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, 22 April 2017

oxford, footpath revisited, gail's bakery, americano, clematis and graffiti



Working in Oxford today.

Walked a footpath - from the Fishes in North Hinksey to Osney trading estate - that I hadn't been down for what, seventeen years.

You don't actually reach the trading estate but veer off before the sub-station along the stream that flows under the bridge that I wrote a poem about the other week.

The walk is leafy and secret and I loved the shadows of the nettles on the bridge just below the pub.

Later, nearing Gail's Bakery in Little Clarendon Street and an Americano, the clematis and other climbing plants were out along the stretch of the Oxford canal opposite where the old Lucy's iron works once stood. There are flats on that site now. I don't know who did the planting but the effect of flowers and graffiti is striking. Though I imagine the aim is that the plants will eventually cover the images.

A mad week at work, catching up after the Easter break. Roll on 4 pm!
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