justthoughtsnstuff: early walk, cracked earth, cowslips, old friend, poetry for peace, taylor #book #shelfie spring chick!

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.

Thursday, 13 April 2017

early walk, cracked earth, cowslips, old friend, poetry for peace, taylor #book #shelfie spring chick!

Really enjoyed walking T this morning early. Wonderful to be immersed in the green of the valley. Not that it will necessary stay green, if the dried out field shown above is anything to go by. No rain for quite a while and none on the horizon, according the the BBC ten-day forecast.

Loved seeing lots of cowslips! One of this time of year's great pleasures. Memories of meadows being thick with them when I was a boy and then there being hardly any trace of them for decades. There aren't masses now but so many more than in those bleak sprayed-up days.

Yesterday, we met Klaus and his family at the Plough at Kelmscott. He is a professor of English Studies at a German university and we were at Keble together some thirty years ago. So pleased he got in touch about his visit to Oxfordshire.

Saw on Facebook a post by my friend Jenny Lewis about a poetry project she joint-led last year, called Poetry for Peace. As it says on the Young Poets Network site: 'Generously supported by Arts Council England, Oxford University Museums and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), the project involved poets Adnan al-Sayegh and Jenny Lewis working with over sixty 11-17 year olds from four Oxford schools on themes of heritage and peace.' And now one of the winning poems has been made into a film poem by the Poetry Society: The Cracked Jug by Shakira Morar.

Just been tipped off by Twitter that colleagues at the Library have just made a #book #shelfie spring chick!