Toby Miller

Full moon signage.

A ripped off sticker on a road sign, caught in my torch light, is a full moon cresting a hill.

Just to the side of this sign, the road wound up to the real moon, making this sign seem slightly magical.

The Evening After Full Moon just risen over the horizon. Looming over it a giant evergreen tree that sits in the middle of an apple orchard. Everything bar the moon and the March night is in darkness

The giants are in conversation.

Alt text - A golf bag on wheels, moving without human assistance across a golf course. The light is dim. The dinner bells of rooks is the dominant sound.

On the footpath alongside the golf course. The land is in that fugue between the exhausted sun and the near full moon.

On the golf course the ghost golfer pushes his clubs to the hell mouth of the 17th hole.

Halcyon Days.

I do recall stopping at a cafe in - maybe - Leiston, and trying to impress the lady I was with by ordering the most exotic sounding thing* on the menu, and ending up with a plate of every food I'd avoided as a child.

*I think it was merely risotto - this was East Anglia in 1992.

I also have my copy.

The man in the book shop said there "been an unprecedented rush for this book, and publishing was close to the 'Nighy Protocol'"- which apparently is when an adaptation of a book, to star Bill Nighy, has to be Greenlit.

It was a busy week and I'd forgotten I'd purchased it, so it was lovely surprise in the post. thank you.

A pencil/coloured pencil illustration of Paul McCartney and John Lennon. McCartney’s hair is a dash of blue; Lennon’s jacket a squiggle of lime green. McCartney is showing Lennon a book.

A card envelope with the drawing of a giraffe, sat atop a letter with a monster drawn in pencil.

I purchased one of @chloecumming.bsky.social’s Beatles illustrations - I love it. Reminds me of The White Album, and songs that are sketches but still fall perfectly together because they were geniuses.

Another beast for my marginalia menargerie, alongside @panchoballard.bsky.social’s giraffe.

a few years earlier. I had a thing for small sports cars in storybook colours. Drove a different film studies student from a different college, around the low roads of Rendlesham Forest. Still have a photo from that day, taken over the steering wheel down the road to Butley Priory.

A bundle of half moon sheds in Essex. looking on as a car mechanic tinkers with at the engine of a sky blue soft top Austen Healy sprite.

The same car in close up. I’m checking the interior (I know about cars, I just like old shapes and string colours) so am probably just doing something for show.

Just found. My father must have taken these. 25 years ago, me looking on and then looking into, the first car I bought with my first proper wages.

I took an Italian film studies student to Lyme Regis in this car. We couldn’t find anywhere to park. It then rained and I struggled to fix the roof up.

it is usually in the field to scare birds away.

Alt text - I've recorded the journey on google maps from North Essex to Cyprus. We zoom in on the air base on the south foot of the island; above the airbase is a monastery - the Holy Monastery of St Nicholas of the Cats.

We go to street view of the monastery and there a cat looms over the camera.

oh, this is lovely. like a small vocal sample, treated with electronics, running through a cutting edge club hit.

this is a little silliness out of the awfulness. I was curious as to the location of the UK airbase on Cyprus. After finding it on google maps I went exploring. There's a monastery just up in the hills... a monastery with an enticing dedication...

(I added a little Nala Sinephro as a soundtrack)

I had honestly had trouble pulling myself away to continue my walk.

Very pleased I escaped the my job in an edit suite early to instead find time in a field to use iMovie on my phone to sync up rushes of a bird scarer.

Made a friend and spent a while in conversation.

Usually in the middle of a field, but now chattering away on the path. I very much liked the Harry Partch crossed with Grand Guinal nature of this beast. Would flip between rapid EDM to funeral march depending on the breeze. Would spin to slice you.

Dominant Talon is a phrase I should be working more into my everyday speech. :)

Watching an older Time Team. One archaeologist hands a pottery sherd to another archaeologist with a gruff "hold your paw out" - and my mind has snagged on the playful therianthropy of that.

Church Going is very good, but you'll need a map near to hand so you can check how easy it is to get to the churches discussed. Happy Birthday!

The amazing scene - which seems to tint Spielberg’s love of cinema with a memory of shame - where he makes his teenage closet a small movie house so he can embarrass his mother with a movie he’s lovingly made of her Infidelity.

xx

It’s a sign determined to remain in the present tense. Those other signs were too vague, and could have meant wet paint at any time in the last millennium.

A piece of A4 paper in a clear plastic sleeve, zip tied to a black metal gate. The signs reads: The paint is wet.

This mesmerised me for a while.

An almost delightfully perverse abandoning of first principles of wet paint signage. It’s like a Hollywood prequel that unnecessarily complicates a previous blockbuster with extra lore, characters, and motivations.

Or a ghost that refused to sign a production release form so they still had to abstract their identity.

The young keeper in the thin tie who talks about listening to the sea and “sometimes it’s saying ‘I will smash you to bits tonight’ and other times it’s quieter, saying ‘tonight I am tired”.

And that they’re living the life of domestic chores, something they might balk at on dry land.

The lighting of the light - look at the exposure on this tremendous shot. I had no idea it was orb of flame; It’s like the opening act of the universe, something the James Webb telescope will eventually photograph for us.

These BBC documentaries are great. It’s the small details: the wicker baskets they use to hook in buoys, the tiny formica kitchen, the folding of the curtains.

And, in this clip a lighthouse keeper waves goodbye to his family, and the dog starts to run to the other side of the dock to watch him go.

If you watch it again tomorrow the date will change to match.

Fog Horns, by Félix Blume 4 track album

Quick final word/sound on lighthouses - you may perhaps enjoy this as a soundtrack for a room in a storm.

discrepant.bandcamp.com/album/fog-ho...