July, ramblings.

Here are some photos of our garden in July. July, which has been and gone. Everything has changed faster than I can keep track of. We have lived here for over nine months now. I keep telling people we have just moved to London, but we haven't, it's been almost a year.

My kids are nearly three. That's three years. Three years old. It's really time to start actually parenting them, not just making sure that they don't kill themselves or each other. We should probably teach them to use the toilet and sleep in proper beds, but lord I'm tired. Yesterday Nye went mountain biking all day (he's better by the way) and left me at home with the girls. It was the first time in as long as I can remember that I enjoyed being alone with them all day. Individually they're great, but together they fight and whine and moan and cry and steal each others' shit and it drives me completely nuts. I shout at them 'WHY CAN'T YOU JUST BE NICE TO EACH OTHER FOR FIVE MINUTES?' and they look at me like I'm stupid. They have a point.

Somehow it's over half way through the year but we've only photographed seven of this year's twenty weddings. To my surprise, most of those weddings are in and around London. It's pretty cool.

On Wednesday Nye and I are going to France, by ourselves. We'll be away for five days. I'm photographing a party one of those days, and we'll spend two of them travelling, but the other two are all ours, all alone in France. It will be our fifth wedding anniversary while we're there. Some of you started reading this blog more than five years ago. Hi. And thank you. It blows my mind that you keep coming back, despite the fact that for the last three years I've mostly been writing 'I don't know what to write.'

A few months ago I started writing properly. I got up every morning before anyone else was awake and I sat at the computer and wrote Shit I Can Remember for an hour. Then W&P would wake up and I would spend another hour drowning out their hysterical yelling with white noise through my headphones. I did this every day for a month. I wrote 28,000 words. Then I stopped. For a long time my heart was too sore. Today I woke up at 6.30am and started again. Who knows if it will stick this time.

Over the last three months I've photographed nine families in and around London. To my surprise, I love it. I think maybe this is what I want to do when I grow up. I've also started building another website, with my personal work. I really want to get more into lifestyle photography, photographing people and places and spaces and things. I kind of want to show you it but I've kind of called the business my real name, and I'm not sure I'm ready to share that. For now it's okay because I have no idea how to get any work photographing people and places and spaces and things. Does anyone from Country Living read my blog? Would you like to hire me please?