[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 24 December 2025].
with bells on
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 21 December 2025].
holly wreath
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 20 December 2025].
A day late and posted late in the day.
I'll be back on track for tomorrow's instalment!
work christmas party
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 17 December 2025].
I finished work for 2025 today.
I'm still technically employed until 31 December, but I also finished my last working day for an organisation I worked for for almost four years this afternoon.
Thankfully, our work Christmas party a couple of weeks ago didn't look like this.
forever in our hearts at christmas
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 16 December 2025].
pre-christmas overwhelm
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 13 December 2025].
This week was busy (which underplays that the previous weeks were too).
I ran out of time to share a 'season's grievings' photo on Thursday, or on Friday as a catch-up.
So, here is today's contribution. It pretty accurately sums up how I'm feeling at the moment after such a busy week.
Don't get me wrong. Most of the past week was positive:
Kitteh visits with two local kittehs and two slightly less local kittehs that I'll be sitting more often in the new year, staying overnight.
My last "anchor day" in my current job was on Wednesday, as I finish up my contract next Wednesday.
Eating pizza in honour of the departure of another colleague and me (which is a breakthrough for me after over three years, for those who are in the know).
A cheeky pint near work sponsored by our CEO.
Visiting the Night Owls and Abstractions exhibition at Royal Festival Hall on the Southbank, the annual exhibition of art by "individuals in prisons, secure hospitals, young offender institutions and immigration removal centres, as well as people on community sentences and probation" that Sabine and I have been trying to coordinate to visit together for a few years now (maybe as many years as I've been sitting her kittehs for). It did not disappoint and was very inspiring.
Preparing to go to Oxford for the weekend to visit, this is what you get, with a couple of longtime friends. It's an exhibition of artwork by and related to Stanley Donwood, Thom Yorke and Radiohead.
The downside was a heartbreaking update I received yesterday evening about a friend in Australia.
Although being busy with sittings is a good thing, especially in the lead-up to finishing my contract, I'm looking forward to a three-day work week next week. I'm looking forward to no pet-sittings, and time for job-hunting, editing photos and catching up on life admin, before a mix of social and anti-social Christmas festivities kicks in.
(Does it count as "social" or "anti-social" if your interactions are only with cats and a hamster?)
This year, Sabine and I will be able to enjoy an early Christmas dinner together before she goes away, as neither of us will be working (I'm usually working).
I have an(other) early Christmas dinner scheduled with friends in Bromley for Christmas Eve eve.
And there will be cheese, cider and kitteh cuddles galore (as well as binge-watching TV and films) over the break.
I'm also hopeful for some creativity and reading!
I hope the lead-up to Christmas is more zen for all of you! x
how do you like them apples?
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 9 December 2025].
a wreath with all the trimmings
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 6 December 2025].
a light is from our household gone
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 3 December 2025].
red roses and reindeer
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 1 December 2025].
It's that time again.
As has become something of a custom, life is "all change" again this December (well, at least on the work front).
Despite that, I'm aiming to share new images from my season's grievings series every couple of days between now and Christmas and make them public approximately two days later.
I hope you enjoy!
I photographed this grave in Abney Park Cemetery in February 2012. The inscription is hard to read through the plant life, but it could be for Thelma Marie Lucas. Alas, I haven't been able to find anything to confirm that or to inform me more about the interred.
I hope that those who love you miss you this much and more after you're gone.
(Though, without the requirement of it being so physically visible. I personally don't want to be buried, so there would be nowhere specific like this for those who love and miss me to show it in the same way.)
uplifting
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 25 November 2025].
pretty fly for a white guy
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 7 November 2025].
When I photographed these fun guys on a grave in Hietaniemen hautausmaa (Hietaniemi Cemetery) in Helsinki, I honestly thought they were artificial.
I probably couldn't have got much closer, as the graves were quite close together, but if I'd realised they were natural, I probably would have tried.
Having viewed them, zoomed in, I'm sure they're real. There's no artificial appearance to the stem of the mature fly agaric mushroom in the front.
So, perhaps not my most artistic photograph, but some pretty impressive specimens captured in pixels for a Fungi Friday.
bianca frangipani
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 17 August 2025].
Early in the new year, I received a message in my Instagram DMs from a woman in Massachusetts, Monica, who had seen photographs I'd taken at Pinner New Cemetery. I posted several photos I took in December 2023 as part of my annual season's grievings series in the lead-up to Christmas.
Monica's aunt, Bianca, passed away tragically at the age of 31 in 1962 and is buried in Pinner New Cemetery.
Bianca and Monica's mother had kept in touch over the years, but family circumstances had kept them apart. With Bianca in London and Monica's mother in the US, she (and Monica) had never seen the memorial laid on Bianca's grave in the cemetery.
My friend and former flatmate, Floriana, was the reason I visited Pinner New Cemetery in December 2023, as she works in Edgware on Saturdays and was attending a work Christmas lunch at a restaurant in Pinner. Consequently, we'd organised to meet at The Queen's Head before her lunch.
Monica asked me if I would be willing and able to revisit the cemetery to take photographs of the grave for her.
Coincidentally, I already had plans to meet Floriana again the following weekend. We had planned for Floriana to revisit my neck of the woods (our shared flat was in Wood Green, and I live in the adjacent suburb of Hornsey) to meet.
However, I contacted Floriana and suggested we meet in Edgware or Pinner instead, as that would allow me to revisit the cemetery and be more convenient for her. (As it turned out, there weren't many options for pubs near her work, so she drove me home from the cemetery, and we went to my local instead, as we'd originally planned).
When I agreed to look for Bianca's grave, Monica sent me further information, including the plot number, maps of the cemetery and the location of the grave.
Exploring Pinner New Cemetery
Looking at the map Monica had sent me, I was almost 100% certain I hadn't ventured into the section where her aunt had been laid to rest, but I looked through my existing photographs first to confirm my memory.
When I visited Pinner New Cemetery for the first time, I almost immediately came across a section dedicated to infants and children, which was towards the front of the cemetery. The section was simultaneously beautiful and heartbreaking, and I walked the full length of it to a corner of the cemetery, taking photos as I went.
Among other things, the child and infant section offered plenty of opportunities to capture season's grievings images, as so many of the graves were decorated for past Christmases (it was slightly early for decorations for the current year).
I explored other areas of the cemetery during my approximately 45-minute visit. However, as the days were short at that time of year, I stopped taking photographs at about 15:30 and started heading home, having only covered about half of the cemetery.
It was my second cemetery visit of the day - I visited Paines Lane Cemetery around midday before meeting Floriana - and ultimately, I had an even longer journey home afterwards than I'd expected. I don't recall the exact journey time, but it was substantially more than the already long 1.5-hour Tube journey it should have been due to train issues.
Seeking others' ancestors
A woman from Ontario contacted me in June 2023 via a comment on my photo of a grave in Brockley and Ladywell Cemeteries. She approached me about locating and photographing the graves of two of her ancestors.
Knowing how vast and overgrown those two cemeteries are, that there's no clear demarcation between them and how old the graves she sought were, I hadn't been too hopeful of finding them.
On that occasion, I spent about 45 minutes searching for the graves with no luck, and I couldn't find any groundskeeping staff on site to ask for assistance.
I contacted the Friends of the Cemetery shortly after my visit to see if someone could point me in the right direction. I was cat-sitting for a friend nearby so I could return more easily than usual. However, without a section letter, they couldn't assist. I passed the information on to the woman who had contacted me, but she chose not to pay for access to records that might have provided her with the complete plot number for me to follow up further.
Finding Bianca
I was far more confident that I could locate Bianca's grave with the map and plot location provided.
Monica had mentioned in her messages that she feared the grave would be overgrown. I hadn't expressed my concern that it may be worse than that.
When I visited both Paines Lane Cemetery and Pinner New Cemetery, I recall being shocked at how poorly maintained the graves seemed. Admittedly, I was visiting during the depths of winter, and it had been raining much of the time while I wandered through Paines Lane Cemetery. And while the weather had cleared somewhat before I reached Pinner New Cemetery, the paths were still far from dry. But the drainage in Pinner New Cemetery seemed insufficient, especially in the sections I spent most time in, which were at the bottom of a gentle slope.
I was nervous that I would visit Bianca's grave and find it waterlogged.
Thankfully, on the day I visited, it was a brisk three degrees, and the grass and flowers still held a light frost in the early afternoon, but there were blue skies and no rain to worry about. Bianca's plot is also at one of the higher points of the cemetery, so it's less affected by poor drainage.
The map Monica sent me proved very helpful in locating Bianca's grave, although I initially overshot into the furthest section of the cemetery.
Once I rechecked my location, I questioned what the map was showing me. Beyond the first row or two of graves near the path, a large part of the section seemed to be only lawn at first glance.
But then I realised there were flat headstones inlaid into the lawn that had become partially sunken. That made it hard to be 100% sure which plot was which, and I initially lifted away fallen leaves from a gravestone about two plots over from Bianca's.
I should have photographed each gravestone before I pulled away the leaves, in case I had found the correct grave. But I didn't think of that as I was more intent on discovering Bianca's final resting place than making aesthetic choices and capturing photographic 'reveals'.
When I found the right plot, I was pleased but simultaneously disappointed for Monica and her mother that the grass and soil had encroached so far across the inscription.
After removing all the leaves, I found that, short of asking a groundskeeper (none were in sight) or gently taking a trowel (that I didn't have) to the surrounding lawn, I would only be able to photograph about half to two-thirds of the gravestone for them.
But at least I could see enough of Bianca's name, month of death and age at passing that I could be sure I had found her.
I took photos of the gravestone and of it in the context of the surrounding graves to share with Monica. I placed some of the leaves I had removed from the marker back onto the grass by the grave.
Although I'm not particularly spiritual, I talked to Bianca while photographing her gravestone. Letting her know her niece had sent me to find her and that her family was thinking of her.
I took most of the photos of the grave with my D700, but I captured a couple with my iPhone and sent one to Monica before I left the cemetery to let her know I had found Bianca.
Monica hadn't told her mother about my mission until she sent her the photograph I had sent. It was lovely to hear about her emotional response to the photo.
It gave me a warm glow to have been able to go just a little out of my way to capture something so important to others, to be their eyes across the pond.
strangers' cemetery
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 19 May 2025].
I photographed the Strangers' Cemetery on the Isle of Portland as Phil and I walked past it on our way to The Merchant's Incline.
I had every intention of returning to photograph the graves more closely from inside the cemetery before we left the island, but we ran short on time, so all of my photographs are from beyond the stone wall.
There's very little information about the cemetery online. The Portland Town Council's entry is, literally, a blank page.
The Commonwealth War Graves Commission's entry has only slightly more information, noting three Commonwealth War Graves from the First and Second World Wars, the cemetery's location, a photo and little else.
The only other interesting information I've found is that, apparently, the buildings surrounding the cemetery were built to house competitors, etc., for the sailing competition in the 2012 London Olympic Games.
Based on what I can find online regarding other cemeteries or burial grounds with similar names in the UK, Jersey and Guernsey, it seems likely the occupants were not local, possibly foreign nationals, paupers, or other folk without any known surviving relatives. However, as I didn't get close enough to read any inscriptions, I can't confirm the veracity of that assumption.
merry p christ
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 23 December 2024].
green and gold
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 21 December 2024].
The past few days have been hectic, so I had to forgo one of my instalments for the series.
But here's the next one.
fifty missed christmases
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 18 December 2024].
I'm a little late for yesterday's offering, but sharing this image of an infant's grave (still?)born 51 years ago today felt timely.
(Fifty missed Christmases as of today's date).
mum at christmas
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 15 December 2024].
DOLLY
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 13 December 2024].
a solitary red bauble
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 11 December 2024].