December 2013 has been a strange month for me with three exhibition hangs to curate, a dissertation draft to submit and degree project images to make. All this without the added drama of other incidents. Good to see Alex getting better though. I cannot begin to understand how he feels but given the stuffing it knocked out of me both mentally and physically it must have been stratospheric.

Mix into this a degree(sic) of internecine conflict and it had all all the hallmarks of a month to forget but …

The strangest thing happened yesterday, spending Christmas Day by ourselves – just the two of us, for the first time since 1977. Now that really was weird being able to please ourselves.  Simply good food and exquisite wine. Perversely, it was the best morning for over a week to shoot large format but I thought better of it. Today my other half is having to work (quite why people think they need to shop on Boxing Day is anyone’s guess), I can now see the top of my desk for the first time since September so chaos is becoming subsumed by order.

A light bulb moment occurred last week shooting for Colchester & Ipswich Museum Service. I was shooting an event as part of the ‘Unlocked’ project and the irony of a stuffed red squirrel with paintbrushes behind it was not lost on me.