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.

Saturday 14 July 2012

drenched, autumnal, corsewall point, omg, newton faulkner, comments





More downpours overnight. Just walking up the garden path to fetch the bike left me drenched from brushing past the shrubs. When I set off on my cycle, the rain seemed to have stopped but it couldn't resist having another go when I was about a third the way round the circular route.

The countryside had an autumnal feel. There was a good patch of scabious in Alvescot (a plant I always associate with the cliffs above the Corsewall Point on the Mull of Galloway in September--an arbitrary association, I realise!). [OMG I've just discovered that the old lighthouse is now a hotel!] The blackberry bushes are budding, with the promise of a good autumn crop. In Kencot, some hedge trees had been felled--though they will doubtless grow back.

There isn't much natural light entering the house this morning. On the radio it said that people are becoming depressed by the summer weather. I'm not surprised. Decided to download Newton Faulkner's Write It On Your Skin to cheer myself up--OK, some contradiction here, you might be saying, but he has a GREAT voice.

Now to typing up assignment comments for the rest of the working day.

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