washed up

I was never much good at getting my homework done at school; I'd always leave it to the last minute - and the last minute was usually early on a Sunday evening with the weekend's fun behind me, nothing on TV except Antiques Roadshow or Last of the Summer Wine and a growing fear of double PE first thing on Monday morning. No wonder Sunday evenings unnerve me so much. And so, many years later, I found myself in almost the same boat with regard to the photography project I'd been set last week.

To be fair the days are short, I work full-time and Saturday was busy with my family. So it just left Sunday to shoot 20 photographs using the theme 'landscape'. As I set out early(ish) yesterday morning my idea was to walk toward Portslade to the industrial end of Brighton & Hove's seafront - but I underestimated the length of that walk. Besides, when I got to the beach near to where I live I was met with the unexpected sight of piles of timber washed ashore from the Dorset shipwreck earlier in the week. So I used this as the basis for a couple of shots and then walked the few miles to the King Alfred leisure centre in Hove. A gloomy day didn't help my photos looking drab and uninspired and I felt bad about taking the easy option of just hitting the seafront with my camera. Consequently, with such a mediocre set of photos to show, I'm not so optimistic about heading to my photography course this evening. I guess not much has changed since school at all really after 20 years: the familiar words "Could do better" are once again ringing in my ears...

lazy

R has written a nice report of Monday evening's first session of the Creative Digital SLR Photography course we both signed up for. This is extremely useful for a lazy blogger like me because, still stumbling dazed from the wreckage of an exhausting first week in my new job, I've been way too tired to think about blogging recently. I wanted to write a long, interesting and insightful piece about the course myself but then long, interesting and insightful posts are not what readers of this blog have come to expect... so why change now?

Head over to Breakfast in Bed instead...

I've got Season 5 of 24 to watch on DVD anyway...

Christmas miracle

My Howies WORK HARD t-shirt had been missing since August. It was my favourite t-shirt. It was my girlfriend's favourite t-shirt. In despair, I searched my room several times, went through my rack of clothes, checked under the bed and thought of all the places I'd stayed where perhaps I'd left it. Eventually, I gave up on ever seeing it again. I even thought of emailing Howies to ask them to do me a special favour and print another one for me...

But then on Christmas day, sprawled on the sofa after dinner, I looked up and noticed the t-shirt my dad had been wandering around in all day... black, with the words WORK HARD made up of tiny lettering of the words DIE YOUNG on the front (ie not really the kind of t-shirt you expect to see your 60something dad wearing - but then he couldn't read that sized lettering).

Christmas was complete. My favourite t-shirt was back! A modern-day Christmas miracle...

digging

Over new year M and me made a couple of visits to her new allotment. It's completely grown over with grass and weeds so there's a lot of work to do before anything can be grown - and that means digging. Lots of it. I quite enjoy digging but am always a bit wary about how much I should do because the aching doesn't usually set in until the following day.

Despite the cold it was great being out in the fresh air working off some of the post-Christmas bulge and the few allotment holders we met were friendly and approachable. What's more, it's a massive learning curve: I feel I've learned a lot over just a few visits. M is keeping her plans for the site manageable by not attempting too much too soon - so it should be a hugely enjoyable experience. And when some crops hit the table even the post-digging aches will feel worth it too...