I used the app a lot when it first came out, only because the lens on the camera of the phone I had at the time was damaged, blurring every shot I took, so using the Instagram filters available then made the pictures worth taking.
Some old examples, just for the fun of it.
The first was, I think, my brother-in-law's birthday party in July 2012. He was playing keyboard in our band at the time, so naturally we turned it into a gig:
And the second, on stage before a wedding gig, in May of that same year:
And third, the lake at Frampton, which would be obvious from its absence if I didn't include it:
Actually, I'm going to include a fourth, because I've covered most of the other significant parts of my identity in the first three so it would be churlish not to complete the picture with Lilly and her mum, Jaz:
And that theme segues nicely back to my most recent foray into Instagram territory, as my favorite snap is Lilly, albeit four years later than in the above (but not a lot changed). It looks like she's reaching out to me, but she'd actually dozed off in that position, with her left foreleg stretched out like that. She briefly awoke, opening her eyes as I moved to take the shot, then confirming I was going nowhere, dozed straight back off, foreleg unmoved:
The sophistication of the post-processing options on Instagram have increased significantly since I last went there in 2012. I don't know how much I'll carry on using it, but I might. Thing is, I do prefer tweaking pictures on the big screen of my PC. The little display of even my most recent phone camouflages so much detail with its lack of scale.
In wandering away with all of the above, I almost forgot the other reason for this post.
We did sail on Sunday. I managed to pick up a bug from somewhere, developing a bit of a temperature and a cough by Saturday night, but a text message to Hels asking if she was sure she wanted to sail returned a very define, very prompt "Yes!"
In truth I didn't need that much persuading, all though it was a struggle dragging myself out of bed Sunday morning as I didn't sleep especially well; a weird, feverish dream kept waking me up, quite strange, and despite going to bed relatively sober, I felt hung-over when I finally awoke to the alarm.
I got to the lake in good time, but in view of the forecast, the fact that I was under the weather, and Hels was a little rusty having not sailed with me for quite some time, when a friend offered to lend us his cruising main, we gladly accepted, effectively reefing Buffy down into the "social sailing" fleet.
In fairness to my caution and trepidation, when I arrived at the Club everybody else was wandering up and down the shoreline saying to each other "Are you going to sail?" or "Have you seen the forecast?" or "It's supposed to get much worse...." and words to that effect.
I don't know why they do it, except it's all part of the ritual. The only time I've ever known them to not actually go out was after they'd reefed down from their Lasers to their kids' Toppers, and even then had been forced to rig the boats on their sides because they couldn't raise the masts in the wind.
So yeah, they were always going to sail. And, I guess, so was I. To be fair, had I realized somebody was going to be drifting around with a camera, I might have even resisted reefing down to the cruising main.
Credit for the video and commentary rests with my fellow Frampton club-member Mark Smyth who, along with Richie Wakefield, valiantly volunteered to man the safety boat whilst the rest of us went out to play. Although (and again, this observation is very tongue-in-cheek, as you can no doubt tell from the tone of my type) perhaps the offer was less about our safety than it was about securing a better platform from which to enjoy the entertainment:
