Welcome to justthoughtsnstuff

I started posting to jtns on 20 February 2010 with just one word, 'Mosaic'. This seemed an appropriate introduction to a blog that would juxtapose fragments of memoir and life-writing. Since 1996, I'd been coming to terms with the consequences of emotional and economic abuse that had begun in childhood, and which, amongst other things, had sought to stifle self-expression. While I'd explored some aspects of my life through fiction and, to a lesser extent, journalism, it was only in 2010 that I felt confident enough to write openly about myself. I believed this was an important part of the healing process. Yet within weeks, the final scenes of my family's fifty-year nightmare started to play themselves out and the purpose of the blog became one of survival through writing. Although some posts are about my family's suffering - most explicitly, Life-Writing Talk, with Reference to Trust: A family story - the majority are about happier subjects (including, Bampton in rural west Oxfordshire, where I live, Oxford, where I work, the seasons and the countryside, walking and cycling) and I hope that these, together with their accompanying photos, are enjoyable and positive. Note: In February 2020, on jtns' tenth birthday, I stopped posting to this blog. It is now a contained work of life-writing about ten years of my life. Frank, 21 February 2020.

New blog: morethoughtsnstuff.com.

Friday 26 February 2010

metamorphosis

The other morning, while scrolling through twitter, I came across a post from my friend Caroline, who runs rentokil.com. She was saying to this woman that yes, she did agree that Rentokil would have had an adverse effect on Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis... What!

...One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin. He lay on his armour-like back, and if he lifted his head a little he could see his brown belly, slightly domed and divided by arches into stiff sections. After a while he noticed that there was a small red dish in the corner of the room containing what looked like breadcrumbs. Yum, he thought. Slowly, and with the greatest difficulty, he wrestled with the bedclothes, legs flailing until plop, he dropped to the floor. Undeterred, he scuttled to the little dish and gobbled up its contents. Suddenly he felt queasy...

THE END

With apologies to Franz K, David Wyllie (translator) & Project Gutenberg.
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