Filler 29

Ooh, there hasn't been one of these in a while. One of the many lesser contributory factors to the soul-destroying awfulness of that terrible weekend on the Isle of Wight was that my cherished Sony Cybershot DSC-F55E, the ageing digital camera responsible for a great many of the pictures on this blog, finally gave up the ghost. One of the distinctive features of that camera was that its lens could be rotated across its body to the same side as the display. Ideal for narcissists, internet pornographers -- and bloggers. (If you have an idle moment, draw the Venn diagram of those three sets.)

Many people have expressed a certain suspicion about this facility, not least among them Ian. (Well, he chose the original model, so I guess he has some idea of the misuses to which it could be put.) But, with only a wildly exaggerated level of teasing, he gave me for Christmas a replacement, the DSC-U50. It's about a quarter the size of the old one, faster, sleeker and black; and it restores to me that highly dubious ability to take self-pics with marginally more control than just waving the lens in your own general direction and hoping for the best.

I fully accept that this is not something anyone should have any real need or want to do, but fuck it, I do. It isn't always as self-regarding as it sounds -- that euphemistic-sounding statement in the reviews that the rotating lens "makes it easy to take self-portraits with friends" is true enough. See, for example, here and there. But it is an indulgence, no doubt of that.

Last night we went to watch the fireworks over the Thames. Forgoing the inevitable bunfight in the prime viewing areas opposite County Hall, we instead wandered down to the local stretch of the Embankment, down by Blackfriars Bridge; near where Pete met Herla. This didn't afford a perfect view -- the disco-lit concrete bulk of the National Theatre interposed, for example -- but it was still pretty fucking good. Although there were nothing like the crowds I imagine gathered near the epicentre -- and certainly nothing like the same area on the same night five years ago, when it seemed the whole population of this great city was packed into a hundred metre wide ribbon of flesh along the length of the river -- it was busy. Busy with rowdy, drunken, loud -- but mostly just happy -- people.

And the pyrotechnics were big and bright and colourful and loud and gaudy and beautiful.

Often on these occasions I've looked at our own efforts, and at the fireworks of others elsewhere in the world who really seem to get it, and been disappointed. Not this time. These certainly weren't the greatest fireworks ever, but they were good. Well thought out. Artful. They worked with the structures of the city; they erupted from the London Eye in ways that we're used to seeing from the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Eiffel Tower but not at all used to here. They were good.

I wasn't feeling great; in fact I was fucking miserable. I didn't really want to go. It seemed such an effort, even though it was just down the hill. It was dark and cold and it was the last dismal fag end of a terrible year. But Ian was keen and had, much earlier in the evening, talked me into it. Made me commit.

You have to take advantage of living in such a fabulous central location, he said. People come to these things from miles around, willing to face hours of travel before and after. We'll be home before they even get into the overcrowded tube stations. Wasting such an opportunity would be downright rude.

So we went.

And I'm so glad we did.

We watched, arm in arm. We cycled home. I spoke to my sister, in London. I spoke to my father, in Sydney. (I couldn't get through to my mother in Italy; vexing.)

There will always be regrets. Perhaps I couldn't spend New Year with all the people I love most. But I got to spend it with one of them, and to witness wonder and beauty, and to be grateful.

And now we go on.
Posted by matt at January 1, 2005 09:35 PM