I don’t read the news. I don’t know anything about economics and I don’t know anything about US politics. I couldn’t pick out Joe Biden in a line-up and the only thing that frustrates me about the recession is that the media has turned it into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Until yesterday, I haven’t really been affected by the current financial crisis. Sure, I noticed the price of stuff going up, but we switched our energy supplier and petrol appears to have lost about 20p a litre so it’s been a relative plateau for me - my funds have just leaned more towards food shopping than energy/fuel. Yesterday, however, it seems that the pending recession (I don’t even know if we’re actually in a recession now - we could be!) took its toll on the awesome agency I work for. It wouldn’t be fair of me to go into details of the whys and wherefores (largely because it’d be mostly speculation), but the upshot is that in a month today, I’ll be jobless.
…

Who doesn’t worry about money though, right?

In work way too early so I could leave early and book our wedding stuff. I accidentally forgot to take my passport. It was Charlotte’s fault really.

I just don’t know where my life is disappearing to at the moment. It seems like I spend my whole life going between home, work, the sink and bed. The dark nights mean I don’t get any chance to get out and take photos, the ones I want are in places I can’t get to so it just sucks a bit. I’m going to start making some effort to get out and take some night shots - hopefully Southampton will be better looking at night than it is in the day. Doubt it, though. I need to start doing more programming as well, there just isn’t enough time to do everything. Sucks.

This was late. I totally knew what I wanted to take when I was watching Amelie play with this last night, but Strongbow Super got the better of me and I forgot!

This is Olaf. When Charlotte and I started going out, apparently I had to buy her a teddy. Naturally, I bought her one from the best teddy bear company in the world, Steiff. I had one when I was little and I don’t know where it is now, so Olaf isn’t really just Charlotte’s, he’s both of ours. This is where we end before I further incriminate myself.

The format of these images is going to change slightly because I’m going back to using flickr. More on that later though.

It’s been on the cards for ages. You know when you meet someone and you just click? It just works. Well, this has been the story for mine and Charlotte’s entire relationship. We’ve been talking about getting married for a few months now, but we’ve just decided to go for it. We’re going to sort a date in the next week and hopefully do the deed at the end of this year/start of next year.

Charlotte’s natural “girl/wedding” instincts appear to have kicked in, and she’s now browsing the net for wedding intricacies that I’ve never even heard of (wedding favours?!). At least her responses have been correct - “oh my god, how deliciously tacky!”. It’s definitely love.

I’m laying it on a bit thick with the black and white conversions at the moment, but overcast sky forced my hand in this one. I love the back of this building, and I wish I could’ve had a wide lens to do this and get the whole thing in, but I do think this works as it is. I love the extra detail you can cram in converting darkish red bricks to black and white.

Anyone’d think I’d never done 5 consecutive days of work before! I was so tired on Friday night, a bottle of cider just knocked me out.

On the plus side, I didn’t get the back-to-work blues I normally get. How refreshing!

It transpires that Amelie is quite a fan of bubbles. We have these bubbles that don’t pop when they hit carpet, or land on hands or anything like that. Lovely. I thought photos of our lounge bathing in bubbles with a lomo would’ve been great, but I don’t have a lomo or the patience to clean up the sticky crap these bubbles leave behind so, settle for Charlotte’s hand with some bubbles on, like she’s been doing the washing up in a giant’s kitchen.