So I just read back through my reflections on 2018 and my thoughts and plans for 2019. I can’t believe this year is already six months old. I have been chasing my tail perhaps more than I have in the past couple of years. The beginning of the year saw three long haul trips to Turkey, Oman and Johannesburg. Each was fun and had new adventures – I got to visit Soweto and Nelson Mandela’s home in the township.

All three trips were also long and tiring and hard work in preparation and during the trips. For my birthday I spent well needed time walking on the SWCP. April saw Sarah and I make a 10 day trip to India. My first time to this amazing, enormous country. I got to see the Taj Mahal and other incredible palaces. I got to see poverty and people living simply both in towns and villages. The heat is remarkable and unyielding. The hotels and tour bus offered air conditioned relief and we were very conscious of living “behind the wall” – the guided existence of people living in relative luxury. I did get sick at the end of the trip and the exhaustion of that trip plus the three earlier in the year really hit me. I then had a week where I spent a night in a tent in Southwold in beautiful weather a few days in rainy and wet Cardiff and then a few days in my flat in Cornwall where I got to bodyboard and soak up some lovely weather. All of a sudden I was back into work mode with two back to back trips to Hamburg with planning for Amsterdam next week and then some more time marking theses in August back in Cornwall.

All in all I feel like I’ve stuffed a year of adventures into six months and not sure if I’m coming or going but, on the whole, I’ve had an amazing start to the year. As for my New Years resolutions. I have read some good book but haven’t done so well with keeping up my weekly walks or lost any weight. Recent events also meant that I have been doing more like five day rather than four day weeks. As for photography, I’ve taken a few nice photos on my trips and some very good gig photos. India was not an tripod friendly location but I managed to get some good shots there too. But on the whole I don’t feel I’ve progressed my photo business as well as I would have liked. I do, however, have nice gigs coming up with Stageworks graduation show and a wedding at the end of August. I am excited about a trip to Bali in September and hopefully a quieter end to the year to consolidate and relax a bit