Working for yourself has many advantages, but taking long Summer breaks is not one of them. While the break is always welcome. it costs you a shedload in lost revenue, and creates so much of a backlog of work when you return, that you need another holiday to get over it. This years break was no exception and will a computer failure on the day I official got back to work, it’s taken three weeks to get back into a normal working/weekend routine. Oh well – maybe it’ll work out better next year 🙂
The break was a belter though. First up were three days up in Manchester blowing loads of Pola film with fellow T189er’s Aithclarke and Meredith and my trusty other half  Sand, followed by five days even further up North in Sunny Scotland.

The first day in Manchester was wet and soggy and photographically was very disappointing for me. Pola film really needs lots of bright sunlight to shine and the day was a bit of a washout. On the plus side was the annual visit to the Real Camera Company on Dale street. This place has wall to wall  display cabinets stuffed with old cameras. I felt like a kid in a sweet shop and could well have spent the whole day in there. I have been looking for a TLR for a while and a Rolleiflex in particular. They had six in the cabinet and after 20 minutes settled on and almost Mint  T Model K8 T1 built between Oct 1958 and June 1961,  with the inbuilt meter. I’ll have more on this his little peach of a camera and the first light piccys later once I’ve had time to dev all the film.

Going back to the pola. The highlight of the couple of days we had there was a day trip to Southport. The thing about the old Victorian seaside holiday towns is that they had their day decased ago. Most of them are now extremely seedy and rather tatty. Southport is no exception. Having said that the main high street has a certain charm and with a mix of the usual seaside tat and some really nice shops, had the place growing on me after a couple of hours . Most of what I bagged with the Sonar was taken here, so will stick up a few more over the next few days.

The trip to Scotland generated a further  six rolls of film as well and countless digital images, so it’s going to take a while to catch up with these.