Progress report

The blog remains somewhat dark. For this, I aplogise; I have reached a stage of the project where it feels that working on the blog would be a distraction from the book; my current main focus is to have the entire book laid out in design terms, using placeholders and boilerplate text, in order that I can send a test off for printing next week (hopefully on Wednesday), in order to work out if there are any problems with the bleeds, the cover etc. I'll try and put together a post in the next few days that'll talk a bit in depth about some of the design decisions I've been making, particularly with regards to colour and the use of the book format. I'll also offer a sneak peek at some completed pages and spreads.

The second autumn walk was only half completed, due to inclement weather. Looking at the forecast, it may be next week before I can get out again; this is the one aspect of the project that really keeps me up at night, but it is not yet time to compromise.

In other news, I am made anxious by and am utterly perplexed to note that my blog has been linked to by the Guardian, probably due to the quotes from Oliver Rackham's History of the countryside. I note, with shame, that in that article, posted a month and a half ago, I suggested that I would have the history essay written 'within the next few weeks'. In fact, it still fails stubbornly to coalesce in any final form. Partly this is because my writing energies have been diverted by the essay on methodology and the poetry. I want to get at least one of these done before I send the book off though, so I've scheduled in a writing blitz in the university library for Tuesday, that's normally an environment that gets me going.

In the meantime, here's a nice picture.

I really should write about the Castle at some point, huh?