Olympic Torch Hits Barnstaple

 Today, admid great excitement, the Olympic Torch came through Barnstaple. We walked the children down from school, all 250 of them, and found a spot on the Strand just down from the Civic Centre. It was heaving. The news said that 7000 people turned out in Barnstaple to watch. It certainly was a great atmosphere. This is Franky Astill Sheppard who carried the torch past us at about 11.15. He grinned all the way along!

And this is Ellie and her friends just before the torch came through. One of the last chances I'll get to photograph Ellie on a school trip. After July she won't be at the same school as me. It will be weird.

First Ice Cream of the Summer

 Finally a bit of sunshine! It was lovely in my back garden this afternoon but not so lovely out. I took my new camera down to Instow this afternoon. I got everyone to come along with the promise of an ice-cream, although disappointingly the Hockings van wasn't there. And as you can see it was very windy on the beach and the wind was VERY cold. We threw the ball for the dog until we couldn't feel our fingers any more then decided to call it a day.

 I discovered how to take panoramic pictures on my camera. Not bad for a first attempt even if I do say so myself.

In other news, Ellie played in her third annual sponsored guitar play-in. Des was there from 9.00am- 9.00pm, but Ellie just had a five minute slot at 9.00 this morning. I took this photo whilst videoing at the same time, all on the same camera. How cool is that? This will be the last time you see Ellie with her child-sized guitar. She's grown out of it and we bought her an adult one yesterday. She didn't want to play it in public until she got used to it though.

New Camera

This is my new camera, bought with money from my birthday and various other sourcres.

And here are a few photos taken with it today. I did love my old camera and was quite upset when it died, but this camera is much better and I am sure I will soon love it just as much. I was particularly impressed, when going through the Scene Positions, to discover there is a dog mode with face recognition for dogs! For any one who wants to know, the camera is a Fuji X-S1.