Places change constantly. New roads, new houses, changes of business, repairs and repaints, etc., are all part of it. The seasons bring their own changes as common lands and agricultural fields are filled with grasses and crops, and trees blossom and then close up for the winter.

Recording all this can seem a little obsessive at times, but - looking back over the years - it's like seeing a film of a village in slow motion. I've always been an amateur photographer, and still have my old Pentax S1a 35mm SLR and various lenses. When cassette cameras, digital cameras and the like came in, I also had several of those over the years. However, I realised after retirement some years ago that it was all too easy to relax in a chair with a guitar or the laptop - and get no exercise. So out came the camera really as an excuse to walk regularly - and to walk with a purpose. Then, about two years ago, I got fed up with the compact digital and had a yen to return to an SLR where I could have complete control over focus, aperture, shutter speed, etc. - just like the old days.

I now use a moderately expensive Canon DSLR with a "kit" zoom lens (18mm-135mm), which does me fine. And, more to the point, I shoot in RAW - which allows me complete control over the post-production with Adobe Lightroom software. For those non-camera buffs, RAW is the unprocessed file taken by the camera, containing all the information needed to create a JPG. Compact camera software creates a JPG according to the software in its chip, and you have very little overall control of it once the picture's been taken. Lightroom and RAW, together, are the equivalent of taking, developing, fixing and printing in the old darkroom process.

But that's a huge digression from the original point - which is the people I've met, the conversations I've had, the hidden places I've been to while doing all this - just from casual conversations and being interested in other people!