Making Do
I broke the camera lens on my phone twelve months ago. Three times I tried to get it repaired, and three times I was rebuffed or quoted a bill far larger than I wanted to pay for a working camera. The rest of the phone worked fine, and I could still take blurry close-ups of anything truly important. If I really got desperate, I could use the selfie-camera and rely on the auto-zoom. No problem, I thought. I can do without a camera. I’ll make do with what I’ve got. I placed sticky tape over the shattered lens and got on with things. The first problem came a few months ago, when I needed to photograph a doctors receipt for the Australian medicare app. Getting an image clear enough required several attempts, many knock-backs, and a convoluted set-up that involved lying under a coffee table and trying to take a clear selfie of the receipt on the tabletop above me.