what are everyone’s plans for summer? I think we should have some kind of a gathering, so write on here to say when you’re free. :]

I’m working weekdays at the mo as a cleaner at a school in penn, which is as fun as it sounds. howeverrr, in two weeks the school breaks up for summer so no more cleaning for soph. :] then I’ll be going up to warwick to sing at the graduation ceremonies (rosie, this means you get to hear us chamber choir lot singing the ‘warwick fanfare’ – it’s horrendous and has fake latin in it, so enjoy that!), then I’m free for a week again, then I’m going caravanning in wales with a group of uni friends, thennnn I’m free again, and thennnn I’m going to peruuuuu!

which is VERY exciting. :]

I’m going over there for a month (catching three separate planes to get there, which is the part I’m most nervous about currently :S), to do conservation work in the amazon forest. should be pretty great. :] I also get to do a little nip over to machu picchu while I’m there, which is equally exciting. so, I guess I’ll do a blog about that when I get back! I’m sure there will be lots to say and squeal about. like monkeys and parrots and pumas and things.

in the meantime, I’m keeping myself busy reading about a bazillion books for next year, and doing this online course in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (ie. TEFL). I’m hoping to be able to use the qualification I get from that to go and teach abroad after uni. fingers crossed. :]

so, that’s all my news really! let’s do summery things like picnics and barbeques. discuss.

over and out x

I had a splendid trip to Arran again back in January, there’s photos on Facebook. And then after an exciting bout of family illness problems I had my work cut out for me with university this semester!

Still, my major project has come along fairly nicely:

SEE – Sneak Preview from John Kingsnorth on Vimeo.

Crikey, its strange to think I’ve handed in my last ever photography project…

And now we’re in the mad rush of Degree Show preparations! And they overlap! Which is exciting and hectic and daft.

So IF anyone wants to seeee the shows, which maybe we could do a nice gathering around, it is in Cambridge from the 3rd – 11th June. I am most free on the 5/6/7th for that one.

The show is also in LONDON and is called ‘Seeing the Ordinary’ (I designed the website for the show heeeere > http://www.seeingtheordinary.co.uk Woot woot.) We’re on there from the 11th – 14th June, and I’m invigilating at some point, so maybe we could meet up and the end of that and do a food, or something. Not sure on the exact date yet though.

OTHERWISE I think a meeting-up with punting is long overdue, so come to Cambridge! Provided I am unemployed, any time from the 17th June to the end of the month I will be doing very little =]

I have been doing a little bit of job-hunting, but its hampered by the craziness of exhibition preparation at the moment! There may be a slight chance of buggering off to Zambia for a while (madness?). We’ll see!

Hope everyone is well and fine and I look forward to hearing from you all again.

p.s. Robyn, your wedding photos look splendid, must be fairly chuffed with them =]

Edit: Oh yes, I went to Stockholm in February too. It was bloody cold. And we walked over the lakes. Because they had, like, ice on them, omg. It was cool, photos on facebook :]

GOOD LUCK everyone for 2010, with whatever you’re up to during it. Hopefully see folks alltogether again in Easterly times (epic final deadlines (for those who have them) depending D:)

Well I’m finally in ridiculously-busy-work-mode after much time of demotivation John is back in action. ‘Dissertation’ due in for about 3weeks and I’m 1,000 words off the limit. Hoping to finish that this week and then work on editing and refining, which I think it’ll need a lot of! Otherwise I’ve spent a number of hours on the London Underground, faffing around trying to be ‘arty’. Luckily my lecturers seem suitably impressed by all the non-sense I’m spouting about my work and intentions, so all is well. Done a bit of astrophotography as well, as a sideline to the project. Other than that, I’ve been roped into teaching support for the 2nd year photographers and their web-design. Who needs teachers with qualifications after all? =]

Since I have no interesting news, the main point of this blog is to start pre-empting the arrival of Christmassy holiday time, and ponder when people are returning from uni / when people are free from work?

Meeting ups must ensue!

Magic and win,

John

Well it’s been a while since I posted, but to be honest not a lot has happened to talk about! Still I thought I’d check in to let you know I was still alive =] I’m still plodding along with the photo-a-day project, which is more exciting than my penultimate photography project to be quite honest. I’m also trying to write my research project which is slowly plodding along, I’m just passed the 1k words barrier, just 5k left for my semi-dissertaion =] Astronomising is much more fun though, so I’m out whenever it’s a clear night, lots to see up there.

This Sunday is my 10k run for cancer research! Blimey it’s come up quick, and training has suffered since returning to uni. Also my housemate who’s running with me is just recovering from some kind of flu, so we shalln’t be running it at world-record pace. Still, if you can spare a couple of pennies in sponsorship I’m sure the CRUK folk would be much obliged. I know I will be anyway =]

Hope everyone is well,

ttfn

So yeah, everything’s fine so far and that’s all there is to say really ^^ I have no internet in my accommodation but we’re doing our best to sort something out… most practical solution would seem to be buying a key (?) so that we can access the school’s internet ( or I think that’s what it does anyway…). If anyone has any advice about this, that would be awesome. COUGHJohnCOUGH. Unfortunaely we can’t get a router because our accom is actually within the school and apparently it’s not allowed. And there’s no wifi. So yeah, help please would be grand if anyone can suggest anything

France is HOT. I know I’m on the mediterranean and everything but I really didn’t expect it to be quite so summery here in October! It’s great, I’m getting a tan already! The town I’m living in is very nice, though a bit quiet and there’s not much to do in the evenings (though there is an Irish pub!). I think we just need to explore a bit to find out that kind of thing. During the day it’s very nice here, there are plenty of shops with everything you might need – although it turns out the French really don’t like to work that much. Absolutely everywhere (apart from cafes etc) close for lunch between 12:30 and 2pm, and on a Sunday nothing is open at all apart from, again, eateries. But the people at the eateries seem to like to make it very clear that they do not want to be there, and can be quite rude. That’s the French I suppose!

I haven’t started teaching yet, and don’t really know yet anything to do with my timetable etc. I have about a week of observation and then I think I begin classes sometime next week or the week after. And then a few days after that it’ll be half term – whey!

So, I should pop off now. Hope everyone is having a great time doing what they’re doing :] A bientot!

I would say that it’s because nothing has really happened. Which is sort of true, I suppose, but here goes anyway. A random assortment of things that I have done recently.

The exhibition we put on went very well =] The website I put together (<< looky looky) seems to have survived without breaking (a minor miracle). More importanty the private view was a roaring success. Although we did drink most of the wine and beer before it actually began. So in general all our work was very well received! So that was all rather excellent, and very good fun to organise, in hindsight.

We’ve had a swap of housemates in our house. Someone moved out and has been replaced by someone I met on the Arran trip. We were all slightly horrified to see cascades of mould running down the walls behind our ex-housemate’s cupboards. How he’s been living in such a mouldy hole of a room for a year I really don’t know! Anyway, thanks to some rather wonderful Detol action, the walls are now clean and the room is very fresh. Now she just has to put up with living in a house with four boys for a year =] Poor soul.

I got a lil’ remote control plane which is ridiculously fun. Do you still have yours Toby?

Finished the uni year and got my results a few days ago, I managed to average 70.38 so just scraping a 1st for my FdA Pro. Photography (curses that it’s not a real degree anyway…) =] This means that all of my BA is marked just on what I do next year, no marks are carried over. So next year is going to be pretty damn stressful I think xD

I should be writing drafts of my ‘research project’ (we’re not allowed to call it a dissertation, because it’s NOT apparently.) but I just haven’t gotten round to it… I’ll start soon… once I’ve decied what to do…

Just come back from a family holiday in the Forest of Dean. Pretty good as far as family holidays go =] I dragged the parents out on a bike ride. Oh and there was a place called Puzzlewood, which was amazing. It’s a very very LOTRy forest, all gnarly trees, and there’s wooden bridges, and chasms in the rock, because it was an open cast mine. Very cool indeed. If you like trees. And rocks. And moss. And I do! So bplpl.

Now I’m back off visiting Cambridge for the weekend, but looking forward to the Quasar fest next Sunday! Hopefully seee you all theere? And when else are people around for some sort of coffee-themed gathering? Or house-centred gathering?

Have fun, folks =]

I don’t like briniging bad news, but well, I’ve fractured the index finger of my right hand. Apparently it’s a tiny fracture, but I may have increased the swelling as I had a two hour exam the next day…On a saturday! Extremely unethical. The irony is that I fractured my finger right outside the Brookes Business school library, where I was headed for a revision session. grrrrrrrrrrrrr, as Toby would say.

The annoying thing is that I now can’t drive or hold things properly and it starts aching when I write. I was guttered whenI realised I won’t be able to have a quasar fest until its a bit better , so I’m sending it lots of positive brain waves .

Hope to see you all soon anyway, although I’m in Cornwall next week, but back on the 30th. Hugs to you all xx

I have now finished my first degree. There’s a funny thought. It certainly went out with a ‘phhwut’ instead of a ‘bang’. But with all the work handed in, all I can do now is wait for results and begin pondering my research project (we don’t actually do a disseration, :/ so who knows where the Hons in my BA Hons will come from?).

As I write this I can hear the girly screams of one housemate being beaten at Halo downstairs, and the undead moans of Nazi Zombies being shot at from next door. It seems video games have consumed the house entirely.

Anyway, I am not totally unoccupied now, we managed to get the university to give us a degree show! They offered us gallery space in the toilets, but when we threatened to take the matter higher we were offered the gallery instead. Although the juxtaposition in the toilets between the STI informational posters and platinum printed delicate flowers would have been quite emotive, I’m sure.

I got myself into designing the website for the exhibition, which was rather a mistake considering how much time it took away from doing my projects, but it’s nearly finished now: Exposure37 Exhibition Website.

Can’t really think of much else that’s going on here really. I’m hungry, lunch time, ttfn everyone.

Well,

Where to begin? First of all, I want to say that I had the most wonderful time in Paris at the weekend. The weather on Saturday was fantastic. I was on the top of the Eiffel tower in just a t-shirt and a baggy short sleeved jumper, it was so warm. It was a little colder on Sunday but we still enjoyed a tour of Paris on one of those open top buses and it was a great way to do a bit of sight seeing. We visited the Notre Dame and also the Louvre (although I could easily have spent longer in both places!).

But the best bit was on Saturday evening. To set the scene: I had been told that the trip was as a result of a buy one get one free offer on lastminute.com. My sister Adele and her friend Paula had been sent an email saying that if one couple paid for travel, one night’s accomodation and a meal that another could get it all totally free. We only had two weeks notice but it was enough time and the best bit was that Damian and I only had to take spending money because everything else was paid for.

Fast forward to Satuday night. We got a taxi from the hotel (with my excellent French skills coming to the fore with the driver!) to the Seine as the meal was going to be on board a boat. We had all dressed up a bit as it was our first time in Paris and we wanted to make an effort but none of us, or so I thought, expected it to be that posh because it had been a last minute deal. When we got there, it was amazing. All the tables were laid out beautifully, the lighting was perfect and there was a live band and a singer. The food was lovely. I had scallops with leek and truffles for my starter followed by sea bass, a cheese board and a chocolate praline dessert. Just before the main course, Damian pulled a little box out of his jacket pocket, presented me with a beautiful diamond ring and asked my to marry him! And I said yes!

So, we are now officially engaged and getting married in the spring next year. Afterwards, I realised how many signs there had been that he would propose but it was still a total surprise. For example, as soon as I heard about the  ‘deal’ (which of course didn’t exist and Damian had spent months planning it and paying for it!!), I immediately pointed out that Damian had always wanted to be the first to take me to Paris and I thought he would object to somebody else doing it instead but he seemed strangley compliant! Also, he was really uptight and, at times, grumpy when we were travelling there on Saturday to the point when I snapped at him to lighten up. Now, I understand he was just nervous. It was also really sweet to learn that he had booked tickets in advance for us to get into the Louvre to avoid queueing, only for us to find out that it is free entry for eveyone on the first Sunday of the month! Still, the tickets didn’t have a date on so we can use them another time.

So, that was my weekend and we are both very happy now. I hope everything is going equally well for everyone else.

xx