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My Sony Cybershot is barely interred before I’m taking a daybreak walk along the beach with a replacement camera slung around my neck. No Victorian period of mourning for this heartless woman. The camera is not, however, THE replacement. That will have to wait till I go through that awful process of making a decision. It’s a cheap Fuji Finepix, bought to replace the last camera I killed when I fell getting out of a boat – again in 2″ of water. J is only an intermittent photographer and he passed it on to me almost with glee: he hates the business of downloading and discarding. He’d rather not photograph at all.

I leave my empty house just before daybreak. My Queensland mob are safely back home, and I’m enjoying a tidiness I fear won’t survive long. All the windows are open and the cool air is pouring in. By the time I return home, light has joined it.

I use the walk to explore the simple programming of the camera, via a menu more accessible than the one on my dear deceased. When I look through the results, I decide the colour is a bit bland, and since I don’t have as many megapixels to play with, 12 as opposed to 20, cropping isn’t as effective. So, Sony Cybershot, you are still superior, and hold an unrivalled place in my heart.

Thanks to the morning light / thanks to the foaming sea: so wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson. I feel that gratitude every time I walk along the beach at daybreak, and even more so this time. No camera could fail to be charmed into delivering delicious shots full of radiance. Lemony Snicket is on the money too: how you spend your morning can often tell you what kind of day you are going to have. Yesterday was a gleaming day.