I actually gave up my sleep-in this week to get to Camberwell market this Sunday gone by, this place is such a visual feast. I love the fact that you can find all manner of wonderful things there. I picked up an old sunshine biscuit tin painted yellow, my new favourite happy colour.
I bought a few other things in between mad dashes for cover under the awnings to escape the heavy rain. It's always a little intimate it seems when this sought of thing happens, perfect strangers strike up conversations about the "this mad weather were having" or the entertainment stay put in the rain and begin joyfully choral-ling "rain rain go away, come again another day", and we all clap and cheer when it does in fact stop. Then we all go back about our business, like it never happened.
My main reason for the outing to this wonderful outdoor market was to play with my new Canon 60D. Now I really need to actually have a few lessons on using this baby as there are so many settings and things have advanced greatly since using my old SLR. I did manage some ok shots. I wasn't quite sure if there was an etiquette thing related to carrying a tool like this. All my past photographs in public have been of buildings never before of people's things, so it seemed polite to ask if it was ok to take some pictures if they were around. I was on the tram last week where I happened to be near a guy with a camera, I wondered what he'd taken pictures of when out of the blue he took a picture of a girl in the set of seats ahead of us. It was obvious he was taking random shots not meaning to take her in particular, but I did think that took some courage on his part.
So my first attempt was at my favourite stall for the day they stocked the best assortment of buttons and thread. I just love this sort of thing en mass. I have been playing a little with the theme of multicolour. So this place was just fantastic for me. The gentleman was really nice and was really quite flattered that I wanted to take some shots.
My son and I actually bought some film this week, he was desperate to use my old camera. He had taken it down several times playing with the lens and pretending to take shots. He proclaimed after wearing it around his neck that he finally knew what he wanted to be: "a photographer." I thought to myself wow imagine if we really became who we wanted to be at seven.
I am still trying to find what I want to be at almost forty. I wish someone had shown me how to do really practical things at his age. I loved telling him all about how to focus how to read the light reading. He was fascinated by the fact that each shot will be an actual photo that will get printed. He was also quite blown away by the fact that you cannot delete shots as a result he is taking about one picture a week. He is normally so impatient so this is a great exercise in slowness.
It's also nice to show him the way we used to take pictures, so much has changed in the time I've had children, at the rate in which devices are being replaced and upgraded, I had been thinking that I was afraid for the printed word. Then, funnily enough and without any warning, when my husband left his job this week he was given a Kindle as a going-away present. They knew how much he loved books and that the new place was over an hour on the train each way.
I knew little about this product and just didn't like the sound of an "e book." Now Aaron is not shy about not opening a gift if he doesn't like it. Back to the shop it goes, straight to the exchange desk. Sometimes he's not even discreet about the not-opening: "Go on, take it out of the package!" "No, it's fine."
So when I was prying open the Kindle box yesterday I expected to hear 'don't touch that, I was going to take it back.' I mean he returned the cake decorating set he got at his last job, I expected the same here, especially how much he scorns "toys." He doesn't even have a phone.
But I was wrong. He is an avid reader and will be writer some day, so I trust his judgement on things like this: He loves it. He has already used it on his long train rides to and from work today. I am keen to see what this thing actually does, but he won't let me touch it.
Technology is just moving too fast, and damn they make these things look so sexy too. It is such specky marketing, all the more reason to not have one.
In the same vein I bought an old fashion typewriter last year, actually at the exact market mentioned above. I remember the delight and fascination this little typewriter bought to the kids, "It's so heavy" they all commented and "what are these letters" and "what's this tape thing?" I loved hearing them tapping away loudly. Almost daily someone will use it to write a story or make a diary entry, or Circe loves to get the keys all muddled together.
To me it's worth having these things in our lives, to value the way things were and to exercise a little simplicity, to tap away at old keys to have to focus your own photo to write a letter on paper.
I think this is why I also love sewing, there is something noble about these simple crafts which should not be lost.
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