not according to plan saturday

A teaser of a new Benzo piece... I need to go and shoot the whole piece properly.

This morning did not go according to plan.

It's my own fault in a way... last weekend I said to Ma that we needed to be more spontaneous this week since we'd had much more structured weekends for the last few weeks.

And there's nothing quite as spontaneous as finding that your fucking car won't start.

Turns out that I took the Nice Mechanic Man's name in vain... wasn't the ignition at all, it was the battery... it was, according to the Nice RAA Man (who I'm sure I've had come out and help me before), "not dead, but not far off it". So after he started the car for me I tootled down the road to NMM, who didn't have the right battery in stock (my car's a prima donna, and only takes a very specific and particular battery... typical!), but he put a "loan battery" in the car for the weekend and I have to take the car back on Monday.

By the time I'd done all of that, Ma had finished with her haircut and was on her way down to my place. I got her to meet me at the supermarket and managed to make it through the fruit and veg section before she got there.

So, yeah... not a great start to the morning, but I guess it was better finding out that my battery was cactus before I needed to be somewhere important urgently.

*sigh*

Anyway, cue the traditional shopping/unpacking of groceries montage...

Once I was done with that (well, technically it was while I was doing it) Ma delved into the magic bag of stuff she'd brought down and pulled out all the cross-stitch material and thread and whatnot that she'd dug out and brought down, including the overly organised little box of threads that used to be mine. So now I have pretty much everything I need to attempt the Toy Soldier Experiment.

Eventually we decided to head down to Marion (actually the thought had been floating around in my head for the last few days), and because it was such a glorious day I grabbed my camera just on the off-chance that it might come in useful. Which it certainly did.

As we headed through town, I asked Ma to take a different street to West Terrace, since I was pretty sure that one of the Benzo pieces I'd seen pop up online earlier in the week was down that particular street. Initially I was just going to eyeball it as we went past, but I ended up getting Ma to stop around the corner and jumped out of the car.

I'll have to go back and reshoot it though, the sun was in the wrong position, so there's a shadow line across half of the shots unfortunately.

Marion was Marion pretty much... although the warmer weather had sent boys scurrying from the house in shorts and teeshirts and whatnot (Oh and the little short dude with the red jeans, rainbow suspenders and the Bumblebee teeshirt... call me! And not just to tell me where you got your teeshirt!)... I'm not sure why though, but I felt like I was flying my freak flag at full force (how's that for a nice bit of alliteration!) today... I swear I kept getting stared at. Whether it was just because I was carrying one of Ma's folding bags, or what, I have no idea. It's not even like I was wearing one of my Transformers teeshirts or my Playtime With Becky top.

Just weird...

And add to that the fact that obviously the sunshine brought every man and his slightly less attractive best mate out... so it was occasionally a little hard to get where one was going (which I hate).

We also perused the cross-stitch materials on offer at Lincraft, and I bought some appropriatly flesh toned thread and yet another type of gold thread (that makes three that were mine, and neither of the existing ones where easy to use). And there are so many more groovy threads since the last time I did anything cross-stitch related, including some awesome neon ones and a whole range of metallics.

I gotta say that it's weird that some places are happy for you to hang onto their coathangers (my wardrobe is filled almost exclusively with coathangers from major chain stores, complete with sizing labels), and some aren't... and sometimes I think that even within different locations of the same store it changes. Which is code for saying that I bought a couple of teeshirts.

Also, BBQ Prawn salad from Sumo Salad for lunch... spicy, but yummo!

Would you believe that this shot is in full colour?

Once we finished at Marion, we decided to detour down to Glenelg.

No real reason, other than the aforementioned lovely day and the fact that I had the camera with me. We stopped off and got something sweet to eat (note to self: you hate Apple Turnovers from everywhere but Perrymans... remember this in future!) and wandered down to the beach to eat and generally soak in the atmosphere.

I left Ma sitting on a bench and wandered down to the water to take a bunch of shots since the beach was generally looking very photogenic and interesting. Turns out what was on the beach kept catching my eye too...

I have to say though, that Photoshop is largely responsible for how awesome the shot above looks. The original is all very pale, but it did look very much like it was in black and white... but hitting the Auto Contrast/Level options (not sure which now) gave me this black sand. Awesome!

We wandered up Jetty Road, basically taking the long way back to the car... avoiding the crazy people and I got to scope the half-dressed element...

And what was about it...

So, for a day that started out fairly shitty, it didn't end too badly. Now I just need to work out what I have the energy to bother with this evening...

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