And I think sometimes it’s the same with my photography.

I take photos for a living and, don’t get me wrong, I love it.  I get a great feeling of satisfaction from producing something which brings people joy without them thinking about who I am.  (That’s the same with a lot of the work I’ve done: when I’m doing costume character work I enjoy walking around the place I’ve just been working knowing that none of the people who I’ve been interacting with have a clue who I am, and I enjoy working back stage in theatre, adding to the magic without people giving a second thought to me being there.)  But sometimes I get home, collapse into bed, and wonder why I just put myself through that.

This happens most when I’m out with my camera for fun.  I think this is mainly because a lot of the stuff I do for myself is different to the stuff I do professionally — my professional work is usually rehearsal space, studio or theatre based and generally pretty controlled (with some exceptions, of course, and I’m pleased to do those other things), while the stuff I shoot for myself is often outdoors in unpredictable public environments.  It’s kind of the difference between photography as an art and the thrill of capturing that candid moment.

When I’m out for myself I can spend hours on my feet with my heavy kit bag, sometimes walking for miles.  And today I’m suffering from the weekend.  But I still do it.  I still go out with my cameras when I have free time.  Occasionally I have the moments I just described, wondering why on earth I would put myself through that for no apparent gain, but I do.  And you know what?  I love it.

Events on the main stage in Trafalgar Square were due to kick off at 12noon, so I headed into London in the morning. I had spoken to Miss T the day before and she’d talked about meeting up in the afternoon – she was babysitting for her sister the night before, and so would be passing through London.  I’d agreed to lend her and Mr S one of my old cameras, so this was an ideal chance to hand it over – so I wanted to get plenty of time in before I met her. When I arrived at the square, at about quarter to 12, there were already a lot of people waiting and so I went to find myself good vantage point at the top of the stairs leading up to the National Gallery where I settled down for things to get going.

12 o’clock came and went.  As did half past, as did 1pm.  And still we stood waiting.  Finally, about quarter past 1 our two hosts appeared on stage.  They were two young ladies (Not young young I don’t suppose.  Not what I might have referred to as young before, but from the view of my advancing age, young enough.) dressed in traditional Chinese outfits. It took me a little by surprise when they introduced themselves as Yvonne and [something equally non-Chinese].  Anyhow, they proceeded to introduce a whole load of dignitaries ranging from someone from the Chinese embassy who couldn’t speak English, through to some senior policeman, via Boris Johnson who couldn’t be bothered to turn up but sent us a video message (which we ended up seeing twice, apparently because of technical problems), all of whom made speeches about how great the occasion was and how proud they were to be associated with it.  After around 45 minutes, the painting of the dragons’ eyes and a photo call on the stage, the entertainment started.

The first, and by far the best, act was a dragon dance.  We were told that it was telling the story of a dragon who was sent into the mountains to collect some kind of special tea.  He had to overcome a whole load of problems on his journey and, apparently, was scared for a long period around the middle.  The dance was impressive.  The dragon was made up of two people and the whole dance took place on top of a set of 7 and 8 foot poles.  There were lots of acrobatic jumps from pole to pole accompanied by traditional Chinese drums and thing which no one but the front row of the crowd right by them could hear because it wasn’t amplified.  Following that there was some singing and something else (probably: I can’t actually remember, it made such an impression).

By this time I was losing interest and wanted to wander up to Chinatown, but was a little bit trapped.  Even when they moved the barriers back to make more room on the ground the steps were pretty crowded and I was struggling to escape.  I found my way down the side of the steps in the end, knocking out as few people as possible on the way down. I took some general shots around Trafalgar Square and then my phone rang. It was Miss T.  She was just setting off from her sister’s house and, after a little discussion, we arranged to meet outside of Leicester Square tube.  This was on the right line for her, and was a good reason for me to head that way.

So I did.  I walked up around Trafalgar Square stopping to take some shots of the stalls and people around the edge (as well as taking a picture for some foreign visitors. It seems if you have professional kit on your shoulders people expect you to be able to take good photos on their little instant digital cameras.  This is, of course, the opposite of the truth.), and headed up the (closed) road to Leicester Square.  There was more going on there, and I spent some time taking pictures around there.  The plan was to then go into Chinatown itself, but a little exploration revealed that wasn’t going to work because of the crowds and time.  So I just went to meet Miss T.

Once she arrived we headed off for a break at a lovely little cafe in Covent Garden.  On the way there we spotted a whole load of TV OB trucks parked outside the Royal Opera House so went to investigate. Of course neither of us had realised it was the night of the BAFTA awards; why would we? It’s not like we both work in the entertainment industry or anything. We sat for an hour or so in the cafe, Miss T had soup while I had a very large slice of Chocolate Bombe and surprisingly nice Apple juice.  We chatted and I got to take the weight off my feet for a while.

One thing Miss T wanted to do was get photographs of some graffiti which had appeared on some building site hoardings near London Bridge.  We decided we should head there before the light faded too far.  With those photos in the bag, we walked back along the south bank of the river toward Waterloo, snapping away as we went.

As a theatre and events photographer it’s been a long time since I took landscape pictures so it was a bit of a change for me, but still remarkably enjoyable.  It’s also been a long time since I went on a shoot with another photographer, and it’s always very interesting to see what they spot that you missed, especially when out of the confines of a performance space.

Miss T and I parted company once we reached Waterloo station.  It was pretty late by this stage and we both needed to get off home.  We sorted out who was taking what camera kit (I was still carrying some of the things she wanted to borrow in my kit bag), said our goodbyes, she headed off underground and I went and got my train.

On the train home I sat opposite a photographer who had clearly been on the BAFTAs red carpet.  He was editing and tagging his photos with the help of a celebrity cheat sheet issued by BAFTA.  It crossed my mind that it would be very helpful if something like that could be provided by producers when I’m working with particularly large casts.

I beat Miss T back home for once, although unusually we did start off from my main station rather than hers.

I was glad of a few days with nothing planned this weekend.  The last few weeks have been a bit non-stop.  Early in the year I bought a whole new load of camera kit but hadn’t had much chance to take it out for fun and play with it through January so, on Valentine’s day, I packed up my backpack and headed off to shoot the silent disco in The Scoop at More London.  I was expecting it to be a reasonably busy event with plenty going on to photograph.  Unfortunatly that wasn’t the case.

My trains arrive into London Waterloo which is just a few minutes walk away from the London Eye and South Bank.  Once on the South Bank you can walk along the Thames path right down to Greenwich (in fact the path runs 184 miles from near the river’s source, according to the National Trail website).  So I decided to walk from the station to City Hall, quite a nice walk I’ve done plenty of times before with a full kit bag.  What I failed to factor into my journey was how much heavier my new kit is when compared to my old kit, and how out of practice I am at walking with it after winter (in fact quite probably how out of practice I am at walking at all since I started using my bike for local journeys just under a year ago).

Once I reached The Scoop I was disapointed that there weren’t many people there, and it wasn’t much of a sight.  I couldn’t even easily get close to the edge of The Scoop because they had security barriers around it.  There were pretty friendly looking staff around (one of the young ladies gave me quite a smile as I walked past, actually) and I’m sure, had I asked, they would have been quite accomodating, but I wasn’t really in the mood having walked all that way, so I just stomped past, around the other side of City Hall and flopped onto the stone seating / steps for a rest and to decide what to do. For some reason I chose to walk a bit further.

I wandered across Tower Bridge, in front of the Tower of London and along some of the roads in the City. I didn’t take any pictures.  I had half an idea to walk to St Paul’s, but didn’t make it that far.  I came back down to the north side of the Thames by St Magnus the Martyr (who were ringing their bells at the time) and walked back up to Tower Bridge.  By this time I was starting to hurt; my feet and legs were the worst. I crossed back over the river with the intention of seeing if things had hotted up at the disco, but they hadn’t so I decided to head home.

By this time my shoes were feeling really quite uncomfortable and I was limping slightly.  It felt like my sock had shifted slightly aroud in my shoe and the feeling of it moving against my foot was starting to annoy me, so I stopped to sort it out.  Unfortunatly it wasn’t my sock, it was the skin on the ball of my foot which had blistered very badly.  I hobbled on to London Bridge tube and back to Waterloo where, thankfully, it wasn’t much of a wait for the train.

I continued to suffer for it the next few days.  While my feet felt a little better after a good night’s sleep my legs decided to start aching more.  I think perhaps I was a bit ambitious (albeit not intentionally) on my first outing of the summer, but at least I know now how much practice I need to get in before we really hit the summer events season…

The plan was to meet the runners around mile 9 just past Canada Water, and then jump back on the tube and go to Bermondsey then Westferry, Poplar and finish off at Embankment.  This quickly went out of the window.  I arrived at Canada Water in good time and made my way around to Canada Street just in front of the Standard’s press building.  At first the crowds were a little too deep to get any good coverage so I wandered down the road the way the runners were going.  After a short distance the spectators thinned out and I managed to get some shots in.  A little further down the road I came across my first water station.

Last year all the water stations I came across were fenced off and without a route pass I couldn’t get very close, but this year I managed to get up close and personal with a couple of them.  One benefit of having professional equipment at events like this is that people often just assume you’re doing something official and either don’t question you when you’re in a slightly strange place, or actually get out of the way for you.  This happened a few times with the water stations and I got some good pictures from right in the middle of the action.

Having come this far from Canada Water I decided to press on a little further rather than fight my way back past the crowds again.  While I did have my own plan on me with tube stops marked, I didn’t get it out to check and just walked on.  In the end I walked about 3 miles from Canada Water to Bermondsey by which time I was really hot, pretty tired and well behind schedule.  At Bermondsey I bought myself a bottle of water and took stock.  It was too late to get to Westferry on time so I decided to ditch that step.  The previous year I’d had a bad experience with changing on the DLR so decided I didn’t want to try that again and decided to skip Poplar as well.  That left me just with Embankment, so I set off there.

I decided to head to Westminster and walk back along Victoria Embankment rather than change to the District or Circle line to Monument or anything partly because it would give me more time above ground on the Marathon route, and partly to see if I could get any interesting shots of the current protests in Parliament Square along side the runners.  So I headed up to the surface.  On the way up it amused me that London Underground were making announcements about the best exit to use for the protests — customers for the protests should use exit three.  Once I got out I had a look around.  Slightly sadly I couldn’t get anywhere near the protests because of the police cordon, so I decided to head back the other way.  Just as I was turning back to walk towards the Houses of Parliament and around the top of the Marathon route I was approached by a foreign visitor who asked me to take their photograph in front of Big Ben.  This I did but made a bit of a mess of — I managed to cut the top off the tower.  She probably thought that someone who looked like a press photographer would be able to take a decent photo and I felt bad not framing it right, but I decided it wasn’t exactly the right time to spend a couple of minutes getting it all right.  That takes my tourist photo taking to 2 (the other being outside of Buckingham Palace).  I wonder how many other professional photographers have had this pleasure.

Anyway, I wandered down Victoria Embankment looking for interesting things to get pictures of but was pretty disappointed.  The crowds were too heavy to get to the road most of the time and where I could there wasn’t much of interest to photograph, so most of the pictures I got on this section were of supporters.  I walked a good mile down the road and back again although pretty much gave up taking pictures on the way back.  Once I got back to Westminster station I tried once more to get a reasonable picture of runners and protests but still couldn’t.  I wandered onto Parliament Street and sat down for a while — by this time I was hot and tired.  I thought I’d head back to Waterloo on the tube to save pushing through the crowds.  The entrances to the station on the junction with Parliament Street were exit only, so I decided to head back to the entrance next to the mini Tesco.  Unfortunately as I tried to get back on to the road by Parliament Square I was met by a policeman telling me it was closed.  At this point I have to say that, despite all the complaints the press have with the Met, he was very polite about it (I know I wasn’t working, but knowing what’s been alleged by photographers of their experiences with the police it does skew your expectations a little).  It was, however, a little irritating:  if you know that area of London you might know that it’s a long walk back down Parliament Street onto Whitehall before you can turn right again and get back to Victoria Embankment, cross the river and get back to Waterloo.

By the time I got back home I couldn’t be bothered to sort out the pictures and instead went to bed.  I’ve still not sorted them out.  It makes me glad I’m not in the editorial market — I don’t think I could be bothered to turn these things around in such a short time — at least in my area of work I can just flop when I get in from a shoot and sort the rest of it out the next day!

This obviously throws up a few issues, both morally and technically.

To be quite honest I don’t personally have a moral problem with the adult industry.  It’s not something I’ve particularly wanted to get into, but I don’t have objections to the principal.  My view is that so long as the people involved are there willingly and are comfortable with the situation then there’s no problem.  I appreciate the argument that some of the issues are with the message this kind of work gives to young people, but my general opinion is that the majority of people understand that it’s art and that the people in the images have chosen to be involved.  Not everyone I know would agree, and this is another slight issue — if I do take the job, do I keep quiet about it?

Technically it’s portrait work and normally I would turn down portrait work.  It’s not my area of expertise and I know others who specialise in that kind of thing could do a much better job.  While I have similar thoughts about this kind of thing, and it’s well out of my comfort zone, I kind of think that I wouldn’t feel as unconfident about taking these pictures as I would doing traditional studio or location portraiture.  For one thing I think these would be more casual shoots with fewer expectations of what is expected.  This would give me more freedom to experiment, and to some extent shoot in a more candid style that I’m comfortable with.

I gather that the client already has a number of ‘models’ lined up — a handful of friends who want to do some sets of this kind — and I guess he’s got a good idea of the direction of the site he’s building and so the kind of image he wants to end up with, but another concern would be how we would go about about capturing the images themselves.  I’d want the shoots to be casual and fun, but I don’t really know the best way to go about making the models feel comfortable.  I’d certainly want to take a girl with me as my assistant because I think that would help the model feel more relaxed, and then I guess the client would want to come along.  (In fact I’d really appreciate that — given I don’t have any experience in this kind of thing I wouldn’t feel comfortable myself trying to direct a shoot.  Obviously I’d be willing to put my artistic opinion in but I wouldn’t be happy being fully artistically in control, at least for the first few sets. )  I’d also be happy for the model to bring a friend along with her, be that a boyfriend or a girly friend, if that would make her feel happier, but after that I think I’d want a closed set.  That would mean there would be 5 people on set, each with a clearly defined role.  I would be concerned if it turned into a much bigger group with people hanging around not having anything to do.

I still have to get back to them about if I’m willing to do it, and it still might not take off.  But I’ll keep this updated with what I decide and, if I do agree (which I think I’m leaning toward at the moment) my experiences of the shoots themselves.

Then, this weekend, I spotted a copy of The Daily Telegraph on the train open on an article titled “The Mandy and Osborne Show had us in stitches”, so I had a look.  The article I had initially seen was, in fact, not very interesting at all (some comments by an actress about The Spectator’s Parliamentarian of the Year awards), but the item above it was.  The section I was reading was the comment section, and the piece above related to the current economic climate.  The article is clearly comment – it’s not hard fact, it’s one writer’s opinion on the way Gordon Brown has handled the slow down in the economy.  As good comment should be it’s a very biased article.

The blog post and the article may not be related, but they started me thinking – do these issues of ethics and bias have any impact on the way I work as a photojournalist?

To deviate quickly. Charles Moore’s article begins:

“The credit crunch is not great pictorially. One can tolerate only so many photographs of screens turning red and young traders burying their lavatory-brush haircuts in their hands.”

To some extent I agree – the economy doesn’t lend itself to great photos – but there are some great shots out there which relate to this.  It makes the photographer look for new ways to go about shooting the news and brings up some very artistic work.  It also happens pretty slowly (in photography terms), so there’s plenty of time to set up and get the very best shot you can and you’re not just shooting in bulk in the hope that one image will be worth something.  Put it this way: it’s no riot.

I’m freelance and make my money (when shooting editorial work) by selling my pictures on the wires.  The more outlets that pick up an image the more money I get.  The more images I sell the more money I get.  When I’m in the field shooting a news story I don’t know how writers and editors are going to spin the story, indeed different outlets will spin it different ways.  Therefore it’s in my interest to shoot an as un-biased set as possible.  For example: if I shoot 12 pictures of Gordon Brown with a light above his head which makes it look like he has a halo.  I put them on the wires and one image gets picked up by one newspaper who want to illustrate their story about how Brown is the saviour of the economy.  However, if I shoot 6 pictures like this and another 6 where he’s waving a large knife around looking menacing (during a publicity at a butchers, say), I might well manage to sell two pictures – one halo to the previous paper, and one knife to a paper wanting to paint him as the butcher of the economy.  So now I’ve made twice as much money.  And if I shoot 12 different pictures of him doing a whole range of things I might well sell 12 images to 12 different outlets each with their own agenda.  And now I’ve made 12 times as much money and can take the rest of the week off.

You see, as a freelance, it’s in my interest to not let my own opinion cloud my artistic (and business) mind.  I guess this changes if you’re staff.  Thank god I’m not staff.

And so to Wimbles’ blog post.  He’s being taught the legal and moral boundaries journalists need to work within as part of his course (or, at least with the moral issues, he’s being made aware of the complexities he needs to take into account when choosing his own boundaries).  While I appreciate we work in different areas – he’s studying broadcast journalism while my work as a photographer is generally for print and new media – there are some similarities (the legal framework is the same, for example).  When it comes to moral boundaries I think it’s easier for me to qualify my choices.  If I take a picture of something then the thing I saw was visible to everyone.  I’m not an investigative journalist, I’m simply an observer.  If my camera can see it then anyone could have seen it and by publishing that picture I’m not revealing anything anyone’s tried very hard to keep secret.  There are gray areas – the paparazzi’s treatment of celebrities is an obvious example – but, for me at least, the boundaries are clear here too: as soon as someone courts a press photographer to further their career they have no room to complain if the photographer then uses them to do the same.

Finally I should say that, luckily for me, I’m very rarely in the situation where these issues come into play.  When I’m shooting editorially I’m at events – sporting fixtures, carnivals, concerts, etc. – and I don’t go about making a living from chasing cutting edge news.  It’s encouraging that courses like the one being taken by Wimbles teach the moral side of journalism as well as the legal side.  It’s very reassuring to know that it’s people like him, with apparently a very balanced view on these issues, who are the future of journalism in this country. But I do sometimes fear that, once out of the protected environment of the college situation, this solid grounding and common sense will come a little un-stuck when it meets with the real daily pressures of journalism and, ultimately, the need to make a living from the stories being written.

While out shooting the Hallowe’en party last weekend I was approached by a man asking if I did this professionally: “I’m looking for someone who knows what they’re doing for an event we’re holding tomorrow night in Woking” he told me, “it looks like you know your stuff, just looking at your flash”.  I shoot with a Canon Speedlite 580EXII.  He went on to tell me about his event.  “There are some big names going to be playing — N-Dubz, Jodie Steele”.  I’d never heard of either of these.  And something was making alarm bells ring.  Still, I gave him my card and he gave me a flyer.

When I got home I decided to do a little bit of research.  He’d told me about their new website (in fact he offered me publicity through it — he said that he’d let me us it to promote my work.  I explained I pretty much had that covered myself), so I started looking there.  It looked reasonable.  It explained about the event, a 16+ club night, their launch event.  Their gallery section had some images which had obviously been stolen from somewhere else.  Next I checked their Facebook event page.  This looked a little less professional.  They had over 1000 people saying they were going to go, but the text was very poorly written and all the contact details were mobile numbers.  People seemed to be excited about going.  I still wasn’t convinced.  I decided that I wouldn’t ring them as he’d said I should, I’d let them ring me.  And I went to bed.

Next morning I woke up thinking about it.  This is my kind of work, and normally I wouldn’t think twice about it if I had a gap in the diary, but still something didn’t seem right.  My mobile rang about half 10, I didn’t check it, but I decided not to answer.  It turned out to be the letting agent asking if we had any post for the previous tenants.  The day went on as normal, no one rang.  Just as I’d pretty much decided they weren’t going to ring my phone rang again.  This time it was the man I’d met last night.  I didn’t answer.

It was about half 7 in the evening and the event was due to start at 9pm.  This was pretty much the deciding factor — any properly organised company would have sorted this out before now, especially given that they had promoted that photographers would be there on their publicity.  I think this is part of what made me feel uneasy the night before: why would a well organised company approach someone in the bar the night before asking if they could shoot their event?  So I didn’t go.

Next morning I checked in on the Facebook group again, had people enjoyed themselves?  The first comment: “WHAT A LOAD OF BOLLOCKS THAT NIGHT WAS!! FUCKIN RIP OFF! COMPLETE N UTTER SHIT!”.  Oh good.  The next wall post was from the organisers claiming they had problems with the club management and that “At 11pm on the night we were threatened with the club being shut down”.  Sounds like a rocking night.  I think my suspicions were well placed.  Who knows what would have happened if I had turned up…

He still has my card, and they are promising to do another event at the end of this month for everyone who was let down last time so maybe I’ll hear from them again, but I think that’ll be another job I’ll be turning down.  Besides I think this next event might never happen — their website has now disappeared.  I wonder if that was done on a promise like they tried with me (“we’ll give you publicity!”) and with the failure of this event that poor person, who has already put the time an effort in, has decided to pull out.

Either way, it’s times like that sometimes it’s better to listen to your gut feelings than just grab work when it’s offered.  My horoscope for the day of the event gave the best advice, in fact: “Well, on the 1st, if somebody comes your way peddling something that, while appealing, just makes no darn sense, say no.”

All in all it’s been a reasonable weekend, although I still didn’t get around to getting my accounts up to date.  I must do that this week.  Preferably tomorrow.

Friday was Hallowe’en and a group of people connected with work had organised a party at a local bar to which I was invited (I realise just because they wanted pictures of the night — a little earlier in the day Paul asked me “are you being photographer tonight” — but I’m used to that).  With it being Hallowe’en it was a fancy dress party.  With me being me I didn’t dress up.  We started off meeting up at the office where people got themselves dressed up and ready before walking to the bar.  The back room had been reserved and the plan was to get there about half 7.  As is expected with these plans we didn’t actually leave the office until about quarter past 8.  There was a good number of people there and we had booked a buffet which went down reasonably well, although there was too much of it (it ended up feeding a lot of people not in our party in the end).

I spent the evening snapping away.  I only took the one camera because I was expecting us to be moving on somewhere before the end of the night and I’m always concerned that clubs aren’t necessarily going to be very pro-gear friendly.  This restricted my scope a little but still, all in all, I took around 135 pictures and from that came up with about 60 of publishable quality (not job-quality, but that’s ok when they are just going to be used on Facebook).

After a few hours I’d pretty much run out of things to photograph so I decided to sit down for a bit.  Amy, the girl I mentioned above, came and sat with me.  “I haven’t spoken to you yet tonight”, she said.  So we sat and talked for a bit.  About what she’s doing (a placement from University doing something with chemicals — she’s studying chemistry and forensic science), about what I’m doing, about my university, about where we’re from, about her boyfriend.

It was interesting to get her side of the story — I’ve heard about the relationship from his side quite a bit, but having never met her I’d not been able to judge his comments, or hear what she had to say about things.  She’s not happy with him.  “He treats me like shit”, “it’s like I’m not here”, “I was worried all his friends hate me because of what he’s told them”.  I know what his friends think.  So I lie: “They don’t hate you”.  Then, because I’m nice and she seems a bit upset: “I like you at least”.  It works.  We hug.  I get called away because shots are on the cards — this is an important photo op.

A little later I’m standing by the bar with everyone else and she wander over again.  She stands next to me and puts my arm around her.  That’s ok I guess, I have plenty of girly friends who I’d do that with.  The next thing I know she wants a photo of us together, so we pose — typical friends-taking-a-picture-with-their-own-camera type pose, faces together, camera up high — and she takes a picture with her camera.  And then another.  And another.  Another.  And another.  I am summoned away again, this time to get a picture of Batman and the Joker.

TIme passes, the Joker wins costume of the night, and it is decided to go to Guildford to carry on the evening.  By this time most people have given up on the party and split to go home.  There are only 7 of us left and not many of us really think it’s worth going on to Guildford, especially not by £36 taxi.  I’m in two minds — I do actually quite like going out, despite what people think, and I’m happy to go on somewhere, but I’m not so keen on spending well over £170 to get us all to Guildford and then back home again — but I don’t have much else to do, so I figure I might as well.  Amy wants me to as well.  There’s a bit of a fuss getting into our taxi.  Amy gets in next to nick both facing forward and she signals that she wants me to sit next to her.  But Steve says he wants to sit facing forward, and I don’t mind facing the other way, so he goes to sit next to her.  This causes her to move so she’s on the other seat facing backwards, next to me.  The reason for this soon becomes clear — she wants to hold my hand.

The trip to Guildford is about 15 minutes.  Throughout this she keeps trying to hold my hand and I keep moving it away.  We finally arrive at the next bar, although I have no idea what it’s called.  We roll in and head for the bar.  There Harry buys everyone a drink.  Except me and, apparently, Amy.  So I offer to buy her one.  In fact, I offered to buy her boyfriend one.  I did this strategically.  I didn’t want to look like I was offering to buy just her a drink.  He already had one — Harry bought it.  In the time it took for me to get served everyone else had gone off to find somewhere to sit.  That left just the two of us.  She latched herself on to me and rested her head on my shoulder.  I didn’t respond.  We got our drinks and went to join the others.  There I strategically sat at the other side of the table from her and didn’t talk to her.  It worked, she talked to Harry.

Soon people were fed up of this nice comfy seat and wanted to go upstairs to, what turned out to be, another part of the bar which was busier and less enjoyable.  She grabbed my hand, and we moved to the other bar.  Once there, she put my arm around her again.  Only this time she pushed my hand down onto her bum.  And not only onto her bum, under her skirt onto her bum.  I kept trying to find a way to move it away: I’m talking to Steve so I’m going to have to gesticulate; I need to check what time it is; I need to take a photo…  When I moved my hand away she put hers under my shirt onto my back.  Hmm.  We stood by the door of the bar for a while, mostly because there wasn’t room to go anywhere else, until Harry found a table in the corner with spaces to sit.  So we pushed our way through to that.  On the way I decided to say something in her ear: “I have to work with Nick, I’d rather he didn’t find out…”.  “So would I”.  “I’m not the one doing anything wrong”.

Soon enough it was decided that everyone had had enough.  Nick was looking worse for wear, Steve and Matt were fed up, Freya had convinced Harry they should go home and I wanted to escape.  So it was decided to call it a night and we started to make our way back to the taxi rank.  As had become traditional by this stage, she grabbed my hand.  Not much happened for the first part of the walk to the taxi rank.  At one point she stopped to zip up her jacket while I carried on going.  A brief stop at the cash machine gave her chance to catch up, it also gave her chance to realise she trapped her hair in the zip.  “That wouldn’t have happened if you had done it”, she said to me, before continuing “although you’d probably rather zip it the other way”.  Oh dear.

Had I really given the impression I was that interested in her?  Sure, I’d been friendly — she seemed miserable when we were talking and she seemed like a nice girl — but I don’t think I’d done a huge amount to lead her on.  Perhaps I should have more obviously moved away from her when she put my arms around her.  Perhaps I should have just come out and said “I’m not willing to do this” rather than hope she’d get the message from other things I said.  I suspect I was too willing to cuddle, but that’s what I’m like.  That comes from the lovvie group I’ve grown up with — yes actors really are like that.  I think she just wanted attention.  I know she said her boyfriend doesn’t give her as much as she wants, and from the way he behaved that evening I can see that, so I suspect she was looking for it from somewhere else.  Anywhere else.  I’m looking forward to the fall out.  I have no idea what he saw or thinks he saw or thinks he thinks.  I guess I’ll find out.  She added me as a friend on Facebook, but other than that we haven’t spoken.  She posted a few comments on the photos I uploaded but nothing directly relating to me.  I’m curious, I think, to find out what she really thinks — was it all just drunken attention seeking, or does she think more of me than that?  Does she think I think more of her than that?

You know, there’s a small part of me which is really curious.  I never said no.  Sometimes I think we all crave a little attention.  Don’t we?

The building the install is going into is an old grade 2 listed coach house which was converted into an office in 1984.  It already has structured cables installed for general office work and it has false floors, although it’s effectiveness is a little patchy.  There are 23 cameras being installed covering pretty much the whole building inside and out.  Everywhere I can I’ve tried to use the existing cable to carry the data but for some of the cameras installed in hallways and stairwells this hasn’t been possible.  That’s where the hard work has come in.  Friday was spent pulling new Cat6 cables from the ground floor to the 1st floor through a pretty full riser, so full, in fact, the cables don’t run through holes in the rider itself, but through holes in the ceiling next to the riser.  It still all looks very neat.  It then went under the floor on the 1st floor and through ducting out to the stairs.  Yesterday I spent 8 hours finishing the job by running the cables under the floor in the main office on the ground floor and patching into the rack in the the comms room.  It’s certainly been a learning experience and I’ve enjoyed it, although I’ve found that I’ve been much more sleepy in the evenings for the last few days than I normally would after a day working at the computer.  I think this week will be much more back to normal.

I watched an episode of the new version of Beverly Hills 90210 on Friday.  It’s a pretty standard American teen series thing, but one thing struck me.  The episode I saw involved a lot of photography — there was a fashion show and there was a load of photographers taking pictures.  Only the actors playing photographers didn’t seem to know anything about photography.  They were shooting portrate, and one woman caught my eye — she had a full-frame camera (something like a Canon EOS1D) with side grip but was holding it all wrong.  For a start she was still using the main grip up over her head rather than the grip and shutter release on the bottom of the camera.  On top of that her other hand was just kind of holding the body on the side.  Not only did that look silly but it also meant she couldn’t possibly be focusing the lens.  I suppose you could argue she was using auto focus, but in that case she still couldn’t be changing the zoom range and I think it’s unlikely that she’d be using a prime lens in that situation.  I find it amazing that no one putting the programme together noticed and did anything about this.  There must have been at least one person on the crew who knew how to use a camera properly (after all I presume the programme was filmed using a camera…), and it wouldn’t have taken much to explain to these actors how to at least look like they were taking real photographs.  Sometimes I despair.  Miss D thought it was an odd thing to get upset about.