Photos

Digital makes such a difference to how many photos we take and store, over the days of developing films.

My old phone didn't have a lot of storage capacity and when travelling (holiday or work) I would move photos from it to my tablet in order to free up space from time to time.  The problem was that the tablet is also not over endowed with digital storage capacity and it too would 'max out'; refusing to hold any more.

At that point the whole lot should have been transferred to the carefully curated directories of photos on my laptop computer.  It was the process of the 'careful curation' that causes me to procrastinate.  The exponential increase over the years in the number of photos I take and retain, means a few hours devotion to the task when I finally address it.

I know, I know - little and often - but occasionally someone actually asks to see that photo you took on holiday last month; the one that any normal person these days has stored in their phone.  

Mr B gave me an SD card to go in my tablet.  Result: it corrupted all the photos I moved to it's storage and I lost a big chunk of our West Country tour last year.  I will just have to keep Avebury and the National Arboretum in my head - or browse other people's shared photos in a well known search engine.

Finally I made myself address this photo tidy-up yesterday.  The laptop is up to date and the whole lot backed up on a removeable stick thing - all 27GB of it!

In 27GB of photos going back to 2005, I found only two photos of Mr B and me together.  He photographs me.  I photograph him.  We don't do selfies.

Mr B needs all the evidence we can muster that we are a partnership of nearly 20 years in order to support his application for a New Zealand visa - and all I can find is one decent photo.  At least it is from 2010.

Hardly substantial proof however that we have shared life since 2005.

In a remarkable twist of fate (or more to the point, Mr B's hoarding tendencies) he still has all our WhatApp exchanges since goodness knows when, and NZ Immigration accepts social media stuff as evidence of partnership.  They have going to have a grand old time reading through thousands of domestic exchanges about taking dinner out of the freezer, feeding the cat, delays on trains, and possibly even messages from me urging him to get on with his visa application.

(Now it is me holding the process up waiting for police record clearance from Greece.....)