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, 23 December 2012

first walk together in ages, bampton-downton, profumo, log and twig deer





















Pre-Xmas guests left this morning--great to see Deci and Margaret.

Took T for a walk afterwards. The first time we've walked on our own together since I can't remember. A beautiful day for it, with the sun coming out every now and then and thankfully no rain. Water, water everywhere, though. T was reluctant to walk off the lead as we headed away from the village but was brisk off the lead on the way home! It was strange, somehow, getting used to walking together.

Meanwhile, an extensive article in the Sunday Times about Bampton property and the Downton Abbey effect, entitled, Live Abbey ever after in your own piece of the real Downton (not sure about that pun!). Bampton is where the village scenes in the TV series are filmed, though the Big House itself is actually 30 or so miles away.

Also intrigued by the second extract from a new book about Stephen Ward and the Profumo scandal, An English Affair: Sex, Class and Power in the Age of Profumo by Richard Davenport-Hines, a story that has always fascinated me.

Loved the deer made of logs and twigs in front of a house further down the street.
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