The Tale of the Haunted Camera

What I am about to tell you will frighten you, shake you up and change you forever. Brace yourselves.

Well, it probably won't, but it's a good story.

On the last day of our vacation, we left the beauty of our little loft in Ulverston to head into Manchester for a night before we caught our trans-Atlantic flight home. We decided to visit the little hamlet of Cartmel, since it was on the way into the city, and also because our hosts in Ulverston had recommended it.

We turned off onto a tiny, twisty country road (as there are all over the countryside in the UK) and followed it for a few miles, our eyes straining to find the Norman abbey that was supposed to be in the hamlet. On the way, we hit some traffic.

Once the gridlock passed (or turned a corner to another pasture), we eventually came upon Cartmel and found some signs that a craft fair was going on that day. That perked me up considerably. We parked the car next to the abbey, which was undergoing some renovations.

We decided to go in and visit the abbey, because it's not every day that you get to visit a building that's over 500 years old.

These churches often are built over the graves of some of the parishoners. It's creepy, yes, but I found a poem written on a gift card in the abbey written by Mary Elizabeth Frye that helped me understand. It starts:
Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.

I am in a thousand winds that blow,
I am the softly falling snow...
That gave me a perspective on the whole thing that banished some of my modern fears of the dead and of death.

I then took this photo of one of the floor stones:

Note the pink tinge of the photo.

We left the abbey and, as I took a photo of the graveyard outside, I noticed the display on my camera beginning to "fizzle"out. I thought that the battery might have been dying out, so I turned it off for the time being.

We followed the signs to see if we could find the craft fair, and on the way, I took some photos of the buildings:

It wasn't until I got home and looked more closely at these photos that I noticed that every single photo I took after the abbey looks like it has a pink filter over it. It's like everything has been coloured by a Technicolor technician on a bad day. And I can't seem to fix it.

There's a ghoulie in the camera.

But we'll see what Canon says.

In the meantime, it means that I can't share with you the two skeins of wool I bought at the craft fair that day. They were sheared, washed and spun by the lady at one of the craft fair tables, and I simply had to have them. They are a beautiful chocolate brown, which is the natural colour of the fleece. They come from a Jacob ram, a rare breed of sheep with spectacular horns. This photo is from the Oregon Wool Growers Association:

That is a SERIOUS sheep, dude.

My wool comes from the collar. It's spun in worsted weight, and still has quite a lot of lanolin in it. I think they'll make a nice, warm pair of mittens for me!

Anyway, that's how my camera came to be haunted. I am investigating other possibilities (maybe I can justify getting a digital SLR as I've always wanted), but hopefully I can't become pictorially-enabled soon. We shall see.

Muahahaha...

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