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Over the last few weeks, reading between the lines, things have glimmered, and glimpses of truth have sparked, but, as ever, they are very difficult to grasp. But listen… you can hear the smallest things…

I recently listened to a friend talking about the ‘scripts’ we have in our worldviews. The ideas and narratives we have both been given and have chosen. What do we unconsciously take for granted, and use as a foundation for our being.

Also, what are we holding onto, grasping too tightly? 

I was also reminded about the importance of ‘seasons’ “A season for planting, for waiting, for flowering, for stooping, for dying, for clearing and for emptiness”.  

 “A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing” Ecclesiastes 3

Things change…

The same friend above reminded me of ‘composting’, how it’s ‘natural’ for things to recompose; institutions, organizations, projects, personalities, should have the possibility of regeneration built into them, the potential of ending/changing (re-composing) into something else. Don’t feel precious about your grasp, but embrace, trust and grow.

As you may know, I ‘play’ at amateur theatre. The next amdram opportunity clashes with other plans I’ve made, so I will not be diving into a new script this ‘season’. I was disappointed, but in retrospect i am reflecting on not having to sweat over a new character. Learning to ‘play’ a character, learning their ‘script’, can be a consuming hobby. Perhaps it’s time to go off script.

Over the last five years I have played;

Simon ‘A keen young insurance broker, well dressed and professional looking’

Martin ‘Not lost, just waiting for someone… 40s looking for love’

Bernard; ‘A foolish fixer of things and odd job guy’  Played Bernard twice.

John: ‘A friend of Colin’s who is married to Evelyn.’

Bill: ‘Never lifted a finger in the house… couldn’t even be bothered to wipe the toilet down… and dead.’

Jack: ‘…who rapidly cultivates a taste for pouring whisky over his head’

Clarence: ‘A failed old-school Shakespearean actor, “Before my body I throw my warlike shield.”’

Jeff: ‘Nosy neighbour, moves the bins every week!’ 

Tony: ‘failed club singer, and flouncer’

As Rumi wrote..

This being human is a guest house.

Be grateful for whoever comes.

For now, we’re ‘off book’ and I am just being; Jules: ‘insert description here’.

Instead of lines, I have returned to tunes and songs. After a few years out, I have returned to Global Harmony the choir that I enjoyed for more than a decade. 

Everything comes from nature…

Goodness and brilliance…

Listen… can you hear the smallest things…

Another new year…

I recently heard “Art has a way of reflecting the nerve ends of our souls…”

And read “The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.”

I’m toying with an ambition ‘to be more active than the algorithm’… Ahh… The cultural machinations that are constantly suggesting what we do, think, eat, hear, be… I think we can do better than that, do you?

With a little reflective realisation…“What do we know for sure?”

That life is tangible.

During holy-days there might be a chance to glimpse a sense of something more tangible. Something more than a WhatsApp TikTok message…

If the shepherds simply sent a WhatsApp message and the wise folks just commented on Linked In… I don’t think the story would have lasted… UV. ✨ MTFBWY. BFF.

Real life has colour and character, stories and sounds, light and shade…

True life can be achingly accordant, diverse and disparate. Immanuel, life is tangible.

This year I’ve neglected one of my favourite phrases, “The interaction between things is what makes things fruitful.”

So, this coming year, to try to be more active than the algorithms. Somehow.

No filters, just autumn…

Below is a random selection of textures from our autumn break. From the North Devon coast and from an East Midlands garden.

You can’t bottle it, it’s just there. It’s free.

(Five images taken in the same week from each universe below, slide to compare)

The East Midlands: The church bells chimed three times, mid-afternoon. It’s October, but the sun’s still warm enough to sit out with a coffee. Buzzards can be heard calling, they are circling high, crows are… crowing. A light aircraft splutters through the blue, and… away. Silence… except; (the tinnitus) the birds, the distant hum of traffic, the buzzards, a bee… relatively quiet… I take the deepest breath. It’s Autumn.

The North Devon Coast: Two hundred miles west the tide has turned. Two juvenile gulls shadowing their mother on the rocks. You can see the tide on the move filling the estuary, and the sandbanks get washed daily by the sea. The tide’s relentless duty is remarkable. The relative calm seeps into your pores and the tide soothes… a cup of tea on the harbour side. It’s Autumn.

I take photos, I create images… It’s what I do.

I did a thing. “Why?” I asked my daughter. “I dunno, ‘cos you’re weird” she suggested.

Every autumn I incline to seek out conkers. When the kids were young, I had an excuse. But today the excuse was so the youngest teen could practice her driving, she could drive us to our favourite conker site. They walked the dog, I collected the bounty (for the local primary school to ‘play with’ was my adult reasoning).

The process of ‘play’ is an integral part of the creative process… that’s what I like doing, being creative. It’s rarely useful, but to create something is an urge that we all enjoy… 

I’ve wittered before about it here… putting ‘stuff’ together in a new or another way, to resonate a novel or appropriate difference… …to illuminate the familiar, to resurrect the lost, to prize grace out of joy, to make firm that thing that is in flux, to capture, weave or play with, to engage, disturb, entertain, please, refresh, challenge…

I recall a little project from 10 years ago here… hopestrengthwisdomlove

Any who… Process documented below.

I’ve said it before;
Repro; copying and reproduction of documents and printed material.
Graphics; creating imagery and visual material to communicate significance.

From postcards to large format posters, cake-toppers to wall-wraps. I have more than 30 years experience of working in print  ‘here’.

I’ve written before about School Reprographics here.

Essentially I support teaching and learning through the timely provision of a variety of printed resources and graphic design.

See more, search the blog for ‘repro‘

Here’s just a random selection from the last year;

As part of the graphic design I provide supporting teaching and learning at Leicester’s Castle Mead Academy, I was asked if I might create a graphic that visualises “Two Thousand Years of History within ten minutes walk of Castle Mead Academy”.

I’ve recently completed educational graphic timelines for History, Computer Science and Art.

Colin Hyde from University of Leicester’s Oral History Archive saw these and suggested the ‘two thousand years’ idea.

Castle Mead Academy is situated in the heart of Leicester, as you can see history is on its doorstep; from the Jewry Wall Roman remains through to remains of the 19th Century Leicester’s Central Railway Station.

Thanks to Colin for the concept idea and the content.

Leicester City Council has compiled a wealth of images and information in their  Story of Leicester project here: story-of-leicester
Their Heritage Panel Trail brings Leicester’s 2,000 years of history to life with now 350 colourful information panels now installed on the city’s streets, more info here: heritage-panel-trail

Two Thousand Years of History within ten minutes walk of Castle Mead Academy.

Before the Romans   before 47AD
Leicester was the primary dwelling of the Corieltauvi tribe who lived around the River Soar in the area that is today beneath St Nicholas Circle, Jubilee Square and Bath Lane.
The Romans   47 – 500 AD
Although we can’t see it, the Roman forum was under St Nicholas Circle. What we can see at the Jewry Wall is the remains of the main bath house in Roman Leicester.
After the Romans   500 – 1066 AD
St Nicholas Church was consecrated in 879and contains Roman tiles in its tower.
The Normans   1066 – 1154 AD
The castle motte was built in 1068 and is the huge mound that the Normans built to support a wooden castle soon after they invaded in 1066.The Castle Area contains the Norman motte, the Great Hall/Leicester Castle 1150, St Mary de Castro Church 1107,and the Turret Gateway 1423.
Medieval Leicester   1066 – 1714 AD
Bow Bridge, the original bridge, shaped a bit like a bow, was built c.1350. The Newarkes contains Trinity Hospital founded in 1330,The Newarke Houses Museum c1511 and 1583, the Magazine c.1400. Wygeston’s House comprises a timber hall of around 1490; a brick block of 1796 which replaced an earlier timber shop and chamber;and a Victorian (1800s) wing standing on the site of the medieval kitchen.Leicester Cathedral which dates from 1086, and the Guildhall which was built in 1390.
Georgian Leicester   1714- 1837 AD
Castle Mead and the Rally Park are built on the site of the Leicester and Swannington Railway (L&SR). This was one of England’s first railways, built to bring coal from West Leicestershire collieries to Leicester, where there was great industrial demand for coal. The line opened in 1832.
The canal was completed in 1794 and Friars Mill, one of the earliest factories in Leicester, was built in the same year.
Victorian Leicester   1837 – 1901 AD
The site of West Bridge Station, was part of the Leicester-Swannington Railway. There was no platform at the original station and passengers had to climb aboard using steps and handrails attached to carriages. A narrow passenger platform was eventually created in 1876. By 1893 a new purpose-built station had been constructed next to Tudor Road.
The streets to the west of Castle Mead around Tewkesbury Street were built through the 1880s to the 1900s. There is a KingRichard III theme to several of the street names, such as Tudor Road.
Leicester Central Railway Station was built in 1899 and is now Lane7. The station was part of the Great Central Railway’s London Extension linking Nottingham with Marylebone in London.

There’s an ‘around the block’ video, made from a cycle helmet cam here:

#Graphic #Repro, it’s what I do.

If I can help you visualise something. Drop me a line.

It is done. Nine years ago I first posted and messaged the council about the state of Melton Road’s old cycleway.

It’s a cycleway from the 1930s and was in a sorry state of disrepair

It’s now been renovated. Yippee! (Perhaps that’s OTT)

Thanks Leicester City Council and the government’s Active Travel England scheme.

Thanks also to Carlton Reid and the British Cycle Tracks project.

You can see more about the project here; cycleway

You can see my 2015 post about the poor state it was in, here: Melton Road

In 2017, see here, Leicester’s Mayor said “I cycled them recently … they do need some TLC”.

The surface shown in the image above still needs to be sorted. Will this take a further nine years Mr Mayor? Please?

I struggle with noise… be it cultural capitalist clatter or anxious apprehensive self-abuse…

It’s oh so quiet…
Under the tree… in the shade, sheltered from the heat of the midday sun…
We agreed “no-one can take this away from us.”
I sat with my wife and daughters and just took in the moment.
The cicadas sang in the nearby trees, the mountains bathed as though sleeping in the heat.
Rugged escarpments carved the bluest blue sky.
The brightest flowers decorated the greenest foliage in a small valley that played in to the a small Turkish Mediterranean bay.

It’s hard to explain.
It’s taken a week of tempering to reach a state of heat induced contentment.
It’s hard to explain, but it’s possible to forget, ignore, or perhaps swallow the worries and annoyances of the world and just be grateful for the moment.
To breathe in the mountains, breathing in blue jasmine, breath in the olive tree, breath in the sweaty forehead, breath in the clutter of life that chatters around us…

We returned to the UK…
Oh… it’s oh so quiet…
No cicadas, tinnitus returns.
The sizzle is replaced with an English tranquility.
A verdant pleasant land.
The ubiquitous cloud decorates the horizon.
The land and humanity is reorganised…
It’s still possible to forget, ignore or perhaps swallow the worries and annoyances of the world and just be grateful for the moment.

To breathe in the ancient pathway, breathe in the hedgerow, breath in the flying swans, breath in that unique evening light, breath in the clutter of life that chatters loudly around us…
It’s hard to explain, because it is oh so quiet, amongst the noise…

You know when you take a roast chicken out of the oven… ? That’s what it’s like walking out the door… 38°  🇹🇷… As with a roast chicken, I am thankful for a small dose of Mediterranean heat.

Tempering is a process of heating and cooling metals to achieve greater strength by decreasing the hardness, an increase in flexibility, and decreasing brittleness.

Over the last week it’s been a process of heat, cool, and repeat… you could call it tempering. You can’t fight it, you just have to be. A tall iced mango juice helps. Again I am thankful.

Let’s pretend we’re closer to heaven.

Floating in a bay surrounded by pine tree lined mountains, the bluest of blue skies backdrop a razor-sharp escarpment reaching to the skies … salty lips and a big deep breath… the view seems clearer.

Breathe, forget the challenges ahead for just a moment… 

Take away the percussive beat of stuff that needs sorting, questions unanswered, annoyances and indecisions…

What we perceive is what it is.

My wife is the catalyst, and again we venture to the Mediterranean. Thankfully. I’d return to France, Spain, or the British National Parks or coast again and again, but under my wife’s suggestion, over the years we’ve stretched further, Cyprus, Corfu, Greece, and this year Turkey. I am infinitely grateful for the opportunities to experience such places.

But what is sold to us is quite separate from what is free, the treasures right in front of us..

On previous visits to the Mediterranean weve found the extreme heat is ubiquitous. The climate intensifies colours, smells, taste; life gets slower, more fervent, the view seems clearer.

As with any capitalist environment, we are sold stuff, we are sold pretentious dreams, we are sold processed products; extra-cheesy Crax, all-seeing eyes, Anatolian fizz cocktails, parascending, fish pedicures, etc. A percussive beat of celebrated pop jazz hip cool, with salt and/or cheese…

Don’t get me wrong, a cold local beer by the sea is a heavenly delight. Mediterranean food by the sea is exceptional. And a little pop-funk Lady Gaga helps keeps one young.

What is essentially more tangible in such holiday destinations is stark nature and hothoused humanity.

People come to soak up the intensified energy. Culture is the dressing on the cake of humanity and is weird and wonderful, but behind the sunbaked sales the essence of what is free is humanity and nature.

Human nature is behind the Turkish kofta, as much as it’s behind the Staffordshire oatcake.

What’s magnified by the Mediterranean climate is human pleasure. Take away the magnifyer and we still have humanity. Alexander is a father to two young children and businessman who’s very proud of his restaurant in the village of Icmeler.

Omar, proud of his Muğla homeland, genuinely wanted to share it’s delights, but is also keen to discover England. Just as much, Joyce loves Stoke-on-Trent, her dog, and her weekend trips to Buxton and the Peak District hills.

The treasures right in front of us…

I don’t think we need to pretend we’re closer to heaven.

Right now. Breathe… stop… breathe… 

I am so thankful for the sparkling sea.

The Persian silk tree.

I am also thankful for the green leafed lane.

The church tower.

The smile from the dog walker.

The breeze.

Take away the percussion of cultural trappings and what do we have?

What we perceive is what it is.

Sometimes it’s clearer, it is what it is.

When it’s not clear, I hope you can find a way to decrease hardness, increase in flexibility, decrease brittleness and hopefully find delight in something somewhere right in front of us.

You do need to look past the clouds.