136/366 The Comfort Zone

Isn’t it strange how things change? In the early 1990’s when I was living in Berlin, I spent a fair bit of money (DM300 comes to mind, probably about £100 as was then) purchasing a small micro-tape recorder. The idea was to record my thoughts and impressions of my time in the city. I still have it, but I haven’t used it for years. No need to, the ubiquitous mobile phone has entirely supplanted the need for such devices.

Sadly, I never took full advantage of it. I wanted to do things like walking down the Kurfürstendamm with my East German Practica camera, taking pictures, and describing what I was seeing and feeling. But the idea of walking down a busy street (it doesn’t really matter where the street was, it’s the principle that’s important) holding my hand up to my mouth and be talking to myself was an image that my far too conservative (small “c”) brain could tolerate, and so I just could not bring myself to do it. That expensive device went mostly unused.

But how conspicuous would you feel today, walking down any street, holding a small device to you mouth and talking about anything, even “being on a train”? It’s a bit different isn’t it? My conservative brain had gone in to hibernation. Note, I stay had!

It’s back again. not with a vengeance because circumstances are different thank you to the mobile phone. Today, a new gadget arrived, it’s a little unit that can sit on top of a tripod and holding a mobile phone. With a microphone, I can stand 6 – 8 feet away from the camera and talk to it about a topic that I want to cover, and as I move, it follows me. But the whole set up reminds me of that time in Berlin. It’s not “normal” activity in any street, even a side street off the high street of Gosport! So that self consciousness returned.

This time though I was mostly prepared. So I forced myself to do a session of talking to the camera; outside the council offices, just off the Gosport Promenade, at the Falklands Gardens (although I just walked around a bit without talking), to the entrance to the tunnel through the ramparts that took Queen Victoria to quay for her trips to the Isle of Wight. This last one was easy – no one about.

A success for the most part, an increase in confidence, I just need to work on my delivery. Here’s a sample – let’s see if this works. What do you think?