What do all the picture taking guides always give as their first rule? Always carry your camera. And now there’s no excuse as everyone has a smartphone. 

Okay, I know not everyone has a smartphone. There are still tribes in Norfolk that have never been exposed to civilisation and so only have original Nokias – used to make (whisper it)…phone calls. Remember them? And I know there are multi-millionaires who never carry a phone because they have servants for that sort of thing. But for the rest of us – the little people – if you don’t have your camera with you (and why don’t you?) you will at least have a phone. 

I was at the Black Rocks in the Derbyshire Dales – so called because they are…black, on a hike, scrambling over scree, bouldering over big boulders, snaking along sneaky trails, sneaking Sally, peering over vertiginous drops, sunning myself lizard-like on hot stones in the spring sunshine. The sun was high, and the air was warm and all was right with the world – or at least in this little corner I could blot out the woes that afflict so many parts of our little floating globe.

We were heading down, me and my friend, squeezing through narrow gaps, brought low by swaying branches, clipped by thorns. I looked up and caught a glimpse through the trees across a gap in the leaves – the ghost of a dog and its owner, backlit by the sun, delineated by sparks against the background.

The iPhone 16 has a very effective telephoto and I got off a few clicks, two fingers scraping the screen to close in on the scene. In a moment the vision had gone – the light changed, the sun slipped inside a cloud, the dog and its owner de-materialising like Doctor Who. And his dog.

Always carry a camera with you.