Welcome to justthoughtsnstuff

I started posting to jtns on 20 February 2010 with just one word, 'Mosaic'. This seemed an appropriate introduction to a blog that would juxtapose fragments of memoir and life-writing. Since 1996, I'd been coming to terms with the consequences of emotional and economic abuse that had begun in childhood, and which, amongst other things, had sought to stifle self-expression. While I'd explored some aspects of my life through fiction and, to a lesser extent, journalism, it was only in 2010 that I felt confident enough to write openly about myself. I believed this was an important part of the healing process. Yet within weeks, the final scenes of my family's fifty-year nightmare started to play themselves out and the purpose of the blog became one of survival through writing. Although some posts are about my family's suffering - most explicitly, Life-Writing Talk, with Reference to Trust: A family story - the majority are about happier subjects (including, Bampton in rural west Oxfordshire, where I live, Oxford, where I work, the seasons and the countryside, walking and cycling) and I hope that these, together with their accompanying photos, are enjoyable and positive. Note: In February 2020, on jtns' tenth birthday, I stopped posting to this blog. It is now a contained work of life-writing about ten years of my life. Frank, 21 February 2020.

New blog: morethoughtsnstuff.com.

Friday, 18 March 2011

west hanney

Long lie-in. Such a treat on a Friday.

Had a Times Eat Out for £5 lunch at the Plough, West Hanney--a great little pub in a beautiful village. Now in Oxfordshire but before the boundary changes in the 1970s in West Berkshire. Definitely has a West Berks feel--red brick, thatch, dark beamed bar. Delicious lightly malty Vale Brewery Best on handpump.

Lovely walk after lunch, which we first did in late summer last year. Much more stark this time, walking south of the village: a deep field of spring corn, a brake of skeletal trees and the Ridgeway beyond.

The return journey is by a green lane, fallen burdock along its route, fresh grass growing up, a clump of wild-ish daffodils.
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