Category Archives: 101 challenges

A Long Week

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…well, it has been.  I was ill, hence my poor internet-world attendance.  The doctor said I had a bad virus and its normal that I still feel as though I’m dying!  And, to top it all off some s***bag fraudster had £500 out of my bank, through PayPal.  But it’s back where it belongs again now.  PayPal incidentally are the best company in the world for customer service, if you ever have money stolen from you, you better wish it’s via PayPal.

What else.  Well from several thousand submissions to my now quite forgettable competition, I have chosen a lucky winner.  I had to employ a large team of monkeys to sort through the many submissions and the winner is………..Sammy Dee!  at Manchester Meanders.  And, no it isn’t weird that she’s also my main commenter here at Manchester’s Artistic Son.  

What did she do to win?

Baked a Souffle, which was one of the challenges I set.  I hope Sammy blogs about this herself, as it was an experience with its ups and downs (that’s a souffle joke)

She designed a Manchester’s Artistic Son T-shirt!  and she is in the process of finishing her colouring book but has come up against the old felt tip nightmare (you know the pen with the cerulean blue barrel which actually draws more like Prussian blue, good for the sea but too dark for the sky).

So Sammy Dee - the prize of a book and a print of one of my photos is winging it’s way across the globe to Manchester, England, Well Done!

Other news.

Cutaway closed and the edits have been sent out to all those accepted.  Sorrys sent out to all those not.  Booo.  We had hundreds of submissions so had to be very selective, it’s a big thanks to everyone who sent stuff.  Next is the layout and the design then we send off to the printers for a proof copy.  Off the back of Cutaway and a few emails I’ve been able to join Structo magazine’s Editorial team this month, which is a real great opportunity.  Structo is a lovely newspaper-style literary magazine which my fellow editor Craig Pay has been published in, and a magazine we admired and referenced when we started Cutaway, its brilliant to see how another magazine operates too.

We had super-successful novelist Jenn Ashworth visit last night at our MA and she was encouraging about blogging, and the whole world of Social media stuff, and off the back of her advice I think I’m going to return to posting a bit more fiction and poetry and a bit less photography.  Over the next couple of weeks I’m thinking you can expect some poems, a short story, some insider thoughts on publishing and editing and some of the same in terms of model photo shoot pics (I’ve got two planned this weekend and a couple over April too.) Oh and the 1st birthday of Manchester’s Artistic Son blog!!

April is going to be another month of analog photography on 365project.org, so expect some funky lomo styles.

 

 

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(My) Challenge Time!!

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So, January is depressing…

And I haven’t had the motivation to do any of my 101 challenges (see tab above for the list) in ages.  Think you could do better?  No, really, could you do better – I’m asking?

I thought I might turn my Project Day Zero Challenge around, and let my readers have a go.  Basically I’ve picked out a handful of my unfulfilled 101 tasks and I challenge YOU to do one (or more) and record it for the purposes of assessment – resulting in a prize (or two)

The 10 Challenges:

3. Have an art exhibition, even if it’s just in your own home

9. Make and encouraging/motivational banner and anonymously put it up

23. Interview someone and write a story/poem about their life/experiences

25. Cook a souffle

26. Make some street Art (I am not encouraging you to break the law)

54. Go on a demonstration/protest and if there isn’t one make one

66. Set off chinese Lanterns

70. List a hundred things that make you happy

74. complete a colouring book

95. Have a T-shirt printed which advertises MY blog (for the hardcore fans)

The Prize:

A 6/8 print posted to you, or handed to you if we are real-life friends (RLFs). You can pick any picture, as long as it fits a standard 6/8 format, from my 365 project, going back over the whole year.

http://365project.org/chewyteeth/365

Also a great collection of short stories: Nobody belongs here more than you, by Miranda July.  One of my favourite writers.  Also posted or handed to you if you’re one of my RLF’s.

What must you do?

Take a challenge or more than one (if anyone achieves all ten they become my favourite person for 2012) and record your completion of it in an entertaining way, if you have a blog or website then make an interesting blog post of it (put the link to it in the comments section below) if not you’ll have to email me your submission – photos and explanation and if you win in this manner I will publish the winning piece on my blog.  I’m not sure about the time scale but I’m thinking of running it till a fornight tomorrow – Sunday 12th February.  That’s tough!

The small print:  Be an email subscriber to Manchester’s Artistic Son (if you email me or post on your blog please make sure it’s clear to me who you are), be as entertaining as you can be, but also properly satisfy one or more of the above challenges.  Be artistic and imaginative, for instance if you just set off Chinese lanterns make sure you make the photos of the challenge beautiful, or alternatively do it from the top of the Empire States Building, for instance.  Don’t get arrested doing any of these things, and if you do….yada yada I’m not to blame.  The submission which made me laugh, smile, cry the most wins.  I would like to see in your exif data (cameras digital info) that the photo has been taken during this period, but if the exif data isn’t present with the picture and you cannot show in the picture that it was done for this purpose then I rely on your honesty.  Please do not send five year old pics of your mother’s souffle.

 My email address is basically the word admin then the little at sign, then manchestersartisticson.com

Whoop! winner to be announced on the blog!

The Mangover (Meat-hangover) Post number 75!

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So I failed.  Challenge 69, I quote ‘Go vegetarian for a month, Ooo this is going to be so hard.’

But now I’m wishing I stuck to it because after visiting Chao-Baby at the Trafford Centre last night I got the most horrible Mangover.  The best way to describe it is a hangover, made of meat.  I belched enough meat vapour to power a balloon and still my stomach was like a drum.  Dreadful.

In other, more interesting news – I received an Alpha II rangefinder, despite sounding like a spaceship – it’s a photo enlarger (to print photos from negatives).  I also picked up a case full of developing equipment (the case was a 1945 demob case that a soldier was given on leaving the army.)  Well 1945 is an estimate, it could have been anytime during national service I guess.  So I’ve just disinfected everything, thrown away all the rotten cardboard and polished all the lenses.  There’s an undeveloped film from 1979 in there which would be interesting to develop. and a heap of weird stuff I’m going to spend the night sorting through. 

I’ve realised, this last month or two, why I met so many nice people during my life – so that I can beg borrow and steal photography equipment from them all now.  I can’t wait to start printing my own black and white in my bedroom at night.  It’s missing some integral part though so I’ll have to trawl the internet first and find out what it is.

Erm, what else?  Reading the cutaway submissions is super fun.  Finding lots of cool work, if you meant to submit and haven’t yet send it in quick because we’re picking now, as we go along.

Also, if anyone saw Sammy Dee’s comments on my last post, about a kind of tutorial, slash lomography trip, slash photo walk in Manchester then climb on board because that actually would be fun. If you saw the comments you might also have seen my admission that I bought too many point-and-shoot, lomo style film cameras and am now selling them. I’m putting them on eBay in batches but I have about ten I’d like to sell with cases for £4-5.  I can post for another £1 I reckon so it’s a cheap deal.  They are the simple, toy-camera type where you roll on the film by the sharp little cog thingy.  But I also have some fancy Olympus ones and some APS ones if anyone is actually a collector of that kind of stuff.   Anyway sales pitch over, email me at admin@manchestersartisticson.com if you fancy one before I sell them on eBay.

Have a nice week – my stuff is submitted to uni, but now I’m empty on the writing front.  Really, no motivation to write for about four weeks now!!  This weekend’s been one of those ‘At least I’ve not got cancer’ type of weekends anyway where things go wrong and I end up doing something self-destructive like watching TV instead of making something worthwhile.  The weather seems to be getting worse again too, and my employment status in January hits an annual low.  *sigh*

Snow!

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This morning was the first day of the Christmas holidays for me!  I woke up pretty early and opened the curtains and….SNOW! I ran round in circles, banging into furniture and knocking over vases until I was tired.  Then I had a sausage butty, jumped in the car and headed off into the woods.  See for me, and everyone below the age of eleven, snow doesn’t inspire hot chocolate in front of the fire, it inspires adventures!

Rivington for three hours was my adventure.  I walked up into the woods, and as I got higher the fog closed in.  It was snowing but the light, big pieces of snow that are very slow falling and don’t just make you wet.  The nicest thing was it was silent and there wasn’t a soul up there.  I walked for maybe an hour until I was totally surrounded by the wilder parts of the moors.  the trees were covered in frost, the ground was layered with untouched snow, the sky was white and all the plants were frozen.  I don’t think the lake was actually frozen over, but it was skinned with snow.  All I could hear were my own footsteps crunching through the snow, or sloshing through the mud.

Nature seemed to not expect to see me up there.  Pheasants, sheep, squirrels and robins seemed to do a double take before they slowly ambled away into the snow.  Maybe their reactions are a bit dulled in bad weather.  It didn’t mean I got any decent shots though, I have the habit of freezing when I see wildlife rather than getting a shot.  Which is what happened when I stumbled onto a path full of deer.  Three or four young deer were standing against a fence, obviously trying to stay out of the wind.  I stood still and even though they at first began to move away, they circled round and came back down towards me.  They were beautiful.  Stupid me clicked my camera on and fired off a couple of shots without checking the exposure, and yes the che-chink of the shutter frightened them all off and the pics were rubbish anyway.  Serves me right for not shooting on automatic.

Anyway, hope you enjoy the pictures (slideshow below) and wrap up warm if you hit the countryside this weekend.  Processing was done in photoshop and pixlr. Comments welcome. PS this is one of my 101 project challenges done – photograph snow.

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A Year in Pictures

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As I write this I’m just two or three pictures from completing my first years 365 project.  So I thought I might look back with nostalgia over the year which pretty much flew by.

December – My equipment consisted of a Panasonic FS4, as big as a medium-sized matchbox, my software included photoshop-7- but really I didn’t know how to use it.  The Robin picture sums up where I was at last December – except it doesn’t I cheekily cropped it and made it brighter this afternoon – he was lost in a patch of empty snow. 

January – I picked this one out of 1.5 gig of pictures because it has a naturally occurring light leak and I grew to love – much to my followers chagrin – such lomography-style flaws on my pictures – often destroying perfectly good pictures with flares and sickly colour tweeks.  This is a macro – using my FS4, on my way to work in the morning light.  Really a type of photo which dominated the first half of my project.

 February: Well over 2 gig of photos taken in February – practice makes perfect.  Still using my FS4, with a growing knowledge of photoshop and some lovely bright days – my photos develop.  Countryside still dominates, and ‘pretty’ scenes.

March - I picked this photo of the Bridgewater canal for March. 

It represents two things.  I began to gather followers on the 365 project website – most of them from the dominions, more recently known as Canada and Australia.  And I became interested in portraying my locality - and what was for me – its fascinating history.  Industrial architecture, cotton industry, mining, bad housing – to represent the North of England to the world.  I also began to understand photoshop.  At 3 gig of photos taken, March might represent my career high!

April

  April I discovered HDR, and a few other bits of software.  Looking back I think I began to lose interest a little in the project.  My FS4 was still going strong but 1.5 gig of photos and most of that heavy processing and duplicate images – The work was hotting up on my MA so I began spending more time writing.

 May

 May saw a miserable holiday in Marrakech.  If I needed any more proof that I loved where I lived, and in fact – that it is the best place to live, in the world – this was it.  Osama bin Laden ‘bought it’ as they used to say, much to America’s enjoyment – and I cowered in a Muslim country which smelt of wee, trying not to look American.

June:

 

 

 Oh to be in England…or Wales – where this was taken.  2.2 gig in my June file says that I got about a bit and took lots of pictures.  I really got to grips with Oleneo HDR software, which is why I picked this picture to show.  HDR does fancy things with the highlights and darks to make a really super picture (RSP) which is what it should be called.  I was still loving my local area and using the Panasonic FZ7, a step up to an SLR style superzoom.  My FS4 sadly had passed on to the scrap heap in the sky.

July:

July represents a change in my photography.  I began going into Manchester more and really discovering what a great city that was.  Armed with my FZ7 and various friends who’d agree to trawl around the place I snapped buildings, railway stations, busy squares and trams.  This panorama is a hugin-HDR picture of Piccadilly station.

August:

Who can forget August?  It seems hard now to believe the men of North London

were taking up arms and marching the streets during the night to make up for the sheer lack of enthusiasm the police initially showed as our cities were invaded…invaded!  If I hadn’t learnt to love Manchester this year then I would now.  Apart from my politics momentarily veering over to the right with shouts of ‘Hang them all!’ ringing around my house – I also made a habit of getting into town once a week to take some photos and have some lunch and a general mooch around.  Joining book clubs, writers groups, writers courses and a walkers organisation in Manchester this year also encouraged me to get in as much as possible.  This panorama and the one above were done on hugin software which stitches four or five pictures together to give this format.  August though only saw 500mb of pictures taken and marks a low point in pictures.

September:

 The music festival in the Northern Quarter – Like August not many pictures taken, but since I had a camera phone – new this month – I was able to snap whenever the desire took me.  The 600mbs I did take were processed through pixlr-o-matic and photoshop.

 

October:

 

 

In October I did two things, I asked for volunteers on my Facebook page – looking for people who’d let themselves be victim to my photography.  Basically I was tiring of buildings and streets.  Heritage has had its day, there is only so many mine shafts and terrace streets.  It even felt as though I was running out of Manchester scenes.  I wanted more journalistic pictures, more street scenes full of people, more portraits and exciting things.  At over 2 gig of pictures I was back on form - the reason:  Well I had a dream I owned a Canon DSLR, and when I woke up I was sad…so I went on ebay and bought one!  Yey.

November:

I know you only saw this picture last week, but it represents November.  The first of my facebook volunteers – and a change in tack for me.  It’s tough taking portraits and people shots, or I found at least – it requires a bit more bravery and quicker thinking.  I began shooting on manual this month (the success of the whole year really – going from a point and shoot compact to shooting manual on a DSLR)  I purchased 4 lenses this month and dug a couple more out of my own film camera collection and bought a Pentax ring adapter so that I could use them all on my Canon.  My camera bag became quite huge and I felt as though I finally knew what I was doing.  12 months have gone by and maybe you can’t see my progress from these 12 but if you could browse the sometimes huge - sometimes not - files on my hard drive you’d see that my output has changed.  I have learned to not overwhelm my pictures with post-processing, and I am looking for light effects and compositions which I know will make a good picture.  I’ve taken 2.5 gig of pictures this month with my Canon

Feel free to take a look at my other 350 odd pictures in what has become a diary of the year.  This is another challenge ticked off the old 101 project too.  Feel free to comment below if you have any feedback.  http://365project.org/chewyteeth/365

The Portrait Challenge!

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(A second attempt – WordPress you swines, I don’t ask you to publish a portion of what I wrote, but all of it!)

Well winter is here – how do I know?  Well my car breaks down (last week I turned the ignition key with forty-five minutes to go before I had to be at work – six miles away – and it sounded like an angry donkey remonstrating.  I subsequently ran back to the house, threw on more suitable gear and pelted it on my bicycle.  I got there in time but spent the rest of the day sweating and wheezing.)  Also I know winter is here because I get an awful cough, always.  Oh and the final indicator that the bad weather has arrived – our bathroom becomes mouldy.  So basically things work less well (car-me-bathroom ventilation).

If you’re looking for the upside, it’s here:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I also completed one of my challenges last weekend, number 18, portrait photography.  My model and I wandered Manchester in the quickly declining light and I tried my hand, feeling like a real beginner.  People photos always look more interesting than buildings and streets – and equally they require a bit more thought.  I shall get there, but I think this set of pics shows it was my first time.  Feel free to comment on the pics, and lovers of mince pies feel free to wax lyrical.  I would have posted some writing but I’m at a schism – I’m reading lots and learning lots and hopefully in the near future I’m going to apply it in some wonderful shiny and sparkly way and create something superb.  That’s the theory.  Thanks for reading.

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Mmmm Sunday – soup, fresh bread and a good book…

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This photo serves two purposes.  First to show me awarding my twentieth email-subscriber her prize for subscribing.  Okay, there’s a bit of nepotism here, Hannah’s a friend, but she was twentieth.  Other red letter days will be my 2000th view, coming soon, and maybe I’ll give out a pressy to my fiftieth email-subscriber, which at this rate will be somtime during 2039. ;) (the picture Hannah recieved was from my mixed bag of sketchbook pages from the last 10 years.)

Second purpose is showcasing that superb beard, my month long growing challenge having finished I trimmed it aggressively.  October-November feels like a period of some great firsts and exciting projects, so much so I’m surprised how little of my 101 project I’ve completed in that time.  The writing is coming on, and I’m trying to post more new prose and poetry, so hope you guys are enjoying that – scroll down older posts to catch up.  This week there’s a board meeting and big discussions regarding the cutaway magazine project.  Launch for the website is December 1st so you’ll be hearing more about that.  Also big things on the photo front, I’ve been focusing on my several new lenses, manual settings and experimenting with different subject matter.  Only 19 photos left before I finish a year of photos over on 365project.  I’ll be sticking round for another year since I’ve only lately got to grips with buttons and dials etc.  Also a portrait project in the coming weeks will be another challenge ticked off my 101 list.

Thanks for reading and have a good week.  Some dates for the diary:

If you missed Manchester xmas lights turn on last Thursday, like I did, then Bolton’s will be on the 24th in Victoria Square

Christmas villages (all 8 of them) will be opening this Thursday so empty your piggy banks (and your bank accounts and remortgage your houses) and head down for some mulled wine.  My advice, avoid Saturdays unless you want your pockets picked and to be rammed constantly by people’s prams.

…Tick it off the list

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At the end of a sixty nine hour week I’m afraid the most I can come up with is a quick update about the day zero project which I began in August.

I saw my intimate gig!  Emmy the Great and Stealing Sheep at the Deaf Institute in Manchester. The only photo I took was dreadful, but the music and the venue were lovely.

I attended a beer festival.  Well I worked one really but hey…I’m exhausted either way but I was the only person in the place who didn’t touch a drop for the seven days!  Seriously, I even  farmed out the tasting of the stuff I was selling to others so I could advise customers. 

Something about drinking in that kind of environment doesn’t appeal to me.  I really have begun to link alcohol with food, sure get home from work on a hot summers afternoon and drink a beer while picking at a few olives, some crusty bread and a selection of cheeses.  Maybe a glass of wine with a nice thick, bloody steak.  But drinking for the sake of drinking?  Drinking and making notes?  Perhaps I shouldn’t be so critical of something which gives me work once a year but I’ve seen some several thousand very drunk people over the last three or four days and I have never been so happy to not follow the crowd.  You can see some other pictures from the event here.

Number 28, grow tomatoes.  I’ll let myself tick it off the list even though apart from one the tomatoes didn’t turn red

I bought a new camera, surprising myself with a stupidly expensive Canon which I really regret now.  Something happened whereby I lost my mind for a couple of hours and went into some kind of consumer-zone and when I came out I owned a Canon DSLR.  Now I have to think of something else to buy when I win the lottery. 

I’m going to change a few more of my challenges around.  I really want to start taking more pictures of people instead of buildings and landscapes, and I have a few willing volunteers, so I’m going to make a portrait-photography challenge, maybe instead of the stupid idea to have a spa treatment.

And I’m determined to see the Blackpool illuminations this year as I haven’t seen them since 1988.

 

101 things I love (part of a Day Zero Project)

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I surprised myself with this list.  It’s nice to remind yourself what you love, or at least like now and again and lists can do that, especially when its a list of 101 things, which is pretty hard to make.  Mostly its locations, foods and cultural stuff.  I know a couple of people had this as one of their project zero challenges (why does this project sound so apocalyptic?) but said they wouldn’t publish the list when it was done.  I can only imagine they had private ‘Loves’.  I’m not that sophisticated.  Give me a pot of tea and a scone and sit me on top of a hill in the Lake District and I’ll be as happy as I possibly can be – it appears.  Also, aside from more spelling mistakes than a YAHOO news article, you might notice its a bit of a girly list.  Pastel coloured bunting, cakes, a hatred off football.  Hey, I’m being honest, what can I say?  Guy-stuff is a bit two-dimensional.  I’ve stuck a couple of beautiful ladies in to even the balance a bit.

Anyway, at least it’s another challenge ticked off, next week I do * An intimate gig, * A beer festival, * Buy a camera, and I’ll probably blog an update in a couple of weeks.

Oh, before I forget you can see my latest published effort here, literally the shortest thing I ever wrote…in about a minute one afternoon when I saw the call for submissions.  Read the other stuff on the website, it’s better than mine, and its a cool idea for a journal.

A hundred and one things I love, one of my 101 in 1001 challenges, AKA Project Day Zero.

  1. Studio Ghibli animation
  2. Finding great stuff in the yellow-sticker reduced isle of the supermarket (cheap skate)
  3. Real fires in pubs when it’s cold outside
  4. Coffee and croissants for breakfast
  5. Great conversation and laughs
  6. The end of a long hike when you visit the pub and you’re aching all over
  7. Fish and chips with curry sauce (with really crispy batter)
  8. Cats, especially purring, except when they use their litter trays and stink out the house.
  9. Bruce Parry
  10. The end of the work day
  11. Manhattan 1979 Dir Woody Allen
  12. Salty crisps and cold beer in the sun
  13. Juicy Piel di sapo melon in season
  14. Children’s laughter
  15. Children’s silly questions
  16. Meeting people from other countries
  17. Fillet steak, medium rare with chips (I had porterhouse in NYC, amazing!)
  18. My Hyundai Accent 2004-2008 RIP best car I ever owned
  19. New York, specifically the viewing deck of the Rockefeller and the beach at Coney Island
  20. Arezzo, Tuscany – Italy (especially the park on the hill)
  21. Mixed pattern pastel bunting
  22. Miranda July, artist filmmaker, genius, writer
  23. The Scottish artist Peter Howson
  24. The Lake District
  25. The English film Director Shane Meadows
  26. The common discussion had most weekends – “If I won the lottery I would…”
  27. Manchester
  28. Hattie Watson’s looks
  29. Bolton food market (really its award-winning)
  30. Libraries
  31. Newsreel footage from the First World War
  32. North Wales (lived there for 18 months)
  33. 365 project
  34. Mist
  35. Country Tea shops
  36. Ethiopian Coffee
  37. Scones with clotted cream, strawberry jam, butter and a pot of tea
  38. Macaroni Cheese, even from a tin, creamy goodness (in fact everything with cheese in the title)
  39. My laptop
  40. Amazon
  41. Mountain biking in the rain
  42. History (Modern British)
  43. Post, I fricking love getting post!
  44. The American actor James Stewart
  45. Cotton mills and coal mines and elements of our past that survive
  46. Climbing Snowdon, and being at the peak
  47. Collage
  48. Photoshop
  49. ebay
  50. Photography
  51. The Arndale world food court
  52. Advice that works
  53. My Panasonic Lumix FZ7
  54. Cooking for friends
  55. Manchester City Art Gallery cafe coffee
  56. Bacon, streaky-smoked
  57. Still have a soft spot for those plastic Airfix model planes, not made one for a while though
  58. That moment when the plane speeds up to take off and you’re pressed into your seat.
  59. Writing stories
  60. The smell of gorse bush when it’s in flower and the flowers smell of coconut
  61. Writing poems
  62. Drawing
  63. The Langdale Valley
  64. Raymond Carver’s Stories
  65. Puccini  
  66. Painting
  67. Pies, in fact, anything made of pastry
  68. Sandwiches, specifically club sandwiches
  69. Brittany, Northern France
  70. Laura Groves…I mean her music…ahem – Laura Grove’s music 
  71. Paint
  72. My phone (oh what a cliché)
  73.  Black tea, no milk or sugar
  74. Pickled gherkins
  75. Yorkshire
  76. The smell of fabric conditioner on laundry on the washing line
  77. Risotto, with lots of butter
  78. Home grown veg
  79. The smell of smoke in Autumn, and the smell of bonfire night specifically
  80. The word Subsequently
  81. Family, friends, life blah blah blah, the usual
  82. When I’m gardening and blowing the dew off grass and it makes rainbows
  83. Children’s art and how they explain paintings which make no sense
  84. The poem The Highwayman, by Alfred Noyes
  85. People who hate football, yey!
  86. Iron and Wine especially the song on the link
  87. Southport
  88. Eva Cassidy
  89. Tempura fried vegetables
  90. Youtube
  91. Macro photography
  92.  Toasted white bread and butter, and the smell of bread toasting
  93. Frank Sinatra
  94. Douglas Dunn – Scottish poet
  95. When children notice it’s snowing outside and get into a crazed frenzy
  96. Photo days (which means trips with friends and cameras to somewhere new)
  97. Jeanloup Sieff French photographer
  98. Dracula (the book not the character)
  99. Tattoos (on other people not on me)
  100. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
  101. My blog!

Feel free to link to your list in the comments, or make an impromptu top 5, or agree/disagree with my list (disagree comments will more than likely be deleted, this isn’t a democracy!)

 

Miserable week for Project Day Zero

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I’m back at my term time job which is in Higher Education, but still gardening in my spare time.  I’ve stopped writing!  But started back with my MA classes?!? I think I have the ideas in my mind, but I want to have a break, a pause in my output, so I can restart and feel like I’ve changed.

 So project day zero wise…(if you don’t know what I’m talking about find my list of 101 challenges on the tabs above)

I’ve grown a beard…(attractive and complete with white/grey/ginger camouflage by the looks of things) it’s been more bushy than in the picture but I’ve tidied it up.  What else?  I’ve watched a couple of films, Tales from Earthsea and Whisper of the Heart, which of course were brilliant.  I’ve seen all the Studio Ghibli at my university now so I’ll have to start buying them.

I’ve seen the Tourist with Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp, which was so dreadful I can’t explain, I was purposefully holding my breath so I’d lose consciousness.  It was like watching Fashion TV.  Manhattan (1979), which I’ve seen before and is my favourite film, and I Love You New York, which is a lovely collection of shorts about New York.  So that’s a few off the list.  In book terms I’ve read a few off the infamous list of classics, The French Lieutenants woman which was horrid, really ghastly.  And a Russian novel and some short stories none of which lived up to the modern bestsellers I’m currently reading.

I’ve bundled up everything I don’t need and taken it to a charity shop:

Here’s my shirts, all off to the shop, which is more significant than you realise, these are my ‘teaching shirts’ from when I used to teach High School, so by getting rid of them (some still spattered with paint [I was an art teacher]) I’m kind of saying I’m not going back to that.  There was nothing wrong with teaching, the kids were lovely, and when I’m rich and famous and a super-ace novelist I’ll go back to working with kids for sure.  It’s teachers I don’t like, and I didn’t want to be one.  I didn’t like the shouting, the forcing people to spit out chewing gum, the staff room gossip, the politics…none of it.  So these shirts have represented my lack of faith in my future, and the chance I’d slip back into teaching because I’d run out of other options and now they’re moving on to a new home.  Also lots of other things I don’t need are moving on.  It’s tough but invigorating to clear out things you haven’t used.

For next month I’ll be able to tick off the beer festival challenge, the gig challenge, maybe the vegetarian challenge but I have a feeling November might be better for that one.  Also I plan to read a  few more classics and watch more movies.  The zombie walk looks like it isn’t going to happen, and there’s a few more challenges I’d rather replace with other things, but I don’t know if that’s allowed.

Finally Sammy Dee, at Manchester Meanders, has been shortlisted for a blog award in the Manchester blog awards and you don’t have to sign up to vote just click the box, follow the link: http://www.manchesterblogawards.com/the-shortlist