Steep Grass

I've never thought of myself as being a particularly prolific blogger, but I think I've outdone myself in having successfully avoided posting to this blog in almost a year.

It's a bit like that patch of skirting board you should really paint, but because you can only see it from a certain place not many people are likely to stand in, you think, oh, it's okay, it'll wait till the next time I happen to be passing the paint shop.

The thing is, usually when I'm passing the paint shop, I'm often thinking about groceries.

Despite the initial optimisim after having a short break, I got sucked right back into the workaday, failed completely to kickstart my illustration work again, and totally missed the boat as far as trying to get out and about in general, rather than come home and vegitate in front of the TV.

I bought the first new book for about 6 months the other day in an attempt to relieve the boredom - 'Offshore' by Ben Fogle - but, despite it being yet slightly middle class Tom And Barbara Good type read, it has only really exacerbated the whole need to get away from it all but can't seem to find the money/nerve to do so thing I seem to be wallowing in at the moment.

I know I frequently joke about llama farming, but I begin to wonder if there might be something in it after all.

It's fairly worrying how much I seem to have been acting out a routine of late. As I said before in the previous post, it's been a case of work.sleep.work and it's taken a fair bit of willpower to take time out, get some rest and actually interact outside of the office.

I had a really good weekend visiting friends I haven't seen in ages, and had a look around a city I've not been to in years, listened to albums and watched films I thought I had forgotten, and up to this point avoided a computer pretty much the whole time.

And you know you have had a good time, and gotten away from it all when you realise that the day doesn't just operate between 9 and 5 (6, and sometimes 7,8,9)

I'm fairly convinced there's a lesson to be learnt in all this.

...Seriously

It only seems like a couple of months ago I was messing round on Scottish islands, but crikey, that was Feburary. The work.sleep.work routine seems to have totally ruined my sense of timekeeping.

Speaking of which, I heard something on the radio this morning that certain shops were now selling Christmas stuff... from one holiday to the next without missing a beat.

Ah, the British. We're always moaning about the weather.

The thing is, when its snowing and raining and its dark at 4pm we'll be wishing it was this warm again.

Too hot for me though, I'm quite looking forward to autumn once all this 35 degrees plus milarky is out of the way.

I thought I'd try and get to grips with Bloggers tags, and get a nice design together to hang the content off. It's funny how the moment you start using CSS and XHTML, things fall into a general sort of 'look'.

No Web 2.0 curved boxes and shock gradients yet though, which I suppose is something to be thankful of. It will probably change when I don't like green anymore/it doesn't match my curtains/some other websafe colour is in vogue.

... shortly after creating a blog, The Author spent a considerable amount of time trying to come up with some sort of witty First Post.

Disappointingly, this was about all he could muster.