time in looe

^{[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 10 June 2026].}

It was a dark and stormy night when Phil and I drove into Looe. The storm had a name. Its name was Goretti*.

Despite the forecast warning of winds of up to 90 mph, we braved the elements. The weather and the journey were less hairy than I had expected from Warwick Parkway to near Bodmin, but not far from the Jamaica Inn, as the daylight started to fade, the driving rain started to have more of an impact on our progress.

The first, most direct route we attempted to take from the motorway to Looe had become flooded. The second route we considered was most likely too.

Thankfully, my need to use the ladies' led us to The Archer Arms, a village pub in Lewannick, where one of the locals gave us detailed directions for the safest route into Looe.

We made it through No Man's Land and into Looe at about 20:15, not long before entry to the town became inaccessible due to fallen trees and branches.

The most suitable car park was only a 5-10 minute walk away from the Harbour Moon Inn, where we were staying, but with winds of about 67 mph and the rain still coming down (though thankfully, somewhat less heavily), it was quite a challenge to walk to the hotel from the car.

As it was the off-season, the hotel's kitchen wasn't open. However, the staff kindly pointed us to a selection of local restaurants that would still be open, despite the weather, and allowed us to bring our Indian food back from the Viceroy to eat in the warmth of the inn. I'm ashamed to say that it was my first authentic biryani (microwaveable ready-meal versions don't count!)

By the time we sat down to eat, the wind had dropped to about 63 mph, but we were well and truly indoors for the rest of the evening. The experience of being out and about in the storm was both nerve-wracking and invigorating; definitely an adrenaline rush.

Though I don't cut the waif-like figure I once did, I'm still a short 5'2"-and-a-bit in height, and apparently still light enough to be almost lifted off my feet by the gusting winds we encountered walking back across the Looe Bridge from East to West Looe.

I only captured a handful of iPhone photos of the dark and stormy night we arrived.

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We woke to a lovely blue sky (as seen in the photos above), which came and went with some lingering showers over the next couple of days. Apart from the wet and windy greeting on arrival, we fared much better with the weather in Looe than in St Ives and when we popped in to have lunch at the Jamaica Inn on our way back from Cornwall.

Phil and I really enjoyed our visit to 'Shipton Abbott' of Beyond Paradise fame. The locals we met were all so friendly and welcoming, and I have plenty more photos to share (of course!)

^{*Storm Elli in Germany.}

dynnargh

^{[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 8 January 2026].}

A belated dynnargh - welcome - to 2026.

I should have been here earlier. Alas, the past few weeks have been a tad stressful.

I had my last working day in my day job on 17 December. I had hoped to spend a large chunk of time editing around job-hunting, but there was some life admin and a couple of appointments to fit in before I headed south to Bromley for Christmas with the kittehs and the wee hamster.

Christmas was my usual (mostly) quiet affair, with the added pleasure of an early Christmas dinner with Sabine before she went north, and another on Christmas Eve with two good friends, Sophie and Dan (it would have been Christmas dinner, but the UK don't run public transport on Christmas Day and the pubs were closed, so we brought it forward).

I admit, I had a fairly lazy Christmas, as I was still mentally and emotionally exhausted from the past six months, but I was looking forward to returning home on 27 December to immerse myself in photo editing for my end-of-year wrap-up blog, which I was hopeful of sharing this year after having to forego it last year with my home move.

Unfortunately, my external Duo drive, containing (almost) all my life's work, had other ideas. I came downstairs on the day to pack up my laptop and the drive to travel home, and it was making some fatal clicking noises. Only a few folders from my primary drive (Daisy) appeared, but my Time Machine backups on Violet all seemed visible and accessible. However, after turning it off and back on again, neither my laptop nor my iMac was able to find the drives, except through the WD Discovery app. That showed the drives had a configuration fault.

Fast forward to yesterday, and I've provided a portable drive to a local(ish) company to copy the data they have recovered from Daisy, about 3 TB of what should be about 6. They haven't been able to access Violet to restore anything from her.

Fortuitously, I made a full backup to another drive (Orchid) in early April, when I had to reformat Daisy and Violet from MacOS Journaled to APFS. So, I have everything up to that date.

I haven't lost any raw or mobile photos as they were all imported to Photos on my iMac. I exported those not already on Orchid within a couple of days of returning home.

In addition, I had copied my client files and some day-to-day documents to my iCloud drive and a portable drive (Winnebago) that I usually take with me to Bromley. I copied the majority of files across in October and November, so they are relatively up to date.

It's unclear at this stage what the 3 TB recovered consists of, but I've resigned myself to the strong possibility that everything I have on Orchid and have retained on Winnebago and iCloud is all I will get back. The files seem almost unidentifiable from what the data recovery company has shown me. The task of reviewing them may not be as arduous as I first thought, as I'll likely sort by modified date and find there is little, if anything, created or edited since early April that I can recover.

So, while 2025 was a disappointing year from the perspective of how few photos I edited, it's somewhat positive when I consider the final edits I've likely lost. At a quick estimate, it's still about 50+ final edits, but not the hundreds to thousands I might have edited in previous years.

Dealing with that administrative nightmare (as well as formatting my replacement drive, sorting out some cloud storage, and trying to resolve the additional error Disk Warrior has started identifying with my iMac) will have to wait until next week.

Later today, I'll be heading down to Cornwall again with my friend and fellow photographer, Phil, to capture Looe (Shipton Abbott to fans of Beyond Paradise). And to revisit St Ives (where I took this photo on 1 March 2025) and Penzance.

I'm a little apprehensive, as we expect Storm Goretti to land in the area later today, and we're staying in an inn on the river. Fingers crossed the storm isn't as bad as forecast and/or it doesn't affect Looe too badly.

At least if confined to the inn, I have plenty of job-hunting and other things to be getting on with!

I hope 2026 is treating you kindly so far.

a cornish churchyard

^{[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 17 March 2025].}

So, in the end, I didn't manage more than the first day of this year's Februllage.

I didn't start the 100 Days Project, and though it's still within the 100 days, I'll be honest and say there's no way on Science's green earth I'll manage it this year.

I'm somewhat disappointed on both counts. Unfortunately, my art practice is the one area that has had to be deprioritised for a while. But, at the same time, I'm not giving myself a hard time about it because, sometimes, that's life.

I did get away for five nights to Cornwall with a friend and my "proper" camera, so I've not been idle with my art. I'm just a little restricted in editing and sharing my work because my day job, pet-sitting and life have left me exhausted a lot lately.

I also spent some time (finally!) cutting up magazines for future collages during February. And I have more to hand to cut up while I'm sitting my floofy friend, Jilly.

In Cornwall, visiting Tate St Ives, I discovered a selection of books explicitly designed to be cut up to create collages. So, I spent money on those instead of replacing my dilapidated trainers.

Towards the beginning of the year, I received an email about my Etihad Guest points expiring at the end of January. That prompted me to check my balance with Emirates Skywards (zero) and Qantas.

It turned out that I had a not insignificant number of Qantas Frequent Flyer (QFF) points that would expire at the end of February if I didn't use some or all of them or take a new flight. Not enough to get me even one way to Australia. Perhaps enough to get me one way to Singapore or the UAE. But enough to get me a return flight to a variety of places in mainland Europe I haven't previously visited or Iceland (which has long been high on my list of places to visit).

However, visiting Iceland solo is problematic, as I don't drive, and it's one of those places you seem to have to unless you know someone there who drives to act as a tour guide or you want to fork out money for tours.

But there were a couple of places on my list where I know people who live there. Or people who are from there and return to visit family semi-regularly.

Sicily was on my list, as I missed attending a former flatmate's wedding there in 2018, as I was broke after returning from being a bridesmaid in New Zealand. However, her next planned visit is in high summer, when I would die from the heat if I did not already have bookings for sittings in London and Bishop's Stortford.

On further investigation, visiting some of my other preferences in mainland Europe didn't make sense as neither Qantas nor their partner airlines fly direct, so I might spend 4+ hours in the air when I could pay for a cheap fare to be there in one to three hours.

But also on my list was Finland, where my lovely friend, Pia, lives. And Qantas fly directly to Helsinki, with reward flights within my QFF points balance.

So, the day before I travelled to Cornwall, I booked return flights from Heathrow to Helsinki in mid-September. I still have an itinerary to plan, but I'll spend some time in the capital and some in Tampere, where Pia lives.

I'm very excited to catch up with Pia in her homeland for once. We met virtually and in person when she was living in London and have caught up most times that she's been back since she returned to Finland.

I'm also excited to see a new country, visit mainland Europe for the first time since September 2014, and go over seas (excluding Australia via airports in other countries - my home country doesn't count as overseas travel) for the first time since 2018 (technically, I've been out of the country (England) at least three times since the pandemic, but not overseas).

I'm always nervous about making plans to visit friends in other countries. Many will enthusiastically invite when it's hypothetical but might not be so welcoming when you ask about suitable dates and discuss more solid travel plans.

It's unlikely that I'll stay with Pia for practical reasons (which I knew in advance and I didn't want to impose anyway), but she's happy to have someone follow through on their threat to visit her in her home country :)

Meanwhile, Phil and I visited the mermaid in St Senara's Church in Zennor, Cornwall, after walking from Sennen Cove to Land's End and back the day before we returned to London. We caught some lovely light in the churchyard (as you can see in the photo above) before venturing into The Tinner's Arms for some tea (for Phil) and a half pint of Cornish cider (for me).

More posts about my Cornwall wanderings are to come as soon as possible!