Today I was just going to go up my allotment to let the chickens out and to try and take a few photos with my new camera a Sony DSC-H2 Cyber-shot.

After having the other camera for almost five years, having a totally different camera takes a bit of getting used to. All the instructions are mind boggling when you first start, but I expect it will be easier once I get going.

The first thing I discovered was that I could not see properly what I was photographing – the photos on here were taken hit and miss. On reading the manual when I came home I found that I have to adjust the view finder settings to my eyesight – but I am having difficulty finding the thing that you use to adjust it! Old age setting in!

So here, after a lot of reading up, installing software, then using my old software for editing (shame on me, but there is so much to take in) are my first efforts.

A half hour visit in my neat everyday wear – turned into an almost four hour session – now that is what you call entrapment.

I really have missed my daily routine of working up there – as nice as it was to have family staying every day for eight days.

So as per usual I got sucked into the plot. So many jobs need doing, and not knowing where to start!

The most urgent was to tie up yet again the tomatoes and pinch out any side shoots, and take off some leaves so that the tomatoes could ripen.

I picked an ice cream tub, barely full, the start of a good crop I hope. The tidying and tying up took me over two hours – aided an abetted by my three companions of course.

Having lost my mobile phone somewhere over a week or so ago, I had no idea of the time (what’s new I hear you mutter), so I packed up when I could hardly move after being bent over the tomato plants so long.

On the way back to the shed I passed the runner beans – and there were just too many to leave dangling, so picked a basket full – I dare not even start on the Cherokee clusters up neared the shed!

So here I sit, after cooking a chicken curry for lunch, eating the last choc ice (with Pat of course), struggling for an hour or so the conquer USB card readers, new software and camera download, I am just about ‘done in’ and I still have the basket full of runner beans to blanch and freeze.

So off I go to do those.