I just wanted to visually record my first successful mutta roast - a Keralan egg curry - before I ate the leftovers for brunch. For some reason I was intimidated to make it although it’s actually really easy. Like a lot of not very Instagrammable brown food, it’s super tasty.

No otters down by the river. But great flights of ibis - including two flocks of Glossy Ibis; about a dozen each. Might be getting new lenses for the little XE1 today. Excited about that.

A rare moment away from Obs and surrounds during COVID. @withoutaleaf needed to buy ice-cream in the dampest place in this damp city. I enjoyed shouting “Scofflaw!” at her when she crossed a foot to the right of the pedestrian crossing.

@johnthevudio shared this pic of me from 2008 which I didn’t know existed. Looks like I’m hamming for the sky drama. Place called Rockhaven where we went to enjoy…the rocks. In 2008.

They were having some mid-afternoon madness - usually reserved for the late evening. This chap is getting chonky again in defiance of my meal planning. The box behind him is an extremely rare Gibson lap steel guitar from 1967 belonging to @sad_ivan (who was supposed to collect it after I discovered that fewer than 50 were known to have been made and hence they were a chunk more valuable than we’d suspected… but COVID).

The world has been too long deprived of Trinket! … or Bun as she’s known around here. I recently saw that a Youtuber I enjoy calls their cat, “Pigbunny,” which is a perfect cat name. My camera seems to be working fine with a different memory card. I’d already decided if it packed up, I’d just get another ‘obsolete’ model like it. This sensor apparently has quite the reputation for getting analogue-looking results. I’ve ordered a pair of native TTartisans lenses for it - a 50mm f1.2 and a 17mm f1.4 (cheap as chips at <US$200 for the pair despite very good reviews - which I think will be a super-versatile pair. It makes photography difficult - manual focus lenses shooting at fast apertures with very little depth-of-field to nail the focus. But it’s exactly like the film camera I’ve used for so many years. And when I do get a sharp picture at f1.4 and 1/60th it makes me very pleased. It’s a big chunk of the experience of shooting film without the cost… or the tedious scanning.

I didn’t see an otter today. I saw two.

A mendicant’s moon in observatory.

A grab-shot of my boy moments before he jumped up next to me where he is as I write. He had a scare the other day where he tangled himself in the handle of a paper shopping bag that then followed him making hideous noises no matter where he ran. Even after being rescued - and his assailant banished forever - he’s been a nervous fella for a few days. We shan’t let such grotesque monsters come into contact with our high-strung boy again.

You meet some extraordinary people out on the street in Observatory.