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.

Sunday, 9 October 2011

building, kennington literary festival















As I walk between the Bodleian Latin American Centre Library and the Taylor Institution Library, I pass three University building sites--St Antony's, St Anne's and the one glimpsed in the photo (where the old Radcliffe Infirmary is being redeveloped--see post of 24th June--and work on the so-called Radcliffe Observatory Quarter is beginning--observatory is on the right). The city-centre end of the Woodstock Road is alive with lorries coming and going, cranes and piling rigs, not to mention mud and dust.

Alarm went off early this morning as there is a mountain of marking to do. Cycling woke me up, although the morning is distinctly grey. Warm, though. A surprise after yesterday, when we had our first log fire since, I think, May.

Looking forward to reading from Invisible at the Kennington Literary Festival next Saturday, which is previewed in this week's Oxford Times.
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