Narnia began

 

Just for a few minutes, in Ampthill Great Park.

One Thing a Day

This year, my death-cleansing continues. The most useful advice I've yet received on this ritual is One Thing a Day. One thing out the house every day. The list this year includes a fabric throw, canvas box, and 100 photographic slides, including gun boats used in the Cod Wars of 1972. Let's hope the Icelandic Archives love them.

Also, I forgot to photograph them before they left. But I found this on the floor, so it'll do instead. It might be tomorrow's Thing. A Thing can be big or small, room-changing, or never-will-miss-it. A paperclip to a wardrobe. That helps.

Morning, Ramblers

 

Five mile leisure stroll. I know this looks like 'never as lonely as in a crowd', because every photo I have is when they all walk off in front of me. 

 

But it's a sunny morning to breathe frost air and hear the crunch of ice. I did have a conversation with a path checker, so not spent entirely alone.

Walk and talk

 

I'm with Shark today. Everyone else has gone. 

We go on this walk and I tell her about the young woman I saw in Tesco on Christmas Eve. She was wearing a flawless drawn face with perfect coiffured hair, dressed in boots and unwrinkled pyjamas. Held in smooth hand with tapering fingernails before her, was a phone, picture-perfecting her steady walk through the harassed crowds. Her face, expressionless. The rest of us, exhausted and spent, making way, clutching our grubby last minute parsnips and cheap brandy sauce. 

I say to Shark I find it dispiriting that our cultural life seems to be no more aspirational than to be an influencer with a marketing plan. Then we're all running along, threatened with the miserable lives we are destined to have, if we should fail to 'live our best lives' and 'curate our authentic selves'.

I ask Shark, 'What will you do when you get back today?' She answers after a slight, thoughtful pause, 'Draw a goldfish.'

There's hope for humanity, yet. 

Script? What script?

 

Family outing to see Avatar. The new one. The script is terrible. Don't go for that. It was so bad, at one point I felt the balance of my mind become disturbed. 

I cheered up a bit when I'm told that my script score of -10 was fair. People don't go to Avatar for the words apparently! They go for the spectacle. And American violence. Guns and fist fights.

Well, we got some great discussion from it, so not all bad. About the Romans, the process of film making, the emotional management of audiences, CGI and the role of writers. We covered good ground in a two-hour autopsy.

The photo, by the way, is not the Avatar audience. The screening was well attended, and I have my limits when it comes to crowd scenes. I took this photo some time ago when I was the only one in the audience.

More shonky curtain stitching

 

I bought a pair of green velvet curtains for £2 from a car boot sale about ten years ago. 

They were hanging in the garden room for years, then spent four years in a cupboard. 

Today I cut up the second one to stitch it to the first, to turn a six foot curtain into a ten foot curtain.

The electric sewing machine spat out the velvet, so I complained for an unproductive time about things like Nap and Frister Rossman 1974. Then I gave in and hand sewed the lot. Here it is. 

Achievement looks like this.

Routine appointment

 

Time for bed in my workshop

 

Sold

 

I live in a house with more chairs than people

 

Clear out

Ramblers Walk 7 miles circular Milton Keynes

 

This, earthworks at Shenley Toot, location of motte and bailey castle remains. I'm happy with the story that it dates from twelfth century battles between Stephen and Mathilda. (Living in revenge against the opinion that MK is just another new town.)

Cheese

 

Admittedly, not much of an achievement

 

Illuminated my micro dressing room with fairy lights instead of overhead light. (Neither photographed.) Also, decided to paint the walls pink. Low bar for achievement today. Maybe it's a necessary step.

Shopping, mostly

 Shopping, mostly for essentials.

 Shopping, mostly for essentials. Like crisps.

Crisps! Ahhh, why resist their crunchy charms?

I love them. 

 

 (The tins are just for show. I think the yellow one might contain a few Lidl ginger nuts.)

Worst curtain stitching ever

Emergency curtain stitching, resulting in shonky mess. I'm consoling myself, over the hacked-up discarded theatre curtains I saved from a skip, that at the very least, they hold the house warmth, and they provide the black-out required for my Dark Academia office. Also, they do provide the back-drop for this bright, bright moment of happy figurines to contrast my melancholic death aesthetic.

 

 

 

Ramblers group walk

Eight miles circular, taking in restored Buckingham canal, nature reserve, woodland, Roman tumuli, lost village earthworks, medieval bridge, and a bit of road. Salve for the soul.

Wandering Bath

I got lost trying to find the Long Barrow. And the miles of single track roads without passing places caused palpitations. A dog walker got me out of trouble. Farleigh Hungerford Castle was easier thanks to the A-roads, the English Heritage signpost and a car park with only one way in and one way out.

It's a long story

Started with a temper tantrum in a skip in Milton Keynes. Finished in Frenchay Village Hall car park, Bristol. En route, took in Nairobi, the Gambia, Rwanda, Zaire, Kenya, Johannesburg and Buckingham. Job done.

In the knicker drawer note book studio x

Sunrise, sunset

 

MKG

 

Time, moving, or staying still

 

Tunnel, love

 

Family visit

 

New year starts here, for me.

 

Circular walk, Cambridge Fens, starting Reach

 

 Looking a lot like this, for most of it.

Interesting things...

And this next one, I'm having made up as a lapel badge. When I'm standing at a reception desk, or an entry point, or a place where anyone under the age of 25 asks to see something on my phone, I'm just going to wordlessly point to the badge...