On the way to town to buy birthday cards on Sunday afternoon, a man stopped us to ask if we were local and if so, where he could go for some lunch. Reliant on a walking frame he explained that he couldn’t go very far and that he wasn’t familiar with Birmingham, but that he happened to end up here as a result of a mix up with the trains. The question, it turns out, wasn’t really about lunch, but rather an excuse to start up a conversation. Step by painful step we continued in the same direction as him for some twenty minutes, covering just twenty metres in that time, but also more than twenty years of his memories. Love, loss, disability, loneliness, despair and the cost of living, but also his love of classics, philosophy and memories of all the places he has called home over the fifty seasons he’s seen come and go.
In May I began work on my first feature length documentary. I filmed everything on location between May and August, and I have just finalised the edit. Last night I hosted a private premiere for the stars of the documentary and I wanted to write about the experience because it’s a milestone for me, and one I don’t want to forget.
As someone who loves to read, I own surprisingly few books. Part of this is practical. I love physical paper books but they take up space and when you live in an apartment space is at a premium. Another part of it is financial; new books are expensive (I don’t see Amazon as an option). The third reason though is the most important reason for me, and that is that I find by ‘owning’ a book I have paid full price for, I feel compelled to complete it cover to cover and then hang on to it even if I don’t like it. I have wasted months of good reading time trying to force myself through books I don’t enjoy, half a page at a time. The reason I have read fifty books and counting this year is because I have almost exclusively been reading library books. They’re ‘mine’ for four weeks at a time, and if I don’t like something, I simply return it unread. It’s been liberating.
I have been making sourdough for about eighteen months now, but it’s only recently that I’ve felt like I’ve got the hang of it. Yesterday I bought some new varieties of flour to experiment with different types of sourdough. This loaf is 25% rye and 75% plain white, and the crumb is perfect. It’s not too heavy but the rye gives it a lovely flavour. I don’t weigh my ingredients like I would for a cake because I’ve been making bread for years and can eyeball what looks right in terms of dry to wet, but I do use measuring cups to make sure that the balance of flours is correct.
I love spring and summer best. Daylight from 5am to 9pm, everything is green, all the doors and windows are open, and even on an overcast day the world somehow feels full of life. Every autumn, without fail, the melancholy settles in around mid October. It’s not as bad as it used to be as I make sure I get out for a walk every day and have introduced hobbies that don’t require light in the same way photography does, but I struggle with the gloominess and lack of light, and I just don’t like the colour palette of late autumn as green, red and yellow fade to bare branches and slush. There are some things I like about autumn though, so here’s a little collection of them.
