Thursday was a bit of an odd one.

It was bright and sunny, the working day was fine, and I had a haircut scheduled with my favourite-ever hairdresser in the late afternoon!

What fun!

That was all sort of overpowered by a few unwelcome events.

First, I somehow lost the cash I had withdrawn for the hairdresser’s tip! I visited a bank machine on the way to make a withdrawal, put it in my purse, and when it came time to pay: gone! I must have dropped it when I took my phone out to check the time along the way because I don’t think anybody would have gone into it at the salon.

There was also a situation where I had made a photo of a building after my haircut and was spotted by a woman passing by who was absolutely convinced that I was making a photo of her and she ran across the street against traffic (!!!) to confront me.

I stopped to see what her problem was and she immediately accused me of taking her picture (which I was emphatically not doing, though she did get into the frame¹) and how I am awful for doing that. She then proceeded to shove me, but when she found that it didn’t have the effect she wanted it to, she instead decided to pepper me with unkind transphobic invective, concluding – somewhat confusingly – that she would “see [me] in hell!”

While I usually find these sorts of event frightening, upsetting, or bothersome, they are fortunately infrequent. And nearly every time I’ve been accosted or threatened in some way in the streets, it has been by someone whose struggles are much more profound than my own. Without knowing for certain, it did seem like she had only recently found the ladder’s bottom rung.

Finally (and much less seriously), it was confirmed to me that my Pentax ES II is – at least in cold weather – unreliable. On maybe ⅓ of the roll, the shutter remained open, overexposing the frame. While I still suspect that there is something amiss electronically, I will give this camera another go in a month or so when it is warmer outside to confirm that its problem is with cold weather.

If it is electronic, I will consider sending it off for servicing.

I love the results from those older pre-K-mount Takumars.

---

1. Which I have not shared in the gallery above. ↩︎