March 2025

Well, 2025 continues broadly positively — mostly each month I am feeling thankful to not be beset by the persistent exhaustion and low moods that were a big feature of 2024 in ways I didn't even fully appreciate at the time. Winter hasn't actually felt too dark or long this year, but nonetheless it is nice to see the seasons changing.

On March 1st I caught up with my old uni pals for the first time in ages — me, Michael, Lyall, Lucy, and her baby Rowan went to see the Tirzah Garwood exhibition at Dulwich picture gallery. I loved seeing how her work evolved over the course of her life and how many different things she dabbled in... everything from woodblock prints, to oil painting, to model house building, to paper marbling — the latter of which was why we went to see the exhibition, as Lucy runs a paper marbling studio. I tried very crudely to recreate some of Garwood's marbling work here

As is typical for March, the weather has been very changeable. I actually don't mind walking Jessie in the rain because it tends to mean fewer people and other dogs are out, but equally it is best of both worlds when the weather gets sunnier mid stroll.

For someone who claims to be environmentally aware, I do think I maybe use too many post-it notes in my teaching practice...

I enjoy this particular vista on my walk to work, with the railway bridge at an angle across the street (this is a not very good drawing of it)

I was asked to teach a photoshop workshop, which I found quite funny, because I don't really think of myself as a photoshop expert, but it turns out I definitely do know enough to teach undergrads pretty well. 

I did a section of the workshop about facial retouching (which I do think is a useful skill, even if it shouldn't be taken to extremes) and while most of the students seemed to love it, one student was a bit 🤨 about it, and I guess I can't blame her. Even though I caveated it with a little discussion around the ethics of retouching people, afterwards I was like 'shit, maybe I shouldn't teach that at ALL?'

(Anyway I delivered the workshop again a couple of weeks later and reconfigured it to retouch a street scene rather than faces, but I can and will continue to retouch photos of myself, sorry not sorry :)

 
Genuinely astonished and delighted to realise that there are woodpeckers in the trees surrounding our house and local park in Croydon.

You might remember that a couple of months ago our sewer got blocked by a fatberg and it was very stressful. Well, my pal Vicky who lives just down the road in a tower block had the same thing happen and I felt stressed just knowing about it. I think a bit too often about how quickly society would fall apart if the taps stopped running and the sewers stopped functioning. 

 To escape the sewer situation, Vicky and I went to Kew Gardens (I had free 'teacher planning tickets' as I was taking my students there later in the month). We very much enjoyed the Marianne North gallery — she was an astonishing woman who travelled the world making incredible botanic, geographic and anthropological paintings at a time before photography, and when it was very uncommon for a woman to travel so extensively. The gallery remains exactly as she envisioned it in the Victorian era, so is a spectacle in and of itself. I'd never visited before — it feels like a real hidden gem in Kew!

First sit in the garden of the year!!! Still can't get over that I have a garden of my own, even if it does look a bit rubbish at the moment

I often talk about how I love teaching first year undergrads, but equally sometimes it really does feel like teaching high school students (which is basically what they still are) — especially when they sometimes call me 'miss'.

That said, even the tiniest bit of appreciation makes it all feel worthwhile.

Someone placed an order on my Etsy shop and I realised it wasn't that far out of my way to deliver it in person. Any excuse for a lil train jaunt. Did these drawings about how much I love train.

Been hustling hard on the extra teaching this month, delivered an evening workshop for school teachers considering getting riso equipment for their schools — teaching teachers is fun but also stressful (but at least they are more engaged than my regular students...)

Had a stressful day of locking myself out (whoops) and bad tummy, but enjoyed dinner and lino printing with Ellis to cheer me up!

An ongoing exciting thing is that I and several others are in the process of setting up a new tech workers co-op — it's mostly being spearheaded by my former GFSC colleague Katja and her pal Stuart, but a bunch of others (inc me!) are also involved and bringing different skills to the table as a collective of freelancers. (Our website summary currently says "We work with small organisations and people to discover, design and build the digital tools they need", so if that sounds like something YOU need please hmu, though we will have a better website and brand and portfolio ready sooooon)

Anyway, Katja, Stuart and I attended a conference/gathering for other workers co-ops in tech to meet and chat and discuss what's going on in the industry at the moment, and it was super interesting. I do find days like that (meeting lots of people) a bit overwhelming though, so it was nice to sneak out with Stuart at lunchtime for a quieter lunch at a nearby Shoryu ramen.

Because I knew I was going on holiday for a week at the end of the month, I had a slightly hectic period of trying to clear the decks and prepare for that trip ahead of time.

That doesn't mean I didn't still have time to stand still and think about pigeons (and pigeon neighbourhoods) though

Then I went back to Kew with my students for a research based field trip. Unfortunately it was VERY COLD. I still had a nice time though, and I hope they did too. (I enjoyed this cool tree)

Wouldn't be Emma's visual diary if I didn't do a weird self-portrait every so often

Went to Borough market for some bits and got a spur of the moment arepa, realised it was the best thing I'd eaten all month (the tomato and basil one from La Pepiá if you're in the neighbourhood)

Saw these ladies in the park getting tangled with their small dogs and took a speedy reference photo from a distance to draw later. I really love this.

My laptop has been playing up for several months now (often won't charge, shuts down randomly, finder crashes a lot), so I took it into the Apple Store in Battersea for them to take a look at while I was away. Annoyingly, it needs a new logic board, but they DID NOT DO THIS, they just diagnosed the issue — the whole point of me taking it in while I was on hols was so that the work could be done while I was gone, but now all I've got is the same broken laptop where I know what the problem is but it's not fixed. Because of the nature of the way I work, there's basically never a 7 – 10 day period where I can just not have my laptop (because that means 7 – 10 days of not making money, and also letting clients down). Normally I work through my holidays too, so it was very rare for me to actually switch off and not have my laptop with me! Realistically the next time I'll probably be able to get it fixed is Christmas, which is a pretty annoying amount of time to have to wait.

Anyway, sigh, it was nice to go back to Battersea. 

Regular readers may remember that I was blighted by a constant succession of colds over winter. Since then, I've been masking on public transport again and have stayed well, but unfortunately Spen got sick and it was impossible for me to avoid catching it. Even more annoyingly, I succumbed literally the day before going on holiday. Livid.

I mentioned this to a couple of friends who'd travelled last year with colds, and they both said that flying with a head cold can really fuck up your ear tubes and that I should get some decongestants. 

Now here's the moment of epiphany. This is like AN ENTIRE CLASS OF BASIC MEDICINE I DID NOT EVEN KNOW EXISTED 

Why did no one ever tell me about decongestants — I have literally spent my ENTIRE LIFE with issues breathing through my nose, and whenever I catch a cold I really struggle to breathe at night when I lie down — like, both my throat and nose clog and my mouth dries up and my throat cracks and it's all awful, and THE WHOLE TIME THERE WAS JUST THIS DRUG THAT WOULD TOTALLY ELIMINATE THIS ISSUE

I took one puff of sudafed up each nostril and went from being totally congested to suddenly being able to breathe better even than I normally can?!?!?

I feel simultaneously delighted and astonished that my suffering during every cold for the rest of my life can basically be halved, and FURIOUS that no one ever told me this before?! I feel like this is comparable with living until your mid 30s not knowing about paracetamol, honestly.

(Yes yes I know you're not meant to take them too much)

Anyway, basically decongestants saved the day this holiday and enabled me to actually function on my trip, so hallelujah!

(This is a truly horrible drawing, turns out it's really hard to visualise inhaling vast quantities of air through your nose)

And then, it was HOLIDAY TIME! I booked again with Journee, the provider where you don't know where you're going until you get to the airport. I had a great time back in 2023 when they sent me to Lisbon, and really appreciated how it just takes all the stress and over-thinking out of holiday planning. Also I love a surprise! 

Anyway, my flight was at 6.50am so I'd booked into a hotel near Gatwick overnight before travelling. Unfortunately due to aforementioned cold I slept terribly (I did NOT take decongestants because people kept saying you shouldn't take them too much, but I wish I had!)

I got to the airport and and opened the exciting envelope to discover I was off to SEVILLE!!

I didn't really know much of anything about Seville, and had never been to mainland Spain before, but was very excited to hopefully get some sun and learn about somewhere new.

After an anxiety inducing but uneventful flight I arrived in Seville, and got a taxi over to my accommodation where I was able to drop off my bags, but not check in, as it was only around 11.00am. (Seville airport is really close to the city so the taxi only took about 20 minutes! This is great!)

I was feeling pretty tired and strung out from travel stress, but managed to have a nice long wander round central Seville with absolutely no plans for a few hours (and a long sit down to read my book in a different hotel foyer after I got tired). I eventually checked into my accommodation which was an absolutely lovely apartment, but by this point I felt exctremely run down. Heaved myself out later for a takeaway pizza then went to bed at like 20.00 and slept for 12 hours, and felt WAY better the next day.

Unfortunately this first day was a bit grey and rainy, but I was still struck by the gorgeous warm colours, orange trees, and beautiful ceramic signage everywhere!

 

On my second day in Seville I felt loads better! I did all the big tourist stuff — walked along to the Plaza de Espana (a big beautiful showy boulevard/court), walked past the cathedral (but didn't go in, the queues were massive) and spent several wonderful sunny hours exploring the Alcazar, a huge palace and gardens in the centre of the city. (Journee had booked me on a guided tour but I immediately absconded from that as I hate guided tours).

I also went to an absolutely amazing chocolate shop/patisserie that had loads of vegan options and had genuinely one of the best cakes I've ever had (and a cookie!)

The next day Journee had booked me on a guided tour of Cordoba (an hour and a half by bus away), but I still wasn't feeling amazing (and I hate guided tours) so I cancelled that and instead got a local suburban train to the site of the old 1992 expo and saw a load of semi-derelict pavillions. I also went to a weird modern art museum in an old monastery, a contemporary art/science museum in a shopping park, bought myself a swimming cossie because *reasons*, and that evening went up onto the roof of the 'mushrooms' — a modern building/sculpture in the centre of the city — to see the sunset. (Plus also just a lot of nice idle wandering of the streets).

The next day was my birthday!! I had a morning idly wandering some miscellanous attractions (that were a bit so-so), and then in the afternoon had booked myself in to the Aire spa for a restful birthday treat (I love the London Aire spa, and did not know until I looked it up that the Seville Aire spa is the original in the chain) — it was very lovely. In the evening, because everyone kept saying I should, I went out and saw a flamenco performance, which was a lot weirder and more fun than I expected.

On the Thursday my flight back wasn't until around 20.00, and I had to leave my accommodation at 11, so I had a lot of time to kill. I did a speed run of a bunch of other attractions, but mostly just enjoyed wandering around that beautiful city for another day longer. The whole city smelled of orange blossom, and with the exception of the first day, the temperature was a pretty consistent 20 degrees and sunny. Everything was super walkable, and I found myself, as I always do on the last day of a holiday, wishing that I lived there!

Luckily my flight home was smooth and easy, and I arrived home feeling genuinely rested and actually (thanks to not taking my laptop) disconnected from work for once. 

Made this drawing depicting the approximate walking I did each day while I was in Seville.

Went and collected my laptop, spent much of the day reinstalling all my software and downloading files (I didn't restore it from a backup to try and have a clean fresh start, and uggggh it's so annoying, you forget how many little details you've got set up for yourself just-so). Whenever the laptop stuff got annoying I went outside and did a little bit of gardening (I am actually doing some gardening this year and I am excited!)

For my birthday my partner bought me some new digital brushes for procreate on my ipad — they're 'riso effect', and I had fun making this cute little drawing of a tree branch sprouting in the park.

In theory I should have been working today, and I did get SOME work done, but only around half of what I should have done, thanks to ongoing slow reconfiguring of laptop / being distracted by sunny weather / being distracted by other tasks...

Hoping I can regain my work focus for April after my nice lil birthday break.

February 2025

My pal V declared 2025 'The year of the blog' and I've gotta say, I am willing it to be true. I joined Bluesky in the hope of revisiting the Twitter glory days of the past, but have regrettably discovered (again, after failed forays into Threads and Mastodon) that... I have nothing to say?* Apart from, apparently, once a month, where I braindump all my doings and thoughts here with the help of these drawings. So thanks for reading, and if you have a blog, send it to me so I can read it?

(*I am going to persist with Bluesky though as lots of nice people are there and I do occasionally have something stupid I want to spit into the void)

 February 1st was (as it is every year) hourly comics day, and you can see all of those here.

Perhaps because I was in the hourly comics headspace, I did a very panel-y Sunday drawing (but also I think because I was busy and did lots? Went to Quaker meeting, then travelled into central London, saw the weird Ikea popup, helped at a Samaritans event, stole lots of canapés from said event, then came home and had pizza with Spen)

I feel like Jessie may have got to the point where she is about as easy as she'll ever get to deal with day to day (that is to say, not EASY, but bearable). As long as we keep her out of other people and dogs' way on walks (sometimes easier said than done), walk her on the same familiar route, and minimise the amount of interactions she has with traffic, she can have a fairly chill time. Luckily in our park there are lots of edge-bits where not that many other people walk, so I was able to chuckle at this moment of overwhelm she had (because we were well out of the way of everything happening so there was no risk of her lunging at anyone). All at the same time, a man running strangely went past (she HATES when men run strangely, and they do it a LOT), an unusually loud plane flew overhead, a train went past sounding its horn, some men were emptying the bins loudly (how dare they), one of Jessie's 'enemy' dogs went past, and right behind her some birds were fucking about in a bush. She had a big moment of trying to figure out which she should care about the most (which reminded me of this meme)

 

Teaching — a blessing and a curse

I told the vet that Jessie was very anxious (and may be reactive) for her annual jabs appointment (with a view to booking an appointment at a quieter time, and ideally a longer appointment), but the lovely vet offered to drop in at our house on his way home to do the jabs. Jessie was still mad about it but did recieve many treatos, and managed not to do anything very naughty (mostly just a lot of anxious, evasive behaviour). She wore the muzzle for about 2 minutes without throwing a tantrum about it too. Good girl.

We hadn't seen our pal Vaishnavi in aaaaages (mostly because we've all been busy working and Vaishnavi has now devoted her life to K-pop which seems like a pretty full time hobby). She kindly invited us over to hers for DELICIOUS dinner (including chutneys and pickles made back home in India by her gran)

 
One way of knowing that my mental health is in a broadly good place is that my motivation to consistently cook elaborate new things is high! I made this banh mi and it was AMAZING (that website is truly horrible to use though, sorry) — the recipe also made so much that I had it for lunch for days, and did not get sick of it!

Did another London Loop section with Jay — it was a drizzly day and a fairly drab section, but good to power through it. It was quite a long section, and right on the other side of London (up past Harrow) so a long day, and I got off the train at my local station at the end of it feeling knackered. As I left the entrance I saw a flash out of of the corner of my eye which I initially thought was a fox, but quickly realised was a pure white dog, some kind of skinny german shepherd looking guy, running freely around, with no collar, and no visible owner. I looked around me and some other people said he'd been racing around for quite a while, and they were worried about him running into traffic (which he had been doing).

The people outside the station didn't seem especially motivated to do anything about the situation (in fairness to them, the dog was moving very fast). The dog seemed perfectly friendly, but extremely unwilling to be caught. I chased him down into my street (I live just a couple of minutes jog from the station, #blessed), and some other people joined the chase, including some neighbours. We eventually pinned him down in someone's garden, where he rolled over, tail wagging, and showed us his belly. I caught him with a slip lead I'd grabbed from the house, and once the immediate adrenaline rush was over, I was like 'oh, what do I do with this manic guy now' (flailing at end of lead)

So we took him home to regroup, where he proceeded to climb over everything, get into everything, and be entirely incapable of sitting still. He was clearly super bright, very amenable to learning, and without a vicious bone in his body. He wolfed down some dinner and took a big drink, shat on our floor and stubbornly refused to wee in our garden.

It was clear he was a young dog (probably around a year old, maybe younger), and still full of a lot of wiggly adolescent energy. Jessie was mad about it and gave him what for, and he did show her appropriate submission, but still proved entirely incapable of not annoying her, so we had to seperate them. Because it was a Sunday afternoon, the council dog warden was not on duty, and the local vet was closed. I'd initially been happy to keep him overnight, but after a couple of hours it became clear that if we did we would probably not sleep (and it would be unfair on Jessie), so I started calling round slightly further afield emergency vets, and eventually found one who would scan him for a chip and take him in.

I christened him 'Cheese' (because I think food names for animals are funny), and at around 19.30, we multi-harnessed him up (to avoid another escape) and took him to Streatham to the emergency vet there. By the time we dropped him off we were quite sad to say goodbye to him (though I was also extremely glad to see the back of him, I think my partner would have kept him).

He did have a chip, and the vet said his owners did eventually come and get him. I am glad he's safe but also feel pretty judgy about owners who would walk him without a collar (and in a way that it was possible for him to get loose, that dog CLEARLY needs a harness as he's way too wiggly for a lead alone). I really hope his life improves a bit, as he was so smart and ready to learn.

(The vet told us he's actually a Swiss Shepherd, so it made me laugh that I called him Cheese — Swiss Cheese. Apparently his real name was Archie which is extremely not as good)

Bye Cheese, miss u.

Sorry, this is a horrible concept, but that's what it was! Had my smear test (a strange signifier of the passing of time, how was the last one three years ago?!) then went into Croydon to a piercing shop as I've decided to start stretching my ear lobes (not much, don't worry mum :), and needed a piercer's assistance removing the old screw earrings I'd been wearing since around 2018 (he also used a taper to insert the first stretch).

 

Been having more bad guts time than usual this month which sucks. Not sure if it's an IBS flare up or something related to my new and improved natural periods (now I am not on the pill they're much more... powerful)

I hate feeling ill while I'm out, especially while I am out doing something fun! (In this case, scoping out the Wellcome for a student trip later in the month)

 

Despite Friends House and the Wellcome Collection being basically next door to each other, I for some reasons scheduled these errands on two seperate days?! I am an idiot

My partner has been rewatching all of Red Dwarf. Growing up I thought it was kinda stupid and 'for boys' but have been enjoying it much more than I expected to.

We don't really celebrate valentines day, but nonetheless, here's a valentines day tribute to this cutie

 

Jessie also likes a lie in (I respect that about her), but when I sleep in especially late, she comes and puts her face right next to mine to ask for a cuddle, and it's very sweet. 

I am pretty sick of this haircut but don't know what else to do! And so I persist

 

Over reading week, our students did a project which involved decorating one of our hallways with a lot of mirrors. Here's a silly drawing of it.

 

I am EXTREMELY PLEASED with this drawing (I went to a Quaker study group thing and we all had tea, here's a depiction)

 Ready for winter to be over and my hands not to be fucked any more :(

 Played Wilmot's Warehouse with V and friends and really liked it! (Though am curious about how much re-play potential it has)

 

After reading week, started teaching two brand new units to our BA UX students, and was ruined by self-doubt (is this good content?! Are the students enjoying it?! Are they learning?!) Had some light relief by teaching a guest workshop on MA Data Vis for one of my fav colleagues — despite it being my first time teaching at MA level it felt a lot lower pressure than the other stuff I was trying to do that week!

 

Went to a weird workshop at Pushkin House about potatoes. Felt socially awkward but had a nice time... extracting starch!?

I don't WANT to use hormones as an excuse, but damn, since coming off the pill, as well as being a lot less depressed, I am also annoyingly a lot more irritable, and not just at predictable times of the month. I hate being grumpy! But I guess it's better than being dead inside.

A fun day of introducing our students to SYSTEMS THINKING! (And trying to get them to draw systems...)

 

Then the next day, took students for their trip to the Wellcome collection. We were asking them to explore the permanent 'being human' exhibition, and to pick 3 – 5 artefacts that particularly interested them. Felt like it would be hypocritical not to also do the exercise myself, so here are my 5 fav artefacts from the exhibition.

 

After hanging out with Cheese earlier in the month I have a newfound appreciation for how much Jessie loves to snooze.

 Classic freelancer pain, however...

...the truth of the matter is that all of the work I have on currently is good, and fun, and lucrative, APART FROM one piece, which is nothing but suffering — mostly because I am being asked to do work I don't know how to do, and don't have the time to learn how. I've previously politely tried to extricate myself from the job, but the client was not taking no for an answer — after several hours of trying (which I didn't feel able to bill for, because why should they put up with my learning time), I STILL couldn't figure out how to do the task at hand, and felt increasingly jittery about the backlog of other work that was buiding up behind me, so (regretably) had a little cry at the client about it. Will they ever work with me again? WHO CAN SAY!! Have I got out of doing this work? UNCLEAR! Oh well. Had a nice dinner over at Camille and Cathy's place and played a far-too-long game of Concordia to cheer myself up.

I am very much ready for spring at this point, as well as MARCH HOLIDAY ooooh (more on that next month, see u then I hope)