Thirty: vision

Thirty: Vision, originally uploaded by meganknight.

For my entire adult life, my glasses have been the single most expensive item of attire or adornment I own. These latest pair cost £400 for the lenses alone, and that was at a relatively cheap optometrist.

My vision is not good, and it's getting worse: I already find I can't focus on things too close to me, or too far, and that my eyes get tired from reading too much.

I was cleaning them, and I noticed the droplets, so I decided to play around with the image. Can you tell I really want a macro lens?

Twenty-nine: Chappies

Twenty-nine: Chappies, originally uploaded by meganknight.

Chappies is a brand of South African chewing gum, sold by the piece on the counter of "kaffies" and "spaza shops", what in the US would be called corner stores. Each piece of chappies is one and a half centimeter square, half a centimeter thick, like a little terracotta tile, and traditonally they are pink, violently fruit-flavoured and wrapped in a yellow wrapper like a little present. They use to be four for a penny, and were the only kind of chewing gum we were allowed. I suspect they're considerably more expensive now, and they come in different flavours and colours. The inside of the chappies wrapper had trivia 'did you know' questions on it.

This is part of a mobile I bought from a shop in Grahamstown that specialises in recycled crafts - it's a string of five cranes made of chappies wrappers in different colours, and it hangs from a shelf in my study. Yellow is the iconic chappies wrapper colour.

Twenty-eight: Brulee

Twenty-eight: Brulee, originally uploaded by meganknight.

I made creme brulee tonight. We accidentally ordered too much from the delivery people, and are drowning in milk and eggs, so creme brulee made sense. Well, some sense, at least. It only uses a cup of milk for two servings, and although it has four egg yolks that leaves me with the question of what to do with four egg whites.

It didn't work that well, I'm afraid. I was doing supper as well, and lost track of time. I also didn't have enough time to chill it properly before doing the brulee. It still tastes lovely, though.

Now, what to do with the whites?

Twenty-seven: sunset

Twenty-seven: sunset, originally uploaded by meganknight.

It's staying lighter later, and today for the first time I managed to be on my way home before it actually got dark.

This is just off of Plungie, again, and the houses are typical northern terraces, all stuck together. It's been clear and cold, and the sky is full of jet trails - I suspect from planes heading over the pole to North America: several years ago, flying from London to Vancouver we flew over this part of the world, never suspecting we'd end up living here.

Twenty-six: Plungie

Twenty-six: Plungie, originally uploaded by meganknight.

Plungington Road (known as Plungie, with a classic northern long 'u'), is one of the main north-south strips in Preston, running from the university campus up the hill to Blackpool road, which used to be the northern limit of the town. Plungie is not a great neighbourhood, consisting mainly of charity shops, convenience stores, takeaways, discount booze and pubs. The original houses are classic northern terraces, with front doors right on the street and dense back alleys. Now, being so close to campus, there are loads of students as well as the original inhabitants.

This is the Plunginton Tavern, a truly handsome building, but unfortunately for rent. People seem to prefer the discount booze mart two blocks up, and judging from the broken glass, just do their drinking in the street.

Twenty-five: shooting star

Twenty-five: shooting star, originally uploaded by meganknight.

We get a lot of jet trails here, I'm not sure why. They show up during crisp clear winter days, especially.

This was early this morning: I went out while the kettle was boiling, and there was a plump little magpie sitting in the tree. By the time I went upstairs and fetched my camera, he had flown away, but the jet trail had showed up, so I took that instead. A woman leaving the house two doors down glared at me as I went back inside with my camera, mistrusting my motives.

Twenty-four: shawl

Twenty-three: shawl, originally uploaded by meganknight.

I have a large collection of shawls, throws, wraps and scarves, acquired all over the world. They're my last concession to my hippy lefty roots: I dress pretty boringly otherwise, so I the wraps are sometimes the only colour on display.

This shawl is probably the largest I own, it's almost too large to be useful. I bought it in Guangzhou, and it wasn't cheap. I was recently cornered by someone at a conference who insisted it was made in Pakistan, that she imported shawls from Pakistan and she knew it was Pakistani. She was deeply offended that I had bought it in China, and I felt bad for having done so, but there was little I could do about it.

Twenty-three: oh my darling

Twenty-three: oh my darling, originally uploaded by meganknight.

According to the box they came in, these are clementines, hence the title. I don't know, where I grew up anything that's orange-coloured, but smaller and easier to peel than an orange is a naartjie. Apparently that word comes from the Tamil nartei and refers to a mandarin, satsuma or a tangerine. As far as I'm concerned, a satsuma is a plum, and well, what exactly IS the difference between a mandarin, a clementine and a tangerine except branding? As far as I'm concerned, they're all naartjies.

I have no idea where we got the bowl, probably an antique shop in Johannesburg. It lives on Martin's dresser and contains random objects, as receptacles on dresses often do. Recently, Martin put a lemon and a lime in it to remind him to do something (because it's unusual for the bowl to contain anything edible, much less brightly-coloured). They've been consumed since then, so the naartjies it is.

Twenty-two: toes

Twenty-two: toes, originally uploaded by meganknight.

These are Oliver's front paws. Oliver is our other cat, and a cat less like Giles you could not imagine. Aside from his colour, which is a magnificent ginger, with a white muzzle, he is confident, cocky, assertive and pushy. He is the very definition of top cat.

We adopted him in Dubai, after the vet assistant said to me: you look like you could use another cat. In other words, she knew one when she saw one. Oliver was still a young-un then, about six months, skinny and scrawny, but he thrust himself up against the bars of the cage and insisted on all my attention. He had a rough kittenhood, I think this was the third time he'd been returned to the vet's, and on one occasion he had been shaken by a dog, leading to the one thing he's actually scared of: dogs.

He has a lot of names, Oliver, Tipsy McStagger (he's got some hip and back issues because of the dog), Captain Stripeypants, Mr Pyjamas, and most often, Thruddle. Martin coined that last, it's a portmanteau of 'thrust' and 'cuddle' and describes exactly what it's like when he runs up to you and leans his whole body against you, purring madly.

Twenty-one: beetle

Twenty-one: beetle, originally uploaded by meganknight.

I'm not completely sure where I got this, but it was almost certainly a street vendor in Johannesburg. These little toys made of old tin cans are common in Africa, sold as souvenirs. This one reminds me of my very first car, an orange Volkswagen beetle, which I called the pumpkin. I bought the car before I had a driver's license, and drove it for at least a year, illegally. We moved to Canada and I sold it to my friend Silla, who I believe had it resprayed and gave it to her sons to drive.

It wasn't a great car, and it got me into several unpleasant situations, including two separate occasions when I pressed the brake pedal flat and nothing happened, and a trip to the Drakensberg in which it died, leaving us to spend the night in it, on a deserted mountain road. Still, it was my first car, and that counts for something, I suppose.

Twenty: mask

Twenty: mask, originally uploaded by meganknight.

I've had an exhausting week, and am what can only be decribed as shattered. I wanted to experiment with depth of field and photograph a necklace, but I am too tired, and the clasp of the necklace broke and will need mending first, so I took this picture.

I bought her in Simla, and I'm not sure who she is. She's about 15cm tall, and made of copper plated with silver. She hangs on the wall above my desk. This is a tight close-up, and it's incandescent light that makes her look so burnished. She's normally just silver.

I like her, although she's really just a cheap souvenir, I know.

Nineteen: Fog

Nineteen: Fog, originally uploaded by meganknight.

It's a foggy day. I like fog, it is possibly my favourite weather of all possible weathers.

Preston is pretty foggy, and damp overall, which is why it has all the cotton mills. Cotton's explosive, so you really want to spin and weave it in as damp a climate as possible. Preston is not only damp, it's apparently damper than all other places in the region, so even though it's a bit of a schlep from Liverpool (up the coast to the Ribble Mouth, then up the river to the city and the docks), it made sense to build the cotton mills here. The cotton that was spun here was grown in the Americas, shipped here for spinning and weaving, the completed cloth was taken by ship to West Africa, traded for slaves, who were taken to the Americas and traded for raw cotton, which was brought here for spinning and weaving, and so on. Globalisation is not an entirely new phenomenon.

Eighteen: he's lost his bottle

Eighteen: he's lost his bottle, originally uploaded by meganknight.

There's a lot of drinking in Preston. Well, in the UK in general, but also in Preston, and in my neighbourhood. The Lancaster canal seems to be a favourite hangout for [presumably underage] drinkers. It's pretty secluded, aside from the dogwalkers and people like me walking to work, it has a nice wide towpath, with various benches to sit on, and it provides the inestimable joy of throwing your empties into the water and watching them not bob away, but stay right there, mocking you. Actually, probably not mocking you, unfortunately. I wish they did.

The fact is, the canal would be a much nicer place if it weren't so filthy, so littered with bottles and cans and cigarette packets and takeaway boxes and used condoms and dog shit. There are no rubbish bins along the canal, for some reason, but there are bins for dog shit, which provide helpful plastic bags as well for walkers. I do see people pick up their dog's shit, but I can't help thinking that they must only do it when someone's watching, how else to explain all the rest of it.

Oh, bottle in English slang is courage, or nerve. Losing one's bottle is chickening out. I don't know why the title, I just like the expression.

Seventeen: Moon

Seventeen: Moon, originally uploaded by meganknight.

I tried to photograph the moon, but although it is clear and bright to the naked eye, there is clearly a lot of moisture in the air, so this is all I got. On the other hand, I rather like its graphic quality.

Jupiter's visible in the sky as well, but I would probably have to stay up to 3am to get them both in one shot, so I'm not going to try. I'd love to do more astronomical photography, but the kit is really expensive. I'd like to get a macro lens as well, and try to photograph the insects in the garden.

In the meantime, all one can do is howl. Wooooooooooo!

Sixteen: graffiti

Eighteen: graffitti, originally uploaded by meganknight.

This is the first picture from my mobile phone. It's not a great pic, as you can see, but it was early in the morning, and the light was poor.

The picture is of graffiti I spotted on my walk to work today. It says: Adam Bellemy [sic] is a rapist, and then someone (possibly the same person) has added, some time later, in brackets, the word "still". The script is quite distinctive, and although it's either fading or someone has tried to scrub it away, it's large and clear, and along a main road, close to campus. There's obviously a story here, and I wish I knew what it was.

It reminds me rather of campaigns in Vancouver to name and shame the kinds of criminals we felt the police were unwilling to pursue: rapists, domestic violence perpetrators, gay bashers. For a while there was quite a lot of graffiti in Vancouver that looked like this, but I don't know that it worked. I hope whoever wrote this gets what she or he is hoping for out of it, but it seems unlikely, given that they have resorted to writing their complaint on the walls.

Fifteen: Risotto

Fifteen: Risotto, originally uploaded by meganknight.

We cook a fair amount, and I tend to cook on Sundays. Sundays are routinely spent in the kitchen, full-on breakfast, the one day a week I do that, dinner, and often some baking as well.

Today I made coffee cake, and mushroom risotto. We get a weekly delivery of organic veg, and we had mushrooms, so mushroom risotto it was. I'm not that sure about risotto - it's nice enough, but it doesn't seem worth all the effort, in the end. This is very dark because the stock was dark, and the mushrooms were brown. It does taste good, though, creamy and VERY mushroomy, thanks to the porcini and the chestnut mushrooms.

The pan it's cooking in is a new one, another seasonal indulgence, a lovely Le Creuset pan, deep and accomodating. I predict it getting considerable use, especially sice it's such a pretty colour.

Fourteen: Tiger

Fourteen: Tiger, originally uploaded by meganknight.

This is a little cast metal tiger, one of a pair that belong to an inkstand we bought in Delhi. We don't actually have the inkstand any more, just the two tigers and the back panel, which has three reliefs on it.

The tigers are only a few inches tall, and because they have lost their inkstand home, they don't have a real home: they can't stand up on the screws that extend below their feet. This one is balanced on the mantelshelf (yes, that's the living room wallpaper behind him, and believe me when I say it's the quietest wallpaper in the house).

We bought the inkstand from an indian antiques and art shop in Delhi four years ago. We went to Simla for Christmas, and had a day in Delhi before we had to fly home. We went for a walk and met a man who escorted us to the antiques shop, which appeared to be some kind of government institution, with some very expensive art. I know perfectly well the man made commission on us, but I don't mind. We did spend quite a bit of money there, including a painting that cost a substantial amount. I did resist the amazing jewellery, though, which could easily have bankrupted us.

Thirteen: Tea

Thirteen: Tea, originally uploaded by meganknight.

I think I can safely say that at least ninety percent of the days in my life so far have begun with a cup of tea. Real tea, camellia sinensis assamica, fermented, brewed with boiling water and served in a cup with cow's milk and possibly sugar.

I was raised on tea - from my earliest childhood I remember drinking tea (albeit weak and milky tea with lots of sugar). My mother used to make mugs of tea for everyone in the family every morning, a ritual solid as sunrise, even when she was ill. After she died, my father tried to keep this up, but it soon petered out. Nevertheless, I was old enough to make my own tea, and did. Tea every morning. Probably no breakfast, but definitely tea.

As a teenager, I discovered coffee, and for a few years as a student, I drank coffee in the mornings, like a good North American. I still love coffee, but waking up requires tea. When I went back to Africa, I was back in the land of tea, and returned to it, as to mother's milk. Sweet milky tea, in east Africa, boiled in a big enamel kettle with tinned milk and sugar and served in enamel cups too hot to hold, served in fine china cups-and-saucers in fancy hotels, mugs of tea made over fires, plastic cups of tea served with the bag still in on trains and in bus stations, tea is everywhere.

This is just a plain old mug of tea, Dilmah Gold Breakfast tea made from teabags (on this occasion - we also have loose tea to hand) brewed for a good five minutes in one of the seven or so teapots we have, kept warm with my handmade tea cosy, milk poured in first, then the tea. Made for me by Martin, and served in one of our new mugs we bought for Christmas this year.

Twelve: a cat and his shadow

Twelve: a cat and his shadow, originally uploaded by meganknight.

It was only a matter of time before the boys showed up on this blog. This is Giles. He is, as you can tell, extremely elegant and shiny. He is also terrified of his own shadow (seen behind him here).

We adopted Giles as a kitten in Johannesburg, along with his sister, Mabel. Emily, the best cat in the known universe was still with us, but she had leukaemia, and we knew she wasn't going to live to a ripe old age. Hannah had run away from us in Grahamstown, and moved in with the neighbours, so we had only one cat. We didn't intend to adopt a pair - we were actually after their older brother, but we decided he was a bully and came home with two tiny little scraps of nothing and fur. Mabel, his sister, escaped the flat and was killed in traffic, two weeks after we got them. Giles once got out, about a year later. We found him underneath the stairs, metres from his front door, crying with fear.

Poor Giles, we've dragged him halfway round the world, and he hates leaving his home. He spent four months in quarantine in the UK as well, and hated it. I think he spent the whole time under a blanket. He loves us, and trusts us, despite this, and we love him, even if he will never be a fierce jungle cat, defending us from all comers.

Eleven: greasy cobblestones

Eleven: greasy cobblestones, originally uploaded by meganknight.

Our street is cobbled. Proper cobbles. It's one of the few around here that still is, and although it's pretty it has its hazards, particularly in the winter.

Wet cobbles are slippery, and look greasy in the light (although the camera's flash tends to flatten that out), snow on cobbles is nasty, and packed snow/ice on cobbles is lethal. Not to cars, that I can tell, but then the road is only a block long and one and a half cars wide, so we don't often get people losing control outside the house. I don't like riding my bike on wet cobbles, though, and confess that I ride on the pavement until I get to a cross street with more familiar tarmac.

The recent snow, though, got packed down hard, melted and frozen repeatedly, making a lumpy icy treacherous mess. I hate being nervous when leaving my house, although I don't mind the cold, and I hated the snow for that reason mostly. I live in fear of broken bones, having broken too many already.

Ten: Glass leaves

Ten: Glass leaves, originally uploaded by meganknight.

We live in a very standard English two-up and two-down, probably built some time before the first world war. It's on Mafeking Road, in a little neighbourhood of streets (and houses) named after battles of the Anglo-Boer war (Mafeking, Colenso, Belmont, Ladysmith, and Kimberly), which ended in 1902, and I suspect that this neighbourhood was developed for returning veterans of those wars - the Queen's Lancashire Regiment was active in it, and are based here in Preston.

Of course, we don't know the provenance of the house exactly, but we do know that compared to many of its kind, it has been little interfered with. One of its  features, and one we are very fond of, is a set of glass-paned double doors between the two reception rooms on the ground floor. When the house was built, the front room, into which these doors lead would have been the parlour, reserved for visiting company for weddings and funerals, most likely. The main room would have functioned as the all-purpose cooking, living and even washing room, with a small scullery at the back. The scullery was expanded into a full kitchen, probably when indoor plumbing was put in, this room is now our living room, and the front room is Martin's study. This picture is of the light in Martin's study through the patterned glass doors  - it manages to combine being warm and inviting with being rather surreal, to my mind.

Nine: Art Centre

Nine: Art Centre, originally uploaded by meganknight.

Yet another church, this one has been converted into an arts centre for the university. I've never actually been inside; the one time the university held an open day in the fine arts department it was in the most non-descript building imaginable.

This was taken this evening: as the term gets under way my concerns that the remainder of this blog will consist of pictures of my office, my house, and pictures taken in the dark of the route between them seem to be well-founded. I took this at the bus stop, waiting for a bus in the rain, hence the distortion on the top right. It didn't turn out badly, I don't think - it has a nice ambience. I'm clearly going to have to work to get good and interesting pics when my life really starts to get busy.

Eight: chili plant

Eight: chili plant, originally uploaded by meganknight.

Martin likes to rescue plants. Whenever we buy groceries and they are selling live growing herbs in pots, Martin wants to rescue them. This poor thing was a chili plant in an English supermarket, and you can imagine how that felt. We brought it home several months ago, and it's now thriving, living on the kitchen windowsill where it gets some sun, at least. It's produced several new pods in the last little while.

It's too cold to grow herbs well here - everything seems to die over the winter. We added a shelf to the kitchen window, and now have a little colony of rescued herbs, but aside from this chili plant and a venus fly trap which was being sold as a novelty and is doing surprisingly well, not much else lives for long. Basil, particularly, doesn't seem to cope at all. Poor things, grown in hothouses and sent to supermarkets to be used, abused and thrown away. It's no life for a plant, really.

Seven: Teddy

Teddy Bear, originally uploaded by meganknight.

This is my teddy bear, and I have had him since I was born. He is very well-loved, as you can see, and he and the little knitted rabbit my mother made me were my constant companions throughout my childhood. We never had dolls: my mother hated them, and we inherited her dislike of their creepy plastic semi-humanness. Aside from a brief rebellious desire for a barbie-type doll when I was around 11, I don't recall ever wanting a doll, but I loved my teddy bear. I probably held on to him longer than other kids my age: I remember being teased about taking him along on a car trip by my sister and brother, well after I had started school.

When I was eight I had appendicitis that turned into peritonitis and spent weeks in hospital. I doubt my teddy came to the hospital with me at first (both occasions were late-night emergencies as I recall), but he soon joined me there. The nurses made much of him, giving him an IV drip and a surgical bandage to match mine.

The jumper he's wearing was rather inexpertly crocheted by me, probably when I was around fourteen or so. Every now and then I look at him and think I should make him a proper one, that fits, but this one has its own sentimental value, lumpen and misshapen as it is.

Six: Greenbank

The office, originally uploaded by meganknight.

This is the building my office, and much of the journalism department is in, taken from the ground floor atrium. It's one of the newer buildings on the campus, whose architecture covers the last 120-odd years (as does the institution's history). It's a fine building, as university buildings go, although it does seem to leak a lot. There's a glass roof at the top of this atrium, which does make the place light and airy, but also makes it wet and cold. The first floor coffee shop also has leaking skylights. I seem to be doomed to leaking universities - I did my undergraduate degree at the famously damp and mouldy Simon Fraser University in Vancouver.

The coffee shop is probably the best feature of this building - it's university-run, but Starbucks-branded, so the coffee is actually pretty good, much better than the automated dispenser coffee on offer elsewhere on campus. The coffee shop is also very busy because the powers that be decided for some reason that we can't have common rooms, so the only place to talk to colleagues is in someone's [shared] office, in an empty classroom, or in the coffee shop, so there's a constant community of assorted academics hanging out holding meetings and such. There's also a large television, controlled by the coffee ladies, and usually showing Jeremy Kyle. I've learnt a lot about the world from that television set.

Five: Winter trees

Winter trees, originally uploaded by meganknight.

I'm still getting used to European winters. In Vancouver, it's cold and wet and snowy and rainy and all, but the trees are almost entirely evergreens, so at the least there is greenery (of a sort - dark green branches, sopping wet against a grey sky is not as cheerful as you would think). Johannesburg has deciduous trees, but winter is so short (although it can be nasty in its own way), that you don't often see bare branches like this: in fact you may well see autumn leaves and green fresh leaves all at once.

Preston is cold, wet, rainy, snowy and horrible in winter, and the trees all lose their leaves, so this, the naked branches, is a common sight. Today, at least, there was a tiny amount of blue sky to leaven the gloom, but it's still all pretty bleak.

Four: Caroline

Caroline, originally uploaded by meganknight.

This is my colleague Caroline. She suggested I photograph her, and since the light in her office was so interesting (she hates the overhead flourescents and uses a desk lamp, by late in the day, the office is dark and the side light is wonderfully warm and glowing), I thought it would make a great picture. I took this picture without flash, by mistake, but looking at the other picture, I much prefer this one: both Caroline's expression and the light on her face with the rest of the office in darkness, so I'm uploading this, shakes and all.

Her desk and office is pretty typical of academics - binders and files and books and stationery - although the foreground is actually another colleague's desk. I spend a lot of time in Caroline's office: she has a nice bum-warming heater in there, and she and George are great company and conversation, although I suspect we would all get more work done if I didn't.

Three: Church

Church, originally uploaded by meganknight.

I really need a ladder to take this picture properly. This is on my walk to work, and I have been watching this church decay and fall apart for more than two years now.

England has too many churches, unfortunately. It has only a tiny regular church-going population (6% at the last census), but has all the churches of a devout and observant community. Some are listed buildings, and cost a fortune in upkeep, constantly raising funds and worrying about how to pay for repairs, some are not, and are taken over by nightclubs, universities, mosques and other community groups. Some, like this unfortunate building, just get left to rot. It's not in the best neighbourhood, and clearly the local population are not keen churchgoers (there are plenty of pubs around, though). It's all boarded up and fenced in, and there is a sign advertising a storage facility, but I don't know whether that's opportune advertising or serious plans. In the meantime, more and more sky shows through the roof.

Two: The Lancaster Canal

Lancaster Canal, originally uploaded by meganknight.

This is a picture of the Lancaster Canal, which runs only a block or so away from the house. It's a rather sad canal, it was built in the late eighteenth century, and ran from Preston docks to to Kendal, in the lake district. Unfortunately, as with the docks, there had been so much wrangling and arguing over the plans that by the time it was built the railways had taken over, and it never really came into its own. This is apparently a common state of affairs with Preston development projects.

Some time in the seventies the end of the canal was cut off, and it now ends abruptly about half a mile south of where this picture was taken. The canal does still run most of the way to Kendal, although it is impassable at various points, having been crossed by motorways and the like.

I often walk to work along the canal, although it is rather rubbish-strewn, and has more than its fair share of dog shit along the path, it does have ducks and coots, and even some swans. In the spring it is very pretty, but right now it's still frozen, and there is rubbish strewn across the ice, so I cut that out of the picture.

One: The dregs of Christmas

1/365 The dregs of Christmas, originally uploaded by meganknight.

We're not that into Christmas, really. We're not Christians, and having spent considerable time being Christians, quite seriously I'm uncomfortable with the idea of celebrating Christmas now that I’m not. We do like Christmas food, but then, to be honest, we like food. Since moving to the northern hemisphere, and to a place where winter actually means something more than the name of the ‘special' sales on at the local mall, we’ve discovered the true meaning of holiday spirits: candles and green things and warm lights and rich, special food are essential for preventing suicidal depression and psychotic cabin fever among the population. So, this year we actually bought Christmas lights, and I acquired some ivy from the garden, along with some spruce boughs and bright red berries, and set up a display with candles on the mantelpiece.
It was very festive, and went well with the roast beast and all the trimmings, and the mountains of Christmas cake we went through. Now, of course, it's the new year, and the display is looking a bit sad. I'll take it down later today, and maybe replace it with something else, or maybe not. The mantelpiece does tend to get cluttered with stuff, though, and I do prefer a display of some kind, rather than assorted random things.

The first post

So, I've been dithering about doing the 365 project this year, and after a day of indecision yesterday, have decided to do it, but with a slight twist. You see, I should write more on the blog, but I battle to write short simple things - each post is like a newspaper column. So, I've decided that I will do the pictures, but the challenge is to write at least 200 words on each picture, so the point becomes writing, not photography. I'm not a great photographer, although would like to be, and way limits the pressure on me to produce great pictures (which I would rapidly find frustrating), and it also means I can probably get away with using the occasional picture from my mobile phone, since in my mind, the point is the writing.

And yes, I am starting on January 2nd. I could claim I'm being quirky and original, or that I'm refusing to participate in the collective delusion that some random point in time, some arbitrarily determined date is meaningful, but not really: I just didn't get it together yesterday. In fact I didn't leave the house yesterday (although I did get dressed, and make supper from scratch, so there is that).

The photostream is here.