I'm Obsessed

I was back in Camden Town yesterday, as you can see from the image above. I photographed this place years ago, during the lockdown, when it had recently been a functioning restaurant. It's been closed since then, I believe, and now it's looking a bit derelict. I wonder what the long-term plan is?

There's a second restaurant in the shopfront at left, a Chinese place called Fungsun Kitchen that's still open.

Anyway, I think it's a very photogenic building!

So, yes, I was back at Camden Market to talk to my slide dealer. He had another box of slides on hand, which I bought, and I asked him about buying his entire stock. We're talking about it. I know I'm taking a huge headlong plunge into this project, whatever it may eventually turn out to be -- maybe only blog posts and Flickr albums. But hey, it will keep me from becoming a delinquent in my late-middle age.

This is now on what I always think of as the Carmen Miranda wall, across from the market, even though Carmen hasn't been there for years. I love how the artist painted the disco ball. They really captured the glittery effect, didn't they? I'm not sure about the grammar of that sentence but let's not be nitpicky.

After securing my second batch of slides, I walked home from the market, and it was an ideal day for that. The temperature was a perfect 72º F and the sun was shining. London in the late spring and summer can really be amazing. I remember when Dave and I moved here in July 2011, we kept exclaiming about the climate: "People say the weather in England is horrible, but this is fabulous!" And then, of course, autumn came and the long, dark winter and we realized what everyone was talking about.

I stopped for coffee in Belsize Park, and there was a woman ahead of me in line. She ordered a latte and I ordered a white Americano. What emerged from the barista was an oat-milk latte and an Americano over ice. Apparently the woman who took our order wasn't very careful about the keys she was punching, and the barista gave her a stern talking-to right in front of us. "It's not your first day," she told her. Yikes!

Anyway, we eventually got our correct coffees and hopefully the counter woman didn't get fired. I'm not sure what it says about her future job prospects if she has trouble taking orders at a Pret.

Back home in the evening, I heard a knock on our door. It was a delivery guy with the slide-duplicating attachment for my camera. Woo hoo! So I'll be experimenting a bit with that. I've taken a couple of test shots and it seems to work pretty well, though the images are not as sharp as professional scans. They should be suitable for blogging, though.