A friend from overseas recently e-mailed me about her proposed trip to England next year with her husband. The list was a little ambitious for a week long trip. It got me thinking, what would I do if I only had a week left? I'm one of those people who squanders time and then wonders where on earth it went. I think I need to spend my time more wisely and productively. I have a few projects in mind for the new year, but I spend too much time sitting here in front of this computer. I think that the first thing I need to do is to sit down, once again, and write down those life goals. Watch this space.

Well it's late - or , I should say, early so that's all you're getting from me for now. Good night :)

Boxing Day. Looking foward to next year.

I have, on occassion, sat down and written my goals. They may be goals for today, this week, the next year or, even, the rest of my life. I guess that my life goals have been rather short sited because the last time I did it I achieved the majority within the year. So maybe goal setting does work, I just need to work on the timescales. So this brings me to think about m goals for 2012.

I have already made a pact with a friend overseas that we are both going to read the entire Bible in the year. We have agreed to exchange brief daily e-mails about what we have read and learned each day. That is a huge commitment but with each other as moral support and more than a little divine help it's achievable.

Another friend has, in 2011, carried out a photo a day project. Again that's something that I would like to do in 2012. Another tall order, I know, but I know that I need to spend more time with a camera anyway, so this seems like a good way of going about it. Wish me luck because I know that I'm going to need it.

Today's picture is the Tennyson statue at Lincoln cathedral. This should inspire me. the cathedral itself is a beautiful building and took a great deal of tenacity over many years to build, especially when bits of it kept falling down etc etc. Tennyson, of course, was one of our nation's greatest poets and, like me, he was from the great county of Lincolnshire.

Hapy Boxing day, folks.

Christmas Eve

Postman pat has certainly been a busy boy this week. He managed to bring the Ernest Hemingway book that I ordered from Amazon. That's another couple of pence for Silk Brass through easyfundraising.org.uk . He also brought more Christmas cards and two letters from new snail-mail pals in France and California.

I've also been busy on the letter writing front in the run-up to Christmas. I guess that they won't all have arrived by today, but I guess that doesn't really matter.

I'm also waiting to hear from a friend in Oregon to hear if she bought the pen that she had her eye on. Time will tell, I guess.

Last Saturday was the final concert of the year with Silk Brass. For the first time in almost thirty years I stood up and played a solo. It was Rodney Newton's arrangement of "In the bleak midwinter". It was quite a daunting experience after so many years of not doing it. I guess it went OK , anyway.

Today Postman Pat brought me.......

A letter from Deutsche Post about their letternet. Erm not sure this is working out for me. Has anybody else signed up to Letternet? Let me know how you get on.

I have been busy lately dealing with quite a pile of mail that came in from various places in the USA including a new snailer in Idaho. It's always a pleasure and never a chore but I do wish that Postman Pat could spread it out a little rather than delivering a fair number of letters on the same day. Pat, if you're reading this mate........

I had a bad experience recently with J. Herbin's Rouille d'ancre. Does that really mean rusty anchor? I found it to be a terrible colour. I'm so glad I didn't buy a whole bottle of it. By the same token I had previously disliked Larmes de Cassis but a correspondent used it and it looked great. So I have tried it out in the Wrcester Sentinel and it looks just dandy.

A friend was posting on Facebook earlier about books. I mean literature type books not cheap station bookstall type books. But she omitted science fiction and Jerome K. Jerome. How remiss of her. I set the record straight and suggested First Men in the Moon and Journey to the Centre of the Earth as well as Three Men in a Boat and Three Men on a Bummel. Actually I ought to re-read all four of those books as it's been a while. Also worth a mention, of course, is Peter Graham's magnificent work based on the novel by M. Verne. The banders out there know what I mean.

Where do you start?

So today is the first day of a brand new blog. It's my blog! So where to start? To paraphrase Lewis Caroll i guess I should start at the beginning, go on til I reach the end and then stop. Sounds good to me.

I'm Jim, or Jimothy. I'm in Cheshire in the north west of England. I'm not from here originally but life's journey has brought me here. Que sera, sera. I'm married to Deb who, frankly, deserves a medal as big as a frying pan for being married to me.

I play for Silk Brass. We're currently a championship section band but, from January, we'll be back into the first section. I'm a tenor horn player and, after twelve years on second horn with Crewe Co-op, Silk have put me on the solo horn chair. Not sure that's the greatest idea anybody ever had but I'm giving t my best shot.

I also do a little bit of photography here and there. I haven't done any weddings in a while but there was a time, not so long ago, when i was shooting more than thirty weddings a year. I never set out to be a wedding photographer - it just kinda crept up on me while I was looking the other way.

I've recently (fifteen months or so) got back into writing letters to pen pals. It's called snail mail these days, but when I did it as a teenager we hadn't heard of e-mail. I'm acquiring an ever growing number of snail mailing pals around the world. They all add to life's rich tapestry I guess. It was fountain pens that caused it, of course. We were all compelled to use them at comprehensive school. Scribbling sticks (aka biros) were not permitted. So i was passing through Frankfurt airport one day, with a very long stopover, when I discvered Mont Blanc. That started the collection going. Now they're not all MBs. Some of them are cheapo pens. But the collection has steadily grown since Frankfurt. I got to thinking about what I was going to do with all of these pens and the ink lake that goes with them. So I returned to snail mailing. I have met some very interesting people in the process:)

Well I guess I've bored you enough for one day. Come back another time and see if I have got the hang of this blogging nonsense.