Photo An Hour: Saturday 26th August 2017

I remembered Photo An Hour two months in a row - hooray! It's a rare occurrence for sure. Last year I missed it, but in August 2015 I was at my mum's for Photo An Hour with Thomas, who was playing in a football tournament and opening his birthday presents. 

This year? Sunshine, cat time, an afternoon jaunt to Rugby, and lots of food. Oh, and I had problems with both my camera memory card and my iPhone Photo Stream, which means that some of the pictures here aren't the ones that I Instagrammed. Oh well.

9.30am:

A slow start to the day. Missy very kindly allowed us a long lie-in before coming to ask for her breakfast.

10.30am:

After spending an hour cleaning the house, we rewarded ourselves with banana pancakes with lashings of the maple syrup my uncle brought us from Canada last month when he came for the wedding.

11.30am:

I've finished cleaning the bathroom; now it's time for a shower. 

12.30pm:

Obligatory Photo An Hour picture of my outfit. Today it's a thrifted midi skirt, Primark tee, Fuck The Tories necklace and my favourite Make Zines, Destroy Fascism tote bag, because I'm never subtle in my politics or my fashion.

2.30pm:
My photo for 1.30pm - some plants on a stall in Rugby market - has disappeared entirely. So onto 2.30pm, when we'd just bought a bargain Ercol chair and were browsing the secondhand books in British Heart Foundation.

3.30pm:
A late lunch at the Bacco Lounge in Rugby. The Lounge chain have a reliably great vegan menu and often seem to have venues in smaller towns where otherwise we'd struggle to find vegan food - that being said, I am eating an extremely non-vegan steak & cheddar ciabatta here!

4.30pm:

Complete lack of inspiration for a photograph so it's the Insta-cliche of my feet. I am so completely in love with my new tan Saltwater sandals.

5.30pm:

Home after a diversion into Home Sense just outside Rugby that yielded some Orla Kiely bedding and the best smelling scented candle ever (Olivia Black Wild Pumpkin & Nutmeg). Excited about my bargain finds (and trying not to think about the £££ I've spent), it's time to find the new chair a home, and it fits perfectly into the office/craft room at the back of our house. 

6.30pm:

Ok, I know I'm biased, but isn't this the most beautiful cat?! She sometimes holds her pose so nicely while I take a picture, like she's auditioning for America's Next Top Cat Model.

7.30pm:

Neither of us are hungry yet (well, we did have lunch at half three after all) so we're using the time wisely and making a start on thank you notes. The beautiful linocut cards show our ceremony venue and I fortuitously stumbled upon them in a bookshop this week. We're saving them for our families: everyone else gets the beautiful Thank You stationery designed by my cousin, who also made our invitations.

10.30pm:
Oops, missed a few hours there! We had dinner and watched Jonathan Creek, then spent a while messing about staring at our phones in an annoying manner, before coming to bed to read for a while.

A Photo An Hour: Saturday 15th July

I finally remembered to participate in Photo An Hour, after a few months of consistently forgetting, hooray! To be honest, when I woke up I felt like I wasn't going to bother with it but then I saw that Becks - who I was meeting later in the day - was taking part and it spurred me on to start taking my photos.

10am:
A shamefully late start to my day. I don't know why, but I am just so tired at the moment and feel like I could just sleep and sleep every morning. Anyway, finally up and I have a cup of tea and a bagel to fortify me for my trip to Nottingham.

11am:
Getting dressed. I really wanted to go to Weirdo Zine Fest in London today but train tickets from Leicester are ridiculously £££ and I just can't afford to go much anymore. Instead, I'm representing for zinesters with my brilliant new tote bag from Black Lodge Press: Make Zines/Destroy Fascism is a great slogan to live by.

Midday:
On the tram into Nottingham from the Park & Ride. I was meeting up with my friend Becks for the first time in months

1pm:
Can you believe I didn't know that there was a Sostrene Grene in Nottingham until today. Just loooook at all this beautiful yarn! And I don't even use yarn in any of my crafts. Never heard of Sostrene Grene? Imagine Tiger, but both cheaper and classier.

2pm:
Becks had heard about a super special secret bar hidden away in Hockley and was in the process of telling me about it when we literally stumbled upon it by accident (so maybe not so super secret after all). Inside was an incredible candle-lit space that reminded me of Budapest's ruin bars.

3pm:
Pizza time! I had a the garlic bread with cheese and it was amazing.

4pm:
My timings are a bit screwy here - at 4 I was actually driving home, so instead have this picture I took at about half 3 in the Sue Ryder Vintage shop. I can never resist a vintage typewriter.

5pm:
My vintage shopping haul. I've been after a pleated polka dot midi skirt for ages, so I was especially excited to find this one.

6pm:
Missy has shown to inclination to sit on laps since it got warm a month ago, so the fact that she plonked herself down on mine almost as soon as I sat down was very exciting. Never mind that it delayed dinner by a good hour, I wasn't going to pass up the opportunity for some quality cat time.

7pm:
I'm a real creature of habit, and Saturday evenings don't feel quite right without the following ingredients: the Funk & Soul Show on 6 Music, a glass of wine, the kitchen fairy lights lit, and something bubbling away on the stove.

8pm:
I'm feeling completely wiped out lately - underlying wedding planning stress maybe? - and last night I didn't feel capable of anything more intellectually demanding than a terrible comedy, so Role Models it was.

11pm:
Missed a couple of hours as we were finishing the film, but 11pm found me in bed with a book and about to turn off the light.

Eat: Oscar & Rosie's Pizza

Oscar & Rosie's has long been one of my favourite dinner destinations in Nottingham, so I was excited to discover they were opening a location in Leicester. So excited, in fact, that Thomas and I visited within 24 hours of them opening their doors last Friday.

Why all the excitement over pizza? I hear you ask. Well, although Oscar & Rosie's isn't the first independent serving decent pizza to open in Leicester, it is the first to offer vegan cheese and a huge range of vegan meats. It makes such a huge difference to eating out together when neither Thomas nor I have to compromise; when he can have great vegan food and I, well, don't have to have vegan food! 

The Leicester venue is smaller than their Nottingham branch, but offers the same mid-century-cum-junk shop style of shared seating along long wooden tables, and the same extensive menu of pizzas and both soft drinks and beer from small producers (although, at the time of our visit, no cider yet - unfortunately for me). From a menu boasting options as diverse as the beetroot, goat's cheese, & pesto Frenchman, to the Hamster (ham hock, mushrooms and ricotta), it felt a bit lazy to go for the Margherita, but with top-notch ingredients it was anything but boring.

Like all the best indie businesses, there's a slightly ramshackle feel to Oscar & Rosie's which is entirely its appeal; there's no slick corporate marketing needed when the pizza's as good as this. If you're local to Leicester - or even if you're not - I can heartily recommend you paying them a visit at Market Place, just off Hotel Street.

Note: this is not a sponsored post and  - more's the pity - I didn't get free pizza for writing about Oscar & Rosie's. I just really love the place!

Why I Love Zines

In 1994, when I was 16, I made my first zine. My mum photocopied it for me at work, I put an ad in the back of Melody Maker, and before too long letters with 50p pieces sellotaped to them were arriving through the letter box. My life as a zinester had begun.

A zine, for those who don't know, is a homemade booklet or pamphlet. They can be fanzines (zines, as the name suggests, about something you're a fan of - usually music. My first zines were Britpop fanzines), perzines (personal zines), comics or instruction zines. What they all have in common is that they're a DIY form of creativity: more often than not hand-drawn, photocopied, and either sold for a low price or swapped.

After making both fanzines and perzines for four years I stopped when I was about 20, and it wasn't until a couple of years ago that I felt like I wanted to get back into zines. In the interim blogging had become for me what zines once had been - a way of communicating, of practising my writing, of meeting people with whom I had a lot in common but whom I otherwise wouldn't have met - but within the last two years I've felt increasingly less motivated to blog. Instead, I decided, I would make some new zines.

My first new zine was about abortion, telling the story (largely through cartoons that could kindly be called naive, otherwise known as crap) of a termination I had in my early 20s, and it took me two years to finish. Luckily, I picked up the pace after that and, since the beginning of 2017, have written and made two more zines: Barren, about being childfree by choice, and a perzine called, like this blog, Someone, Somewhere.

When Laura and I visited Sheffield Zine Fest last year, we promised ourselves and each other that this year we'd return to table. And so, at the end of February, we set up stall: Laura selling her My So-Called Life compzine and her comic about turning 30, and me with my little stash of zines and badges.

Zines don't replace blogging for me but they do complement it, giving me a creative outlet that's about more than just writing, and a space to share things I wouldn't necessarily feel comfortable sharing online. The zine world is as wonderfully welcoming and diverse as it was when I was 16, too, and I've met so many brilliant people through making, sharing and buying zines. As the blogging world becomes increasingly mainstream, and often focused on people trying to make money, I value the truly DIY ethos of zines and the sense of being involved in something so firmly outside of the mainstream.

I'm now working on two compzines and would love contributions: Mixtape is a 90s nostalgia zine that Laura and I are putting together, and Cherry is about virginity - the loss of it, the concept, the problematically heterocentric nature of the concept, whatever! Email me at jbistheinitial@gmail.com if you want to submit something for either zine.

You can buy my zines from a range of places: by emailing me for Paypal details (they all cost £1 plus 50p P&P), or alternatively Brick is carried by both Penfight Distro and Vampire Sushi Distro, with the latter also selling Barren and Someone, Somewhere).

I have also contributed to a number of compzines in the past year, all of which you can buy on Etsy: Laura's zine The Boiler Room, Versions Of Violence, a zine about heterosexism, and Yr Faves Are Problematic. 

Photo An Hour: Saturday 18th March

Another month, another Photo An Hour day, organised by Jane & Louisa (thanks guys!).  My day was a fairly typical Saturday of pottering at home, reading, a bit of shopping, and hanging out with the cat, before ending the day with a glass of fizz.

8.30am:
One of my favourite things about participating in Photo An Hour is seeing what other people get up to, and I especially enjoy it when our photographs all synchronise. This month, it was a rare first photo that wasn't of a book in bed.

9.30am:
Leftover pancakes from yesterday for breakfast, together with banana and raspberries in an attempt to claim it as a healthy meal. I mean, that's two of my five/seven/ten/whatever they're going to claim next a day, right?

10.30am:
Shower time. It's like hammer time but with more water. And considerably fewer baggy trousers.

11.30am:
Reading through the first submissions for the two zines I'm currently working on. Laura and I are making a compzine about 90s nostalgia called Mixtape, and I'm also editing a zine about virginity called Cherry. I'm still seeking submissions for both zines, so let me know if you want to write or make something!

12.30pm: 

I only wear stripes on days that end in a -y.

1.30pm:
A vintage warehouse has opened up not far from where I live and I went to have a browse to see if I could find a chair for our kitchen: sadly I didn't find anything suitable, but there were lots of interesting bits to look at nevertheless.

2.30pm:
Time for tea and cake in Clarendon Park. I was feeling a little delicate after an evening in the pub on Friday and hoped that mint tea will settle my stomach.

3.30pm:

Home, via the bike shop where Thomas splashed out on a new ride (after being told that his old bike needed repairs that would cost 5 times what it was worth), and a chance to hang out with Missy cat. This photograph doesn't properly reflect how lovely and affectionate she was being: lots of of head boops and nose kisses.

4.30pm:

My pins and badges had been scattered across the mantlepiece in our bedroom - I found a scrap of linen fabric in my stash and 5 minutes of pinning later, had a much neater storage solution for part of the collection.

5.30pm:
For the past 6 weeks we've been in bathroom renovation hell, having tiles (and bits of wall) ripped off, walls replastered, new tiles put on and finally, applying coats of paint. Now it's onto the fun bit: Thomas had just put up the new wire shelving so I got busy styling it with vintage Penguin paperbacks, pretty toiletries, and a plant.

6.30pm:
Onto outfit two of the day (I was freezing and felt the need for a big cardi), ready to go round to my friend Leanne's for the evening.

7.30pm:
Doing Saturday night right with pizza and Prosecco. It's also where I abandoned the photos, as I didn't much move for the next four hours!

What did you get up to this weekend?

Photo An Hour: Saturday 18th February

Saturday was Photo An Hour day for February, as arranged by Louisa and Jane. It turned out to be a day of pottering about at home, getting jobs done, reading, and a big gap in the evening when I forgot to take photos. Weirdly, February 2016's Photo An Hour was not all that different! Must be something about this time of year...

9.30am:
I'm tending to sleep so late at weekends at the moment, I'm not sure why. At half nine I'd been awake for a short while and had picked up my book - Uprooted by Naomi Novik - to read before breakfast.

10.30am:

What weekends are made for - leisurely breakfasts with a magazine, instead of rushing about like a mad thing trying to get ready for work.

11.30am:

This little cat is so silly. Despite yawning fulsomely, she just won't go to sleep. I think she has a severe case of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), as any day that we're in the house she really struggles to nap, instead following us from room to room to keep an eye on our activities.

12.30pm:
I went to the garden centre yesterday, as our hanging baskets and pots were looking very sad and brown after a long winter. Half an hour with the trowel, and everything's looking a lot better.

1.30pm:
In an attempt to earn a bit of extra money, I'm doing some proof-reading work. This is a frankly incomprehensible PhD thesis, but really well-written so it's turning out to be easy to edit.

2.30pm:
And she's finally asleep!

3.30pm:
Working on an IKEA hack. I think I'll write a post about this soon, it's been such a fun and easy project.

4.30pm:
I walked into town (stopping to chat to a friend on the way) and made a beeline for Oxfam to have a look at their book selection, before returning some bits at H&M and buying a new pair of jeans (which I need to return, as apparently I am now taller and the 30" leg jeans are too short).

5.30pm:
Strictly speaking, at 5.30 I was browsing in Waterstones, but I figured two photos in a row of bookshelves would be a bit dull. I've been racking up points on my Waterstones card for quite some time now, and finally decided to spend some: I got this and a Holly Bourne novella.

6.30pm:
Date night, and our first-choice pub was rammed so we went to Firebug instead. Vegan pie for Thomas, nachos for me, cider for both of us.

7.30pm:
Still in the pub.

9.30pm:
Home two hours later, and Missy was so happy to see us that she came and hung out on the bed with us (a rare occurrence, she doesn't usually like it if we're both in bed - she prefers having a full side to herself).