Long time no see. I moved house a few weeks ago, and the internet connection has been a long-running (and very boring) bureaucratic saga. Hopefully from next week we’ll finally have proper internet. I’ve been keeping up with stuff like email either on my phone or work computer, but that isn’t really ideal for things like updating a blog. At least I have unlimited data on my phone, which has been very helpful, although I never want to have to use my internet banking site on a phone again as long as I live.
I moved into a property guardianship with my friends Mel & Katie. It’s an ex old people’s home, and living there has its peculiarities, but it’s incredibly cheap, and it’s really nice to live with friends again after subletting earlier in the year, living in hotels for work over the summer and then house-sitting my grandparents place/Anna’s flat, and also not worrying about affording the rent and bills without working non-stop. More about the strangeness some other time.
I got a job at a school. Initially I came in to cover sick leave for various admin tasks, but I soon got put to doing all sorts of design and website things that weren’t being done, and started teaching an after-school class about animation. Til the end of term I’m essentially doing 1.5 jobs, but I come back after xmas part-time, which suits me fine and pays the bills while giving me time to work on other things. I’ve been doing some free-lance design stuff for the school. I’m not really a graphic designer, but they really like what I’ve been producing for them. The project is pretty big, and I’ll be glad to see it finished. The money will also come in pretty handy.
As well as moving house and working a lot, I’ve also been taking advantage of all the things there are to do in London. There’s no point putting up with the expense, crowdedness and general inconvenience of the place if you’re not going to take advantage of the good points. In the last couple of weeks I’ve been to a halloween themed archaeology conference; a feminist conference; the Queer Zine Fest; seen Godspeed twice in one week (once at Brixton, once at ATP); seen Slint; seen Tortoise, Television, Dinosaur Jr, Low, Forest Swords, Les Savy Fav, Múm and Scout Niblett at ATP and been to two lates at the V&A. All those things combined mean I both haven’t been updating this, and also have a bit of a backlog running of things I want to write about.
Apart from doing a lot, I’ve been feeling a weird mix of hopeful/happy because things are looking up and I’ve been doing a lot of interesting things, but also pretty crappy mainly due to winter, sinus/tonsil trouble, tiredness, lack of time and some personal stuff I don’t really want to go into here.
I’ve also been completely re-doing my website from scratch to work properly with phones and tablets. Progress is slow, due to the lack of internet at home (except for one corner of the kitchen squeezed against the microwave, or the downstairs toilet that has been dubbed the “internet toilet” due to the fact you can pick up the next building’s wifi). So no zine or print orders until that’s done.
Tomorrow I’m helping with 2 events:
In the daytime, my housemate Mel is helping to run this event at the photography studio/darkroom she’s been doing a residency at. There’s an open studio with all sorts of demonstrations, and some live music in the evening. I did the flyer for her. It’s made of 5 pinhole photos of Cornwall I did a few years ago layered up, with each layer set as a different colour.
In the evening I’m selling some zines at Fliss’ event at . Come along to both things if you truly love me.
I'm really glad you've found a nice job that pays the bills, and I'm glad you're enjoying living in Melanie's place 🙂 It sounds like an amazing place to live!