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, 20 July 2016

last bus, cuts, a bit of luck, 'the man on the 18 and 100 buses', thatching barley


Sad to say that tonight's journey home on the 18 bus was the last. The service - along with many other local ones across Oxfordshire - has been cut by the council to save money.

We are lucky because there is still a service to Witney with a connection to Oxford but many villages now have no bus at all. Catching the Witney bus will mean a even earlier start and a longer journey.

The acknowledgement at the back of my second novel, Invisible, is now an anachronism: to 'the man on the 18 and 100 buses'. Most of the novel was written on a PDA on these two buses and 'the man' was an (unconscious) inspiration for the voice of one of the narrators.

Took the photo of a crop of thatching barley this morning when dog walking. The straw of this, presumably old-fashioned, variety, is, not surprisingly, very long.


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1 comment:

  1. Margaret Keeping21 July 2016 at 12:17

    Nice commemoration of your very significant bus route, and sorry about your already astonishingly early start.

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