Hello again, dear reader.
In case you're new here, I'm Alastair Johnston and you're receiving this newsletter because you subscribed over at my blog or via a link from Substack. I'm grateful for you giving me some of your time and attention and hope I always inform or entertain you here. If not, please feel free to unsubscribe, I won't be offended.
Spined Calendars
I’ve been scratching my own itch again, with regards to my Bullet Journal and I wanted to share that with you here. Sometimes you want a quick, at-a-glance calendar, something for holidays and high days. But there is the constant battle between how much info you can put on a set of pages vs how many months you can then view on that same set of pages. There is and will never be a perfect solution. But I think I’ve got a good one for what I want, for now, which I’m excited to share.
The key to me was to move those day and date numbers and letters from the left to the centre of the page. Add a little jiggery-pokery and voila, your ‘spine’ now allows two whole months per page, four months to a view. Pretty neat eh? Go take a look and if you have feedback do let let me know your thoughts.
Maybe Bullet Journal is not your bag. If so, that’s fine. Here are some other things I’d love to share with you:
There is a NEW film camera coming this way soon.
I cannot tell you how excited I am about this. I’ve recently moved back into taking pictures on film and I’m loving it. There will be some bigger blog posts about this in future, but I’m finding the process far more enjoyable than digital, more mindful and slower. I also love the look of film. Even when I do shoot digital, mainly on my iPhone, my standard setup is Hipstamatic to take some of the hard edges off those pictures. To me film feels softer, more human (ok, ok, I know this is sounding a wee bit hippy, but there is something about the results I get which I love).
I digress. Film is making a healthy comeback. Kodak and Ilford are manufacturing the stuff. You can buy plastic cameras brand new. You can buy proper used cameras for reasonable money, or proper new cameras for ridiculous amounts (cough) Leica. But what you cannot do is buy a new, reasonably priced proper camera from a major manufacturer. Until that is, Pentax/Ricoh deliver the first of a number of cameras they are working on. This will be a game-changer. It will be as big as record deck manufacturers building more turntables to support the resurgence in vinyl. That big.
I currently shoot with a number of compacts, a Rolleicord and my trusty Nikon FE-2. But I can’t wait to see what Pentax launch and if it’s reasonably priced, I’ll be wanting one.
Seven local summits
I watched this delightful film by Alastair Humphries and thought, you know what I could actually do this. So I have an Ordnance Survey map in my online basket and the UK trig point website open in another tab. It sounds fun, and doable and something else to get me out of the house having proper fun.
Enchantment
This is my current read. Not as good as Wintering in my opinion, (which if you feel low and crap and just bleh in winter I urge you to read as that book was a lifesaver) but still great. It’s a look at finding your sense of wonder, of joy, as you go back out into the world after Covid, Lockdowns and all of the long term anxiety these events have caused. I have felt that I’m still a bit timid, still a bit uncertain and still a bit flat in my own life and I couldn’t quite put a finger on why. Katherine May shares how she felt exactly the same and more importantly how she began to find ways out of it by allowing herself to be enchanted again. It was timely to me and it’s lovely.
That’s it for now.
Be kind!
Comments? Insights? Join the discussion or email me.