They were the worst of times, they were the best of times, it was the season of darkness, it was the season of light, it was the winter of despair, it was the spring of hope.

Yes, the quotation[1] has been mangled and deliberately so, for in this particular tale the dark period yielded to a light one though as with Dickens' opening, the two sometimes coexisted. In the mid 90's I had been stuck in a dead-end job for much longer than I should have been. I'd heard the words "The Landlord Has Decided To Sell" three times in four years and had to move accordingly. Money was tight, and living was a week to week proposition.

Then I landed in my current place. I recall the day that I arrived to look it over in my then-16 year old car. It needed new carpet even then, could have done with a paint, and the windows... really need replacing. As I said to the estate agent "It's not Versailles, but I'll take it". In one way it was an incredibly lucky break. The suburb is not considered "desirable" (though the reputation is rather undeserved for the advantages outweigh the disadvantages), the building was old, but had apparently been bought and paid for by the owners so they were more interested in keeping a stable cash flow from stable tenants than squeezing them for every dollar. It gave me a chance to consolidate and get moving forward again.

However it has to some extent been a love-hate relationship. As a single guy I don't have so much a home as a barracks so the fact that the place was far from stylish was not that much of a concern. The fact that both the kitchen and bathroom need to be dynamited and rebuilt didn't matter. The rising damp didn't matter until it started to rot the door frame around the linen closet. (Who on earth puts a linen closet backing onto a shower?)

The fact that the electricity supply is dead dodgy is more of a concern, and was doubly so when I was unwisely running Flight Simulator (flying through a storm) during a real-life storm in the late 90's and a power surge blew out my motherboard. And the plumbing also bites in many and varied ways, not least the brown water that comes out of the hot water system. In this case the kitchen tap has blown, yet again, so further repairs will be needed.

So in one respect, I'll be glad to put this decaying place behind me. In another... when I leave it will be with mixed feelings.

In the case of this shot I originally planned to use the 50mm f/1.4 since I needed speed, more speed! to freeze the water mid-flow like this. However I couldn't focus close enough so I had to resort to the 60mm macro which unfortunately can open to only f/2.8. I therefore resorted to both the flash and pumping the ISO up to the max. Even then I got to only 1/200th but it was fast enough for the purpose.

[1] The opening lines of Dickens' A Tale Of Two Cities, for those who have it frustratingly on the tip of their tongue.

Last Year