When picking up the Sony Z1 camera lent to us by ThreeFeetHigh I thought I'd check to see if everything worked...and found there was no power. The chap at PIKS repairs where we collected it from told me they replaced the power board and that it should be fine. But upon checking the battery he told me that in fact the battery was faulty. And as luck would have it there was only one battery in the camerabag. And at PIKS they had none either...AAAAARRGGGH!!! So frantic calling ensued to anyone and everyone I knew in the business to see if they had a spare Z1 battery somewhere, but no joy. Even the hire places I rang were either already closed or did not have any. After what were probably 50 calls to Giles from ThreeFeetHigh I finally managed to get a hold of him (sorry for the huge amount of tries Giles, but I was pretty desperate as you can imagine) but he also did not have any at all as this was an obsolete camera for them. So I resigned myself to the necessity of a very early Saturday morning start to knock on the doors of as many hire places as possible, something I really did not need because we had planned to leave Richmond by 9AM...
But then I got a call from Deuan, who simply rang for a quick chat before we set off to Land's End in the morning. And this was the call that sorted it. Not that he had a Z1 battery, no, even better. He had an almost new Canon XHA1 in his attic...as you do... Turns out he had bought it for the charity Communities Empowerment Network, for which he works, a couple of years ago. With some convincing I got him to agree to lend it to us for the trip. After all, CEN can use the publicity to highlight the superb work they do for kids excluded from school as well as raise money through our ride. So, Deuan arranged for Dirk to pick it up in the morning on his way over to my place as Deuan himself was not joining the ride until Glastonbury, two days into the 2010 1000Miles Challenge.
It did mean a lot of lost time though. Had Deuan mentioned this camera before I would not have needed to go asking around for a freebie, costing me many hours. And I would not have needed to go to Wandsworth to collect it from the repair shop. Neither would I have had to bother everyone I knew in the tv industry with a plea for a spare battery at 8PM on a Friday. However, I did get a connection out of it with Giles from ThreeFeetHigh who seems a throroughly decent chap. Apart from offering to lend us his Z1, he also paid for the repairs to it so we could use it and also offered to pay for rental of batteries. Unfortunately there was just no time to meet up with him for a coffee before we left on our ride, but this will happen still. Things happen for reasons...and I look forward to actually meeting up with Giles at some point soon.
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