December 2023

Observant readers might notice a change to this month's visual diaries, in that they are (almost) entirely digital. I started this last month, due to a combination of ire at Moleskine's massive price hike on their sketchbooks (and subsequent unavailability at most of the places I used to buy them), and the stress of moving house and packing up all my art supplies requiring a more portable approach.

I do now have a new Moleskine to work in, and my art supplies are unpacked, but I found myself somewhat enjoying this way of working. This blog marks 11 (!) years of daily visual diarying, which, until 2020, was entirely analogue. I bought myself a secondhand ipad then, which I have been sporadically using ever since, both for client illustration work, and — when travelling — visual diaries. 

I started out doing my visual diaries with the primary intent of improving my illustration skills. There's absolutely no doubt that this ridiculous exercise, spanning over a decade, has done that. Switching to digital allows me to cheat, in some ways. I can trace photos (which I do, regularly, both in these visual diaries, and in client work). It allows me to collage found materials with greater ease (which I don't do enough of, as I find it hard to draw my own individual line on what counts as 'cheating'). But it also offers me an infinite gamut of colour in ways which are far easier, faster, and less messy to apply than analogue processess. It offers me infinite possibilities without having to buy infinite art supplies. It allows me to try more different styles. In short, I have found working this way exciting and refreshing, and though there's a little tug at my heartstrings over the first month in over a decade with no analogue pages to turn, I think I am going to keep going like this. For a while? Forever? Until the storage on my ipad runs out and I am too lazy to deal with it? Let's see...

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy these, and that none of my regular readers will desert me, like when Bob Dylan used an electric guitar for the first time...

This silly drawing has become something of a new dog tradition. You can see Charlie's on the 11th of February 2017, and Chase's on the 16th of January 2021. We didn't have long enough with either of them.

Barley, as an ex-racing greyhound who had never even been in a house before, had absolutely no reason to arrive pre-house trained, and yet somehow, he almost entirely did. Compared with our sweet old lady Chase, he has astonishing bladder capacity, easily waiting 12+ hours between wees (at his choice, not ours!), and has the good sense to know that the house is not the place to do them. We have had no wee accidents. He also generally has this feeling about poos, however they are a little harder to hold. To our great ire, for the first week or two he spent with us, he decided that outdoors was COLD and BAD and absolutely to be avoided, and for a couple of days running, despite us offering him the garden, the declined, and then immediately pooed in the living room as soon as we turned our backs. 

Luckily he picks up on social cues quickly, and that has not happened since (though admittedly we have not has such a cold snap since then either...)

Tabled at a zine fair in Brighton run by lovely old friends! Sealed the 'lets go digital' deal by doing a really shit pen drawing (albeit on lovely paper) while I was there. (Added the text over the top digitally later). It was lovely to have a flying visit to Brighton and catch up with some people I hadn't seen since pre pandemic, or even pre Hebden Bridge move in some cases...

Those of you who've ever talked about my veganism with me will know that my one longstanding deep, unfulfilled longing is canned mackerel. (No, really). My partner decided that Barley would benefit from some occasional meal additions like egg, mackerel, sweet potatoes and peanut butter. While prepping his dinner I allowed myself a tiny morsel of the fish, just to see if it was as good as I remember. READER, IT WAS (Emma can have a little fish, as a treat, just once)

I wish to report that Besta is STILL not fully assembled, 26 days later

I now live a 20 min-ish trip away from Ikea, and that means I go to Ikea a lot, sometimes just for a cheeky plant balls lunch. I love how cheap the food is, and how if you go on a weekday lunchtime you can just go sit at a quiet table in a huge room and just think about nothing apart from whether you're getting the ratio of lingonberry and mustard just right. Sometimes I need that.

We had a student party for our UX Design course students, with a huge quantity of lebanese food from Camberwell's best falafel place. Finally having a moment to breathe and reflect on this last term I can see just how much I learnt, how much I got done, and how intense it has all been! I am very proud of what me and my teaching partner Patrick achieved, and I sincerely hope we can keep it going for the rest of the year...

Slight hyperbole here because he is OCCASIONALLY a lightly naughty boy, but mostly in very manageable, sweet ways (like how he sulks whenever we're eating and he's not, and shows his rage by going and fetching small pieces of paper from the recycling bin and depositing them around the house).

Although term was technically over, it was not quite over for me, as I had to go back with my promotional hat on and run the UXD open day — particularly daunting as the much more senior person I was meant to be doing it with was off sick. (I really need more professional clothes)

When we got an ex-racing greyhound, we were warned that while they make excellent, gentle pets, sleepy and sweet round the house, their one weakness is often their prey drive. However, we know from Barley's race history that he was... not very good (he only did 3 official races before they retired him), and it seems that might be because he has literally no interest in most of the things that he probably should, professionally, have quite a strong interest in. However, it makes our lives as pet owners much easier. Since this, he has had a number of close cat encounters, and is no more interested in them than he would be in another dog (i.e. likes to have a look and a sniff and then move on, nothing more). We've also met loads of other 'fun guys', none of whom have ruffled his feathers whatsoever. 

Having been freelance and/or remote working for several years, I was very excited about the prospect of being invited to the design school staff christmas lunch!!! I was braced and ready for a delicious canteen christmas din!! However... that was not what I got (never one to turn up a free lunch like, but still)

A weird lookin guy

Been very much enjoying exploring our new neighbourhood. We very intentionally chose a specific little corner of South London which is within walking distance of a whole bunch of parks, just to keep those dog walks fresh. I am loving it here!

On the way to one of our park walks we saw these beautiful lurid purple berries which I love so much.

I would never normally choose to go to Carnaby Street during December, but that's where Samaritans is, so that's where I go. I will concede the lights this year were espeically gorgeous. (And I really enjoyed doing this drawing — depicting darker scenes with analogue materials has always been harder to do justice)

Did get to have another cute work party — a bunch of my colleagues at GFSC came down to London to attend Gendered Intelligence's 15th birthday party, and celebrate the work we've done with them this year. It was a very lovely time.

One of our nearby parks has a boating lake! Sailboats, for some reason, make Barley uneasy.

By this point, after a succession of Christmas dos and general 'see you next year's! I really felt like it was time to LOG OFF, but sadly, it was not, with an entire extra week of work to do. UGH!

Pleased to report I have now met all the key neighbours, apart from the one guy who is mysteriously absent!

A sweetboi

Happy solstice, at last (enjoyed this one)

Back to ikea again, and one of my favourite silly drawings for ages (referencing those Drake memes, for those of you not terminally online). The good thing is, Ikea is really close, the bad thing is, I don't have a car and can only carry so much, so multiple trips are needed (I think at this point I was wrestling home a couple of curtain rails)

Sadly, Emma does not know how to switch off any more

Ever since living here, I'd noticed that the toilet often didn't flush right, draining really slowly. Usually a few plunges resolved the problem but this time it didn't. I popped the job on Checkatrade, imagining I'd get someone out after christmas, maybe in the new year, but was immediately overwhelmed by calls from OVER KEEN plumbers, desperate to come look at my drains, RIGHT NOW! Well, fair enough. anyway, now I'm a homeowner I guess I also own a small section of sewer, and it turns out the previous residents had a nasty wetwipe habit which had mostly clogged my sewer pipe (and which they must have been studiously ignoring). Anyway I paid this already slightly sloshed guy (covered head to toe in sewage) who came out at 17.00 on Christmas eve and gave a well angled POKE up the sewer pipe, which unleashed a frankly grotesque torrent of my own backed up toilet flushes, which will haunt me forever. Now my toilet flushes right. Later, we watched Die Hard, as is right and proper on Christmas eve.

Christmas day was spent, as is also right and proper, not doing very much at all.

 Had a nice lil video chat with my fav boys

Our friends Nadia and Vaishnavi came over for a walk. Later that afternoon, I was running a couple of rounds of Wavelength for the GFSC collective, so we decided to do a test game before I did that. I've played a bunch of games of Wavelength, and we rarely get above 'ok', but somehow the four of us managed GREAT! Astonishing!

Treated myself to a lil boxing day sales shopping trip, so that I can look more like a convincing adult when I go back to work at uni. Bought some expensive shoes at Clarks and happened to get a sales lady who actually cared about feet. She told me my feet are REALLY, WEIRDLY narrow (which I knew), and also that I have really sharp ankle bones (which I did not know, but does explain why shoes almost always rub there). Anyway, I don't know if these shoes I bought will be any better than they usually are, but here's hoping as they look really cute

Enjoying exploring my new home, ✨ Croydon ✨

One of the purchases I'd been most excited about making when we got our house was SOFA!! It seems like me and my partner have quite precise and specific requirements that are not what most people want from a sofa, which are:

• Not "like sitting on mashed potato" as my partner put it (i.e. incredibly soft such that it's hard to stand up)
• Not TOO deep in the seat
• But deep enough that a large greyhound can lie on it
• Doesn't have really deep wide arms or back that take up loads of uneccesary space
• Not UGLY
• Not impossibly expensive

Apparently getting a sofa which fits all of these things is... really hard?! 

Anyway we went to DFS and I was really excited about it because of the constant TV indoctrination when I was a child. Surely DFS has every possible variation of sofa?! NO. They all look like this.

Anyway in the end we bought one from Ikea (surprise surprise) and I'm kinda annoyed because it's the exact same sofa we have at work in UAL, and it feels ridiculous to sit on the same sofa at home and at work, but at least I know it's comfortable I guess.

Our weird long boy is doing so well, just over a month in.

He's not scared of walks any more (in fact he quite enjoys them), he understands it's NOT okay to bother us while we eat, he's settled into our daily routines, and he's teaching us all the ways he most likes to be cuddled. We're still in the early days of our (hopefully long) friendship, but he really is acing it thus far. (Though at time of writing he's cowering under a desk because of new year fireworks)

And so, with that, onwards to 2024.

Not gonna lie, I've kind of got a lot I have to do this year, and a lot I want to do this year. Can I do it all?! Keep reading the blog to find out I guess...