untitled #9
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 10 May 2022].
Tonight was the calm, creative and productive evening I had hoped to have last night.
Something I desperately needed after an unexpectedly stressful and emotional 24+ hours.
Tonight was an evening spent editing photos, sharing work here with you and listening to my illuminations playlist followed by Dubstar's latest album, Two.
For much of the evening, I've enjoyed the company of a brimstone moth who you can see on my Instagram, chilling on my desk. S/he's nestled in a crook of the hutch on my desk as I type this.
I guess if I don't have cat-sitting therapy this month, then at least I have the calming company of a pretty moth. Though initially, s/he had the 'zoomies' around my monitor :P
rievaulx
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 18 March 2022].
Rievaulx is a lovely little spot in the North York Moors.
Visiting there in 2012 (when these photos were taken) inspired me to encourage my parents to visit there during their visit in 2017.
Unfortunately, on that visit, we had sleet and rain instead of smatterings of snow.
It was a lovely spot to visit on Valentine's Day.
you've made your bed...
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 10 January 2022].
child psychology
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 29 October 2021].
barefoot and pregnant
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 2 October 2021].
057 view from a bed
Day fifty-seven of The 100 Day Project for 2021.
I thought I'd set myself a more simple subject today.
I sketched it with a 4H pencil, then went over the edge of the blue wall with a 4B pencil, the lampshade and the cornice with an HB pencil, and the wire and light fitting with a 6B pencil.
I've got something of a superstition going with these lampshades. Though I don't generally consider myself to be a superstitious person.
The first place I lived after I moved out of home was a flat owned by my parents. The previous tenants left one of these lampshades in what became my bedroom. I didn't really have much of an opinion on it at the time. I lived there for almost 5 years before moving to the UK.
I lived in four different places in under two and a half years living here that first time.
I lived in four different homes between the Gold Coast and Melbourne over the next two years.
When I finally moved into a place on my own in Brunswick East in 2004, there was one in my bedroom. I think my study had one also, but I can't recall for sure now. I lived there for four years and one month.
When I had to leave there, I managed another four abodes in less than two and a half years.
When I returned to London in 2011 and found a room in a shared flat, there it was. Hanging above my bed. I lived in that flat for almost three years before moving downstairs into my landlady's garden flat with Kyle.
Her flat didn't have one. We had to move out after less than nine months.
Our next flat didn't have one either. Our relationship ended, and we moved on again after about a year and a half.
When I moved in here, there was already a smaller colourful patterned version hanging in what could have been my bedroom.
But I took the lounge room for my bedroom, and there was a bare bulb suspended from the roof above my bed.
So I knew what I had to do to make this my home and not have to move on again before I was ready.
I took the source photo on 4 June 2016, lying in my bed, a little over a month after moving in.
At the end of April, I will have lived here for five years.
it’s time to light the lights
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 19 December 2020].
I took these photos of a house in the Redlands area of Queensland, just outside Brisbane, on my Dad's birthday in 2007.
My parents and I went for a drive around the local area to see the houses lit up for Christmas while I was staying with them over the holidays.
I'm not a particularly Christmassy person, but I finally edited these a week ago.
It feels like a good time to share them with the world, or else I fear they'll never make it online.
Merry Christmas, if that’s your thing x
landlocked
He was back in front of this window; the window that had ended his school days, every day.
When he was young, he used to stop and gaze up at the model boat and the marine rescue vehicle as he arrived home each day. He would stand there, distracted for long moments.
So long, that his mother - waiting, anxiously, for him to return home from school - would open the curtains and find him stood there. Motionless, head tilted back, mouth slightly gaping and staring up at the boat.
She would come to the front door and watch him for a minute or two, a soft smile playing at the edges of her lips before she bundled him up and took him inside to the kitchen. She would ask him about his day while she prepared supper and listened to the tales he would bring home from the schoolyard.
His fascination with the boat had not waned over the years, but he had stopped gawping at it as he grew older. There were girls to gaze at instead, and as he grew up, they were what caught his eye or kept his attention as he arrived home each day from high school.
As he reached the end of high school, he was usually too busy sneaking in one last kiss with his girlfriend, Sarah, as he unlocked the front door of the house and said his goodbyes for the day.
The model boats, the marine rescue vehicle and the lighthouse baffled him a little bit when he was growing up.
Their home was twenty minutes from the nearest body of water, and that was a river, not an ocean or the sea. Hardly somewhere that a lighthouse or a marine rescue vehicle would be needed, let alone various large boats or ships.
The models were his dad's, but he didn't talk much about them and didn't like being asked about them.
His dad didn't really like being asked about anything. Or talking about anything.
The models just sat on the windowsill gathering dust, hidden from the inside of the house by the curtains. A display for others, not for us.
Except him, of course; he was fascinated by them.
On occasion, when his dad was in a more social mood or simply wanted to distract him while he talked with the grown-ups, his father would let him take down the marine rescue vehicle. Roll it across the rug, pretending he was saving his Lego men from some maritime disaster.
But his dad was always firm about the boat. The boat was not a toy. It wasn't to be removed from the window. He had received more than one firm slap across his legs and buttocks for even inching his fingers up toward the boat.
It was only in the past few years that his mother talked more about his dad's upbringing. It was only in the past few years, as he became more ill and his mind started to slip that his father spoke about the sea. It was one of the few things he could still connect with. That he still remembered.
He didn't remember faces, except his wife's. He never remembered birthdays; that was no change. But he could talk vividly about the sea. The sound of it. The smell. The feel of it on his hands.
His dad would sometimes stop mid-sentence and tilt his head as if listening closely to a conversation through the walls. After a few moments like this, he would invariably ask if they could hear the waves. They nodded and smiled awkwardly, hearing nothing, but knowing that they had to agree. That his dad would look crestfallen and confused if they said "no".
Growing up, he never met his dad's parents. His dad never spoke of his father, so he grew up believing he only had one set of grandparents. He didn't question this for a long time, and then it seemed too late to ask. Too awkward of a conversation to have.
Coming home now, facing the front windows of his childhood home, he gazed once more at the boats, the lighthouse, the marine rescue vehicle. He knew that now he could lift them out of the window and take a closer look. He knew that no one would reprimand him for that.
Since his dad had died, a lot of pieces had fallen into place in the puzzle. His mum had opened up dusty photo albums hidden away in the loft for decades. Too painful for his dad to look at, to speak about, to share.
In the yellowed black and white photographs taken in his dad's childhood, a warm, smiling, middle-aged man gazed into the camera from the railing of a boat.
He waved at the photographer with a look of love.
doing the dishes
cookout
Day forty-nine of The 100 Day Project.
Illustrations: