Etched Behind Eyelids | October 2019
Read more…Strawberry hookah wafting out of a cafe, drizzle, and slow moving traffic on the Middleway as a grey day fades to black with the evening rush hour.
3rd October 2019 // From my observations notebook
Escape to the Mountains
It’s half term at the moment, and so Ed and I decided to get out of the city and spend a couple of days in the mountains up in Cumbria. As October half term is split this year and Birmingham doesn’t share the holiday with London or a few other regions, we managed to find space in a couple of hostels. They’re usually booked up months in advance for the school holidays, so this was a bit of luck. We stayed at YHA Honister Hause for two nights and then YHA Helvellyn on our last night.
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October 2019 | Books & Links
My Amazon Boycott | A Work in Progress
Nearly three years ago in January 2017 I promised myself that I would no longer contribute to Amazon’s profits, and I stopped shopping with them altogether. I removed my card details from my account and pledged to buy less, buy direct and pay more for the things that I really need or want in life. I object to Amazon’s way of doing business. They don’t pay enough tax, they treat their staff poorly, and their rock bottom prices, whilst enticing, encourage wasteful over-consumption. Whilst I long ago stopped buying books and music on Amazon, favouring bricks and mortar bookshops and record stores, or buying direct from musicians and bands at shows, until January 2017 I used the Amazon marketplace to buy things like camera batteries and replacement parts for household items whenever something broke.
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Small Pleasures // Autumn Edition
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.
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