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.

Wednesday 28 December 2011

sunny, better, badbury, great barn, plough, downton, shilton





Unexpectedly sunny day. Cold much better.

After a late breakfast, we headed to Iron Age Badbury Hill beyond Faringdon, from where we walked to Coleshill (church shown above) and then to Great Coxwell, with its amazing old barn. (The Badbury Hill in my photo, by the way, doesn't look half as dramatic as it is in reality.)

The only new thing on the horizon was the wind farm below Coleshill--I'd glimpsed this from the road before now but not seen it clearly (it's way bigger than it looks in the pic).

On our way home we stopped off at the Plough at Kelmscott.

More Downton Abbey Series Two during lunch--hadn't realised that some filming had also been done at Shilton, a favourite nearby village (the charabanc drives through the ford, ostensibly at Kirkbymoorside, and stops by the pub where Mr Bates is working).
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