Shocking red hair and toastmaster's tabletopics

The first action of the day was to send confirmation to the printers that we could proceed with the production of Mr McArthurs's book Ka Sefofane.

A drive to Soham, taking the more circuitous yet faster route via Newmarket, to Mr Coleman's residence. We were meeting with Ms Gilmore to discuss the continued development of the Cambridge Open Studio Website that she was coordinating on behalf of the COS management team.

Progress reviewed and priorities established for the next phase of development, I returned via Wicken Fen over the minor roads. All the farmers were out in their tractors, making the most of the continuing fine weather to plough their fields.

After a quick lunch I spent half an hour attempting to photograph myself at the desk or in the armchair with a metal measuring tape. The aim was to measure the distance from eyes to book, desk or computer screen, to assist the optician in re-evaluating the prescription for my spectacles.

Starting from the Grafton centre, I wandered into town and was suddenly confronted by the sight of a shockingly-red coiffured young black woman. She had passed me by ten yards before I recovered, reacted, turned around and pursued her and her group of friends.

She was slightly bemused when I requested permission to photograph her (with apologies to the others for not demanding the same of them). They were a group of fashion students from Anglia Ruskin University, who had themselves been holding a photoshoot around Cambridge. The young lady consented and struck a pose and you can see the results in my Portraits Collection; the cropped version working particularly well.

My time at the opticians was a bit of an anticlimax thereafter!

Passing some flowering chestnut trees, I quickly took some photographs of the tree's habit, then a series of close studies of two or three flower spikes and leaves, with a view to use these as the basis for a new composition painting in the xie yi Chinese brush painting freehand style.

I barely had time to return home before departing again, for the meeting of Toastmasters International at the Club at Hemingford Grey. This was a different meeting to the usual agenda as we were looking to the future. However, there was an amusing interlude with the impromptu 2 minute "Tabletopics".

Mr Slezak had generated a series of questions on lots to be drawn from the table and the volunteers had to expound for up to two minutes on the subject drawn. For my attempt, I had to argue the case that watching the television was beneficial! I struggled through and for once did not extend beyond the permitted 30 second overrun, as I am usually prone to.

This was another opportunity to test out the audio recorder. Remembering Mr Smiths comments on the benefits of a fast sampling rate and high bit level, I recorded my tabletopic at 96kHZ and 24bit.
The meeting was otherwise well attended, constructive and it was good to be in the company of like-minded friends.