Dreaming...

What was supposed to be a couple of days off after my course is rapidly turning into a week... there seems to be so much else to do that I haven't even had time to update my CV, let alone start applying for jobs. I have seen a few possible ones - one of them is in Scarborough. I'd love to go to Scarborough, but it's not residential and I'm not sure the hours I'd be working in the job would make it financially viable to rent a room.

I hate the way that everything depends on money. I know that it's so much part of our society that it's fairly impossible to get away from it. But it seems somehow ridiculous that so many people spend hours typing away in offices that they don't really want to be in, simply in order to get some numbers added to their name, so that they can swap the numbers for shiny things like new houses/cars/shoes/digital cameras.

I think I'd like to go and live on some kind of community farm, with hens and vegetable plots, where everybody worked outside and went for walks to see the beauty of creation, and in the evenings we would swap languages and tell each other stories, and we'd always welcome strangers, and the whole way of life would be a quiet worship to God. We could have a library with books and CDs and computers, and take turns to do the laundry and the washing up and lead prayers. And anyone who didn't have anywhere to go could come and join us.

This is just my dream. I think there might be places a bit like it. But would I really enjoy all that cooking and laundry and digging and hard work as much as my imaginings make me think?

With the grace of God, I hope so.

Making a pinhole

Paca and I spent yesterday creating a pinhole to attach to the front of an SLR camera (in the morning) and taking lots of shots with it (in the afternoon). He would have been at work, but he'd pulled a muscle in his back at the weekend, and it was still hurting too much to sit down for very long. But filing a piece of tin can to the correct shape, superglueing it to an old lens mount and sealing it with putty seemed to be ok (with plenty of standing-up breaks, that is).

Of course, I'm now desperate to get the film developed. I've got no idea whether any of the shots will come out. We tried four or five different exposures each time, just to experiment, to try and work out the best way to use our new lens. (We both keep wanting to call it a 'pinhole lens', but of course technically it isn't, because the whole point of a pinhole camera is that you can take photographs without using a lens... but it's hard to know what else to call it!)

I still favour film photography over digital. Digital definitely has its advantages - like my being able to publish this lovely photograph of the pinhole attachment without developing anything - but film somehow feels more real. Maybe it's also because I understand the process a little better. It's amazing, almost magical, to think of the light reacting with the film inside the camera, creating an image, which can then be projected onto paper which again reacts with the light... wow! I'd like it even better if I had my own darkroom. I'd love to develop and print my own pictures. But so far neither space nor finance has allowed me to try!

Carrying a Cross

Today's the day of the Northern Cross meeting. Me and Paca (who's currently asleep on the sofa) have to go to Amersham to discuss route plans, overnight stops, numbers of walkers, and all sorts of other things I'm sure I'll find out about when I get there.

Northern Cross happens every year over the week running up to easter. Groups of pilgrims set out from various locations in Northumberland and Scotland, each with their own cross to carry (most are eight feet high). We all walk towards Lindisfarne, arriving there on the morning of Good Friday. Then everybody spends Easter weekend there on Holy Island, before heading off home on Easter Sunday. If you're even remotely interested, have a look at the website and think about coming along - it's well worth it!

Part of the fun is the stories that are involved. The area we walk through, and particularly Lindisfarne itself, is closely linked up with those ancient Northumbrian saints coming over from Iona and ultimately Ireland, who were in part responsible for the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons. I'd like to look up some of the stories before I go this year, so that tales of Columba, Cuthbert, Aidan, Hild and the like can be told on the way.

Books!

Today was the final day of my intensive, four-week TESOL course. We've all been so busy over the past month that it comes as something of a shock - certainly a very strange feeling - not to have any work that we've got to do. OK, so my bedroom could do with tidying (there are offcuts of brightly coloured card and discarded, half-finished lesson plans all over the floor!), but the certain knowledge that I don't have at least two assignments due in on Monday is - well - like suddenly finding that you're not in a tunnel any more but have emerged into sunlit fields.

In celebration, I paid a visit to Waterstone's on my way home, having realised that I actually hadn't read any fiction whatsoever over the last four weeks. Waterstone's almost always seem to have a 'three for two' offer on. I was easily drawn in by their marketing ploy, choosing one book that I definitely wanted to read, one that I sort of wanted to read, and a third which I'd never heard of before and only bought because I was looking for another one that might be interesting, seeing as it was 'free'...

I think I'm going to begin with Book One (the one I'd seen and definitely wanted to read): A Winter Book, by Tove Jansson.