England v Argentina

The second weekend of the 2009 autumn rugby international season featured England hosting Argentina at Twickenham. Having offered me a ticket, Patrick was unable to attend due to work commitments, so I was able extend the offer to Lee and his mate Andy, who we met outside Twickenham station. Thankfully the day’s persistent rain had taken a break as we trudged off to the stadium, past all the temporary food-stalls set up in the front gardens of suburban south-west London.
The sizable crowd was hoping to see a bit of flair and ambition, after a disappointing defeat to Australia – who themselves had looked far from being world-beaters but nevertheless eased past a lacklustre England with a much more incisive second-half display.
England were sporting a new all-purple kit – not universally admired – and after the first half of perhaps the most amateurish display of international rugby ever witnessed by a paying audience, the crowd booed the team from the pitch with hoots of derision and headed for the bars and food counters almost in shock at what they had seen. And it was rank: no structure to the attacks when in possession, aimless kicks to the corners and into touch. Monye at fullback(?!) dropped countless high-balls and was switched with Cueto at half-time.
The second half was an improvement, but there was little actual end-product until Matt Banahan barged his way over late on. England held on for a disappointingly hollow victory.
We were pretty much fuming as we headed back into Twickenham to console ourselves with several pints of Guinness in one of the many busy pubs – the England football team were playing a friendly against Brazil (an equally forgettable performance). The whole day was rescued with supper at Andy’s: he and his wife take turns with the Pickrells to host a Come-Dine-With-Me style suppers. The food was delicious and the company excellent – very much made up for the poor entertainment I had ‘treated’ the boys to earlier!
I stayed over and spent much of Sunday at Lee & Julie’s fabulous new house, helping shift a few awkward items and assemble up the metal bicycle container in the front garden. Eventually headed off about 4pm.

Lumix-LX3 is here!

I’ve bought a new digital camera: a Panasonic Lumix LX3. It’s a high-end compact camera which combines excellent picture quality, sophisticated auto-mode and plenty of manual adjustment should you want or need to use it. I’ve been hankering after SLR-quality for a while but wanted a camera I could put in a jacket pocket, because I just know that I wouldn’t use it if I had to carry a bulky SLR slung over my shoulder. The LX3 fits the bill nicely – I can take it everywhere with me and shoot ad-hoc snaps but with good results.
The key is the lens: a 24-60mm beauty that lets in plenty of light (F2.0 in a compact!). At maximum wide-angle (24mm) you get enough field of view to usefully shoot indoors and get some sense of perspective and whilst 60mm is not much of a zoom (about 2.5x), it’s enough for me. If you’re always zoomed in to your subject then this camera’s not for you, but for me the wide-angle and fast lens is much more important.
So far I’m very pleased with it. It has a lovely wide-screen aspect ratio (16:9), a couple of black & white modes, and can take decent HiDef video footage too. Takes great close-ups in macro mode too – you can get as near as 1cm from the lens! It feels very solidly made and at the moment I just take it everywhere with me in my coat-pocket. We are inseparable – it must be love 🙂

Useful wide-angle, and good low-light performance so no need for flash indoors ↑

Nice big aperture enables SLR-style depth-of-field effects too.

Includes two B&W film modes

Cheers!

More samples here>>