19th August 2008

I've joined Norwich & District Photographic Society. It's great fun, and although its predominantly comprised of the older generation, there are really talented people there. Tonight we were shown pictures by a delightful couple.

The title of the evening was 'A Walk on the Wild Side' which made me think of safari, Kenya, lions and other scary mammals with big teeth. But sadly no. No tigers. No lions. The delightful couple had been on holiday to the Falklands. A natural history holiday where they spent their time walking round the islands with telephoto lenses and, I should imagine, matching all-weather jackets.

So I spent an hour looking at some very well produced ornithology pictures. A whole hour. Now I appreciate a well taken and difficult to capture image, I just have no love for birds. And I really don't care that they keep changing the Latin name for some big ugly looking bird with black wings.

At the break I drank black coffee to keep awake and my friend and I hoped the bird mans wife liked something a little more fury and interesting. Turns out she did. She has a fascination with.... Fern's, seaweed and lichen.

I tried very hard not to laugh. And failed. Especially when she told us that she had tried for months to identify a type of lichen, with no luck, until she mentioned it to her friend, a lichen expert, who solved the problem. I turned to my friend, "That's it," I whispered, "I want to go to dinner with them and the lichen expert. I bet we'd have the time of our lives."

At the end of the evening as a society member thanked the beaming couple, I thanked the lord that these two people had found each other. In an imperfect world, there could not be a more perfect match.