2026-10-09Hello!After making the wrong measurements for the rug, I put my focus on smaller items in my room. This was cheap, and so I couldn't pass it up.I still haven't returned the rug, by the way. I keep meaning to, but I've forgotten every time I have the opportunity.I also can't believe how much dust accumulates after just a few days of moving stuff around. Also, my hands have a weird rust smell on them, so I should probably be using gloves now.Finally, a blogger's look into why the New…

2026-10-08Hello!After framing my photos, I decided to spend the weekend designing my room and going through some dusty old kit. Spring cleaning, but in the autumn.I neglected to measure the space I needed, so I bought the wrong size of rug. It also came with an insufficient backing, so it slipped all over the place and curled up in the corners.I'm never buying furniture online again. I'm going to return this when I get the chance. Thank you for visiting this blog! Reply by email, subscribe via…

2026-10-03Hello!I'm chasing something so specific I don't even know what it is yet. Catching the train to a new destination to get inspiration for photography at home. I only made it by a few minutes!Relying on the city to provide me interesting photographs is a crutch that I'm beginning to rely on too much. The scrap test I made with some materials at home was an interesting experiment that I might continue, because it's something I can do on a rainy day with limited budget and time. That…

There are times at my age when I look back and wonder, "What if?" Don't get me wrong, there are a plethora of things in the span of my 60 years that I am immensely and profoundly grateful for. But there are times now where opportunities that have come and gone are just gone... with no chance (in this life, anyway) of getting a second chance. Sure, those missed opportunities have made me who I am today, for better or worse. But I would be lying if I said I didn't think about things I had the…

I recently acquired a 2009 Citroen Relay van. Driving it home, though, I discovered that the cab cooling fans didn't work. Turning the switch to 1, 2 or 3 did nothing, going to 4 led to a whiney fan noise with very little output from the vents. There are generally 3 possible causes for this Burnt out resistor Knackered Blower Fan Broken Switch The resistor is, by far, the easiest and cheapest, so is worth trying first. This post details the process of changing the resistor. Although I did this…

I’ve been a fan of football (soccer) for almost as long as I remember. I remember going to my first match at Anfield when I was seven years old in 1997. A pretty dull 0-0 draw from what I recall. Despite the scoreline I was hooked. The atmosphere. The excitement. The chips with my Dad on the walk home. I loved it. I’ve been a fan ever since. Although I haven’t been to a Premier League match in years (tickets are hard to get and too expensive now) I’ve still watched almost every game I could.…

It’s been many years since I walked around Berkeley Deer park, so we decided to spend the morning there and also check out the regular farmer’s market that is held in the castle grounds. We headed for the park first. It’s a little way out of time, but the terrain is pretty straightforward. There used to be many permissive paths through the park, but these were closed off, and only the main public footpath was accessible. There’s a very fine line of oaks across the top – perhaps three or four…

i've wanted to write this for so long. at first, i thought i might want this as a lengthy, no-one-is-reading-this-and-that's-okay instagram caption to combo with contextless pictures of our cats. then i thought it could be a tweet or a thread or something or the other. it's just that, i really love our cats. and i don't mean it like on a deep or intellectual level. you know that overused gif/clip from despicable me where the little girl was like, it's so fluffy i wanna DIE or something like…

It's a sad day here. My "everyday-carry" bag has died. This "man bag" (or "murse") has served me well in probably twenty countries, thousands of miles of travel, and just over seven years. I rather like the patina and signs of use it has developed. I enthused about the bag during the before-times, shortly after I adopted it as you can read in my EDC bag review: "Check out my Nutsac." Presciently I mentioned the zippers. And it was a failure of the front zipper, after countless openings, that…

I'm continuing my quixotic habit of getting up early, sitting somewhere with a coffee and streaming a mix to YouTube.I think this morning's was nice, ambient things by Regents Canal. Not actually steamed, the phone signal wasn't up to it, but live-ish.Here I am outside Bar Italia playing selections from Matt Irvine Brown's Modern Boogie Yus. And here's the rain on Gail'sAnd a damp, windy, wavey morning in Lyme RegisFurther along. A couple of days before.

For those who know me, or follow along with my posts, you will know that I generally do not watch much TV. I can go days without looking at anything on the big screen; I've even gone weeks if I am home-alone. During the summer I spent many weeks in Spain and never once had the TV on. My other half is a TVaholic (probably better to say a noise-aholic). The TV in the house is always on, blaring out some nonsense. What do I watch?I could count on one hand the shows that I seek out. They are…

As mentioned in my previous article, I spent much of Friday enjoying a day out in the lovely and easy‑going town of Faversham. It’s not the simplest place to reach by rail from Tonbridge: two changes are required, the first at Paddock Wood, from where an interesting journey unfolds. This is where the line follows the sinuous course of the river Medway for a good stretch, offering glimpses of water, marsh, and industry as the train heads towards Rochester. The second change takes place at…

Anyone else notice that people don’t flash lights at oncoming traffic to warn about a speed trap? (I still do.) Has this practice just been forgotten or is it the result of thin blue line propaganda? I remember when country folks and cops weren’t friendly. Not hostile, but certainly not trusting.

Today’s theme from That Artsy Reader Girl is a little less bookish than some! This time we’re talking about “Things That Make Up My Perfect Day”, which is a fun prompt. Plenty of time to read! I’m sure variations on this will be common answers among this crowd, but it’s nonetheless true for me. If I can carve out at least an hour overall for reading, that’s ideal, though I haven’t been super good at meeting that recently. New books. It’s not the be-all and end-all, but I can’t help but enjoy…

On Thursday, October 15, I completed my 31st cycle around the sun. My wife bought us tickets for “Elephants and Ants”, a play based on one of Yaşar Kemal’s books. It was a story about elephants oppressing ants with their brute power, and ants, after years of abuse, rebelling against them. I liked the story very much, but more than that, I liked the practical effects of the play. In the play, the decor was very sparse, almost non-existent. But the cast did many small things that made the story…

At first, meditation was hard.Then, meditation became easier, and things became easier.And here I am in a season where things have been very hard, and the practice of meditation has made it easier. Or at least easier for me to remember who I am and how to be that person.Recently: I got laid off from my consulting job. The company was a rudderless ship, smashing into the rocks into a storm, with people overboard, including myself. A career adjustment is underway. I’m actively developing my next…

During my extended Summer break I was able to spend more time with friends in the village in Spain. We spent a lot of time together, laughing, eating and drinking, and going on a few trips. One evening, at the village bar, we were sitting outside talking nonsense as usual, and generally having a good time. We decided we should take a trip to the beach. Living inland in Spain, this meant a 120 minute trip to the coast in the South East of the Country. We settled on the beach location in a quiet…

I finished my roll of Fujicolor 200 in the Olympus XA at the Zionsville car show in September. I want to kick this off with this Brazilian Chevrolet C-10 truck. Honest to god, if I wasn’t standing right in front of it I would have thought it was an AI slop response to a prompt of “show me a vintage Chevy truck.” I’ve seen a few ’57 Buicks in my time, but never a post coupe. I’m a sucker for the Karmann-Ghia. This is probably the only old car I could be talked into buying right now. And that’s…

If you've known me IRL, you know for a while I've tended to dress pretty monochrome. Mostly wearing black, or if I'm feeling daring a white tee or dark blue something. My iPod is black, my DS was black, my wallet, you get the point. Something shifted in my brain recently, like within the last year or so, where I kinda started to hate everything being black. I have a desk that's black, so of course my black devices blend in like a fucking chameleon. It was starting to irritate me. My clothes…

Scarf and Coat Weather Means she Returns to her Perch Pretty much for as long as she's been alive, Possum has enjoyed perching on my shoulder like a parrot; when she was a kitten this was achieved by CLIMBING UP MY LEGS (hence why I usually wear motorcycle-grade denim lmfao) but in her later years she went to full-bore athletic leaping. I'm not active on TikTok anymore but for about a year, the only thing I used it for was filming her (as well as Snowapple and sometimes their brother Kindy)…

This summer, we decided to embark on a long distance train journey. You’d ask why? Especially when train tickets are supposedly more expensive, reliability is questionable, and when Europe is getting hit with scorching high temperatures. I still do not have a clear answer, it just felt more free - we could get off and board at any stop, in any country. Also, a car isn’t an option with a toddler who hates to sit calmly in it for more than 20 minutes.

Never thought I'd be shadow banned, or index blocked (or whatever it is Bearblog does) for a post about a man pouring urine into local public infrastructure. I thought the world needed to know what sort of chaos is running in the streets these days. It's basically a public service! I thought it's some sort of bug, so I started troubleshooting and it's interesting because it appears that no views are getting logged into the analytics, but the toasts still show up. This applies to all my posts.…

I don't (and try not to) rant on here very often. This morning, however, I was once again presented with a situation that has convinced me of my position on a couple of things. So, here is the simple backstory: It is 6:30 a.m. I am on my way to work and hit the drive-through at McDonald's on the way. Simple order: two sausage McGriddles and a large Diet Dr Pepper (yeah, healthy, I know...). It's not busy, there's one car ahead of me, and my order is not complex or specialized. I pull up, she…

A dull cool morning but a nice sunny afternoon. Mopped the office out this morning. Brushed up around bins. Burnt heap at back of Joe’s. Cut 2 trees.

My blog a few weeks ago talked about the 3 book swaps I've visited in my home county over the last few weeks. Two are housed in old red BT phoneboxes. There is also a fantastic website that tracks all these old boxes, categorises them on location or current usage (book swap, defib etc). Check out the K6 project; https://www.thek6project.co.uk If you're interested in seeing what your own county has to offer in terms of old phoneboxes. Anyway, I'm also still spending time looking at (previous…

My name is Robert, and I have hemorrhoids. It’s almost at that A.A. introduction level when hemorrhoids get mentioned (on the few occasions when someone even dares to speak about it). It still carries a lot of embarrassment and stigma, even though around 50% of us have it. Why is that? Maybe because it’s about a place where the sun doesn’t shine. Maybe that’s why people feel it’s a pain in the ass to talk about it. It’s a sore subject. Not speaking about it also leads to misunderstandings. More…

While on the bus on my way to work this morning the thought occurred to me that I should really make an effort to get back into meditation. To be honest I’ve been having this thought on and off for quite a while, but something about the way I thought about it today was different, I guess. Today it felt like a thing I should actually make an attempt at.A few years back I had a decent meditation habit going for quite a while, and I most definitely noticed the positive effects meditation can have…

And somehow, if I get to trying it, I am often able to enjoy it. A side of me thinks my taste is pretty good because of this. I’ve never finished a book or videogame thinking that it wasn’t worth it. To tell the truth, I also happen to get recommendations from friends and reviewers with good taste, excellent podcasts, YouTubers I trust, and all the cool bloggers that I follow here, there is so much good stuff to enjoy, I rarely put myself in a position where I think of something as a slog. I…

For reasons, I recently went into a part of the city known for particularly confusing and bad parking signs and photographed a bunch of them. Los Angeles has uniquely terrible parking signs. Sometimes you'll see a pole with four or so different panels on it, each outlining a different set of rules which must be compared and overlapped. Parking is the worst in areas where district parking permits overlap with public infrastructure like schools, hospitals, police stations, and commercial loading…