For the past few years I have always bought my phones direct from Apple, without contract, and have assumed that it is the cheapest way to smartphone ownership. I am always suspicious of the carriers’ hire-purchase deals which are seldom the most cost-efficient solution. I buy new and sell after a year or two and the difference is my ownership cost. But what if I forget all about ownership and regard the phone as a rentable commodity?

Earlier this week I was strolling around Bushey Park in south-west London when I had my greatest photographic disaster of the year. I found a mob of deer. One obliging stag was washing his antlers in a rather unsavoury, muddy and smelly pool. Just the job, I thought, and fished out the camera of the day, the Leica X1 as it happened, from my Billingham