September

September marks the end of beds. The fall of rain. The switch to darkness when I wander home from work, the start of lights on for motorways. The end of laughter down the hall and protein shakes in the kitchen. The sunglasses are out of my bag, instead replaced with an ever-present umbrella. I remember a younger me who came to relish September, the promise of fresh starts, breakfast in coffee shops. New pencilcases, walnuts in salads, poetry readings, looking forward to winter coat weather and frosty hands on playgrounds. I do not relish those things anymore.

This September is different. Journeying halfway across the world to solve a dilemma I do not fully understand. Sifting through my belongings and photographing them in the hope that some stranger may want them in their hands instead. Confronting the cold in my heart, the grit that has not really lodged since last November. The long game of scheduling when I would rather just write songs all day, songs I can not write because nobody wishes to hear. The pain sure to be stirred by the arrival of orange on the trees. Committing my frenzied, troubled thoughts to tape and airing my hard-won work to a discerning and unwilling audience. Worrying about fronting poorly-attended gigs. I’m restless, and there seems to be little left to come. Maybe this is the danger of living constantly in the moment, or just a comedown from summer, or just spiralling thoughts on a rainy Tuesday night whilst the boys move out.

Frankfurt

  About 3 weeks I jetted off to Frankfurt for a few days. I was accompanying my friends to a trade show where they were helping on the 3D Hubs stand. You may remember this post about a brilliant guy (and if not, maybe get re-acquainted with him… more soon) and my fascination with design engineering. The trade fair took place in Messe Frankfurt, one of Europe’s largest exhibition centres. It is HUGE – on one memorable night it took us an hour and a half to exit the entire site. Whilst there I got to meet lots of inspiring people working in similar design, tech and 3D printing-related spheres – I really enjoyed the networking!

I took some time out on one of the days to explore Frankfurt a little more. It’s a really beautiful city; the old part of town was particularly enchanting with lots of bohemian architecture and fanciful coloured houses. We went in late Autumn so the trees were at their most vivid and chimed in with the yellow, beige and burgundy buildings. It was incredibly peaceful wandering along the river and I felt so grateful just to be surrounded by such beautiful colours.

We were staying in the centre of Frankfurt. I was able to visit all the areas I was interested in just by walking – my favourite best way to get a feel for a new place! I’ve only been to Germany once before and I found Frankfurt to be very unique, so now I’m eager to explore further. Next time I’ll show you the christmas markets!

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Denbies II

I originally wanted to call this “Denbies through the Seasons” but I’m not entirely sure my real life cynicism, sarcasm and constant irony really come through on this blog and was worried people might think I was being serious. Anyway, these photos are from Denbies Wine Estate in Dorking. I first visited back on one of the first sunny days of the year, and it was lovely to visit again and see the changing colours of the leaves against the perennially golden fields.

If things look a little different, I’m trying out my new camera lens! This lens will take some getting used to as it has an incredibly shallow depth of field which is great for portraits as it focuses on one subject (i.e. notice how blurry and undefined the backgrounds are in the photos of me), but I do like taking shots that show detailed tableaus and this lens is not great for that (i.e. the banana sign is way clearer than the others, where as in previous posts those kind of flat detailed shots are very clear as I’m using my other lens – like this one).

I’m wearing my newish Orla Kiely coat (!!!) which was 65% off in their sample sale and then a further 35% off the marked sample sale price when I got to the till (isn’t that the best feeling ever?) and my new shoes which were £6 from New Look in the sale. One of the many perks of having massive feet is your size is always left over in the sales. I love mustard (both as a colour and a condiment) and have wanted a coat in mustard and gold for such a long time, so it was like a dream present to myself. Does anybody else have dream items in their mind which rarely seem to actually exist?
P.S. I’m going to be shutting down my Raccoon Circus Facebook page soon so please follow me here or here instead and I recently signed up to both LookBook and Pinterest, so you use those sites do let me know! 

Coat – Orla Kiely (sample sale), shoes – New Look (sale), dress – Miss Patina (sale), bag – ModCloth (gift), leggings – Tesco, socks – Monki

Leaves

So if these photos seem familiar I’m basically following the same formula from a couple of weeks ago; take one coloured coat (this time my favourite maroon number, a fiver from Deptford Market 3 years ago), head into the garden… the leaves are so lovely this time of year, what can I say! It seems every time I’m home the trees have changed colour again and I want to document it on my camera! I love this time of year when nature is in technicolour and the changing colour of the leaves are such a powerful and perennial metaphor for the passing of time.

As I was editing this post I was reminded of this set of photos featuring the same shirt and trainers. That post was from when I was last on tour in the South West with Rhum & Clay, and coincidentally I’m on tour again with them at the moment. It’s so brilliant to be able to see different parts of the country whilst in such good company! I wrote the score for the show we are performing and it is so stimulating to revisit a project I care about so much, as so often in art that’s not the case. Completing a painting, finishing a novel or recording an album all have a moment of finality where the product is finished and the time for alterations is over. Theatre is the opposite: constantly evolving and adapting to new stages and audiences, nuances and cadences never quite the same from night to night.

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Snufkin

This post was supposed to show you my coat (new) but as I was editing the photos I found I was blurry in nearly all of them. My camera had decided instead to focus on the trees around me. I think this may have been a conspiracy between the trees and the camera; I was using another tree branch as a camera stand so there was plenty of time for them to plot whilst I had my back turned). At first I was a bit annoyed, but then I realised my camera had the right idea as focusing on the immense natural beauty in these photos is far more interesting than my coat. Just look in the first photo – the irregular pattern of the cracks in the tree closest to the camera and the myriad shades of green are far more exciting and dramatic than an item of clothing could ever be!

Recently I’ve spent lots of time outdoors marvelling at the beauty of nature (especially at this time of year) and it makes me think how impossible it is to capture those moments. You can’t paint those colours, or photograph the crisp feeling of a leaf under your shoe, or sketch the smell of the rotting conkers and leaves in the wet grass. The colours on my computer seem so dull and uninspiring in comparison. If you read this post, go for a walk today and admire the leaves. Tell me what your trees are like.

So, this is my new coat from Greece – leave it to me to go on a beach holiday and return with a winter coat! I wore it on the plane home along with a wide-brimmed black hat; when James collected me from the airport he just said “Hello Snufkin“. I was so happy; as I child I always felt a sense of kinship with Snufkin as he was an outdoorsy, rebellious, loner musician like me. I much prefer owning clothing that looks like it belongs to my favourite characters rather than just featuring them! I love my Moomin skirt but if I wore it in Moominvalley, I’d just look weird whereas with this I would fit in. I’ve got lots of coats, but I spend so much time running around between rehearsals and gigs in the cold I feel it’s justified!

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Protected: Autumn

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