Vinyl

A bedroom scene from May 1974. I was nearly twenty-two. I still have all of these Beatles LPs. 

In May 2015 I began a determined effort to clear out my attic (and, at the time, wrote a couple of posts about it). I soon got sidetracked, and then abandoned the project. By then the stuff up there had been somewhat rearranged, and it all looked a bit tidier. But there remained a lot more to do. I've promised myself another clearance at some future date. But as I don't urgently need the space, and I'm not moving house, it's hardly a priority job.

Still, it would be nice to get rid of some things sooner rather than later, while I feel like climbing up and down the step-ladder to the attic. Things that I never use and will never do anything with, that are just sitting up there uselessly.

For instance, my collection of vinyl records. You know: singles, EPs and LPs, all in boxes and dedicated carrying-cases bought in a different, pre-computer era.

You know what I mean. Vinyl discs, most often black, with grooves on each side that an ancient device called a record-player could turn into audible music when the disc was spun on a turntable. As found in the tomb of Tutankhamen. Well, not really! But it was an old technology that reached maturity - if not yet its ultimate refinement - seventy years ago, and fell from mass popularity only during the 1980s, as the CD (that is, the Compact Disc, now itself rather last-century) became more affordable.

Vinyl never died, of course. It was beloved of disc jockeys everywhere. There were also people whose passion was collecting vinyl records, and preserving the means to play them. And for a long time some music was available only on disc.

There were, and still are, serious hi-fi enthusiasts who claim that the continuous analogue sound from a well-pressed vinyl disc is superior to any sort of discontinuous, reconstructed, digital sound. No doubt they are right - although appreciating such things does depend on the quality of one's audio equipment, and the acuity of one's hearing. My own hearing has never been good enough, nor trained well enough, to discern very small differences.

So vinyl has lingered on. And somehow, recently, it has had a distinct revival. Vinyl is fashionable again, albeit in a niche way. It's still a bit fringe. But there have been many fresh pressings, and superior turntables are on sale again. Personally, I think this revival is driven by nostalgia, and a quest for an alternative kind of excellence. Rather like the way some people hanker for the glory days of film photography, the special rendition of processed chemicals on photo paper, and the results obtainable from the celebrated cameras and lenses of that era. But a vinyl disc is not a robust, convenient-to-use, take-anywhere recording medium. It's easily damaged. So I can't see that vinyl, whatever its cool, will much affect digital music sales.

Still, vinyl is definitely back. And I have long-unused vinyl records up in my attic.

Should I consider dusting them off and playing them again? Or selling them on eBay to people who might want to buy them from me? Or just tip the whole lot into the bin?

Mine is not the largest collection in the world. Shortly before I retired in 2005, I catalogued what I then had, and popped that information onto a couple of spreadsheets. (Was I really so strapped for something to do with my time?) These spreadsheets were still in my Archive, although not consulted for many a year. But they tell me now that in early 2005 I had:

# 72 original singles (that is, purchased when the song was actually in the current pop charts);
# About 80 singles and EPs that were reissued as golden oldies some years later (there was, I remember, an Old Gold label); and
# 92 original LPs.

I expect many readers have much bigger collections of vinyl than this. But even my own modest collection takes up a surprising amount of attic space. And those boxes are awfully heavy. It would be worth hanging onto it all if the collection included many items of rare or unusual musical interest, but it's mostly the same stuff that everyone else bought, the same stuff you'll find in any charity shop.

I probably wouldn't throw away the half-dozen LPs I inherited from my late brother - they are a cherished physical souvenir of him. But the rest?

There might be the odd disc worth offering on eBay - I have a few cult singles, or singles from a cult label. And some singles that hardly made it into the charts, were unwanted by most, and are now hard to find in good condition. But a quick search on the Discogs website revealed to me that I'd be lucky to make more than £2 on any of them. With a return as small as that, what profit might be expected after safely packaging a fragile disc for posting? It isn't worth the effort.

So most of my vinyl is likely to be consigned to landfill.

I would of course photograph some of it first - certainly any disc with a special history, and certainly any record with good or distinctive artwork on the sleeve. And some other records that bring to mind an occasion I'd like to remember. But all of this material, or at least the best of it, has long since been repurchased in mp3 form. And with a comprehensive digital collection at my fingertips, I really have no reason to hang onto scratchy old vinyl.

Do I hear howls of outrage and protest? How can I possibly discard a major part of my younger life?

But let's be rational. It's the music itself that's the important thing, and not what it's recorded on. And I'd much rather have 1,500-odd intangible digital songs on my phone. They occupy no space, they are weightless; and they are brought to life, and playable in different ways and different orders, with just an app. There's no mystique or ritual about the digital way, but it does let you play what you want, how you want, anytime and anywhere.

Books

My study or library - actually the 'second bedroom' in my house, although it can't be used as such now - is stuffed full of books and maps. There are bookshelves on all four of the walls. There's no room left. Any additions are getting piled up in front of existing books and maps, or placed on top of them, restricting access either way. The situation isn't desperate yet. But I'm still buying new books, and the odd old map, and within a year or two I will certainly have to do something to prevent it all looking a mess.

I can't install taller bookshelves all round, because there are paintings on two of the study walls with nowhere else to hang them. (The study is also something of an art gallery, as well as a library!) There is however the possibility of getting rid of the computer desk sitting in one of the corners, and replacing it with additional waist-high bookshelving. It's old and tatty, and its departure wouldn't grieve me. Now that would ease the pressure somewhat!

But is such a plan feasible? That corner desk is for viewing items stored on my old desktop PC. If I scrapped the desk, there would be nowhere else for the PC to go. And although all my day-to-day computer stuff is done on my laptop (a Microsoft Surface Book bought in 2016) all of my vast Photo and Document Archive is on the PC, which still has bags of storage space left on it. More than 200GB worth. A storage asset, then.

The PC is of 2007 vintage, and won't last forever, but I still fire it up several times a week to add more items, photos mainly. And it still has real work to do, in that my printer and scanner (both of them of the same 2007 vintage) are connected to it, and the three devices work very well together.

They might however work just as smoothly if connected to the 2016 laptop instead. And it seems I could buy a fast 2TB external hard drive, also to plug into my laptop, for less than £150.

So I could get rid of the PC entirely - and if I did, I would have more room for my books. Well, it's something to think about, for 2019 if not for 2018. (I'm definitely not cancelling any of my exciting 2018 caravan holidays so that I can find the cash for an unexciting external hard drive!)

There are other ways too.

I could purge my book collection. There are a number of books that I never actually look at. They could go. Into the recycling bin, probably. They wouldn't be the sort that a charity shop, or a secondhand bookshop, would easily sell. The only thing is, it seems sacrilege to throw away any book. There's a psychological barrier to overcome. And besides, I like to have a comprehensive range of books on my shelves, a proper collection covering the entire range of subjects that interest me. My bulging bookshelves say something about me that a trimmed-down collection would not.

I don't mind giving unwanted books away to appreciative friends who might visit in the future. But that means hanging onto those books for a long time to come - and then passing the storage problem on to those friends.

I could also stop buying new paper books. But e-books have never had much appeal. Rationally, they do make sense. But there's something about being curled up with a paper book that is better. A paper book's physical characteristics make all the difference to the activity of reading. Somehow there's more pleasure, more personal involvement. You can use leather book-markers. You turn real pages with a crisp rustle. And you can measure your progress through the book by eye, in inches, and not just according to an electronic indication.

To cap it all, I keep on discovering new crime writers whose output I want to try. Currently I'm working my way through Ian Rankin and Ann Cleeves. That means lots of paperbacks yet to buy. No trouble at all! I like visiting bookshops. And there's the sport of hunting down copies of hard-to-find books. The next story in a series, say. A book not out of print, but not often seen on shop shelves, so that you might have to visit several shops before you find a copy. (You must never cheat by ordering them from Waterstones' central repository, or buying them online from Amazon!)

No, that PC (and the desk it sits on) will have to go!

Toe update: two weeks post-op

I've hardly been out since 8th January, when I had my toe op - just two visits to the clinic, three essential household shopping trips, a couple of lunches with my local girl friends, and one trip into Horsham to get a birthday present. Some of that left me limping for a while.

I went out again today, for a quick stroll on the coast at Saltdean. Saltdean seafront is all unbeautiful concrete and shingle, and rather unrewarding to visit. But the walking is easy. And even if the exercise didn't do a lot for my toe, the rest of me appreciated the fresh air. I'm starting to feel rather cooped up at home, with all this enforced (but sensible) inactivity. I am not one for sitting still in front of the telly, and you can do only so much reading or photo work. I have been meaning to get out a few more posts, but, oddly, I write best when a little crowded for time, and not when I have oodles of it.

I was glad to find that walking around at Saltdean was a more comfortable experience than my visit to Horsham a few days ago. I still wouldn't care to stride out briskly, nor walk for any distance, but clearly some healing is under way - as should be the case by now: the nasty nail came off two weeks ago. I have of course been taking pictures of the grisly surgery every couple of days, to monitor the healing progress, but those pictures could be stomach-churning to some, and so I won't show them here.

Where the nail was still looks a bit red and raw, but the lady who performed the surgery assured me when I saw her four days ago that all was as it should be. In fact she was very pleased with the appearance of the toe, despite the redness and despite the fact that it still weeps a clear fluid, especially if I am on my feet.

She told me that the nail bed - essentially an open wound - was free of infection and doing fine, but I must expect the recovery process to go on for a while yet, possibly as long as mid-February. The weeping will stop, and, after scabbing, a stiff surface will form. I can help things along a bit - if I have my feet up at home - by exposing the wound to the warm air inside the house, thereby hastening its drying-out. So Best Medical Advice is to bask on a recliner (with a cup of tea and a book to hand) as the sun streams through a garden window! But I must be remain very careful to avoid infection. I can go back to doing pilates, but only exercises that don't involve flexing my feet.

So the daily saline bath for the wounded foot will continue. I'd better check my supply of sterile dressings, and get some more if necessary.

Meanwhile, I will try to get out more. I hadn't realised quite how active I usually am, even when at home all day. In ordinary times I am a bit fidgety, and constantly getting up on my feet for one reason or another - which of course is good - and because of it, I must be burning off calories. Not many, to be sure, but enough to ensure no accumulation of new fat. However, if obliged to sit still, those calories clearly don't get used up. When weighed last week at Slimming World I found to my consternation that despite keeping rigorously to my eating plan on most days, I'd nevertheless put on three pounds in fourteen days! One and a half pounds each week since the op! That's got to be down to keeping my feet up as much as possible, because I haven't been eating more. Well, some more lounging around is unavoidable; but I really look forward to getting back to normal.

Another personal achievement - two million Flickr viewings!

I went to bed late last night 45 viewings short of a significant viewing milestone on Flickr. But this morning, it had been passed. I took this screen shot as soon as I was out of bed.

There it is: 2,000,043 viewings. I'm proud of that.

This is of course the grand total since I began to put shots on Flickr in February 2009, nine years ago. But I didn't start getting a lot of viewings until mid-2012. Then things took off. I suppose you need to build up a 'critical mass' of photos placed online, and then - poof! - you suddenly get noticed. And occasionally I have really popular days. For instance, two weeks ago, there was a day with over 16,000 viewings. I seem to be most 'popular' after uploading my holiday snaps, but there is often a surge of interest with no obvious reason behind it. 

I wish I knew what the secret of a great photo is. I can see which are the most popular shots, but they seem a bit run-of-the-mill to me, and wouldn't be in my personal Top Ten. 

Flickr and Blogger are the two halves of my creative effort online. So far as popularity goes, the 21,000 pictures on Flickr have won hands-down in the viewing contest, generating two million viewings, whereas the 1,900 blog posts have generated only 880,000 viewings in the same timescale. 

That said, my most popular blog post has had over 80,000 viewings, whereas my most popular photo has garnered only 4,000. 

All these figures are dwarfed into insignificance when compared to what the most popular photographers and bloggers achieve on a daily basis. I don't mind. I'm thinking that excessive popularity is the enemy of genuine creative freedom. When you are chasing big viewing figures, there must surely be a compulsion to please the crowd above all else, so that you stay in the lead. That would mean churning out shots and posts using well-tried and unadventurous formulae. I'm not suggesting that my own pictures and posts are 'adventurous', but they are at least taken or written with nobody telling me what to do, nobody putting a curb on using certain ideas, nobody insisting that I depict or mention this product or that, and without endlessly reiterating those hackneyed themes that are bound to make the viewing figures leap upwards. It's nice to be noticed, but there is such a thing as selling out.

Gosh, what if each of those two million Flickr viewings had popped just one penny into my bank account? I'd be £20,000 richer. Less income tax, of course. But still... 

Hey ho. I'd only have frittered it away. 

Deep in the New Forest

I lived in Southampton with my parents from 1963 to 1978, and had a car of my own from 1975. In those first three years of personal car ownership I explored the nearby New Forest almost to death. But of course I also had many opportunities to walk around it in the preceding years, at first with my parents, but from the late 1960s on my own, for the train could take you there.

So it was that in the spring of 1970 I ventured into the Forest by train to put together some supporting work for the main component of my A-Level Art examination - the chosen subject being 'Tree Forms'. I went to Beaulieu Road station in the heart of the Forest, and just wandered around in the vicinity. I was at that time inspired in particular by research into the work of artist Paul Nash (1889-1946), so I wanted to sketch a range of trees in various stages of destruction. Especially trees struck by lightning - blasted oaks in particular. Nash had done studies of those for his own World War I landscape paintings, which featured weird scenes of trees shredded by shellfire, such as this.

But he had also painted gentler scenes with trees in them.

I found what I wanted, and I produced a set of sketches and finished drawings. This is the only part of the pre-exam work that I still have a photo of. I apologise for the poor quality: it was taken with a Kodak Instamatic 50 camera in Mum and Dad's back garden in Southampton.

After leaving school, I remained keen to find interesting tree forms, but to photograph, not paint. And my wanderings around the New Forest would generally produce some good shots, such as this 'moaning tree' seen in 1977.

Once I moved to London in 1978 my visits to the Forest were drastically curtailed. And so were the opportunities to seek out shots of trees there. But I managed to do it on the odd occasion in later years, if I were caravanning not too far away. Such as these pictures of the Knightwood Oak and other trees nearby, taken in 2012.

You can see that the Paul Nash influence was definitely still alive and well!

Last October I was actually pitched in the New Forest, just outside Brockenhurst, and one afternoon decided to take a walk through Frame Wood, to the north-west of Hatchet Pond, parking Fiona at Furzey Lodge. Here is a location map.

Many of the inclosures (meaning sections of forest fenced around to inhibit the movements of deer and ponies) are in fact plantations of commercial-grade conifers, and worked as such by the Forestry Commission. But Frame Wood is much older, untended, full of old tracks and fallen trees. You might hear the trains in the far distance, but otherwise it's a very quiet place. Not somewhere I'd care to go in the dusk, but OK in broad daylight. 

So, well-shod in the Alt-Bergs, and with a stick, I set forth from Furzey Lodge (a collection of forest cottages), heading north-west, with the footbridge over the railway (top left in the map) as my furthest walking objective. I planned to pause at the footbridge, head south, and then return eastwards via Hawkhill Inclosure. But it didn't quite go to plan. 

I started out on a very decent track. I felt the Forest was a great place to be. The peace of it made me feel very content with life.

But the track soon degenerated unto a rutted quagmire, churned up by the heavy tractors used by the Forestry Commission. I had to get off it. I found myself striking north, rather than north-west. I wasn't too concerned about taking a detour, so long as I eventually found the track that ran more-or-less parallel with the railway line. Indeed, it didn't matter too much where I ended up. I just wanted a good walk. If I felt lost, I could get a GPS fix and navigate back to my starting point with that. 

Frame Wood was amazingly peaceful. It was a really old part of the forest, to be sure. Although there was some undergrowth, I was mostly walking on a carpet of leaves underneath a canopy of trees, with just the occasional clearing. But I was constantly having to step over fallen boughs, or alter course to avoid a massive fallen tree, and this undermined my sense of direction. I got some decent tree photos, though.

As you can see, I was more interested in the shape of the broken boughs, and how a monochrome picture might be made from such material, than what the wood really looked like in its natural coloration. Many of the fallen branches or tree-trunks had a serpentine look, as if they were rough carvings of lizards, crocodiles, or the heads of dragons. They looked like different animals as you walked around them...

In dim light, all this might be spooky, and put you in mind of alien creatures, but the light was good, and I wasn't nervous in the slightest. That said, I startled some deer, which made me jump. And I became aware that some ponies were moving closer. 

I'm wary of New Forest ponies. Normally - in the well-visited parts of the Forest, anyway - they seem cool and unconcerned about humans, although I well remember when a mean-looking brute began to walk menacingly towards me in a car park in the northern part of the Forest some years ago. I had to retreat rapidly to my car (this was pre-Fiona, so it must have been about ten years ago) and only just got back inside in time. I imagine the pony in question had in mind butting me hard, to show its displeasure. But ponies have a nasty bite too, if so minded, and they can kick. Since then, I've given them all a wide berth. Now a small herd was moving in my direction. Time to clear out. They surely wouldn't come after me, if I walked on confidently. 

I hit a proper track again, and followed it. I'd suddenly had quite enough of mysterious deep forest, no matter what its photographic potential. I wanted to find a way out of the wood, and then head back to where I'd left Fiona. But all the time I heard stealthy sounds behind me. Damn. They weren't going to leave me be. I had a stick, but that wouldn't really be of the slightest use if they ganged up on me.

After ten minutes of mounting concern, I saw a gate. I looked behind. The leading pony was only yards away now. It was with inexpressible relief that I opened the gate and shut it behind me. Phew. The pony looked thwarted. 

I was back in the commercial part of the Forest. A little way on, and the track broadened out. Then I came to a junction of tracks, signposted for mountain biking. I got a fix, and headed towards Hawkshill Inclosure and Moon Hill. All around were trees planted with harvesting in mind. It wasn't ugly, but it was certainly an industrial scene. It was a place to grow trees in straight lines, and eventually cut them down and haul them away. But at least I couldn't get lost, and I wouldn't encounter any ponies hell-bent on exacting a hideous revenge. They surely knew all about the illegal trade in horse-meat. Some of them had been victims in the past. One human trampled to death would be some kind of retribution. 

My mood had lifted again. I was reminded of a merry shot taken of Edwina, my 1970s friend, on a Forest track just like this one. Here she was, in 1977.

I attempted to reproduce the shot, in so far as you can when holding a phone at arm's length.

There were stacks of cut logs here and there, with warnings to keep off them. 

What did the blue letters and numbers mean? They were repeated again and again on different stacks.

Suddenly the light began to take on that dusk-is-approaching look. I increased my pace. I knew exactly where I was, but wanted to reach Fiona before it began to get dark. Looking sideways, the woods were beginning to look dim and shadowy. Within half an hour - or less - they might look like this: decidedly gloomy and unfriendly.

Close to Fiona, I make one last deliberate detour, to see if an interesting shot of a stream were possible. There was just enough light left to get some odd reflections.  

Yellow lights were already lit inside the cottages at Furzey Lodge. Suddenly it felt a very lonely business, getting my boots off in the eerie half-light. I wouldn't like to live in a forest. I would find the trees oppressive, and the night-time noises of nocturnal creatures most unsettling.

Post-op

There it is. One beautifully-dressed big toe, after the nail was removed earlier this morning, and the nail bed treated so that a new nail ought not to grow back. I was requested to phone Jackie (who had brought me to the Health Centre, and was waiting at Reception), and ask her to bring her car to the side of the building, so that I need take only a few steps outside to reach it. While the phone was in my hand, I snuck a shot.

The trip from home to Health Centre, the op, and then back again, was all accomplished inside two hours. The procedure itself took very little time. My toe was completely numbed with the local anaesthetic, and I felt no pain whatever, neither when the nail was prised off, nor when the phenol was applied. I refrained from watching what the podiatrist was doing! I was in any case comfortably reclined, with a pillow under my head, and stayed that way until the toe was dressed.

Now I'm at home again, with my feet up, and I must stay that way as much as possible.

During the next hour, the anaesthetic will wear off. I hope there will be no great pain when it does, but I've just taken some paracetamol with a nice cup of tea, and maybe that will keep any discomfort within bounds.

The post-op notes I've been given say that the toe will look 'red and puffy' for the next ten days or so, and it may weep. But it will dry out after two to four weeks, and should heal up completely in six to eight weeks. That does seem rather a long time, but surely I will be out and around in a limited fashion, at least in dry weather, before the end of the month. Certainly sufficiently to get shopping in. And I hope enough to attend a lunch or two. The first few days will be the important ones.

It may irk me to be housebound, but I intend to be firm with myself about that, and firm with other people too. I have books to read, and phone, laptop, radio, TV and DVD player are all to hand. I shall doze if nature tells me to.

One of the things I can get on with is booking this year's caravan holidays online. It pays to do that early. The Caravan and Motorhome Club doesn't ask for any booking deposits, and online bookings can be amended or even cancelled if proper notice is given closer to the date. And I already know where I want to go in 2018, and when. 

Later the same day
Well: no pain, no discomfort, and really very little sensation at all. This is after only one session of paracetamol at 10.45am this morning - I didn't need to take any more. And I haven't been totally immobile. I have made tea more than once, quickly cooked up lunch in a wok, and have visited the loo a couple of times. But otherwise my feet have been up.

It's now very nearly time to cook an evening meal, and I've finally donned the sandals at home, not wanted to stub a toe, any toe, while in the kitchen. Here's a photo taken just now.

The cut front strap on the right foot can of course fit over and around the dressing, and I've tied the ribbon so that there is only very, very gentle pressure on the top side of the foot.

I came home wearing a blue plastic foot-covering on my right foot, the sort you put on to protect floors and carpets from wet or dirty shoes. I kept that on at home, in order to keep the underside of the dressing completely clean while I did my minimum shuffling around. Doing so may have been a minor error - after removing it, the dressing felt slightly damp, as if the foot had sweated somewhat inside the covering. I've now discarded it. Although damp, the dressing was still pristine to the eye, so I'm thinking that there have been no wound exudations, and no significant bleeding. If I'm right, the dressing will dry out during the evening.   

Cunning preparations for my op

The op in question is the removal of the thick, ugly, malformed toenail from my right big toe. It takes place at 9.15am on Monday morning, in less than two days' time. It'll be at the Health Centre in Haywards Heath, and Jackie next door is being wheels, because of course I won't be able to drive afterwards. I've got enough food in to last ten days, subject to some topping-up - but then one or other of my girl friends will get in extra milk or whatever for me, if I ask. I don't think I'll need to. I'm expecting to be housebound for only a few days. I have to keep my feet up for a while, and let the toe heal. I will do the sensible thing and obey. I've got one or two laptop-based jobs to get on with, and can do that sitting down in my lounge. Or I can read a bit. Or just doze.

Here's a last photo of the nail I want to see the back off.

It's grown so thick that I can't wear ordinary shoes unless they are a sloppy fit, or especially roomy. Boots remain fine, but I can't go on wearing those into the spring and summer. And the nail has lately decided to grow skewed to the right. The NHS specialist said 'Off with it!' and here I now am, contemplating minor surgery.

The toe next to the offending nail doesn't look too wonderful, either, does it? But its shape and swollen nature are down to arthritis, the first of my digits to suffer in that way. Perhaps it's not so bad to get to sixty-five with only one toe hit by a touch of arthritis. The joint in question has been encapsulated by the swollen tissue, and I normally feel no discomfort at all. Nor does it stop me wearing regular shoes. As the condition of that toe is stable, I have deferred any remedial surgery until there is a change for the worse. But the big toe, with its dreadful nail, is quite another thing.

The nail will come off under local anaesthetic. I have every confidence that the procedure will go quickly and well, but I'm not looking forward to it. It isn't so much the likelihood of a little gore, and a ghastly-looking nail bed once the thing is off. It's more the prospect of burning pain, as the anaesthetic wears off. I'm anticipating a very sore toe later that day.

But it will heal, if I treat it properly once home, and make up my mind to rest as much as feasible.

There is a visit to the Health Centre two days after the op, for the first redressing; and yet another, for the second redressing, a week later. I have got in a supply of sterile dressings I can use myself, as an ongoing thing. I understand that eventually some tough skin (skin, not nail) will form over where the nail used to be. And, if it matters, I will be able to pop a perfect, artificial nail over that, should I be invited to a posh summer party and must wear pretty sandals. I haven't felt able to wear pretty sandals for a very long time. Admittedly, I was never a great one for open-toed footwear in the past. But with that horrible nail gone, I am now looking forward to exposing my toes to the world this summer. Who knows, I might even paint them!

The op requires more preparation than just filling my fridge and freezer. I need special footwear, for one thing. My toe will be heavily bandaged at first. Late last September, I found these two pairs of sandals at the Clarks shop in Honiton, pretty well at half price in their end-of-summer sale:

The bottom pair are for when I am all healed up. But the top pair (in grey fabric) were bought with the period immediately after the op particularly in mind. Here they are again, shot more recently:

My plan was to cut the front strap on the right-foot sandal, and having made holes, push through a length of black ribbon or cord, so that once I'd slid my toes through the rear strap, I could then pull the two halves of the front strap gently together, and tie the ribbon. I'd do the same with the left-foot sandal, for the sake of symmetry.

Here are those sandals with the front straps cut, and various coils of black ribbon and cord to consider using. I decided on the thinner of the ribbons.

I saw that where the straps had been cut, the fabric was likely to fray; so this afternoon I've quickly sewn by hand along the cut edges, to stop that happening. It's not the neatest sewing job in the world, but it will do. With holes made, and the thin black ribbon threaded through, this is the result:

I think this will work fine. I'll wear these to the Health Centre. It's surely clear from the picture how it will be, when I get the right-foot sandal back on after the post-op bandaging.

It's a shame in a way to have mauled perfectly good sandals, but once I'm healed I still have the option of sewing the front straps back together, much as they originally were. Or I could just leave those black ribbons permanently in place. Beribboned, the sandals look just right for the beach, and many people will think they have always looked like that, from new.

There is another preparation I've needed to get on with. When sleeping I  can't have my bandaged toe touching any bedclothes. My winter-weight duvet, for instance. It needs to be hoicked up out of the way.

I considered some sort of frame or cage at first, to go over my feet with plenty of room to spare, and thus keep the duvet off them. Maybe a pet shop, or a garden shop, might have something suitable. Then it occurred to me that nothing fancy was required. Two large clean boxes with a space left between them would give me all the foot-room I needed. Any cheap plastic storage boxes of sufficient size would do. Wilkinson provided a low-cost solution.

Voila!

I'm pleased how inventive I can be! The boxes will of course still be useful afterwards, so no money has been wasted.

Put back in the attic: memories of failure and marital breakup

It's an annual event. Every winter I go up into my attic and fetch down some boxes of photo prints or slides to scan. There's an awful lot up there. I took some 5,000 pictures from 1965 to 1989 using colour transparency film (mounted after processing as 'slides'), and 23,400 pictures from 1989 to 2000 using colour or black and white print film. I discarded anything that wasn't technically perfect (or near-perfect), but still ended up with a collection of 2,500 transparencies and some 15,000 prints, kept in boxes.

My ideal would be the scan the cream of all those pictures, and add them to the Melford digital photo archive. But although I have been having a go at that every winter since 2000, I doubt whether as many as 3,500 have been scanned, processed, and filed away in the archive. Scanning and processing (captioning and so forth) is a slow task. So it's definitely a thing for dull and rainy winter days. And although it's often interesting and satisfying to digitise these pictures, it stretches the notion of 'a labour of love' a very long way, and I soon tire of it.

Each winter, though, I have another attempt. Generally I do it by theme: pictures of a certain person, or a place, or a particular subject. This year I decided to be more comprehensive: I would examine all my pictures of individuals and groups during the 1980s, and scan the best ones. The 1980s were very much under-represented in my digital photo archive. It was high time I addressed that.

So down came five boxes of transparencies. Even if I selected only the best pictures, this represented weeks of work, on and off. But once done, that hole in my digital photo record would finally be filled.

Why hadn't I scanned much from the 1980s before?

Well, you need to understand that it was the decade that I lived in London. It was punctuated by several events, some good, some bad:

1980: Selected for Final Course Training in the Inland Revenue. This was a demanding, degree-standard course involving notoriously difficult exams. If I were successful, my career would really take off. Dad had taken this course before me, in the 1960s, and had won a well-deserved promotion from it. If I were equally successful, I would no longer be an ordinary Inspector of Taxes, but an officer who could command a Tax District, or even occupy a policy seat at the Revenue's Head Office. So much rode on being picked for Final Course Training. It was an honour.

1983: After two failures at the exams, I was denied a further attempt. It meant a return to ordinary duties. Mum and Dad must have felt humiliated. I'd done my best, but it hadn't been good enough. I felt a failure. To compensate, I promptly got married. I'd been pressed to agree, and I was thirty. At the time, getting married seemed, in a way, to offer an alternative career path.

1985: Based on my office results, I was selected for promotion to a new grade, in which I would manage the investigation work of the other Inspectors, answerable only to the District Inspector. It was an achievement. But I knew I'd never now get higher. (And I never did) 

1987: The first four years of my marriage were over, and we had settled down to our humdrum existence in south-west London. The spark had gone. There was no sharing. There would be no more holidays. The pointless arguments had begun.

1989: A fresh start. We moved out of London to Sussex, just outside Horsham. There was the excitement of buying new furnishings, of sampling life in the sticks. But after only a year, the harmony broke down and the tensions came back.

By the winter of 1990/91 my marriage was finished as a going concern. We split. We were both working in London, but W--- left to live there, while I stayed on in Sussex. Divorce eventually followed.

You can see from this brief résumé that I did not have a uniformly good time in the 1980s. High hopes turned sour. Everyday existence was dull and unrewarding. My best times were at the office, but they were overshadowed by the knowledge of having failed those important exams. I was in some respects over-qualified for what I now did. I was regarded as something of an oddity, and my background and office history were never forgotten. I found London stifling.

I remember going off to Liverpool in 1984, on a two-day trust course. I spent the sunny evenings riding the Liverpool Metro, sailing on the Mersey Ferry, and walking the streets of the City centre. Liverpool was mine. It was such a friendly place. I felt free. I was reluctant to return to London, to my marriage, and the daily torture of home-to-office and office-to-home.

I thought of all this, as I contemplated the five slide boxes brought down from the attic.

There would be pictures in them I hadn't seen for a very long time. It hadn't all been dispiriting. There had been some good times, some sophistication, certainly plenty of laughter. But also some despair, and a constant feeling of being trapped. And memories of something between anger and boredom. It was my first marriage, W---'s second. Why had it failed? We never had a proper inquest. We just agreed that it had fallen apart, and that we needed to live separately.

Did I want to rekindle any of this, by scanning the photos? I decided that I didn't. I'd pondered on my marriage too much already. It was kinder to myself to leave the pictures in the boxes. Some reason to dig them out again would no doubt arise in the future, but for now I didn't want to relive the past. And it was, after all, thirty years ago; nearly everyone in those shots was out of my life. What, really, was the point? To get at the truth, to look for evidence, to correct my memory?

Yes...but to be honest, I wasn't in the mood to play the dispassionate historian. I'd taken years to get over failing those exams, disappointing my parents, and not managing to make a marriage work. Reviving all that wouldn't help me now. It might drag me down.

So the boxes went back up into the attic.

It's a New Year, I thought. You're a much more accomplished person now than you were in the 1980s.  Don't spoil it. The future lies ahead. Look forwards, not backwards.