Week #1 of my NEW52 life ...

Here we are my dear friends, the end of the first week of the New Year (question: at what point does the year stop being referred to as "New" and just become "the year"?) and I wish I could write that it had been full of new and exciting opportunities, new sights, sounds, smells and flavours! All those may come throughout the year, but this first week was rather more routine. It was a case of getting back into the swing of things following the festive break. Of waking up with the alarm clock, of getting to work on time, of making it through the working day and of the commute home in the evening. All these things are good though, for whilst they may not scream of adventure, they do at least mean that I'm working and earning pennies, which in turn means comfort and security at home.

So right about now, you're probably thinking that week #1 held nothing new for me, right? Well, wrong! My "new" for this week actually happened just today ... I joined my local library! I can hear Peppermint & Helen both taking a sharp intake of breath at this point, followed by a shout of "what the heck took you so long?". Both have hailed the virtues of their library's hallowed halls, both I know regularly visit and partake of the ritual that is finding the right book, spending minutes, if not even hours soaking up the ambiance, then rushing home with their precious packages of joy, thrill, romance, biography or practical learning. Of savouring the precious quiet moments, opening the cover and absorbing all those words as they float off the pages, all the while with a sense of righteousness and possibly, just possibly, the slightest hint of smugness, that all this enjoyment is theirs for the princely sum of zero pounds & zero pence (or dollars & cents if you prefer), albeit if only for the next 3 weeks.

This is my new library card.


Cute toucans don't you think? I'm guessing that some of you will want to know which book / books I borrowed today. Well, I borrowed just one (I'm a library newbie after all and didn't want to seem greedy!) and it's a book about black and white photography in the digital age. It's easy to read, has great photos (as you'd expect) and best of all, it has step-by-step instructions on how to achieve the kind of effects they write about. In short, it's my kind of book.