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Oxfordshire Artweeks

And a bit of shameless self promotion. In case you hadn’t realised, May is the month the artists in county of Oxfordshire open up their homes and studios to the public, hundreds of art exhibitions take place during a little over 3 weeks (May 4-27th this year), with each week dedicated to an area of the county. As usual I will be exhibiting during city week which officially starts on the 11th May…

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The Dream Thieves

By Maggie Stiefvater: Audiobook review If you know me, you know I’m super fussy with audiobook narrators and if it doesn’t sit right with me, I can’t get on with it.Well not a problem with this book, The Dream Thieves, nay the whole series, I really enjoyed this and I think a lot of that is to do with Will Patton as the narrator who just oozes southern charm. He manages to make all the…

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Book review: Gild by Raven Kennedy

Gild by Raven KennedyMy rating: 3 of 5 starsInteresting concept – taking someone and their story from mythology and giving it new life, however something about this retelling didn’t gel with me. I finished it and it was a decent story, but I don’t know if I care about the characters enough to go on. I felt like the last 20% of the book was the best part, which was a lot less sex focused and story…

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Book review: Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix

Horrorstör by Grady HendrixMy rating: 5 of 5 starsI enjoyed this even though its not my usual type of genre (i don’t tend to read a lot of ‘horror’). The book is set in a US furniture store ORSK that models itself on IKEA, therefore the entire book is designed an IKEA catalogue making it a quirky and enjoyable book to behold. Although the basic premise may seem familiar, I felt there were enough…

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Happy Piano Day

Nils Frahm live at the Barbican, 2018 In case it passed you by, today is Piano Day – a day organised by some amazing piano loving people and created from an idea by Nils Frahm in 2015 – held on the 88th day of the year, because of course pianos have 88 keys. I first heard about it back in 2018 when Olafur Arnalds and Halldór Eldjárn created an interactive installation called Stratus whereby…

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Iceland road trip (day 8)

Iceland road trip (day 8)

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Iceland road trip (day 9)

Iceland road trip (day 9)

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My first glitchy project. I love the use of bright colors to confuse the eyes! by Helpful-Living-9107

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Iceland road trip (day 7)

Iceland road trip (day 7)

Today we head back to Reykjavík for a couple of days, after the rain and clouds of yesterday we awoke to gorgeous skies of blue streaked with golden sun stained clouds, and the sounds of the waves crashing only a few meters away from our bed. We mapped our route back to Reykjavík and headed back towards Holmavik for petrol and to look at the pretty church with rainbow steps and for a brief walk…

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Iceland road trip (day 6)

Iceland road trip (day 6)

We left our accommodation in the south Westfjords and headed to the east Westfjords, namely Hólmavík and Drangsnes. Because the drive took around an hour we had plenty of time to spare before checking into our hotel. We headed for the Museum of Icelandic Witchcraft and Sorcery. The museum houses various artefacts, thought to be used in sorcery. Apparently even owning a piece of paper/vellum with…

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Iceland road trip (day 5)

Iceland road trip (day 5)

Today was a quiet one, we had planned to drive quite far west for a few hours, but one thing and another and we turned around after about an hour – after eating car sandwiches next to another cute church (pretty much this entire journey was on gravel mountain roads, so we were glad to knock it on the head tbh). Church at Gufudalur After heading back to our accommodation I decided to try the…

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Iceland road trip (day 4)

Iceland road trip (day 4)

We started out from Stykkisholmur towards Helgafell to visit the church. We were greeted by a very friendly dog who followed us into the church grounds and proceeded to pee on every grave. We’re sorry if this is why the gate is usually closed. The church The dog Next we headed for the Westfjords. Because satnav kept trying to take us back south to join route 1, instead of the more direct and…

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Iceland road trip (day 3)

Iceland road trip (day 3)

After a decent buffet breakfast including omelette and smoked salmon we packed up the car, but not before having a bit of a wander around the troll trails in daylight, although at this point it was starting to snow lightly. Troll houses Our next port of call was the infamous black church at Búðir, on the Snæfellsness peninsula. The drive was the kind of my dreams, the light was amazing with…

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Iceland road trip (day 2)

Iceland road trip (day 2)

Today it really got going. After checking out of our Reykjavik accommodation we headed towards the town of Akranes, which took around an hour. And wow do Icelanders like roundabouts, it felt like we were in Milton Keynes for the first half an hour or so. I had set the SatNav to Akranes lighthouse, a key location in Eva Björg Ægisdóttir´s The Creak On The Stairs. As you can see from the photo –…

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Another Iceland road trip (day 1)

Another Iceland road trip (day 1)

It’s been 2 years since we went anywhere on holiday. So we decided our trip to Iceland Airwaves would be longer than usual to allow plenty of road tripping. Airwaves then got cancelled, but all was not lost as some of our favourite bands announced gigs which we bought tickets for, then Airwaves got partially reinstated. So we started our trip with 1 day in Reykjavík for HATARI at Húrra. It could…

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A Strange Year In Photos... Part 2

A Strange Year In Photos… Part 2

Following yesterday’s post covering the first 6 months in photos, here is the last half of the year! July 2020 – Instead of going to Bluedot Festival, we stayed at home, for the most part. A few more park meet ups, and a sort of gig – live socially distanced music at Tap Social. My photographing abandoned objects picked up pace – as the weather stayed dry, people just started leaving boxes of…

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A Strange Year In Photos

A Strange Year In Photos (Part 1)

One of the online communities I’m part of started a ‘your year in 4 photos’ thread (1 per quarter), whilst selecting mine I realised I’d like to compile a year in more than 4, as only 4 meant leaving out so many favourites. As a photographer and huge music fan, this year has been extra strange. In 2019, in part because I celebrated a special birthday we did trips to Sweden, the Faroe Islands,…