Saturday, 13 February 2016

So a very weird thing just happened...

Yeah. Here's the email I just sent...

Dear [photo printing company],

Perhaps you can shed some light on what is undoubtedly the weirdest thing to happen to me so far in 2016 (it's only February, so I do hold out some hope for better things to come).

A friend of ours recently visited Uxbridge, which is quite a long way from where we all live in the south of Wales. Whilst there, she went into a charity shop where she happened to see a photograph in a frame that she thought my other half would quite like, because it had two cats in it that look 'a bit like yours'.



On presenting the photograph to my partner (now back in good 'ol Cymru), he was slightly astonished to find that not only did the cats look a bit like ours, they looked exactly like ours and were, in fact, our cats sat on our decking in our back garden in October of last year in a photograph which I took with my own fair hands and a Canon DSLR.
                                                         
As a frequent photographer, I'm not unused to my work showing up in odd places on the internet; I put some of my photos on Flickr under a creative commons license for this reason. But this photo isn't on my [list of social media sites]. The only place it exists online is in my [photo printing company] account, where I used it as a part of a slightly jokey 2016 calendar I had printed as Christmas presents back in December.  


Now I only know of 5 physical print copies of this photograph, being the 5 calendars I ordered, one of which is in front of me right now. The rest are currently residing with my Granny, my Mother-in-Law, the breeder of the two said cats in the picture and (hang on to your hat...) the very friend who presented us with the photograph in the frame that kicked off my current bewilderment.

As far as I am aware, I have not upset any of them enough in recent days that they would travel over 150 miles from their respective homes to deposit an unwanted Christmas present in a charity shop in Uxbridge… in any case, the feedback I got was that they all quite liked it.

So, Mr or Miss [photo printing company]. Here is the question which I hope you can help me with: how did that image, which exists nowhere else online, with the exact same crop as on the calendar, on the exact same paper, end up in a photo frame in a charity shop a goodly distance from any of the copies which I am aware of in print?

Now before you panic, I’m not angry, not upset, not even disappointed, just interested in the reasons behind this crazy random happenstance which made me laugh for a good hour and a half. We have formulated some theories and would like to know which is right!

Yours confusedly,


Dr Duckie (the human), CJ (the grey one) and Calamity (the ginger one)

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