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Today is my birthday so that I have now reached the great age of 64 which is probably equivalent to 54 compared with my Parent’s generation so I do intend to make the best use I can whilst I can enjoy good health and to be as physically active as I can.

My wish is not so much a long life as a fully active one that finishes suddenly rather than peters out in poor health and dependency, God willing. To my mind, continuing to live whilst you can do the things that you enjoy doing and still make a positive contribution of some kind is fine plus keeping yourself physically active makes good sense. You may not live longer but you will enjoy a better quality of life until the end.

Back To My Roots

I was born in London at the end of 1945, I used to joke that I was “South London born and bred, strong in the arm and thick in the head !” However and such are the vagaries of life, that is not a totally true statement because I was not born in South London.

Apparently it was intended that I would be born at a Maternity hospital called the Weir in Balham South London in fact, my eldest son Sean was destined to be born there some 21 years later unfortunately come my day in 1945, the Weir Hospital was closed to new patients due to infections so, nothing new there then !

My Mother recalls going on some grand tour of London in an Ambulance until we turned up at Hackney Hospital where somewhere around 8:15 in the evening I made my appearance into this world, John Francis had arrived ! It was only many years later as I visited a friend who was being cared for in a very rebuilt Hackney Hospital that it crossed my mind that I might well have be born within the sound of Bow Bells, thus conferring on me full Cockney status, at least by the accident of my birth !

Presents

It is a funny thing but once we stop being children and most certainly by the time you get to my age, the question of “What do you want for Christmas ?” becomes unanswerable. Anything you really want is far too expensive to expect anyone to buy you and anything reasonably priced, you have already. I always ask my lads for music CDs, it is modest, I have very catholic tastes in music and enjoy music a lot, I can easily live without a TV, I couldn’t possibly without music.

This year various people both family and friends decided to give me money and by adding some to the accumulated fund, I was able to buy myself one of those “Dare Not Ask” type presents, picture below:

When you consider that the biggest zoom lens most people experience is a 75-300mm one and most models are easy to handle and hand hold, the next lens types of which this is one, are a horse of a very different colour. This one is 150-500mm and I already own a x2 multiplier which fits it and takes it out to 200-1000mm, it is however, quite a lump of glass and comes with a tripod mount fitted to the lens.

Although on bright sunny days where you can get the right shutter and aperture combinations in the 150-500mm mode, because of image stabilisation, you can hand hold a camera with this lens, by and large you will tripod or mono-pod mount mount the lens and camera for extra support.

What Would You Use it For ?

Well as I am not aware of any “Celebrities” that live in the area where “paparazzi” type shots could be taken and sold to the tabloids, it is either Sports or Wild Life and in my case, it is the latter. I have always been a great fan of anything that flies be it natural or man made and because of my caring duties to my Mother, have limited scope in terms of going to interesting places.

However, my morning rides by the banks of the River Brue have introduced me to a cast of interesting characters from my favourite Herons to Egrets, Kestrels and very many wading birds. Whilst over the next few months I will work with this new lens just to get used to the physical handling of it, it won’t really come into it’s own until the weather starts to change to Spring and I can take the time to pick my spot and just sit and wait, then will come the startling pictures.

Anyway a great Birthday/Christmas haul for me on the presents front !