Autumn leaves and mourning comes

Nora is currently heavily into wobbly manhole covers and Autumn leaves, it now takes us an average of 10 minutes to go the 100 metres to the car in the morning. She kicks her way through the leaves that line the pavement and stops to practice her surfing technique on every manhole cover that we pass, shaking her head in disapproval and saying "papa, no" when they don't wobble beneath her feet. I am now getting dagger looks from the staff at the nursery when we arrive late, like I am somehow failing in my fatherly duty of punctuality, or stopping off en-route for a coffee or something. What am I supposed to do, childhod is about the adventure of discovery, not about punctuality!

I am, as we speak enjoying a fine Manchego red wine, indulging in honour of the mourning of my once noble Kodak No. 2 cartridge hawk-eye model B. I stripped it down today, got the shutter and B control working, managed to remove the very spotted lens element which I left soaking in alcohol. This evening I went to the kitchen to retrieve the lens element, and it utrns out that the piece of silver foil I had sculptured a crucible from to soak it in had been swept into the rubbish mistaken for a scrap of detritus and deposited in the rubbish container at the end of the street. I shall not be posting any photos from the hawk-eye model B, EVER.