September 2020

Well, it’s been a quiet old month. The end of September somehow also hails the beginning of the end of the year for me, and what a strange year this one has been (and continues to be). I appreciate there are three months more of 2020 to come (and who knows what they hold) but the ongoing quiet, coupled with the fading weather has really been giving me a lot of light melancholy wistfulness about what has been, and what hasn’t. Ho hum.

With the boy still decidedly less agile than usual, my long walks have been few and far between, but treated myself to a solitary long (and one way) walk up to West Brompton, with the joy of a ten minute train home. I enjoyed how quaint West Brompton station was, and felt like a big nerd for doing so.

Still figuring out how I want to look. Both in physique and fashion. Enjoying some of the curves that lockdown has bought, but not others. Enjoying wearing a lot of black, but somewhat vainly, missing catching eyes, missing compliments from strangers, missing boldness. Just another health goth now I guess. (Except not that healthy....)

I’ve been visual diarying long enough now that I’m not about to stop, but it definitely has its ebbs and flows in terms of inspiration and style, and spending months barely leaving the house hasn’t proven conducive to creativity for me...

Did you know Salvador Dali designed the Chupa Chups logo? (You probably did)

Got to have an out!! My partner’s friend Sophie really wanted to see us so we went and got Temple of Seitan and ate it in the park and it was a really nice time. Seeing people is wild man. Wouldn’t it be nice to get back into that, LOL 

It be like that sometimes I guess. Luckily nothing even vaguely COVID adjacent, so at least I was able to wallow in my own foulness in peace. SKIN, what even is it?!

In a rare bout of productive personal creativity, I finished my zine TWENTY YEARS OF BLEEDING. It’s about periods and how to deal with them and it’ll be on my Etsy as soon as I get the printed copies. My printer liked it so much they asked if they could sell some copies in their distro, so I’m taking that as a positive endorsement!

Still playing Breath of the Wild LOADS, and having frankly the most fun I’ve had this year doing so. Weird how you can grow so attached to fictional places. I’m missing the ocean so much that I sometimes get sad when I walk along the beaches in the game, that I’ll never get to visit them in real life.

I have always loved the boy with all my heart. But there’s been something in particular about this year, sharing such quiet days with him so intimately. We spend all our time together and even though he is still The Unfathomable Boy, we’ve fallen into such contented little routines of affection and coziness and precision of habit that I truly find my love for him growing with intensity every day. Because of his bad legs I feel sad that his world has really shrunk, in terms of outings, but he seems entirely at peace with it all, as long as he gets to come and lie on the bed and be baby spoon for a few hours every evening.

I love the conkers.

So here’s the big mood, as best I can convey it. I’m really lucky to have had such a peaceful few months of sweetness and intimacy with my partner and my (canine) son. We have a safe home, no awful human children, and sufficient trickling of income as to not be super scared (yet). But my goodness, I miss the world. I miss sounds and loves and places and friends and so much yet unseen and unknown. Before all of this happened I really felt like I was pushing to live my life to its fullest potential. And maybe burning out a little in the process, but not quite, mostly burning bright... I remember the week in March when lockdown was announced. I was seeing three or four different friends, a long distance partner was coming to visit, I was going to two gigs and an art exhibition, and another friend’s lecture, and then suddenly, it was all just gone. And I wonder if I will ever get that life back. It’s a small loss compared to what some people have lost, but my heart aches with longing for travel and friendship and new experiences and all the London that this beautiful city could offer me that I barely got to take advantage of (coincidentally this was exactly a year to the day since I moved here...)

(Pizza) Daddy

Mum came to visit for the afternoon and that was a really nice time.

So we finally got the boy seen by a specialist, and got to the root of his issues. If you’ve been reading a while you might remember that he got a mysterious and very traumatic foot infection around Christmas that left him with quite a lot of scar tissue between his toes. Well that scar tissue formed into a corn on one of his pads of that foot, which neither I nor my regular vet had realised. That corn has been causing him subtle, low level pain for months now, which has altered his gait when walking, causing muscle wastage and weakness in his hips. Which is kind of ridiculous, but here we are with a limpy sad boy because of it. Next steps are physio/hydrotherapy, which might totally solve the problem, but if the corn is still an issue he may have to have surgery on that, and possibly even lose the toe, but we hope not. All in all, a sad boy, but could be a lot worse (we’d been fearing something spinal or neurological)

Amongst MY physical complaints, have been a few days where I have just felt itchy all over for no reason. It sucks! Am I allergic to something? Is it anxiety? Stress? WHO KNOWS

More looks

Moths have been a pretty constant presence in my life since I lived in a house in Brighton with someone who had a moth horde in their possession, and then Hebden bridge was apparently renowned as a place where everyone had moths too... most of my clothes are synthetic trash so I’ve never been too badly affected, and seemed to have shaken them off since moving to London, but a couple showed up in our wardrobe and we found some eggs on a couple of garments and my (very fastidious) partner FREAKED OUT, so spent the day gently panicking and dry cleaning and buying cedar and trying to console them.

Hair’s ANNOYING

Managed to get a hook up for a relatively big job for a nice new client, and even though I sometimes joke that I hate designing text-heavy reports, my guilty secret is that I actually love it. Mmmmmm paragraph styles. Mmmmm lets get that grid juuuussssssttt right. (Hire me to design your report)

Treated myself to a solitary, heavily sanitised morning out to the small but good Grayson Perry exhibition about the USA at Victoria Miro gallery, followed by some delicious noodles at Spitalfields. There was one piece in particular at the exhibition that really inspired the visual style for this drawing, a massive red and blue diagram/map about the social state of the US today that I really enjoyed. I can’t remember what it was called but maybe if I’m feeling diligent I’ll link back to it here later...

Okay winter’s here now

Sometimes I make bad choices

I think part of my lockdown strategy that I really stand by has been pretty much switching off from all news. I get the key headlines via word of mouth from my partner or other friends or my carefully curated twitter, but I feel I’ve been somewhat shielded from much of the stress and sensationalism that I know a lot of other people have been hating. But anyway, I went to Asda for my (usually) quiet weekly shop and it was RIDICULOUS, panic buying in full effect, and I was like... did I miss a Boris announcement or something?! But no, just seems like we’ve reached enough of a tipping point for the potential of another lockdown that people have decided to learn absolutely nothing from last time and clear the shelves again. Grim. (Also grim, I have what feels like a wisdom tooth coming through, and the soonest my dentist can see me, even on an emergency basis is OCTOBER TWENTY NINTH. Here’s hoping the tooth gives up trying before then like it did last time...)

I write this blog to you from my shiny new* (*second hand) iPad, its rather nice... the main reason I bought it though was that I’ve been feeling like I should really start doing my drawing digitally, and I haven’t been able to get on with screenless tablets. Everyone says the iPad is a really great drawing tool so I figured I’d get one and give it a try (I can always sell it back to CEX if things don’t work out). The jury’s out for now though as I’m still waiting for my fancy pencil to arrive...

Absolutely didn’t do this justice in drawing form, but today me and my partner went to see the glorious Architecture For Dogs exhibition at Japan House. Highly recommend if you want a gentle socially distanced cultural out. Then we had Katsu curry in the park and it was a cute date (of which we have had remarkably few because, life!?)

I hope I can do some better drawings next month. I’ve felt a bit slow and off my game this one. We’ll see I guess...