Jacquetta

Buying a new camera is, of course, only the beginning of the spending. You soon find that certain small extras are indispensable. The Lumix G1 uses the faster, newer SDHC memory cards – better than the old SD cards, but almost inevitably they turn out to be incompatible with any card reader that you may have already. Connecting your camera direct to the USB port by cable is far from ideal, with a fiddly access flap and a tiny prong that looks easy to mis-connect. Enter the neat solution: slip the SDHC card into a USB card reader, mine for the princely sum of £3.69 (delivered) from the wonderful 7dayshop:

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(And yes, I have seen this item even cheaper elsewhere, but having found 7dayshop reliable and helpful, I'd rather stick with them than risk disappointment.)

The next challenge was to sort out my tripod, which various time-wasting searches had failed to locate. When a close friend returned it recently after a two-year loan that I had forgotten all about, I was torn between delight that I hadn't, after all, lost it, and frustration that it came back missing the vital quick-release post, the piece that screws into the camera and connects it to the tripod:

Since the friend who had lost it reported failure with his local Jessops only at 5.25pm on Saturday, and I am off early tomorrow on a trip where I might get a front cover photo opportunity, replacing it seemed very urgent indeed. Most photo specialists seem to close at 5pm on a Saturday, so a very fast Google search was needed. It revealed recent exchanges on the website of the East of England Binocular Centre. Even better, the very helpful Chris was still answering his phone, they were in stock and charged just £10 including delivery. Considering that my tripod is 30 years old, and useless without this gizmo, I was only too delighted to pay up. Strangely for a binocular specialist, this seems to be one of their top sellers. Later, I found it also on Amazon, but at £18.95. So I am delighted to have found a small indie specialist doing a great job, and thanks to Google, I found it in time for them to dispatch on Monday and (thanks to the much-maligned Royal Mail) it arrived this morning.

In January, I bought a new camera, the Panasonic Lumix G1. It’s the first digicam to have interchangeable lenses that is NOT a 'single-lens reflex'. Instead, an excellent electronic viewfinder replaces the traditional SLR mirror/prism 'reflex' light path. This makes it smaller and lighter than previous dSLRs, albeit larger than the just-announced Olympus E-P1. (The Oly, like the Panny, is "Micro four-thirds" format and is just about pocketable. Indeed if it had a viewfinder, I'd be gnashing my teeth about having bought the Panny instead of waiting.)

For hiking and taking landscape shots for our guidebooks, size/weight is a major issue. But the smallest digicams tend not to have a viewfinder. In bright daylight, I find an LCD screen almost useless. Back in 2007 while on Xtreme Everest with such a camera, I was reduced to setting it to auto-bracket, pointing, shooting and hoping – only to delete 2 out of 3 shots each evening, in the dark of my tent at Everest Base Camp.

What I love about the G1:
• full creative control of settings and lenses
• sensor switches image from screen to viewfinder when you bring the camera up to your eye
• manual focus does a clever enlarging trick just when you need it
• articulated LCD screen lets you shoot over people’s heads or from low angles
• helpful community of G1 users on the Lumix forum
• 7-14mm wide-angle zoom (WAZ) lens opens up huge new scope, see images below.

So what’s not to like? The price of the recent WAZ lens apart, a spare battery from Panny costs a ridiculous £70 – whereas third-party replacements are about £20 in rip-off Britain, or USD25 for 2 in the US. And for use on trek and at altitude, a spare is not a luxury, it’s a necessity.

Panny has just made matters worse by announcing that its new firmware “upgrade” will detect unofficial batteries and disable the camera! I realise that they’d prefer us to buy batteries from them, and if they’d slash its price I’d be happy to. I can believe their claim that some unofficial batteries lack internal protection and may overheat, but even Panny says only “some”, not “all”. I’ve used third-party batteries with two previous Lumix digicams without any problems. If expecting customers to disable their camera for use with competitive batteries isn’t illegal, it ought to be. This dubious “upgrade” is a scandalous restrictive practice, and the Lumix forum is buzzing with protest.

But still, I love this camera. Let me share a pair of photographs I took on Thursday at the newly refitted Faraday Theatre of the Royal Institution. There was NO natural light source, and hardly any artificial, so these are at 2000ASA, hand-held (after several glasses of wine:) at 1/5th second. The first image is what a "normal" 28mm wide-angle lens would capture, the second (equivalent to 14mm) captures the whole 310-seat raked theatre with front desk.

This has been an interesting week with many journeys, both short and long. After Monday's trips to Aberfoyle and to Alloa (the latter to discuss how to bring our existing website fully into the 21st century), I visited Edinburgh on Tuesday. Mainly this was to meet the team at Seol, the repping cousin of Edinburgh publisher Birlinn. Since February, Seol has been repping our list in Scotland and it was great to meet them at last, and get some feedback from the retailing viewpoint. I managed a quick visit to the National Galleries before it was time to walk down to son Sandy's new flat in East London Street. This is a lovely modern development, with light, spacious rooms and it's great to see him settled there. Even better, he cooked a lovely seared tuna salad for us which we ate at an elegant glass table – in his previous flat, it was more a question of balancing a plate on your knees on the sofa-bed.

Wednesday's visit to Aberfeldy was to meet Richard Struthers of Safe Journeys, who has been leading trips to Nepal for 16 years and with whom I have booked an Everest Base Camp trek in September. I'm hoping to get a fair crack at Kala Pattar this time, and also to return via the Cho La pass (5450m/18,000ft) to Gokyo Lakes, and climb Gokyo Ri. Richard thinks that heavy snowfall is the main hazard that might prevent this, but at present, I suspect that it's my own lack of preparation that would create the challenge.

Thursday was my trip to London, on two publishing visits connected with my IPG membership. The first was a session with Susie Dunlop of Allison & Busby, who is kindly acting as my mentor, and she is proving incredibly helpful. Being a somewhat maverick publisher, based out on a limb in Dunblane, it's all too easy for me to sail on blithely unaware of things we should be doing, or doing differently. Supportive advice from an experienced publisher is a fantastic resource, and I intend to make the most of it.

Then it was time to hasten to the IPG's Meet the Buyers event at which publishers meet buyers from key wholesalers and retailers, both online and bricks-and-mortar, and discover how to try to make them aware of our offer. The answer turns out to be different in almost every case, so it's lots of work but definitely worth knowing how to go about it better. It was held in the recently refurbished Royal Institution in Albemarle Street, a superb blend of modern and traditional. The briefing was held in the Library:

After arriving late at my sister's house in Dulwich, I had a lovely lazy start next day in the wonderful garden that brother-in-law Nick and sister Lindsay are just completing. Here are some photos of its swimming pond with beach hut: no chemicals, with water kept clean by ecological means. It's a beautiful feature, and this time was an island of tranquillity before an intense session of follow-up by wi-fi on the busy train home to Dunblane:

We had various arrivals at Landrick on Saturday: one was the HD box that will enable Keir to watch tennis in high definition. This was set up just in time for us to see Andy Murray beat James Blake in two convincing sets at Queen's yesterday. The hi-res picture makes it noticeably easier to follow the ball, even when Andy serves at 135+ mph! This should be a great asset for Wimbledon viewing.

But the box which really made my Saturday was the arrival from York Camera Mart of the long-awaited wide-angle zoom lens for my Lumix G1. Unless you are into cameras, you may find it hard to share my excitement, but if you glance at the images below, you may get the gist. This lens picks up from where most "wide-angles" run out of steam. In the old film-based camera world, "wide-angle" might mean a focal length of 35 or 28mm – if you are very lucky, perhaps 24 or even 20mm. But this new lens has focal lengths ranging from the equivalent of 14 to 28mm. I can't wait to try it out on landscapes, where it should raise the standard of photography in our guidebooks.

Since there was no time to get up a hill today, instead I took it with me to a lunchtime meeting with Rucksack Readers' wonderful web designer Dan Champion in the dignified context of Inglewood House, Alloa. Here is its splendid exterior:

Now compare these two snaps of its entrance hall, taken from both extremes of the wide-angle zoom range:

We had expected to have son, daughter and grand-daughter staying overnight, but for various reasons they had other plans and we ended up alone last night. So this morning I had the luxury of deciding to go up Dumyat – which I've neglected for too long. I'm hoping that Bramble will manage 12 miles when we take part in the Rotary Club of Stirling hike of the West Highland Way in July, so it seems timely to find out if this is over-ambitious. She was 13 years old last month, so in canine terms she's an even older lady than me. Nevertheless, we both made it and thanks to some kind hikers, we even have a "summit photograph":

Recently, Bramble has been having Cartrophen injections for her arthritis, and if today is a reliable guide I'd say she is walking as well as she did 3-5 years ago. We have also been consciously cutting back on her food, and the combination has created a lighter, livelier, younger-seeming dog who was scampering, not plodding, up steepish slopes. (I wish I could have kept up with her.) The problem was the well-meaning group who were feeding her on the summit. She had been under close control off the lead all the way up, but I hadn't reckoned on her mooching technique at the top. Heaven knows what else they had given her, but I certainly saw a whole Maryland cookie – the kind of treat she never normally get. I fear that her Dumyat climb ended as a net calorific gain.

And since today is our wedding anniversary, Keir and I are just heading for Cromlix House for dinner, so doubtless my day will also end in a net calorific gain. This wouldn't matter so much if I hadn't just booked up to return to Nepal in September, so some serious weight loss and fitness training is badly needed. But not today!

Yesterday we had a very special treat: Keir and I went up in a hot air balloon from Bush House, south of Edinburgh, and floated south-west for about 8 miles, broadly parallel to the A702, at heights ranging from tree-tops to 3000 feet. Each of us had been given an Experience Ecosse voucher as a present for a past birthday by son Sandy. Since ballooning demands still, dry weathe, it naturally took several bookings to get on a flight that went ahead. Our pilot was Pete Foster of Alba Ballooning, ably assisted by pursuit driver Tam. (Tam also has the delicate task of negotiating access to retrieve the balloon with whichever farmer's field is used for landing.) Pete is highly professional, refreshingly concise and calm in his safety briefings, and, as you can see, utterly dwarfed by his balloon:

A feature of the experience is that everybody helps to manhandle, blow up and, later, douse the balloon. This gives you a much more hands-on sense of the scale and weight of this extraordinarily 19th-century form of transport by wicker basket. The pilot has no steering, only the ability to control altitude and hence perhaps to benefit from a different wind direction. Here is Keir, wearing thermal gloves and holding the mouth open while burners are blasting very hot air into it:

Our 7 fellow passengers included another person on a birthday treat - his eighth. He did seem to enjoy the flight, but I found myself wondering what his mother, who came along sporting her D&G handbag and fashion shoes, will find to give him for his ninth. Keir and I were celebrating birthdays totalling 121 years, and I don't mean to suggest that makes us any more deserving than an 8-year old, but at least we could see out over the basket.

We also enjoyed watching the balloon's effect on the astonishing range of people and animals whom we overflew. It's difficult not to feel elevated when looking down over barking dogs, cantering horses and waving children. We were also buzzed by some microlite enthusiasts. Fortunately, in the air as at sea, motorised transport gives way to sail. Here's one of them:

We all enjoyed the eerily silent smooth take-off and at dusk had an exciting, but well-controlled landing: just a few bounces and the basket landed on its side. The departure from the basket was orderly and surprisingly trouble-free given that some folk had to climb down from the upper deck. The flight was rounded off by a glass of bubbly, and we returned to Landrick both elated and soothed. Brilliant!

Being country bumkins, and pensioners besides, we don't often get out on a Saturday evening. Yesterday was different: we took the train to Edinburgh to celebrate Experience Ecosse, Sandy's gift experience company, which was 5 years old. He threw a wonderful party at the Hawke and Hunter, Picardy Place, where the Prosecco flowed freely and the 60-100 guests included his suppliers, office staff, friends and family. Husband Keir and I went to it, along with long-standing friends Nick and Margaret Walshaw, but sadly minus grand-daughter Amy who was banned by the byzantine licensing laws, thus also preventing her mother Helen from sharing the event. Amy, watching everybody getting ready, was asking why she couldn't come to Uncle Sandy's party too, and we couldn't really explain.

Anyway, if you've ever had to think up a present for somebody who seems to have everything, the answer is easy: give them an experience voucher - from tank driving to cook school, hot air ballooning to wine tasting, speedboat to pampering. Sandy's website shows the locations nearly all over Scotland and tells you more. For the last nine months he's been assisted by the highly personable and capable Claire Maasch, but Claire is returning home to South Africa this week. Still, I doubt if we've heard the last of her!

Here is Sandy cutting the "Experience Ecosse" birthday cake, with Claire in the background. The cake was kindly created by friends Sheila and Celia, who also provided the photograph:

Glendaruel Village Hall was the centre of an amazing range of activities yesterday: guided walks, primary children's displays, walking theatre, home baking and a very generous launch for our Cowal Way guidebook by government Minister Mike Russell.

He congratulated the authors and the whole community on the completion of this project, and it is remarkable how strong is the sense of community in Cowal, where he also lives. He spoke of the power of a long-distance route to funnel people into the peninsula, to provide a shop window on Cowal's scenery and wildlife, and to form a building block in the development of local tourism. I was pleased at how enthusiastic he seemed about the route, including its role as the missing link that joins the Kintyre Way to the West Highland Way.

The event was well supported by local residents, who not only attended but also bought books. Some of us went on the Walking Theatre event, in which actors appeared in costume and involved the walkers in various activities. It almost worked, I felt, but our "willing suspension of disbelief" was pole-axed at the start by standing around while one of those daft Health and Safety ticklists had to be completed. However, I was delighted and amazed to find that a fellow-walker was someone I hadn't seen since schooldays in London (over 40 years ago) where I knew her as Julia Martin. Since she lives in Western Australia and was in Cowal only temporarily, it seemed quite a coincidence.

Yesterday was the culmination of months of work at Rucksack Readers, but that's nothing compared with co-author Jim McLuckie's decade of work in developing and waymarking the route. My own contribution had gone somewhat beyond the normal role of publisher: see my blog entry for 6 February. However, that trip proved that even I could hike the Cowal Way in deep snow, over sodden ground, inside 4-5 days in January. So I'm fairly confident that it's feasible for normal walkers over that schedule year-round.

I arrived at Book Fair yesterday unsure what to expect of the Mayor's keynote speech. So often, TV "personalities" are disappointing in the flesh. And Boris Johnson is strongly identified with the London Transport that let me down so badly on my journey to hear him: Victoria Line cancellation (strike action) discovered from notices at Brixton tube where I arrived with heavy luggage. After walking to the rail station, more stairs with luggage because of Penalty Fare notices demanding a new rail ticket. (My pre-pay Oyster card beats paying £4 for single journeys, but why can't it be valid on ALL forms of transport within the London area, especially after strike action closes the bit you need?) And the non-Victoria tube lines were even more crowded than usual because of the overspill, so it was an unpleasant journey.

But I needn't have worried about being late, as Boris was even later. Perhaps there was extra traffic on his bike journey from Islington. Once he started to talk, however, we forgave him everything. He was articulate, interesting and witty, a self-confessed "fogey" on the subject of Playstations and his sons, and although he had prepared his "keynote" he never read from a script and I suspect departed from his brief. The chairman wisely didn't attempt to summarise an address that ranged ecelectically over London's literary advantages. These included having twice as many bookshops as New York, being rich in libraries (363 of them), being custodians of the English language with its 500,000 words and (bizarrely, because of the weak pound) having the world's cheapest Big Mac (cheaper than the Ukraine and Brazil).

Boris's talk was well-informed, intelligent and good fun. As an author, he spoke to this LBF audience in its own language, starting with a witty aside about his agent getting the title of his novel wrong (by alluding to "42 virgins" - in place of 72 - the agent was reflecting deep discounting in the book trade.) He made much of birthdays – today is allegedly the day for both Shakespeare and St George – but it was his handling of questions that impressed me most. The first was a left-fielder from a Danish chap who wanted to know how Boris would combine proper celebrations of the Charles Dickens' bicentennial with the Olympics. Boris was understandably taken aback, but barely hesitated before confirming Dickens' dates as 1812-70, and spinning a brilliant fantasy of the Olympic opening ceremony as a Dickensian pageant. The audience loved it, the Dane was baffled.

Stripped of the glamour of TV, despite his heavily Eton/Balliol accent and persona, he came across as a genuine and approachable bloke. If I lived in London, I can even imagine voting for him. Although I've never yet voted Conservative, there are some politicians who seem to rise above party prejudices and to leave the baggage behind. Besides, the man has charisma. If Boris were a dog, he'd be a yellow labrador.

Photo © www.contactmusic.com, with thanks

Yesterday was Day One of Book Fair, so I arrived keen to see if the books we sent months ago are actually on the stand, and to discover if the shelf is buried in obscurity or near to eye level. Once again, the Independent Publishers Guild stand was prominent and effective. I even forgot to take a photo of our shelf of Rucksack Readers. Next year we'll be 10 years old, which seems amazing.

One of the joys of Book Fair is being able to sit and talk to our partners from all over the world: Derek and Wayne of Hong Kong Graphics and Printing who make all our books these days, Craenen of Belgium who distribute in Europe and Interlink Publishing, Massachusetts, who distribute for us in North America. In fact it was this time last year that the idea of going back up Kilimanjaro by the Lemosho route was conceived at Book Fair in a conversation with Michel (who set up Interlink in 1987). Last June we all summited, and he and his partner Hildi have even created a gift book drawing entirely on this trip. I'd be truly delighted about that if it weren't for the fact that their book is likely to be out before my own, overdue guidebook, which keeps getting sidelined!

Today's main joy was listening to great novellists. I began with Umberto Eco, who is one of my favourites. A new novel from Eco is a rare event, about once in 8 years, and hearing about his full career as an academic historian, philosopher and teacher of semiotics and essayist, no wonder. Unlike most authors, he wasn't here to promote a new book, but to present an award to his editor. He spoke freely about the passionate battles between his editor and translators, sometimes days and weeks debating a single mot juste. Happily he scotched the rumour (spread in Wikipedia) that he would never write another novel, though he conceded he might be slowing down a little. Now in his late 70s, he seemed much younger, more energetic and full of humour as well as wisdom and patience.

Later I caught up with William Boyd talking about an unusual source of ideas for his novels. He lives beside the Thames, and had been struck by the little-known fact that over 50 bodies a week are recovered from its waters. How many of us could turn that into a best-seller? Sadly my business meetings that clashed with Vikram Seth, speaking this afternoon, whose novels "A Suitable Boy" and "An Equal Music" are some of my favourites.