Happy New Year, everyone. I'm looking forward to an exciting 2010.
I've set myself some resolutions for January: I'm going to podcast every week on a Friday; and I'm going to get my beautiful things up by 8.10am on weekdays (today is a bank holiday, so it doesn't count); I'm going to review the regular 3BTers on a Monday.
I'll look at how I'm doing at the end of the month and see if I need to tweak this routine.
I also want to encourage more people to write their own beautiful things. The Roll of Honour stands at 160 today -- I'd like to get it up to 200 by the end of the year (that's allowing for losses during clean-ups).
The podcast is up -- with a bonus beautiful thing that I forgot when I came to post yesterday.
1. I set the breadmaker up late last night. In the morning, the smell of warm bread creeps in from the kitchen and climbs into bed with us.
2. Katie gives me a photo frame that is a marvel of decayed art deco. It is mirrored, but the glass has a patina of oily-looking rust, like the flecks of mica in granite. I look closer still, and each fleck is shaped like a fan fungus and marked like a fingerprint.
3. A documentary about Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin, who created The Clangers, Bagpuss, Ivor the Engine and Noggin. I still love the gentle melancholy of these little programmes, and the kindly warmth of Oliver Postgate's voice. I think they taught me when I was still quite small that sadness is nothing to be afraid of, and can be explored and examined and tasted and understood as much as any other experience.
