Reporter's Mother Scoops at Cropredy

Well not yet but we can live in hopes.
I'm all of a dither. My daughter, the reporter, has arranged for me to take pictures at Fairport Reunion's annual festivel (40th Anniversary of the band) at Cropredy, for her newspaper!!! I will be that press person, scurrying around, occcasionally throwing myself (and presumably my camera and tripod) on the ground to get that awesome upside down shot up the Stars' noses, paparazzi fashion and wearing an official wristband!
I don't have a five mile long telephoto lens so maybe I need to make a cardboard cut-out to give my camera the authentic look? What sort of hat should I wear? Do I need one of those many pocketed vest thingies with camera bits festooned all over them? I can manage the world weary drooping fag in corner of mouth look at any rate. And I'm very good at slouching!

Meanwhile my car is in for a service so I can't go off to foreign parts (that's the next county) neither to the backside of B&Q in search of pictures of the canal (for card making purposes). It's quite a relief actually. I've been doing this for the last two (three?) days and coming home, resembling a slightly soggy barbecued object with millions of pictures but not very many good ones. I've confirmed my suspicion that going to a place to look for photos is not at all the same as leaping out of the car and grabbing fifty pics of one inspiring view!
There are some good ones but the vagaries of cloud and camera batteries have cramped my style somewhat. I've discovered that battery no 3 will only take 70 pictures while no's 2 and 4 will take 200 odd each. And No 1 may even stretch to 250!
So yesterday ended with me balanced on a rock between a marsh, a river, a thorny hedge and a delightful little aqueduct on the Kennet and Avon canal, poised to switch the camera on as soon as the clouds (large, white, fluffy and with intermittent gaps) unveiled the sun. They did, I did, and the camera took one last picture and I fell off the rock. The two events being simultaneous so the resultant picture is...interesting. At best. Marshes are soft though so it could have been worse. It could have been the river or the hedge! Or cowsh'! Of which there was a lot.

On the other hand, or in the other hand as it happens, there is the dreaded phone call to the insurance company.
Remember them? Them what don't answer phones or return calls?
Right now, they've assured me (automatically) that my call is important to them and asked me to wait till a thingy becomes available. While waiting for said thingy, I've typed the whole of this post with one hand. With pauses for thought and cigarette rolling.
Thing is, although they were all sorted and the cheques came, duly made out to the chosen contractors, one of the contractors has done his back in. We are interestingly scaffolded but not pebble dashed. He may never be able to do the work. the cheque is made out to him and anyway, as his was the cheapest quote, we may not be able to get anyone else to to the work for that price. So we need to know what the insurance company (currently, no doubt, wading through a million flood insurance claims) will do. And while we have every sympathy with pebble dasher's back problem he might have let us know sooner that he was out of action. And indeed, he rivals the insurance company for non-answering of phones and has no ansaphone on which to leave a message. This is turning out to be yet another epic tale of messages sent out into the electronic void. Unopened virtual bottles floating in the aether! If you should find one washed up on your virtual beach, could you label it "URGENT" and push it out again?