five years ago

I genuinely am not self-obsessed, ask anyone, or at least I hide it from myself if I am by finding myself interesting as a phenomenon. But by accident I have a lot of ways to find out what I was doing on any given day in the last, let's say, 9 years because that's how far back my phone photos go, and a little more vaguely twenty years I can refer to this blog and even further back I have appointments diaries that go back to the mid-90s. Ridiculous really, I have no reason to keep those things in particular and will probably chuck them sometime soon.

Anyway I can tell you what I was doing five years ago - I was 'reading' this book, in a language I can't read. 

This was in pursuit of completing the book Community Green, which was published in, um, 2024. I had visited Käpylä, which is a small WWI-era suburb of Tampere, and I went through a lot of hoops to get a copy of this history by an author who was either dead or resistant to being contacted by someone in Australia who only spoke English. But I worked with the information I had. 

I was also in that week reading Peter Blazey's excellent book on Henry Bolte, probably the best political biography published in Australia, at least until Judith Brett came on the scene. 

I suppose I photographed this section of the book because it mentions Bolte's lack of interest in 'the implications of urban development' and the 'country member' joke, of course. No wonder Bolte h-a-t-e-d this book. 

I don't remember exactly when I moved to where I live now, but there are some pictures of the cats from five years ago where the backgrounds suggest that I had recently moved in, certainly it looks massively different and there's furniture etc which I don't even really remember, and certainly isn't around anymore. Here's Nancy looking like a 90s metal video. 

At this time I was also doing the pictures for Shane and Duncan's poetry book. I'm surprised, I thought this was much more than five years ago but there you go. The more or less finished version is here.

Five years ago I guess I was reading Sally Rooney's book before last (?). 

I can't remember why I accepted Tegar's friend request but the friendship didn't last. 

Seems five years ago I was looking at my formative picture books. 

Or at least some picture books I owned, because I completely don't remember this one from childhood:

This one I definitely do

I completely don't recall this but I really feel it could be useful for something. Like maybe some sort of lonely hearts site. Maybe I should tell my friend Tegar.