freak magnet

Mostly, being average looking, average height and average build, I don’t attract any attention wherever I go.  This comes in handy when I want to take photographs, particularly in the street where people are sometimes suspicious of that kind of thing.

Recently though, I have been toting my Hasselblad medium format film camera about the place and as it’s pretty unusual looking (compared to modern point and shoots or SLR’s), people tend to notice more.  Mostly, I get good comments – people stopping me and going ‘wow, what the hell is that?’ or ‘OMG, I haven’t seen one of those for 30 years’ or some such – and that’s really cool – I love chatting to interested people, and one of these days, I’ll grow a pair and ask them if I can take their photo too.

But recently, someone seems to have stuck a big freak magnet on my back.  Everywhere I go I seem to attract the kind of attention that Tom Cruise and Lady Gaga can only dream about.

An example of this – I was in Perth with a few friends last week, trying to take some photos when a frail old lady came up to me and got right in my face and started having a go at me about taking photos in public and how I had to put the camera away right now.  I smiled sweetly and told her nicely that as I was in a public place and that I could take photos if I wanted to.  She stared the finger waggling at this point and I’m sure I caught the smell of cats on the breeze as she muttered something about metal in her neck, knowing her rights and how it all started in Belgium (no, really, that’s what she said)

I simply pointed to a police car parked a little way up the street and suggested that if she had a problem she should talk to them about it.  She waggled her bony witch finger a few more times, said ‘I will’ and walked away in the other direction away from the police car.

I’m sure I saw a pair of green eyes peering from the crack in the top of her pull along shopping basket.

Then, not 2 minutes later, a happy Aboriginal fellow came bowling down the street, took one look at the camera and ‘posed’ for me – getting in my face and pulling a huge toothless gurn with his arms held up high.  If it hadn’t have been so dark, I would have taken his photo, but I was a bit taken aback!  He was harmless enough, but still..did I happen to step into Freakatopia without realising?

On the train home wasn’t much better – there was a denim clad 80’s reject of a drunken man in the seat in front loudly yacking on his phone for the whole journey.  He tried to call his mate and do a prank call, but was too drunk and stumbled over his words and it ended up being what was possibly the worst crank call ever in the history of ever.  He should probably be the poster child for the Government’s anti drinking campaigns.

‘drink too much and you’ll look like this sad sack of shit’

I think I have a bright future in marketing and advertising.

Anyway, enough of picking on people, its time for me to pick on the dog.

The little cowbag was barking madly at 6:30am this morning, causing me to get up and spray her with the ‘stop fucking barking you stupid dog’ water spray bottle.  She stopped.  Well, for a while anyway.

Trouble is, once I’m up, I can never get back to sleep, so thanks for that, pooch, I really wanted to be wide awake before 7am on Saturday.   I’m gonna wake you up at 11pm tonight when you’re all slumpy and take you for a long walk and see how you like it.

Meh!