Breakfast yesterday with genuinej where the talk was apparently of golf, although I had no idea what he was on about. His previous outing had featured seven triple bogeys, which sounds like the result of a nasty head cold, but instead is some sort of scoring triumph which the man himself seemed less than pleased about.

Never mind, it was good to see the old chap, and most pleasing to see that he had brought the usual offering of Flakes, Crunchies and Twiglets. There were also some chocolate eggs which Cadbury’s had released for Halloween in a shameless act of commercialism by sticking an ‘S’ in the title and calling them “Screme Eggs”. Personally, I was disgusted by this. We all know that the chocolate egg is a symbol of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross and should, like the holy Easter bunny, be held sacred. Still, they taste damn good so I will put aside my deeply held spiritual convictions just this once.

What’s your definition of a good neighbour? Someone who is always available to lend you a cup of sugar? Someone to keep watch over your property when you are away? Someone who doesn’t party ’till 0300 with what sounds like a herd of nympho elephants on crack? My definition is someone who regularly buys new camera equipment and then immediately lends it to me to play with. Which is why Nik is such an excellent neighbour.

Yesterday, Nik came home with one of these:

It’s the Olympus ZD 60mm f2.8 macro lens and it’s really rather lovely.

Until this lens came along, your only choice for a native Micro Four Thirds macro lens was the Panasonic Leica 45mm. It’s good, but but it’s expensive, and both Nik and I had gone with a cheaper legacy lens option, the Yashica 55mm; bolted onto our cameras via an adapter.

But along came the Olympus, lighter in weight and just two thirds of the price of the Panasonic offering; and Nik indulged. Then he handed it over to me.

First surprise is that it is so light, and much smaller than I expected (a phrase I have sadly heard before). It’s of plastic construction, but it feels more solid than, say, the Olympus 45mm and the overall impression is of a well-constructed lens. It’s “splash proof” too, although I decided it might be wise not to test out that aspect. Sadly there is no hood; it now seems to be standard Olympus practice to make this necessity a costly extra. Bastards.

To give a further idea of size, here it is with the Olympus 75mm and the Yashica 55mm macro:

She who must be obeyed had a couple of days off, so we decided on a bijou tripette to Koh Chang. This involves 3-4 hours driving south (time varies with pee and snack stops), followed by a ride on a ferry.

I have sufficient lenses for my GX1 (not that has ever stopped me). But when we were passing a camera shop and my wife was looking for something to purchase for my birthday, this lens seemed like a good thing to point at.

The resignation of our maid has not only dumped a number of unsavoury tasks in my lap, it has also highlighted outstanding projects which the maid failed to undertake; either because she was a lazy bitch, or because any reasonable person might argue that they fell outside her area of responsibility. But I am not a reasonable person so they are all her fault.

Take my feeble collection of motor racing trophies. Well, the maid certainly didn’t, and they probably have not been cleaned for more than two years. She who must be obeyed opined that this is because I told the maid not to touch them on pain of death; whereas I think the punishment with extreme prejudice threat only related to the nearby 1/8th scale model of a Le Man winning GT40, which even I am only allowed to touch whilst wearing gloves.