Etched Behind Eyelids | December 2020
Chopin | Op.28 No.20 | Prelude in C Minor
A funeral march to see out 2020.
I’m getting my piano tuned tomorrow, but when I look back on this year in the future the soundtrack will be a mixture of Spanish Love Songs’ album ‘Brave Faces Everyone’ and Chopin nocturnes and preludes played on a piano which is overdue a tuning because of physical distancing and lockdown restrictions.
I wanted to capture the sound of 2020 in this very much imperfect recording because sound and memory go hand in hand for me. It took me five attempts before I managed to play without any wonky notes as I always get nervous when I’m playing to an audience, even if that audience is just my camera and cat.
Etched Behind Eyelids | November 2020
I have always hated November, but this November has taken the trophy for Worst November Ever. Still, there [were] still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity*.
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Paradise in Lockdown | A Portrait of Birmingham
Regular readers could be forgiven for thinking I have a melancholy mind. I keep a notebook which I fill with observations from my everyday life in and around my city of Birmingham. From time to time, I share snippets from my notebook here on my personal blog. This year, my observations have been bleak. My latest, a postcard from the end of the world, especially so. My hope is that after seeing these photos, you will see that I am not dressing things up, or rather down, but rather aiming for a truthful portrayal of Birmingham. I love my adopted home town, but it has seen better days.
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Plant Diary | November 2020
New leaves on my Pilea Peperomioides after I gave it a few drops of fertiliser. It’s really quite dark inside now that we’re through to November, and some of the lower leaves were starting to turn yellow and drop off. I knew it wasn’t from overwatering as I’ve really got a handle on that now, but thought a little bit of food might help make it happier as I grow my plants in a soil free mix – coir, perlite and bark – and thought it might be short on nutrients as I hadn’t fed it since early September.
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