A picture diary for 2108. Thirty years on from the last time I did this.

Exactly thirty years ago at the very start of 1988 two friends of mine announced they were going to do a small drawing or collage every day for the whole year. Each daily drawing would fit into a space the size of a business or credit card. I agreed to join them in this project, even though I had very limited aptitude in drawing. Both my friends - who happen to be brothers (Tim and Phil Knight) - were on the other hand very talented in many forms of art.

I kept this going for an entire year. Tim and Phil gave up half way through.

I still have the diary 30 years on. It is organised as 61 panels of 6 drawings (It was a leap year). During the year, as I got more experienced, my work became a bit bolder and more expressive. On the back of each drawing is a brief explanation of what the picture is about.

Here is the first panel for 1-6 January 1988.

At that time I was a callow youth in my late twenties working for the Nature Conservancy Council in Peterborough. Later that year I moved to Edinburgh, but that is another story for another day.

So the explanations (and back story) for the above panel are as follows.
top left: First footing - a lump of coal and a piece of bread. A traditional offering in the early hours of January 1st. I was in Essex (Wrabness to be precise) for the new year and it seemed like this Scottish custom was only rarely observed in this part of the world. Strangers were bemused when we knocked on their doors and offered them bread and coal.
top right: A journey across the fens from Essex to Peterborough. The "To Peterborough "sign is the luggage label on my bicycle in the Guards wagon. All bikes at that time had to have a label. I was thrown off a train once in the 80s because my bike wasnt labelled. I tried to scribble one and fasten it with my shoe lace but the guard just thought I was deranged. The leaning telegraph poles are a familiar sight in the fens due to peat shrinkage, but still fascinate me. 
centre and bottom left: I had to travel from Peterborough to the Lake District to install some Apple computers near Lake Windermere.  This is the view from the office. The picture below is of a circular light in the porchway to the office that seemed to have trapped most of the local invertebrate fauna over many years.
Centre right: I had lots of computer cables to untangle. Not my favourite pastime.
Bottom right: On the shores of Lake Windemere two dogs, probably jack russells exploded into life and fury in the back shelf of a car, nearly giving me a heart attack.

So - thirty years on exactly - I start the same project again. I have just cut out loads of bits of card. Enough to see me through to the end of the year.