I'll turn 73 in December... where did the time go?
I had to cut short my latest trip to Southeast Asia in March when the Australian government ordered its citizens to return home. I was in Sarawak and it took me ten days to book four flights Sarawak-Singapore-Surabaya-Bali and finally Melbourne. It was a wild, uncertain, hyperactive time but I coped surprisingly well, the stress probably outweighed the physical exertion and mental effort involved - I did go to bed for a 12 hours marathon sleep when I finally made it home...
For my age I'm still in surprisingly good health, given the amount of good red wine I've soaked up over the decades - I don't smoke and still try to stay as active as the current crisis allows. I've slowed down a lot - I can still walk fairly long distances but I now find six-kilometer treks satisfy me physically as much as the ten-kilometer hikes did in 2018. So maybe wiser as well as older. I do come from long-lived relations, my mom is alive at 101, three aunts passed away in their mid-90s and my mother's father managed to hang in and stay at home until six weeks before his centenary. Who knows how long I'll be toting cameras around the globe or spending long hours scanning old slides, but for now, I'm doing okay.
I no longer carry two DSLRs and a backpack of lenses as i used to do - nowadays one Nikon and one or two extra lenses suit me fine. Or a Nikkormat and an extra lens. Or a Rolleiflex, a few bits and pieces and a meter. Nothing else.
I find photography keeps my body active and also occupies my brain. That and reading, writing, planning to set up a new small web site for my travel images (something I've wanted to do since 2006 but never quite found enough time, ha!), and my latest brain-kick hobby, playing Scrabble on my own. Two sets of letters and off you go. My partner works full-time even during this crazy crisis, so we do things at home and play these word-games together on weekends.
With more time than usual at home my motivation to get out and about and make images has diminished, but I still carry a camera on my walks and find I can muster up enough interest for a few shots. In May I was given an as new Panasonic Lumix GF1 with two lenses which has got me more keen to reshoot old images (as we all do, don't we, when we get new gea?r) and the quality from this small camera truly surprises me, tho' I dislike using rear screens to view and compose images and I'm finding it difficult to get used to the iffy clip-on electronic viewfinder.
My annual medical in July didn't turn up any nasty surprises and I'm grateful if conscious that it all could change quickly I hope to maintain my current level of fitness for a few more years until the time comes to buy a recliner chair, a new film scanner and a set of quality wine glasses to enjoy my (alas, by then severely diminished) consumption of good Tasmanian red wines. Life's small pleasures, long may they last.
