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.

Saturday 13 June 2015

stowe careers fair, thirty-eight years, get over it, i am the man who lives in a shoe

















Stowe careers fair today, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Lovely to meet the students and to see the school again. Also, looking forward to my complimentary cake!

Can't believe it's a year since the last fair - see post of 15th June 2014.

Over coffee, I caught up with someone I was at school with and hadn't seen for thirty-eight years. Just writing that figure is shocking. Is it really that long since I was at school? Where did those years go? I must try and keep a tighter grip on the next lot :-)

Last year I wrote about what it was like to return to Stowe and face some of the family memories that were triggered. Today was much easier. The family crisis that broke in 2010 and lasted, unbelievably, and excruciatingly, until spring 2014, tainted everything. Now, I feel, I must be getting over it. Talking of which, I've a new working title for what was Trust: A family story - it's I am the Man Who Lives in a Shoe. What do you think? Hope to be doing some more work on the book this coming week.

But now some more work-work - and then, the weekend!
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