Troll Bridge

I've spent so much time under this bridge that I'm starting to feel a little troll-like.

Today was about knocking the rust off, for much the same reasons I started this journal nearly a year ago. After two months of cowering behind the sofa - I picked up my full kit, stuck it over my shoulders and headed out to see my old friend. She hadn't changed much, but I'm beginning to think I need to find a new perspective.

For today though, old territory was just fine. I had a lovely coffee in Rankins, found someone who wants to sell some of my work (\o/) and generally started to feel a bit like a photographer again. Albeit one with a thumping headache. :)

As an aside to this. I'd always had it in mind to ask Iain Banks to sit for a portrait as part of this project. So it came as a blow to hear of his sad news. He is without a doubt my favourite author.

He wrote The Wasp Factory while living in the village next to mine and set it in a landscape that anyone from there would recognise, and I read The Bridge while living next to it and staring out of my window at it. Reading both was an experience I'll never forget.

His Iain M Banks novels have been my favourite fictional place to inhabit for almost the entirety of my adult life. We occasionally said a friendly hello to one another while picking up the Sunday papers. It saddens me to know that I'll no longer be able to inhabit the latest creations of his inventive, witty, radical mind.