The digital home of author, artist & photographer Chris Elphick | All content, unless otherwise stated, is copyrighted © Chris Elphick
Showing posts with label Nostalgia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nostalgia. Show all posts

Sunday, 29 December 2024

2024 Review - Part 3

2024 is certainly ending a lot better than it began. I left the department that was giving me so much grief just weeks after giving myself a push and forcing myself to leave my comfort zone. I now have x2 jobs with my employer - one where I can put my writing skills into practice and have time to actual engage with my work rather than a robotic data entry clerk, which is work that literally drives me to despair!! I work that job x3 days a week, whilst spending the other x2 days, in the PCS union office. And so 2024 ends with me finally enjoying my paid work 🙂.

On a personal level, I have never been as happy as I have been these past few months. Both my physical health and mental well-being and making me excited to be alive, which, trust me, is not something I though I would be saying this time last year.

Financially we are doing well (thanks to  hard-earned job). The unburdening of struggling with day to day living expenses is something we have only achieved recently, and it really feels good to appreciate this security.

Finally, and importantly, I am at a place creatively where I can look back at my personal work with pride. 2025 already looks busy, and I hope to find time in the next x12 months to consolidate my creative portfolio and squeeze my way into some new ventures - more of which you'll discover in my upcoming New Year's blog entry...

Tuesday, 24 December 2024

Looking Back on '24: Part 2

Looking back to the late Spring and the Summer of this year, the things I remember most is the unsettled feeling of moving from a trailer in Llanrhian Holiday Park to a small house in Manselton whilst we waited for our home to be fixed up after the housefire in March. I remember the caravan more fondly than the house as I felt that hiraeth of being back home in North Gower. Though, to be fair, the house in Manselton was too bad. This period was marred by a mental detachment I felt, which was probably a self-defence system to stop me getting stressed from the turmoil of our lives in that period of time. This knind of mental numbness made my working life difficult too and I began to hate my job with a passion as I felt 
what I was going through was not really appreciated in the department, where figures and accuracy meant everything. And so I decided to apply for positions in other departments, which I will talk more about in part 3 ps my 2024 round up.

Creatively, I guess I was on form and I finally managed to knock my first and longest novel, Cold Comfort into shape after it had sat in a cupboard drawer untouched for a quarter of a century. After I got that published, I wrote a fanzine on my favourite writer, Guy N Smith. This was a real work of love and seemed to down well with his friends and family, which really pleased me.

With much of our savings lost to the housefire, our holiday this year was reduced from our original plan of a weekend in Brussels, renting a airbnb in Glastonbury and a couple of weeks in Japan to a weekend camping in west Wales with my wife, son and his friends. Whilst enjoying the company and countryside, I also learned that I was getting a little too old to be sleeping on campings beds lol.
One other big event that will always stick in my mind from this time is our evening trip down to Rhossili Cliffs, where the sky turned into fantastic light show as the northern lights graced the British night like never before! 


Sunday, 25 February 2024

Hermon Ivy in Our Garden

Sunday, February 25, 2024

The ivy cutting I collected from the ruins of Hermon Chapel, back in 2021 is growing nicely in our garden now. Its located in a few places in our garden now and is a lovely reminder of the chapel than can still be seen from the window of my childhood home :)

Sunday, 27 March 2022

Yeah, Home-Made Bread Day!

April 12, 2022


Wednesday, 25 August 2021

My Bears

I've looked after these bears since I was a young 'un. At the moment they are sitting on a bookshelf near my writing desk.


55 years ago, the larger bear (Big Ted) was sat on my Nanna's settee, comforting yours truly.


The smaller of the two bears (Little Ted) was brought home by my grandfather, who worked at British Rail - the furry fella having been abandoned at his station's Lost and Found.

I am quite happy with this image of the two bears and am minded to start a new foto-project exploring the remains of my childhood. Watch this space, as they say...

Wednesday, 10 March 2021

Nostalgia #3

Nostalgia. Isle of Skye. First visit. First stop off. Garage for matches to light van fire.


 

Monday, 21 September 2020

Nostalgia #2

My grandmother gave me the gardening bug, and there are several plants I regularly grow in memory of her love for the flowers. Amongst their number are these precious beauties - Night-scented Stock:

Wednesday, 2 September 2020

Nostalgia #1

Old Manor Ware ornament from the early 1970s. My father used to buy these on his trips around the country as a coach driver and they have always fascinated me.