Photo albums

In this age of Flickr & Facebook, digi-cameras & hard-drives stuffed with millions of images, I'm probably one of a dying breed who still prints out photos and puts them in albums. I have about 50 of them. It's time-consuming but I enjoy the discipline of it, the editing down, cropping, theming a spread, peppering them with the occasional tiny print or enlargement, and yes - saddo that I am - captions.

It started in 1975 when I got my first camera which was a rubbish Kodak 110 instamatic. I later graduated to an Olympus Trip, then a second-hand Canon SLR, until going digital at the end of the 90s. And by that time I was fed up with carrying an SLR with lenses and stuff so have been compact ever since. I've never been into the technical side of photography but I like taking pix.

Looking at that first Kodak album, it's incredible how awful pocket cameras were in those days. An expensive film, blurred landscapes, terrible colours, a poxy flashcube, and you had to wait a week to develop prints barely worth having. Now we can delete as we go and store them on-line.

Anyway, I had a most relaxing evening with photos & scalpel, with glass of wine and listening to a sublime compilation a friend sent to me (Glow - your best yet Gary!).