Nikon

Travelling home on the 42 I'm all weighed down with shopping and other bags. I aim myself awkwardly in the direction of those two sets of seats facing each other towards the back where I plan to have everything unwind and spill off while I collapse. I'm shot in that direction when the driver accelerates off from the stand firing me down the bus with the little extra help I hadn't planned, tho' If I were a bus driver, I suspect I too would enjoy this cavalier driving style, upsetting the trajectory of newly boarded fares with a wry smile, although unfair to spill aunt Vera off her heels. I like the 42 because it has that single seat up beside the driver, although no street cred' can be extracted from either sitting here or choosing it above all others and I delude myself - this choice is no sign of decrepitude. But it offers the grandstand view I like. It's not that I cannot picture each and every vista with my eyes closed, but that Tower Bridge thrills me each and every time I cross it, and in winter time at night, it is fairyland lit up.

As I sit I catch a corner of the shopping bag - some cod, bluberry juice, a fruit salad, some soup - a loud click and I think, oh shit, the chocolate, I've cracked it. Never mind. We course down Bishopsgate and swing left at the lights into Houndsditch. Barely anyone on the bus, a chap behind. Strange that on the bus rich and savoury smells of supper should fill the air, and whet my appetite for tea. Also wet, my jeans I notice, from behind. Examination reveals I'm now sat in a growing pool of chicken & corn chowder, thick and sticky, half of it still fills my carrier. The top has popped off my tub of soup, the chocolate is in tact, but I am soaked. And now a delicate maneuver. I can't stay sat in soup (it looks like sick) and if I get up to leave, the embarrassment of it ! At this point I have to make a choice, at the next stop, I will quickly rise, alight and allow the evidence of my embarrassment disappear into the night. I press the bell, gather up all that's mine, and poised, tense, prepare to rise. The bus comes to a jerky stop, and I quickly get up, my carrier slops more gloopy mess along the aisle and I hop off, stressed, relieved, and in a sticky mess.

On a low wall, I try to rearrange my luggage, the carrier is all amuck and needs discharging into another, my work bag, my precious Nikon D70 SLR camera... is... where ? Not here. Accompanying the sticky goo - to Denmark Hill I think it stops - I've left my Nikon on the bus. I feel blind.

If you are lucky enough to find, in an expensive, protective camera bag, my treasure, I hope you will enjoy my snaps and allow this lovely lens and body to hone your own photographic hobby. Stood alone and lost by this little wall, the horror and sadness of it all could not ring louder and my fingers smell of chowder.