london from russelldavies on Vimeo.
I twisted my ankle yesterday, which was depressing, but had an excellent silver lining because last time I did it the doctor told me to get myself a walking stick, and I'm really fond of walking with the thing. A stick lends you an immediate flaneury air of swagger - perhaps best demonstrated by James Mason and his brolly in The London Nobody Knows. (More here. Buy here.) Unfortunately I'm not sufficiently foppish to carry off a stick on a regular basis, so I won't be doing my Masonic pointing very often, but perambulating around today made me realise that sticks are perfect candidates for gadgety augmentation. There's a long tradition of sticking things in sticks: concealed weapons, secret compartments, compasses or the famous and traditional flute/compass combo. But I've not yet noticed stick-makers appropriating 21st century gadgetry. Various people have tried to turn walking stick camera mounts into GPS holders and there seems to be a patent for staff-mounted GPS, (though I may be just misunderstanding that) but I've only found one seriously gadgety stick, and it's not exactly cutting edge tech.
An old-fashioned walking stick with an impact-powered GPS logger, digital weather station and audio recorder, that's what I want. Maybe I have to build one.
Anyway.