I left school at seventeen and my first pay packet was around twelve pounds for a month of slave labour. Having bought my lunches, paid for my bus fare, and given my mother not a lot, there was little left for the simple pleasures of life. So it was rather surprising that I managed to save up enough for an SLR camera in three months. Mind you, it was a Russian-made Zenit-E which probably had “cheap and nasty” printed on the base in Russian.

After a while, the Zenit made way for a Canon, and a Canon was to be my camera of choice for the next hundred years or so, and I arrived at a Canon 300. Then came digital and I moved to a 300D, then a 30D, then (because there was no 3D) a 1D. The 1D was to support a small but quite lucrative photography business, and appropriate lenses were also acquired, culminating in the monstrously gorgeous 300mm.

Then I broke my back, which made lugging around 15 kilograms of kit more of a chore than it used to be. And the photo assignments started to dry up; and finally I discovered Micro Four Thirds, the GF1, and a range of equipment with provided great images for less weight and lower cost.

For the last six months I have used my GF1 almost exclusively, and the Canon gear has sat in the cupboard and depreciated. I can carry 18-400mm of lens range and a camera in a small bag of minimal weight. I can shoot unobtrusively and produce photos which please me every bit as much as those which came out of the Canon. And shooting with the GF1 is just more fun.

At some point in the last couple of days I finally decided that sitting on a pile of expensive Canon gear to support the occasional job or sporting shoot was just silly. So today I went to Bangkok and started the dispersal process by selling three very nice Canon lenses for a reasonable price; and immediately celebrated by spending some of the cash on a wide angle lens for the GF1.

Feeling rather pleased with myself, I was driving home to Pattaya when the phone rang. It was an Indian friend, the man who had been instrumental in getting me the job to shoot the Indian National Rally Championship. He was excited.

“I am getting married in December. I would like you to shoot the wedding at a hill station outside Bangalore. You can stay for a few days with your wife and visit the animal sanctuary in the area and take some photos. Just tell me how much you would like me to pay you”.

I had to explain that he had called me three hours too late, and that I no longer had the lenses that I would have used to shoot the wedding…….

My timing, as ever, sucks.