A mammoth undertaking

I get very few cold-callers coming to my door. Even the Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t bother coming this far out of town – too few souls to save to make it worth their while. There is the occasional lost tourist who wants pointing towards the pub, or a delivery-man looking for directions to one of my neighbours, but that’s about it for unexpected visitors. Plenty of tradesmen call, but always by appointment (four separate lots yesterday, a new record!) and that’s another ongoing saga in near daily instalments at the moment……

So I was rather surprised this afternoon to see a strange man heading purposefully for my front door. His opening gambit was “Are you the homeowner?” which is guaranteed to get my back up and to elicit the icy response “I’m not prepared to answer that until you identify who you are”. It turned out that he was going door-to-door in the neighbourhood flogging aerial photographs. He had a very good photo of my house, with such high resolution that I can even make out the Easter Island head in my front garden! And the moss on my roof, which was cleared off last week. It was apparently taken from a Cessna on 21st July, using a Canon1D with 300mm lens – I think he was surprised to be quizzed on the technicalities. He wouldn’t sell me a soft copy of the file, but I did succumb and buy the A4 print there and then. Now I’ll need to get it framed and find somewhere to hang it.