Final day of 2023

The final day of 2023 has arrived. It's been a fairly typical Sunday so far, although this evening is New Year's Eve so something unexpected could still happen.

Betwixtmas this year has comprised of a fair amount of rain, dog walking, visits to the cinema in Berkhamsted, a trip to see my parents, a trip to drop my son off to university so he can attend a NYE party. Also a lot of food, less reading than I thought I would do and less watching streaming services than I thought I'd get up to as well.

Here's to a good 2024!

Update on everything

 Lots of things happening since my last posting here. I’ll try to give a summary.

My Goodreads reading challenge this year has been given a boost by my joining a book club. It meets once a month in the pub however is currently on a slight hiatus. Have read some interesting novels mostly in the fantasy or sci-if realms, which is the theme of the club (there are other themes but that is the one I chose to join).

I am still doing the DJing at a community internet station, although I have just dropped one of the shows due to it being too much (volunteering is great but when it takes up so much free time there is a balance to be struck).

I attended the London MCM Comic-Con in May and took loads of photos. I set up a new Instagram account purely for my cosplay photography. I’m going again at the end of October.

I attended The Photography Show at the NEC in September and traded in my Canon DSLR and lenses for a new Sony camera. It’s a mirrorless blogging camera similar to my a5000 but with a better spec. I haven’t used it much at the moment, but will be taking it to Comic Con and hope to use it a lot there.

Some sad news, we had to say goodbye to our beloved cats this year. One died in May and the other in September. It was very sad but they were very ill and the kindest thing was to put them down. I do miss having them about, they were timid and shy but were a big presence in our home.

My son is back at university, having been home all summer with us. He needed to retake a module by doing an exam, he passed and we’re very relieved he did. My daughter passed her driving test a few days ago.

Like I said, a lot has happened recently.

Storms Dudley and Eunice hit UK

This week I've been in one of those strange holiday bubbles, where I have a week off work and have not planned trips out or the weather hasn't been very good. It's been a fairly poor week weather-wise, Wednesday and Thursday apart. I did visit my parents on Wednesday, which was good, the threat of a storm was always there however and the wind did get much stronger in the afternoon but thankfully I was back by the time things got worse.

I haven't been out with my cameras as much as I'd hoped this week. The weather has been quite wet and my mirrorless cameras are not weather-sealed. I do have two DSLRs which have weather-sealed bodies but the lenses are not weather-sealed, so I didn't want to risk taking them out. Plus the fact that I didn't particularly know where to take them even if I did feel like going out. I spent an hour or so out with my Sony a5000 yesterday. I bought it as a vlogging camera mainly but I also took some still photographs with it near the canal.

The weather today is particularly bad in terms of the winds. There are gusts of up to 100mph in some parts and there is lots of travel disruption.

This week I have watched a few TV shows that I wouldn't normally have been able to watch, so at least I have done that.

Mama (2013)

Since last night was Halloween I thought it was time to watch a horror film and I recorded this one off The Horror Channel recently. It features a couple of young children, two little girls who are left alone in the woods by their father who has committed a murder. The father is taken by a sinister presence, “mama” and the girls are left alone with it. Their uncle uses up all the money he inherited from his brother to pay trackers to find the girls. The girls are eventually found after 5 years but are feral. They become the subject of a psychiatrist intent on finding the truth behind the thing they call “mama”. The psychiatrist seeks to set up the uncle, his girlfriend Annabel and the two girls up in a house used for therapeutic rehabilitation. It is there that the entity known as “mama” reappears for the girls. Over time the elder girl becomes more trusting of her uncle and Annabel, the younger girl doesn’t because she can’t communicate as well, however she and Annabel eventually bond. Due to various happenings the story behind mama emerges and it’s a ghost story about a woman who loses her baby due to locals chasing her to the edge of a cliff.

The film is reasonably well made and acted, Jessica Chastain portrays Annabel well. The two little girls do well in their roles too. It builds suspense quite well but I felt let down at the end of it. The visuals might have seemed impressive in 2013 on the big screen but didn’t do much for me, watching on a normal TV screen at normal volume (headphones actually).

The Pause

 It’s been a while since I last posted something. The reason for that is probably all about time. It’s also the fact that I am watching a lot less television and film. It’s been a trend for a couple of years now. I have increased the time I spend with music and YouTube and reduced the time watching films for myself.

Other things have been happening in my life, including becoming a community radio disk jockey or DJ, to use the familiar. This is taking up time that I would probably spend with either watching films or on my video game system.

There has also been the fact that for the last two years there has been a dog in our lives and while this is a joy, it means there are daily walks and that life is a little more constrained than it was.

So, given all of this, I have prioritised things and this blog has become a lower priority. The only reason I’m able to post this is that I am on annual leave for a week now and have a bit of time to think.

I’m not closing the blog and walking away. I will come back to this but for now, my posts are not going to be at the same frequency as they were in the past.

Second dose done

 It's the end of May Bank Holiday weekend and the Sunday of the weekend, which means the good news is that I don't have to work tomorrow. This morning I did our weekly shop at Tesco and this afternoon I have had my second dose of the Astra Zeneca vaccine. I received a text a couple of days ago that said if I had booked my second jab I could have it earlier than planned. So I had to cancel the original and could then book an earlier date, so that's what I did, nearly two weeks sooner than it was originally scheduled. I think the NHS has done a marvellous job with the vaccine roll-out. It was all so efficient and organised. Now that I'm fully vaccinated I feel like the life that was put on hold can continue on as normal. I just need my wife to receive her second dose and then it will really feel like getting back to normal again.

Yesterday there was a protest march in London about vaccine passports and the restrictions placed on us like mandatory facemasks and social distancing. They say the media and government are lying and that there is no virus. My own view is that the virus is real and is deadly enough to want to do everything to stamp it out. The people protesting are selfish and putting everyone at risk.

First dose done

Miraculously, not long after my last post I was sent a text inviting me to book my Covid vaccination appointment. It didn’t take long for the short wait to be over and last Friday I drove to Wing and it was there that I received my jab. It felt like a little scratch, not painful and I was given a card and that was it. It was all over in 15 minutes and since, over the next day or so, I felt a little more tired than usual but now I feel like normal again. I do have a tender arm but only like a bruise, not a constant aching.

I received the Oxford Astra Zeneca vaccine, the one that was being questioned in Europe for a day but worries seem to have been allayed, just scaremongers. I know that there are people who are anti-lockdown and anti-vaccine, although I don’t know if they are two opinions that have a significant overlap or not. I can’t understand them.

My next dose is due sometime in June, it’s been booked. On the day I had my first dose, it was apparently a record day for vaccinations - Boris Johnson even had his injection on the same day. Not in the same location as I had mine though!