I am twitching with excitement.

The suitcase I’ve scrounged from my mum is going to be stuffed full of vests, socks, leggings, gloves, hats and anything else that is furry and thick. I am excluding next door’s dog. He is furry. He is also thick. But I’m not taking him on holiday because his breath smells.

Anyway, back to Tallin. It seems nobody has a bad word to say about the place. Visitors love it. They wax lyrical about the beauty of the Old Town, the thick snow and pretty teraccotta roof tops and seem to hold the place in great affection.

Yet it’s so understated.

‘Where’s Tallin?’  people say. ‘Estonia? Oh right.  Erm… where’s that?’ Occasionally somebody says, ‘Oh my aunt/sister/daughter’s teacher went there and they said it was absolutely lovely.’

So I’m expecting it to be gorgeous.

I’m expecting it to be a city that likes itself. Unlike most UK towns where people will say, ‘Oh I live in Wigan/Luton/Chipping Sodbury, it’s a bit crap really.’  I live in one of those UK crap towns – somebody is shouting drunkenly outside in the street as I type these very words – so visiting this pretty city is going to be like coming up for air.

I’m having a camera crisis.

My Pentax point and shoot, which until recently, took great photos whatever you did with it, has decided it’s only going to cooperate when its in the mood. The on/off switch sometimes works. The ‘take photo’ button sometimes works. The zoom hardly ever works.

I spent 90 minutes at an Alice Cooper gig, frantically clicking and shaking the camera which yielded 6 shots out of the whole gig, including some shoes (the bloke in front), somebody’s cleavage (smaller than mine so thank you God for small mercies) and one bouncer.

I have an old Nikon Coolpix which I’ve never really made sense of and the loan of my mum’s newer Nikon Coolpix which she’s never made sense of.

I have my Samsung Camcorder which takes truly awful photographs and my Galaxy 2 very posh phone which is a bit hit and miss for photos.

Then  there’s the old Canon SLR which takes that old fashioned stuff called film. It’s been hanging on my wardrobe door for the past 8yrs, going mouldy. It was a present from my Egyptian boyfriend who gave me three different stories of how he acquired it. I took fab photos with it at the time but have since become used to giving in to the excessive button-snapping activity associated with having a digi-camera.

So there we are. A mish-mash of photographic options, none of them ideal.

I want photos of Paterei Prison, the KGB Museum at Hotel Viru, Tallin Old Town in the snow, St Olaf’s church, Toompea Hill, the Bastion Tunnels.

Wrapped in the vests, thermals and thick socks is going to be a motley collection of dopey cameras.

I just hope between them, I can get some fab shots for this blog.