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, 30 March 2013

bitter wind, sun, in pursuit of spring, book reviews, richard jefferies, daffs and scillas

















The wind was much more bitter this morning, even though there was much more sun. The only time I felt warm was when I was standing by the bin outside the back door, opening up the bag of birdseed about to top up the feeder. At that precise point there was no wind and the sun on my back was hot. A few steps towards the bird feeder, though, and the wind whistled and it was freezing again.

Loving listening to In Pursuit of Spring--listen again on the iPlayer: One; Two. Last episode goes out tomorrow at 2.45 pm.

Shocked to learn that Edward Thomas wrote some 1,300 book reviews--over one million words--in his short life (makes my 100 book reviews, extending to some 40,000 words seem pretty feeble).

Episode Two is very interesting on the great Richard Jefferies, amongst other subjects.

Saw these lovely daffodils and scillas in what looks like something of a 'wilderness' opposite a very Jane Austenish big house in Kencot, west Oxfordshire.
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1 comment:

  1. Margaret Keeping30 March 2013 at 19:18

    I'm so much enjoying the In Pursuit of Spring broadcasts and trying to blog on the book (dealing OK with mild disappointment that they cut me out of the programme.) How well it reads aloud - Robert MacFarlane doing a fine job and Richard Emeny talking his usual good sense.
    It's been decidedly warmer in Oxford today- saw embryonic primroses on the gradually improving Aston's Eyot - the former Victorian dump for Oxford rubbish.

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