lockdown

June Status Update

Not the usual birthday month.

Beach Day at Brora

At the beginning of the month my friends and I travelled en masse to Brora, and had a meet up at the award winning beach just outside of town. After a truly awful global pandemic and accompanying lockdown this was our first big group meet in a year and a half, with lots to catch up on. Sun screen, snacks, shorts, and a chipper takeaway afterwards, it was great seeing everyone, and genuinely the best day I’ve had in ages. Lots of love, lots of good feels, lots of positive endorphins. One of my big epiphanies last year in lockdown was the importance in my life of friends, and seeing everyone so suddenly, at once, really reinforced that. Very thankful. The week after, I went to head back to Brora once more, but we ended up at Golspie Big Burn instead.

A Quiet Place and A Quiet Place Part II

For my birthday this month, in place of a big party with friends, I only had one other request than the walk at Golspie; a cinema trip. A Quiet Place Part II was a film I’d been waiting to see since March last year, and after thoroughly enjoying it’s predecessor at home, it was one of the big films I really wanted to see live in the cinema. Trusted film critic Mark Kermode frequently talks about the audience tension and atmosphere in showings of the original, and I definitely feel that was replicated with the sequel, at Merlin Thurso. Narratively I feel like the sequel misses some of the clear focus of it’s predecessor and feels looser. It is excellent in different ways however; changing protagonist, continuing a longer plot, and peeling back the layers on a fictional world already established. I definitely found it just as tense. After two short films I’ve found myself incredibly invested in the outcomes of the characters- I’d appreciate a third film if it happened but also just as happy to have it wrapped up here. Eitherway, John Krasinski has done really good work with the series, and I really cant wait to see what he does next.

The Birds

Ailish’s birthday was mostly ruined on account of a) continued lockdown and social restrictions, and b) the story below this one. Amongst other things, I got her a Bird Feeling Station, and after some front garden rearrangements, we installed it near the front door. This took a few days to get going but over the month we’ve had numerous visitors, with at least 20 chirpers present at one point. So many birds! We have now had Dunnocks, House Sparrows, Starlings, A crow, and the most spooked pair of Collared Doves I’ve ever seen. It sounds stupid, but this was all incredibly rewarding and weirdly fascinating- I LOVE WATCHING THEM! Feeding the birds outside and spying on them, I am now the oldest I’ve ever been, I am very aware of this.

Covid Positive

The month ended with this bombshell. After a coworker had a recurring cough and a whirlwind of subsequent days -involving countless negative lateral flow tests and a sore throat like glass- I tested positive. This was incredibly jarring, I spent so long scared of something possibly happening, and then it just did. I didn’t panic as such, but I remember feeling distinctly worried about what would come next, and just accepting it. There was lots of days in bed, and while I felt run down as hell it’s only looking back now that I stop and realise how bad it actually was. Lots of sleep, lots of sweat, and losing my voice for a bit of it. I’m thankfully getting over it now and recovering more and more each day, getting strong, and back to where I was.

This month marks the one year anniversary of these status updates. Born last year out of both the whole nasty global pandemic business and deactivating Facebook, writing monthly status updates has been a great way to reflect, pass time, and check in remotely. I’m not sure how fully enjoyable these posts -or even this blog- are but it’s something I’m looking to continue doing as a kind of go-to centre point for anything and everything I’m upto. It’s been great breaking down habits and activities into months, as seasons change and mental health varies. If these posts are interesting, enjoyable, or helpful in any way, please let me know.

Onwards and upwards!

February Status Update

February is the shortest month of the year and went by, as expected, suitably fast. This month was a bit of a struggle with life feeling A LOT right now, so I’m going to change the post format up this month and just reel off some of the stuff that happened. The end of the month is here a lot sooner than I’m ready for it!

  • I finally completed my Lego Castle MOC, posted the pics here, and really promoted it pretty heavily across all my social media channels. I love how well it came out and it looks really great finished- much better than I ever could’ve hoped for. It’s done really well online and lots of people have liked, commented, and loved it, and that’s a nice feeling. It’s been built to display at Lego exhibitions, but I’ll be making and posting a video of the Castle in the meantime soonish.

  • This month I joined my *third* ongoing Dungeons & Dragons campaign, jumping into a new party with a new DM. Already playing as Henk the Half-Orc Barbarian Dentist and Panwick the Cunning Halfling Heist-burgular in my other games, I’m now also playing as Medarin Dunshield; a stoic Paladin with backstory tragedy travelling to Icewind Dale to vanquish great evil. All games feel greatly different tonally and I really like that. More fantasy escapism please!

  • I started building Lego 21325 Medieval Blacksmith this month! This was a post-xmas lockdown treat that I bought for myself and I’m currently building it now…

  • …live on Twitch! This is something I enjoyed doing a lot more than I thought I would and it was good to just sit and talk about Lego for two whole hours. Strangely therapeutic! I’m aiming to build every sunday, you can follow along at twitch.tv/rditr

  • I started studying properly -after registering last month- and I am now a History and Archaeology student! For the most part I am enjoying studying again, but it has been difficult jumping in head first and trying to adapt to the pace of it. There’s a lot of reading, a lot of writing, and then even more additional reading if there’s time or energy left. I’ve found myself a bit overwhelmed with it at times but hopefully this all balances out as the weeks progress.

  • Winter was winter (cold with snow), work was work (busy with reports), and lockdown was lockdown (exhausting with emptiness).

I’ve been having a lot of problems balancing everything this month and it’s been a big reccuring problem for me. Winter, work, and continued lockdown in particular have really made the easy tasks feel quite hard, and while I want to do so much in the evenings and weekends, the energy, time, and enthusiasm really isn’t there. A constant big conflict of “what I need to do” VS “what I want to do” VS “what i’m going to do instead”, and the latter is, as the above; more D&D, Lego stuff, and big evenings just playing The Sims. In March I’m hopeful everything will slow down a little and I can get back on track with anything I need to do. On that list “RELAX” has a big line underneath it.

January Status Update

After the excitement, fun, and just mega relaxing of Xmas and New Year, January has been for the most part a long uneventful month. Lockdown is infinite, work is forever, weekends are my time. After setting some resolutions and goals for the year ahead, January has been a month of forming new habits and behaviours.

With long nights and more time inside, boardgames were great distractions. This month Ailish and I started playing Ticket to Ride: Europe, after getting it for Xmas a few weeks previously. The Ticket To Ride series is something I’ve been aware of for a few years now, but this was my first time playing any of them in a series now spanning the last 16 years. Players take turns bulding trainlines and transport networks across a map, scoring for objectives and route length with coloured carriage meeples and card drafting. I’m mostly indifferent to trains but I missed travelling so much last year, so it was fun plotting journeys across a map and visiting different capitals. We both liked the game a lot (and scored highly!) so this one is definitely a keeper, and game nights in general are something we’re wanting to do more regularly. It will definitely be getting played more!

Last year I watched 141 films in, around, and after the initial lockdown and had a great time doing it. Seven starred Michael Caine, six with Daniel Craig, and five directed by Christopher Nolan. Of my twenty five most watched actors that year only one -Morgan Freeman- wasn’t white(!), and of the sixteen directors, only one again stands out- Taika Waititi. Going in to this year I wanted to watch things more culturally and gender diverse instead of just distinctly and predominantly white male. This is a longer goal, but this month I watched the excellent anthology series Small Axe by director Steve McQueen. The five stories individually show different aspects of the culture, segregation, and racism of London’s West Indian community between 1960-1980 and combine to paint a bigger unique picture. All the films have a distinctive voice and there is a very real sense of history and documentary within each film. It feels and looks real, because, well, these are stories that really happened, and Steven McQueen is great at capturing that. It’s very well done, and I’m on board to follow whatever he does next.

One of my other big resolutions for the year was to do more creative writing! This month I started on a short story, wrote a synopsis for something bigger that’s been rattling around for a while, and entered a short 50 word contest. A great start, but as the month went on things changed pretty abruptly and it’s not something I’m going to be able to prioritise for now…because I’m studying again! After some really nasty existentialism and doubt last year I felt I wanted to actually do something, and I’m now enrolled doing postgraduate History and Archaeology of the Highlands and Islands through part-time distance-learning. I woke up and just jumped in! This is something I’ve been wanting to do for a few years now and while I continue to doubt if I’m clever, young, or have enough time to do it succesfully, I’m looking forward to the challenge. The opening module lasts from now until May, giving me a break before continuing again with the next one after the summer. This is something I’m hoping to focus on a lot this year and while it’s worrying I’ll have less free time, it’s exciting knowing that something bigger is happening instead.

With a Covid_19 vaccination still months away for me even with good intentions 2021 is probably going to be a difficult year again. I want to be out, seeing people, having dinners, and travelling, and none of that will probably be possible again for a while. It’s reassuring however, if the world does go fully tits up again, it means I have some goals and habits, plans and resolutions to keep me ticking over. Less uncertainty please.

December Status Update

With most of the year in tatters, new strains of virus, and further lockdowns, things weren’t looking too optimistic for the end of the year. November went by quickly, but doubly so for December; a month full of dark mornings, darker afternoons, and, well, dark days every week to be honest, with little breaks for good weather or activities outside the house.

A week before mainland Scotland entered lockdown again (or “Tier 4”-the same thing really) we managed to escape to the cinema again for one last big film of the year, and watched Wonder Woman 1984. As with Tenet earlier in the year the experience was great, with huge visuals, epic sound, and great atmosphere. I’ve only been to the cinema five times this year and while the two afore-mentioned films weren’t always perfect, I really missed cinemas this year! I miss doing things in general if I’m honest! I’ve missed seeing people, and the same weekend as Wonder Woman 1984 I got to catch up with lots of friends for two separate Secret Santa lunch gift exchanges. As with cinema trips both lunches make up only a handful of meals I’ve had with friends this year, and after the year being what it has it was great seeing so many people for the first time in ages, safely. Lots of in-jokes, and food, and nerd talk, and great gifts too, from people that I’ve relied and depended on a lot this year. Even with masks and distancing, everything that weekend felt incredibly…normal- a fantastic mid-way relief from winter.

Until Xmas Eve, and maybe even the day itself I hadn’t been feeling very festive at all, so our Xmas tree went up relatively early in December, and there was always lots of films on to try and chase or replicate that feeling. Some worked better than others. Household and family-mixing was advised against, so after a busy social weekend the weekend before, Xmas this year was just my partner, our dog, and I, and this was really great. The usual amount of food, drink, and bad films were all there, and everything was just. so. relaxed. It was fantastic switching off from everything outside the house and inside my head for a while, and even without the festivities this would’ve been more than enough. No appointments! Nowhere to be! No social arrangements! Just a few days of long-needed lazy off-mode indulgence and time spent as a family.

There were gifts too! An excellent selection of books I’m now planning for a similar reading challenge to this year’s, new boardgames to play, and clothes too. The best present was the most unexpected: this year I was fortunate enough to unwrap an actual velociraptor tooth gifted by my partner. What the fuck! A 700-million year old tooth that’s now in the house and on the bookshelf, and undoubtedly one of the best gifts I’ve ever received. I still can’t believe it to be honest.

Xmas and year-end are a great time for giving, spending time with loved ones, and reflecting. This year I’m incredibly thankful for anyone that’s suffered my moaning, moodswings, or mental disasters, and I really appreciate anyone this year that has listened. As everything outside in 2020 got harder I’ve spent a lot more time inside and in my head, and video-chats, online D&D, and being here, blogging, has helped me vent accordingly. Even if or when things “go back to normal” I really want to keep all of this up. 2020 has been an absolute shitter, but maybe some things can stay.

A Lego Castle WIP

This year -amongst other things- I was planning to attend a few Lego shows across Scotland, and most excitingly, display some builds too. I’ve written previously about plans and how big a fuck up 2020 as a whole has been, and the same unfortunately extends to my ambitions for Lego-based travel too. Nonetheless I’ve had a great year pottering away and building those projects, particularly the big Castle MOC I was planning. This was a build that was supposed to be finished for display in April but as one thing led to another and deadlines changed to July, it still remains sadly unfinished...

So, here it is, in not quite but almost there completion! I’m posting it here because it represents quite a bit of my time this year but it also serves as a big to-do reminder for the upcoming months, where -hopefully- it will be getting displayed publicly. The other reason of course is that while all photos and videos of Lego MOCs online are brilliant, there’s a certain fascination to seeing something not quite finished; a work in progress, rough and ready, where techniques and inspiration can be found. This isn’t the most technical or complicated Lego Castle out there by any means but hopefully someone will find it’s development interesting, or at the very least, inspire them to do their own! I’ve been posting regular updates over on my Lego specific Instagram, but here they all rounded up to show the progress.

I’ve built Lego Castles before -this is going to be a bigger, better, and more complete iteration of my Widmore series- and it’s great seeing that progress over a big 15 year AFOL period. Keeping the mostly same landscaping and shape make comparisons easy, and it’s just satisfying having that all play out like a little child. I’m building for me. Send this back in time so I can play with it! There’s still trees and more landscaping to add as well as further interior details and the addition of actual Lego minifig knights to populate it. With good intentions and a few more weeks it will be finished soon- assuming I don’t get distracted or -more likely- try to make it even bigger!

November Status Update

November -like 2020 as a whole- went by sooo quickly; what a short month! This month I bought a Playstation 5 and that’s gone off with a lot of my time (separate post about the games soon?) along with work and moping, but there’s a few specific days worth mentioning from the month too.

With plenty of films either delayed or postponed due to 2020 hell my local cinema has been great at bringing back and showing older titles. Earlier this month we went to see the original Jurassic Park in the cinema, and this was probably one of my favourite cinema trips in recent memory- a joy finally getting to see it on the big screen. As a child I was well aware of the film and hype, but after missing in the cinema initially I was forever relegated to watching it on tv/vhs/dvd et al. Jurassic Park is a film i’m incredibly fond of -and even one that I had already rewatched earlier this year- so watching it again in the cinema was an embarassingly comfortable, reassuring, and rewarding experience: positive endorphins only. The film has aged beautifully- dinosaurs are scary, set-pieces are fun, and the soundtrack that accompanies is easily John Williams best, all heightened in that cinema screen setting. The film is fun and full of heart throughout- I can safely say it’s one of my favourite films.

Socialising this year has largely been online with voice chats and videocalls, with piss-ups and fantasy roleplaying in between, but this month we managed to get out and attend a big birthday dinner with most of my friends present. Lockdowns, social-distancing, and self-isolation are all terms I don’t think I’ll ever have the benefit of forgetting, but against all odds I managed to have a ‘night out’ with 20 people (safely) and it was great getting to catch up with so many people (safely) for the first time in months. 2020 has been a big year of changing habits and no contact so I was drained afterwards, but the night will probably stand out quite a bit in terms of individual days for the year. I had fish for dinner, it was great! Everything at the moment generally feels a bit samey or blurs together, and I still cant believe it’s December tomorrow, but it’s good to know that as far as global pandemics go we’re hopefully coming out of it. Hopefully.

Less optimistically, I went running at the weekend for the first time since April and while I still have daily leg ache (in my muscles?) from earlier this year I was naivé and gave it a shot. On an early Saturday morning I got my running gear on and went to the nearby riverside to meet a friend and see how we got on. My pacing and breathing was good and I managed just over 4km with stops and starts quite easily. It was great being out on the paths and moving again, but I was sore as hell the remainder of the afternoon -the next day even worse- and reminded pretty harshly that I’m still mysteriously injured and aching. This one got to me- more doctor appointments before I try anything stupid like that again.

It’s hard to believe that next month is December and that the year is almost over. While aspirations and enthusiasm are quite low there’s a few things I’m planning to finish creatively before year end or as close to as I can manage. Fingers crossed there’s better stuff to report next month!

October Status Update

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2020 has been a scary year, and I wouldnt be lying if I said I’ve been a bit overwhelmed by it all at least ten times this year already. With a second wave of Covid_19 hitting Europe and the UK now (or just a continued first wave?) for me personally this month there’s not much to report. With venues and shops closing earlier due to restrictions, darker and stormier nights, and NO SOCIALISING WHATSOEVER it’s been a very quiet month, and one with very little respite from the ongoing Monday to Friday 9-5 work drudgery. Again, scary stuff, so with everything hellishly terrible I decided to lean into it all a bit more and made a point of really doing nothing this month except consume horror books/tv and film.

For the longest time Horror media of any sort was just a big no-no for me. Cowardice, confusion, a lack of…risk taking? I’ve read Stephen King as a teenager and forever since, but I was always aware of my limits and sensitivity. As I’ve gotten older it’s something that I’ve found myself enjoying more and more, particularly in film and literature. My favourite thing about the genre is that invariably it has some of the most human themes and characters compared to absolutely everything else and that it rewards looking inwards at self, identity, and just humanity in general. Not always of course, but a great number of stories look at what makes us human, what our relationship is with each other and then makes a horror or fear out of something that is the opposite.

Two years ago Netflix produced and released The Haunting of Hill House, a one-off miniseries inspired by the Shirley Jackson book af the same name. I loved it. It was tense, dark, it was about love, it was about hope and light, and it really opened up the genre for me, both series and book. The show was one of the most complete, satisfying, and absolutely whole things I’ve ever watched. This year it’s follow-up released -again a miniseries- this time inspired by The Turn of The Screw by Henry James. I wasn’t familiar with the source material but I was very excited to watch the show as a spiritual follow-up with the same cast and creative team. The first night we watched three episodes, another three the second, and the final three on the third, closing the entire show out within one weekend. Thematically it’s very different to ‘Hill House with a horror and darkness that sometimes feels altogether more frightening. It’s a lot lighter on tension and jump scare set pieces, but it was incredible at studying humanity, life, death, and the transition thereof. I really want to watch it again and think and talk about it a lot more- a revisit is guaranteed once I’ve finished reading the book.

I made a point of watching only Horror films this month and things that kind of came under that genre, so yes, Hocus Pocus, The Addams Family and Practical Magic were all allowed of sorts. I finally watched Halloween (1978, John Carpenter) this month, having ignored/missed/avoided the franchise my whole life. It was incredible! A real old-school practical slasher flick with lots of scares and jumpsightings of famous stabber Michael Myers throughout, and so really well done. A whole 42 years later(!) I think the film has aged phenomenally and I really regret missing out on it for so long. My other big film fave was Us by Jordan Peele. Get Out, his directoral debut, was critically lauded and while I could recognise it’s brilliance upon watching it, it wasn’t really something that I admired. Against the majority, I much preferred Us. An absolutely stellar, bold, and complex piece of both narrative and filmmaking. It’s not without it’s flaws, but it has buckets of allegory to unpack throughout and really taps into some very nasty unnerving human fears.

As with Halloween this month I went back to another genre-definer classic and I listened to Dracula by Bram Stoker. I knew going in that this was perhaps going to be a bit of a difficult one, but I really didnt enjoy this much at all. It puts all the pieces on the board with a creepy castle, stakes, garlic, bats and fangs, inspiring everything forever afterwards but I found it really dry. The opening chapters are enjoyable and engrossing -Tense! Creepy! Dramatic!- but the second half of the story meanders and dithers so much. The protaganists think, and observe, and ponder which is great, but it’s all with very little urgency. There’s lots of exposition but the story just felt unecessarily long. Not for me. Conversely, I really enjoyed -and I really can’t believe I’m comparing the two- listening to Coraline by Neil Gaiman. I find with Gaiman he’s generally really good at creating unease from the simplest of childhood fears and anxiety, and Coraline does this so well. A dark twisted fairytale about things that are different, changing circumstances (which are just the scariest at any age), and uncertainty through younger eyes. I’ve seen the film before but this was my first time with the book and I liked it a lot.

Going forward there’s still lots to do. At the moment it seems like some of the scariest stuff is on the news and there for us all to see whether we like it or not, but I’m in the process of reading The Turn of the Screw and i’ve started reading the numerous short stories by Shirley Jackson too. In an ideal situation it would be proper lockdown again with all the time in the world to read and watch so much more and already I feel like I really missed plenty of other great stories I could have done. As the horror that is 2020 continues, I’m sure there’s going to be plenty of dark winter nights to get stuck into some of them.

August Status Update

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August was a month of books, boardgames, and “back to normal”.

I’ve been posting here a lot less than what I’d like to recently, and the main reason for that is that things are finally going “back to normal”. With lockdown fully eased in Scotland (wear your damn mask please), shops are open, schools are open, and I’m now back at work, five days a week. It’s good to get out of the house and do things a bit more regularly again, but the whole thing so far feels a lot like a dream: honestly, where the hell have the last few months gone? I’m finding the days having a similar effect, and after doing not much for so long it’s bizarre suddenly having responsibility, appointments, and an actual sense of time again. Night times are a crazy spin of dinner, TV, bed, and days are frequently over before they feel as if they’ve even begun, my energy levels mysteriously depleted. I’m hoping this will all balance out soon.

With businesses, places, and venues opening back up, this month I went for a few lunches, got a haircut, went shopping, and even later in the month, went to the cinema. The first outing was on a sunny Sunday to Forse of Nature, where we sat outside to eat, sat on the (sometimes wet) grass, and had a wander round the grounds. Lunch and company were great, we saw ducks, and I may have fallen in a ditch in the woods, but the best feeling about it all was just how relaxed and normal everything felt- some very long overdue reassurance for me and my doom mentality the last few months. Equally great was getting to drive to Inverness and go shopping later in the month, buying lots of books, having lunch, visiting friends and then heading home. It feels good to break up things again with such days, but arrows, facemasks, and distancing in shops are of course a constant reminder that things aren’t perfect quite yet, and might not be for a while.

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This month -and year, if i’m honest- I’ve been trying to read a lot more than what I would normally. After reading the first in the His Dark Materials trilogy late last year -Northern Lights- this month I jumped into the follow-up The Subtle Knife. Against consensus, I found the first book in the series as just okay, but could see the enormous potential of both the world and the series. The second book opens up a lot faster and vastly expands the world(s) of the series by introducing some really great characters and concepts from the outset. With initial world-building and introductions from the previous book out of the way I far preferred it’s pacing and focus enormously, and got through it with enthusiasm quite quickly. The third and final book in the trilogy The Amber Spyglass which i’m reading now expands with possibility and wonder, but so far it’s taking me a lot longer to get through. The other book I read this month was On Writing by Stephen King, and after reading plentiful amounts of his work over the years, I found this incredibly rewarding. There’s a lot of good advice in here for aspiring story tellers -I have post-it notes on pages to prove it- but I far preferred the more autobiographical sections and passages, which were often just as interesting.

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In August I continued playing in two Dungeons and Dragons campaigns with my two very different characters. Panwick the Pilfer is an agile and sneaky heist Halfling extraordinaire trying to stay alive while Henk is a Half-Orc Barbarian who often misses the point and lacks subtlety. I enjoy both characters and games, and next month i’m looking into starting some solo rpgs and journalling on the side, for even further escapism. With us largely house bound these last few months there’s been frequent online D&D sessions but my partner and I have been playing lots of boardgames too. This month I bought Santa Monica for us to play together, and initial impressions are pretty good. The game is an easy breezy card drafing operation where you build a beach front and then attract tourists to gain victory points, mini engine-builder style. We need to play more and especially as part of a group but so far I can safely say I LOVE THE THEME AND ART SO MUCH.

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While I know lockdown, and Covid, and 2020 are all far from over it’s good to be feeling a lot better about things, and optimism is something I’m feeling a bit more now both mentally and physically. The year, and holiday, and all the weddings we were going to and so much more are written off, but I’m feeling creative and ambitious and have plenty of ideas and projects lined up for the coming months and winter ahead. It’s time to try and get things back on track!

Films watched during UK Lockdown

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I’m back to work properly tomorrow, I’ve had a haircut, and I’ve been out for lunch- I guess that’s lockdown fully over?

It’s been a really difficult few weeks that I’ve moaned about plenty already but in in that time I’ve missed having nights out/dinner, seeing friends, and most surprisingly of all: going to the cinema. I’ve missed the new film build-up, the hype, trailers, just the actual event of going to the cinema. The Coronavirus made for a nice backlog later in the year and next year as all the studios delay and postpone releases, but with all the stay-at-home practices in full effect, the last few weeks I watched a lot of films at home instead. Some of the films were new watches, but a vast majority of films watched were big, easy, familiar comforts instead, films sometimes just as rewarding even for the Nth time.

We watched The Dark Knight “trilogy”, all the Daniel Craig Bonds, The Hobbit/LOTR franchise (without ROTK, odd), lots of Taika Waititi, and more horrors than usual. 64 films in total, including plenty of my faves. I made a big list of everything I watched on Letterbox’d- it’s maybe not the most important film listing ever, but as we move further away from Lockdown (and hopefully Covid_19) it becomes worth remembering and tracking more. All those lost months. I’m having similar thoughts with my diary as we go through it, with the optimism that remembering all this in a year’s time will be a surreal, distant dream. We’ll see.

My own local cinema is still currently closed until the end of the month. I’m not sure if i’m quite ready to attend opening weekend of any film going forward, but it’s good to start taking steps “back to normal”.

Let's Talk July 2020

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July was a month of days out, ‘Dark Knight, and deactivating Facebook.

With quarantine and working from home this past month I’ve still found myself a bit up and down mentally but during these “strange times” I’ve accepted it and I’m okay with it. Physically my right leg is still sore as hell, i’m definitely less okay with it- lets continue the stretches. Mood swings are expected, it’s normal to have them, that’s what i’m self- reassuring. What has helped lots however has been less daily social media. I wrote at length previously about why I deactivated Facebook but four weeks later this is something that’s stuck. I’ve deactivated before for a day at a time, so i’m a little surprised, but this has been so liberating, and not nearly as FOMO-inducing as I had worried. Who knew!?! Definitely a win for my 2020.

Lockdown is easing, and with better weather these past few weeks we made an effort to go out and about a bit more. On a very sunny saturday we headed out West a bit and went to Armadale Beach Bay and Strathy Point, packing swimming gear and towels. Despite good intentions this was mistimed, and wind (and rising tides) meant that we weren’t really able to get swimming at all. Ailish tried all the same, but standing in the sea with waves that go up and overhead is maybe all the indication and warning anyone needs. Nonetheless we walked and explored lots, and I took far too many photos and videos as usual: is 300+ too many? Definitely.

Two weeks later we headed to Latheronwheel Harbour to visit The Fairy Glen. Ailish and Wes had been here previously, but despite all my time in Caithness, I had never been. When we arrived the harbour was full of people picnicking, diving from height and swimming -we *really* shouldve brought our own gear- and the walk was a good hour of wandering. Over the bridge, up the hill, and finally down again through the trees to the Fairy Glen itself. Full of trees, rocks, logs and stumps with small decorative doors, windows, and paths, it’s a miniature woodland town with plenty of imagination, heart, and craft skill. We didnt get to see any actual fairies while we were there, they were obviously having a lockdown quarantine of their own. It was inspiring though- I left wanting to make a Fairy House for myself/garden.

This month we rewatched The Dark Knight trilogy. Batman Begins is a shocking 15 years old this month so it made sense to go back and watch them all. The franchise introduced me to director Christopher Nolan’s work, and while I loved them all at the time, it’s now really easy to see their faults/limitations/plot holes. I think for what it’s worth Batman Begins is easily the best Batman film ever with some of the backstory choices and narrative thematics, but The Dark Knight is without a doubt the best film film of the trilogy for just how damn stylish and tightly plotted it is. Dark Knight Rises is fun, but overdrawn, and really not the send-off the trilogy needs. Watching them all back to back now the trilogy feels very uneven in both pace and tone, with some very loose connections, but I still prefer them by far to all the other Batman films. We also watched The Conjuring and Hereditary this month, scary shit. The former was fun and felt relatively trope, the latter was…well, i’m still thinking about it at large, twenty days later. It’s a really bold film, it’s mastercraft slowly unravelling and scaring me the more I think back to it. What a film.

With things in the UK “going back to normal” I made a final push on what i’m building at the moment. I started landscaping for a Lego Castle back in April by building a waterfall but it sat mostly stagnant after realising that due to everything else, it wasn’t going to be at any of the exhibitions/shows later this year I had planned. I spent a few days this month getting good work done on it however and i’m very happy with how it’s coming along, if still somewhat daunted at everything I now need to do to finish it. I *might* have had this feeling before at just…everything i’ve done creatively? The picture below is a bit crap but the potential is there! I’m hoping to have this finished and forested by the end of next month. We’ll see.

This month (and hopefully going forward?) i’ve been posting here, and so far it seems to be going okay. Reflection, and writing are quite important I think, and i’ve found it good while everything the world over turns to shit, no irony. It still seems selfish to put so much focus and energy on myself, but it certainly feels like it’s been working. I made a 1 Second Everyday this month as ever, i’m still really enjoying doing that. Trying to embed it as video here, i’m enjoying that less so.

Phonetically, the word “month” is weird, right? MUN-TH.