talk as though you are not there. Well that's my theory. It could be just that I'm not interesting enough to notice - the staff in most electronics stores certainly seem to think that ... Anyway not being noticed comes in handy when you want to take pics of the birds and the bees.

July 5. Day 188. Flash mob

I have a new toy. It is suspiciously like my old toy(s) except it works. Until last week I took my photos on a Canon 650D. But it died of old age like the Canon 550 before it. That probably sounds a trifle careless but I do take about 100,000 photos a year, every year. And to take those photos I cart my camera and lenses with me everywhere. It's totally not something wrapped in cotton wool. I work on the philosophy that there is no point in having a camera if you don't use it and if I don't have the camera with me I can't use it. The world is full of what used to be called Kodak moments when Kodak was still a thing. Sure I could use my Fruit Phone but most of the time I'm using it to send a tweet or update Facebook or check emails or something. Sure the iPhone can do everything but not all at once and not if you want to preserve the battery in case you want to actually use it to make a call, And when you average my photo spend over a year it's a small price to pay for the joy of snapping. Well that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

July 5. Day 187. A cut above

A week ago I watched my neighbour Margaret being loaded into an ambulance and transported to hospital in the early hours of the morning. At the time, I really thought the next stop would be a nursing home. It still might be but I am far less pessimistic. I can tell she's thinking the same thing. For the first few days she was confined to bed. The physios tried to walk her but she managed just one step. Today she walked to the end of the corridor and was all smiles as she managed to hoist herself from the chair to walker. She was chatting away happily to the woman in the next bed and was as pleased as punch to be visited by the hairdresser. As any women knows a new hairdo can make you feel like a new woman.
But the real sign that we've turned the corner is that Margaret has returned to bossing me around. In other circumstances it might be irritating to be in trouble for putting the coins in the "wrong" section of the purse or not being able to find a ball of white wool but honestly I couldn't be happier. The real Margaret is back.

July 4. Day 186. Such a card

 Phone calls from my niece Scarlett always start the same way. "Hi. This is your favourite niece," she says. "Hi there Cleo/Jessie/Lucy/Amelia," I reply inserting any one or perhaps all my other nieces as if I don't know. Yeah, I'm such a card. Anyway one is not allowed a favourite niece but the rules totally allow a Niece of The Day Award and today that I loving bestow on Miss Scarlett. My Exhibition photographic competition entries are due on Wednesday and that means the dreadful business of mounting. Last year my good mate and fellow photo blogger Donna Weeks "helped" me with that project but she ran away to Japan probably just to escape my incompetence. Today it was Scarlett's turn. Now when it comes to this type of work the "help" required involves me choosing the colour of the mounting card, making supportive noises and then going off and fiddling with photos of birds or grasses I took earlier in the day or cooking dinner. Some people work by the motto "if you want a job done properly do it yourself". In this particular type of project my motto is "if you want the job done properly outsource it to someone else. A girl might as well be honest about her limitations... I can push a button on a camera, I can joke around with my nieces but measuring cardboard and cutting a straight line. Not so much.

July 3. Day 185. Winging it

When I went to bed yesterday it was already today. As a bit of a politics tragic I had watched the opposition leader's speech and it was only right and proper that I give the Prime Minister the same amount of respect. The clocked ticked and ticked. The political observers discussed how the speech writers would be in overdrive working to get the tone right given that the result was still unclear but the victory line was perhaps in sight. And after midnight the PM appeared, said he was confident that the coalition could take government and then launched into one of the most bitter, defensive, angry diatribes I've heard on an election night. And this is from a man who just said he thought he was on the winning team. Huh? For a bit I thought the lateness of the hour was playing tricks on my brain. Perhaps this wasn't the speech of a man who seemed to be operating on a wing and a prayer, perhaps he wasn't winging it, perhaps this was the well considered rhetoric of a team of professionals. But political brains far greater than my own seemed to agree with my assessment that both the timing and the speech sucked. Maxine McKew said it was "insulting" we'd all been kept waiting so long, Laurie Oakes said the speech was "pretty pathetic" and Mike Carlton called it a "flabby failure". And people wonder why the opinion of politicians is not high. And that's coming from a journalist. I promise this is not a party political assessment. It's the assessment of someone who watches politics with interest and is prepared to call out bird brained decisions when they happen.

July 2. Day 184. Vote one

 Hi ho. Hi ho. It's off to vote we go. After the world's longest election campaign, finally we were able to put the endless ads behind us and cast our votes. For Drama Teen it was a Federal Election first and the first time he was confronted with the Senate paper. Seriously? A paper that's more than one metre long. That's democracy for you. Of course you can just vote Above the Line. If you are a wimp. Not I said the fly. I number every single square. All 122 of them. It's not that I have an opinion on all of them. Many of them I have no idea at all. I start with numbers one to 10 with the candidates I like. Then I move to numbers 122 through to about 100 of those I consider dangerous or nut jobs or just not very nice.  Number 69 is always reserved for the Sex Party and then I fill in the blanks in sequence. It's time consuming but it gives me a real sense of satisfaction. But do you know what really gives me satisfaction? The fact that I have the photos to prove it. Our democracy might have its shortcomings but we have a free and open system and a country where it is safe and easy to vote. No-one questioned my camera or my right to take photos in the polling station. Those handing out the How to Vote cards were enjoying baiting each other. It may be competitive but it's a good natured competition. If only I'd got my act together in time for the sausage sizzle...

July 1. Day 183. A wet blanket

What a horrible wet blanket I've been today. No fun at all. The worst of it is I don't know why. On a clear sunny day a girl has no right to feel like it's drizzling or there's a  thick fog. It didn't even start off that way. When these photos were taken at South Bank all was sunny. But a series of really small things -the sorts of irritants that normally give you the shits for a couple of seconds before you shrug them off - set me on an unusual path to grumpy town. The last train out of grumpy town had already left for the day. I can only hope that like Annie "the sun will come out tomorrow" because frankly the wet blanket act is no fun at all. It's no fun for the blanket or the people being smothered by it.