Photo mags and an early closing camera dealer

28 March

I’ve found something else to chase up. Looking through some of my family history papers I looked at my dad’s demob sheet from the Royal Marines. On there it lists the ships he served in during WWII. I knew about HMS Revenge and Ceylon, but I know nothing about HMS Afrikander IV. Dad never really spoke about his time spent when his ships were out at sea, but he did say quite a bit about what he got up to while ashore on leave. However, I do remember him telling me about one ship he was in where the RN had just taken her over from the Indian Navy. He was disgusted about how dirty the ship was and how long it took to get up to RN standard, and of course about much hard work it was too. Now I am wondering if Afrikander was the ship he was speaking about. As I say, something else to chase down at some time.

There’s a Nikon dealer in London called Grays of Westminster. They have a book on sale that I fancy, Eyes of Nikon. So I’ve just rang them to order it, only to find that they are closed from 1pm on Saturday. Considering their position in London I am surprised they close so early. They don’t open on Sunday either. Never mind, I shall order it on Monday.

After I bought my Nikon D5200, I ordered a magazine called NPhoto on subscription. Last month we were looking at our direct debits and we cancelled quite a few of them; one of them was for NPhoto. Yesterday I phoned them and started it off again but it won’t actually take effect until the June issue. So now I am hoping that I can get the April copy before it sells out. Now, the only photomags I buy are AP and NPhoto, which covers just about everything I need.

Both mags have web sites, http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk/ and NPhoto is part of the Digital Camera group so share the same web site at http://www.digitalcameraworld.com/photography-magazines/  I have both of them book marked so I can look at them often. NPhoto using their Facebook page, asked the question, ‘How often to do use your camera?’ Well, for me it’s not very often these days. The reason for that is that I don’t get as much as I used to. Here’s hoping that things will improve as the year warms up. And seeing as I’ve moved on to the weather yet again, I’ll swap the photo and funny about …

Don’t knock the weather. If it didn’t change once in a while, nine tenths of the people couldn’t start a conversation.

So today’s photo is … 

A colourful line up.