Shorts and Observations

The place for all the briefies including the moments of real-time observation of the world around us.

WHO’S A FAN-UARY?

| sophiekemsley

This is such a January image. And not just because it was taken in… January.

People seem to hate on this month a lot – a bit like how they hate on Wetherspoons and pigeons (see previous posts) – prematurely and unreasonably sometimes.

And yes, there’s a few things we can rightfully accuse January of doing wrong. Making us feel poor – yes. Being freezing – yes. Having to listen to people who chose to do Dry January moan about it for a month – yeees!

But put these things to one side and I think there’s a lot of nice things about January too.

Winter sun – like what appears at the top of the photo above – might just be my favourite of those things, because I think – like a lot of things – it shines brighter when it’s unexpected. During Summer we’ll moan if it’s too hot – or not warm enough – whereas in January we’re just grateful to see it at all. A welcome break from the grey, and a sign of longer days to come.

And then there’s the frost. Sure, it might be cold to the touch – a bit slippery even – but I love how it makes the fields sparkle in the mornings as they reflect the light from the sky. Maybe we didn’t get the white Christmas we wanted, but maybe we’ll get the white January we need instead. It might not be snow, but they look pretty similar. This iced hill in Kent was the nearest I’d get to mountains this winter, but it helped!

It also feels like a month where you can feel permitted to nest more. To focus on trying to keep warm and save money. To read inspiring books and make soup. Lots of soup. (How do you know you’re pushing 40? Well, you and your friends get massively excited about making different soup combinations, and a growing proportion of your phone gallery looks like bowls of steaming goodness served with bread.)

January is a month of two sides, and one of those is so wonderful it makes the other one worth enduring.

I’m a fan-uary. Are you?

SUNSET SWOONS…AGAIN

| sophiekemsley

A couple of years ago, I had a chance encounter with what would end up being retained in mind as one of my favourite ever sunsets, and it reminded me why I needed to try and take the time to see them more often – dazzling light shows on our doorsteps that don’t require a hefty entrance fee or overpriced snacks and ad-filled programmes – what’s not to love?

The amazing sunset at Conyer Creek

Here in Swale (Kent, UK), I’m convinced that there’s something particularly special about our sunsets (the one featured above took place only 5 minutes up the road). This is said without bias – I’m not originally from here and haven’t felt the same about the sunsets in other places lived – but I’ve been visiting Swale all throughout my life, and a great many memories of the place seem to be set against the backdrop of that blushy pink, tangerine and lilac sky that led to me falling in love with the area. I remember first marveling at it as I fed the ducks at Faversham pond with my Grandad in around 1990; I remember seeing it forming silhouettes out of the Victorian streetlamps on West Street one Summer evening round a similar time, and I remember it tenderly contrasting against the sludgy surface of the creek during another brilliant performance a few days after I moved here six years ago.

And countless times in between.

These days, I mostly see it as it crowns the rooftops of neighbours’ homes whilst I wash up at the kitchen window, and it prompts an internal smile each and every time.

There’s probably some geographical explanation about why it looks the way it does here, something to do with the proximities to marshland and the Swale Estuary perhaps, but I’m not sure I necessarily want to understand all that detail. I’m happy for it stay in my head as a piece of magic – nothing more, nothing less – because as with all good magic, when you understand too much about the ‘how’, it stops being as enjoyable.

A friend who feels similarly about Swale sunsets (see, it is a thing) and I were really keen to catch a good one from a particular part of the creek this Summer but at one point it felt like that it was never going to happen. The plan was postponed multiple times due to gloomy weather forecasts, but when the opportunity finally arose earlier this month we hoped it would be worth the wait, and it was. Proof below. Among the multitude of reasons why I love sunsets is that they can bring out a beauty in whatever they illuminate within their path, even something as austere and oppressive-looking as the National Grid:

In remembering why I’d like to make an effort to see more sunsets I thought about how the average lifespan of an individual living in the UK is around 80 years – 29,200 days – or rather, 29,200 sunsets.

I’m not entirely sure that’s enough of them…

LITTLE THINGS I LOVE, PT. 4

| sophiekemsley

This month I decided it was time to finally address a few ‘niggling‘ things around my flat. You know the sort of things I mean, those things which in their current state aren’t ideal, but will just ‘do’, especially for the sake of saving pennies. Several of these things had been on my ‘list of things to sort’ since 2018, like having the ill-fitting loo seat replaced and painting the kitchen anything other than the dreary shade of brown I’d moved in to, but none had ever felt like a priority until I finally caved this year, and it was fully worth it. A few minor changes have lifted the place up a lot, and again reminds me of the importance of the little details in life, the cement between the bricks.

‘Little Things I Love’ is about celebrating these little sensory things even more. I have already done three of these kind of posts over the years and they are among my favourite to write. We all know how testing and nasty the world can be at times, that’s why these things matter even more. The previous versions of this post are available here, here and here. So here we go… the latest little things I love...

…the notably enlarged shaft of sunlight that fills the room after rolling up the blinds by just an inch or two…

…the first moment that the sunshine reflects off a freshly-formed puddle following a rainstorm…

…books with well-creased spines – a sign of having been read and enjoyed over many years, a permit to do the same…

…running your fingers along the back of a thin piece of paper that’s been imprinted all over in biro on the other side…

…strangers holding open doors for others… (I know that some find this an insult, but to me it’s just a harmless indication of people noticing other people and just wanting to make their day a little bit easier)

…when the sky looks like this, and makes everything glow within its path…

…random, innocent, ‘wtf’ humour. For example, I love that there is an entire Instagram account for somebody who takes their Henry Hoover on road-trips with them and photographs ‘Henry’ at an array of landmarks. There’s another which only ever posts the same moving image of Miffy the Rabbit with a different musical backdrop each time, which I find equally hilarious. I would love to meet the people behind these accounts. If I ever did, I’d buy them a beer. In fact – make that five beers. In further fact – just take anything and everything you want.

…a fresh bag of crisps and pot of dip on a Friday night…

…brisk walks when the music, scenery and heart-rate are all in a state of fantastic alignment…

…when people use quaint, old-fashioned phrases like “full of vim”…

…the particularly thick, fluffy feel of a brand new sweater…

…aimless wanders round Poundland. Nothing you want, everything you need; great deals on toiletries, and random snacks that you didn’t think were real / still available…

And plenty more, but they’ll be within Part 5 🙂 What are the little things you love?

Song of the Day: More Fatter – That Night

Fun, catchy indie-funk tune from California that was recently ‘recommended’ to me by Spotify and which I’m fairly sure will feature highly on my ‘Unwrapped’ towards the end of the year as I’ve had it on repeat pretty much ever since.

BUS-PLORATIONS

| sophiekemsley

A few weeks ago, we had our Summer. It was admittedly a little short-lived (though whilst large swathes of the continent are literally burning right now, maybe that’s nothing to complain about), but it was nice whilst it lasted.
One weekend, the local bus services were all running for free, and it made sense to make the most of this offer. I took a bus ‘out into the sticks’ and wandered around for hours in an area I’d otherwise only be able to get to by car, and maybe wouldn’t even have thought to go to at all.
There was something quite liberating about all of this; being able to look out the window properly during the journey there, not having to think about where to park, and not needing to worry about finding a walking-route that would get me back to my vehicle (plus the financial and environmental benefits of course!). In every way, this was a day to really feel free and explore.

There were some beautiful sights to take in. The vibrant purple hues of foxgloves flashing in otherwise eerie ancient woodland. Meadows spanning miles, peppered with the fluttering of families of Red Admirals. A freshly shorn sheep hydrating itself as it sipped from a trough. Tidy topiaries in the back gardens of homes which I’ll never get to own, but like looking at.

Eventually, taking heed from the sheep and feeling the need for some hydration myself, I went to the local village pub. Here, I was greeted with a warmth that was in-keeping with the day’s weather, and a lady telling me the tale of how her cute dog – that was sniffling around at my toes as we spoke – had been coming to terms with recently losing an eye. I then experienced another benefit of having caught the bus by being able to refresh myself with a beer whilst doing some writing in the pub’s pretty garden, before returning home.

All in all, a nice, easy little adventure for a Summer’s day, and I’m excited to do more ‘bus explorations’ in the future.

Song of the Day: Russian Red – This is Un Volcan

This is a beautiful new song by a Spanish folk singer whose real name is Lourdes Gonzalez. She’s been around for about 15 years now and has produced some incredibly emotive and listenable pieces, the kind you keep on loop and keep finding new layers to the more you listen. One of her earlier pieces, ‘My Love is Gone’, is another favourite of mine for similar reasons.

MUN-YAY-NITY

| sophiekemsley

Whilst idly scrolling through Insta recently I came across the above sentiment, and it instantly resonated.

That same morning I’d found myself getting way more excited than is probably normal about the delivery of an Amazon package containing a grout reviver pen (though I would still challenge anyone unconvinced by this to buy one and see for themselves their power to transform the bathroom…), and then about eating a hot-cross bun with some nice blueberry jam I’d recently bought.

I realised at this point – and not for the first time – that I’m probably pretty boring. But the nice thing about getting to your late thirties and being a bit boring is that you don’t really care whether you are or not.

It’s a bit like that moment during the nights out of yesteryear when you would finally get to take off an uncomfortable pair of heels after teetering around awkwardly all evening, and put on a pair of trainers instead. How much more comfortable you would feel from the change of footwear more than compensated for any loss to presentation that may have ensued. When we shift focus from the big and exciting stuff we notice the magic in all of the things in between, and often feel way more comfortable for having done so.

Life is short. This club does permit trainers. Do what makes you happy.

Now, I’m off to continue grouting the bathroom tiles and marveling at the difference a simple little stick of grey paint can make. Mun-yay-nity 🙂

Song of the Day: La Strada – Mean That Much

A song that just sounds like March. Maybe it should be called Mean that March. Ho ho.

AWE-TUMN

| sophiekemsley

I often hear people say that of all the seasons, autumn is their least favourite.

It’s cold. It’s dark. It rains.

None of those attributes would win first prize in a beauty contest, and eating ice-cream is nowhere near as thrilling (though it doesn’t prevent one from trying to find out).

But I am going to take a brief moment to defend autumn, and push it a little further up the perch.

I spend a lot of time walking around my hometown each evening as a way to get the steps in when working from home. There is something beautiful about this place during any season; the biting clarity of a winter sky adding fine outlines to chimney-tops, bonfires burning by the duckpond on balmy spring evenings, and bright red sunsets at 9pm in summer.

Come autumn, the walks invariably take place in the dark, I return with wet feet, and the town is very quiet.

And it can sometimes take a little longer to spot the scenes of brilliance, but they’re still there: golden reflections dancing off the water below, and Victorian lamp-posts illuminating the paths ahead. Deep-fried fish and vinegar floating through the air, and televisions lighting up living rooms like discotheques.

The glow of anticipation for impending festivities, and watching people chitter-chatter through restaurant windows. Cat-shaped silhouettes sprinting along the tops of fences, and smoke lingering in the air from bursts of colourful fire. The dazzle from the fairground as it visits for the weekend.

There are a lot of awesome things about autumn.

Everything has its place.

Song of the Day: Philip E Morris – The Polka

Spotify recommended this song to me. Philip E Morris is a Swedish composer who specialises in fusing electro beats with traditional, older songs. I can’t admit to knowing quite what’s going on in this piece but I like it, and it jazzed up a recent supermarket visit to listen to it. So there we go.

A CANTERBURY TALE

| sophiekemsley

During a recent rainy Monday morning, I popped into Canterbury Cathedral, a UNESCO world heritage site near to where I live.

My car was having its MOT nearby, and with the rain showing little sign of abating, I was hopping from place to place for shelter. The coffee crawl was fun to start with but by about Americano number four I wanted to head somewhere a bit different, and looking out the window towards Cathy’s Bell Harry tower, I felt inspired to be a bit of a tourist for the day, and made my way over.

I have visited the Cathedral tonnes of times over the years. It has played a notable part in our family history, and there’s so much more I could write about it beyond the content of this post, but those can be stories for another day.

Instead, for now, I’ll just tell you a little anecdote about a particular tile in the photo above, the tile with the reddy-orange stain on it next to the black rug.

During one of my first visits to Canterbury Cathedral, in the early 1990’s, I was too young to really understand anything beyond a very basic, watered down version of history. I knew that the Cathedral was famous for being the site of the murder of somebody called Thomas Becket – who had clearly irritated somebody (King Henry II it turned out) – and that it had attracted many visitors due to the belief in miracles which took place at the site after he was killed.

It all sounded quite scary and gory to a seven year old, like what might happen on Eastenders or one of Bowser’s Castles, but nonetheless it was intriguing too. As we walked around the particular area where the famous assassination had taken place, my older sister pointed down at the reddy-orange stain and looked at me with a grimace:

“That’s the stain from his blood when he was killed.”

Suddenly, a scary story became scarier and my infant self felt a shiver down her spine. Numerous questions abounded within – will we see his ghost? Will we have our heads chopped off too, if we stand here too long?

Well, evidently we didn’t, as I sit here writing this almost thirty years later, but there was certainly one long-term impact of this narrative which has made me look incredibly foolish over the years, and that’s the fact that it was only an embarrassingly few years ago that I realised that my sister hadn’t been telling the truth about the unusual stain on the floor.

It had absolutely zip-all to do with Becket, not then, and certainly not ever! I have lost count of the number of people I have given this misinformation too over the decades since; no wonder my Religious Studies teacher didn’t look overly impressed as I shot my hand up in class during year 10 as we learned about Becket, to tell a bunch of nonplussed teenagers of what they could see at the Cathedral.

And there’s an interesting lesson in all of this I suppose. Not to believe everything you’re told, for sure, but on the flipside I ask myself: would I have found the Cathedral as interesting as a seven year old if it weren’t for my sister’s gory story? Probably not. Would that one piece of stone still make me smile and recall memories of a family day out in 1992, thirty years later? Definitely not.

So yes. There’s a lot of history in Canterbury Cathedral. And that small, almost invisible speck, is mine.

SUNSET

| sophiekemsley

The sun sets every day.
No matter where you are,
No matter what you’re doing.
And it’s been doing so for billions of years…

The sun sets as people dice onions, dust cupboards and stand in queues. And as they fill up petrol tanks, buy yoghurt and watch the news.
The sun sets whether you’re happy, hopeful, scared or depressed. No matter how your day went, that orange duvet permits you to rest.

And it never gets any less impressive.


Yesterday evening I met with a friend and was due to head home at around the same time the sun was due to set. The original plan was to get home as quickly as possible – calling in at Sainsburys to pick up a sandwich – and curl up in front of the t.v whilst devouring it.

Even though I was feeling peckish and daydreaming about supermarket aisles, something prompted me to head to the nearby hamlet of Conyer instead, where I could take a short stroll along the creek in the springtime evening sun.

As I walked, what first appeared to be a blazing bullet hole in the distance gradually blossomed into a marbled blanket of pink, orange, peach and purple that cloaked the entire sky. It felt like one of the most tremendous sunsets I’ve ever seen, an evening of magic for which I hadn’t paid a fortune – but instead had the fortune – to enjoy.

As I walked around in wonder, I thought about how easy it would have been to miss this. I thought how about how I could have easily been swapping sunsets with sandwich aisles at that very time, and how much of a shame that would have been. I’d never have even known what I was missing out on, and that ignorance too, would have been a shame.

I marveled at just how much richer my day had become simply from enjoying a show that has happened every day since time began, and wondered how many of the previous episodes I’d lost to dicing onions, dusting cupboards, and standing in queues. And I know that I’m not alone in that, as I only saw half a dozen others during my walk, out of thousands who could have been there. Yet despite what could have been perceived a lack of interest, the show went ahead anyway. I liked that.

I set myself a personal goal for the Summer: see more sunsets! Give that splendid show an audience more often! I think I’ll enjoy this one, and suggest you do it too!

Song of the Day: Dosh – Um, Circles & Squares

I am very much into instrumental music at the moment whilst working on a number of different projects. I find it much easier to keep focused on what I’m doing without the shift of mental direction that lyrics can enforce.
Dosh is a multi-instrumentalist based in Minnesota and this is a nice, whirly, almost meditative piece, which is great to study to. I bet it also sounds good whilst walking underneath a sunset 😉

The House

| sophiekemsley

Do you have any of those fleeting, pixelated memories from very early childhood, which you’ve not necessarily been able to place into the context of anything else?

I have a vivid one in which I’m stood in the doorway of my grandparents’ house in August 1989 (I only know the date because my mum has kept a family diary for decades). I’m saying goodbye to some relatives as they leave a family party. I remember it because I heard the word, “fortnight” for the first time. Through a wound down car window, they said they’d see us in a fortnight, as they drove away in their beige car. It made me think about forks and knights, and I needed my siblings to explain its real meaning. There are many other memories – all just as fleeting and fragmented as that one – from that particular house, and they always seem so mysterious and magical. Maybe just because the wider detail, and explanations, are missing.

Over thirty years later I often walk past the same house, and from the outside it looks exactly the same as it did then. The same front door. The same lion-shaped door knocker. Same bricks, same roof.

I expect, and want, to be able to ring the doorbell and be embraced by my grandad – still in his ’70’s – and a plume of sweet tobacco smoke from his pipe. Behind him, I expect to see puffy maroon sofas, wooden cabinets stacked with crystal sherry glasses and toby jugs, and pale green lampshades with tassels on the end that I can jiggle between my thumb and forefinger. I expect to smell a joint of meat being roasted in an oven.

But I won’t, because it’s 2021 and somebody else lives there now, and they probably wouldn’t take too kindly to a random 35-year old woman knocking on the door expecting to find 1989, turquoise walls, a cream cake, and some relatives who left us a long time ago.

Plus, I need to hurry home and send an e-mail about an urgent matter. One which I doubt I’ll be recalling within a pixelated memory in thirty-two years time. And what time does Morrisons close during the week?

Time is a very, very strange thing. I am always pretty mesmerised by old buildings such as this. Those which have seen so much, and changed so little, plonked within a society that zips along and changes so frequently by contrast.

They’re building more and more new houses here in Faversham. But I’m glad they’re keeping the old ones too.

What buildings make you feel this way?

A beautiful drawing by my very talented mother

Song of the Day: Smashing Pumpkins – Beautiful

My challenge to you is to listen to this song and not fall absolutely in love with it. Beautiful by name, stunning by nature. It’s the final minute of the song and it’ll do things to you. And even if you’re not a massive SP fan (I’m not) you’ll be so thankful this band exists.