Toby Miller

Several days now of low and mysterious mist. Fairly sure last week’s full moon gobbled us up and we’ve been slowly dissolving in its moon stomach since.

rather than being translucent, like most ghosts, he should fade away from the top down, as if one of the ink cartridges printing him is running out, and you can't restock that colour without buying the whole set.

A wall in a small room. A three floor doll house, with a 13 framed photos and illustrations festooned around the wall. Lights are hung around the pictures.

Two framed prints of my iPhone photos, on a magnolia white wall. Underneath is a shelf of shampoos, plants and soaps.

Visiting my parents yesterday. As ever I go away with ideas how to decorate my own home; I do like the lopsidedness of the photos around the doll house - like stars in the sky.

And they’ve printed / framed two of my Instagram posts - prism views of the wrecks at Pin Mil - and put them above the loo

And a tie-in album. Elvis standards, but subtly rewritten to be from the perspective of 153 foot tall singer.

A window display of model metal cars - Matchbox sized, mainly 1940/50 cars. A model of Elvis in his young pomp towers over them, a price tag hanging from his guitar.

The window display in the local knick-knack shop suggests a Kaiju Elvis, who has entered our world by stepping out of a drive-in screening of Jailhouse Rock. His nuclear fire breath has already laid waste to all around him.

There's a short video somewhere on youtube where the band explains "nobody coming on Tiny Desk was making music using the desk...so we thought we'd try that".

Finally got to the final episodes of Small Prophets (there’s a lot of discussion/loose ends to be had from those final few minutes of possibly casual cruelty)

BUT the stand out moment is the small sigh of Wild One style rebellion Michael Palin gives here.

After nearly 8 years together I’m taking @bugshaw.bsky.social to the village I grew up in. It’s only 18 miles away from where I live now, but because this is East Anglia it’s going to take a walk, a bus, and a lift to get there.

She’s beyond excited; I’m going to show all the places Lovejoy filmed.

The mountains of Trieste looming in the background, still holding the ideas of Europe at bay.

Fathoms deep in doldrums (which, now I’ve typed it seems an oxymoron of sorts)

BUT a spaniel on the town common, a total stranger of a dog, with a tail like a North Sea wind farm, just ran up to me, dropped a ball at my feet and waited.

We played for a few minutes, before I handed the ball back.

thank you. genuinely appreciated.

A young slaptick comic there, just trying to spread the joy of pratfalls.

Full moon signage.

A ripped off sticker on a road sign, caught in my torch light, is a full moon cresting a hill.

Just to the side of this sign, the road wound up to the real moon, making this sign seem slightly magical.

The Evening After Full Moon just risen over the horizon. Looming over it a giant evergreen tree that sits in the middle of an apple orchard. Everything bar the moon and the March night is in darkness

The giants are in conversation.

Alt text - A golf bag on wheels, moving without human assistance across a golf course. The light is dim. The dinner bells of rooks is the dominant sound.

On the footpath alongside the golf course. The land is in that fugue between the exhausted sun and the near full moon.

On the golf course the ghost golfer pushes his clubs to the hell mouth of the 17th hole.

Halcyon Days.

I do recall stopping at a cafe in - maybe - Leiston, and trying to impress the lady I was with by ordering the most exotic sounding thing* on the menu, and ending up with a plate of every food I'd avoided as a child.

*I think it was merely risotto - this was East Anglia in 1992.

I also have my copy.

The man in the book shop said there "been an unprecedented rush for this book, and publishing was close to the 'Nighy Protocol'"- which apparently is when an adaptation of a book, to star Bill Nighy, has to be Greenlit.

It was a busy week and I'd forgotten I'd purchased it, so it was lovely surprise in the post. thank you.

A pencil/coloured pencil illustration of Paul McCartney and John Lennon. McCartney’s hair is a dash of blue; Lennon’s jacket a squiggle of lime green. McCartney is showing Lennon a book.

A card envelope with the drawing of a giraffe, sat atop a letter with a monster drawn in pencil.

I purchased one of @chloecumming.bsky.social’s Beatles illustrations - I love it. Reminds me of The White Album, and songs that are sketches but still fall perfectly together because they were geniuses.

Another beast for my marginalia menargerie, alongside @panchoballard.bsky.social’s giraffe.

a few years earlier. I had a thing for small sports cars in storybook colours. Drove a different film studies student from a different college, around the low roads of Rendlesham Forest. Still have a photo from that day, taken over the steering wheel down the road to Butley Priory.

A bundle of half moon sheds in Essex. looking on as a car mechanic tinkers with at the engine of a sky blue soft top Austen Healy sprite.

The same car in close up. I’m checking the interior (I know about cars, I just like old shapes and string colours) so am probably just doing something for show.

Just found. My father must have taken these. 25 years ago, me looking on and then looking into, the first car I bought with my first proper wages.

I took an Italian film studies student to Lyme Regis in this car. We couldn’t find anywhere to park. It then rained and I struggled to fix the roof up.

it is usually in the field to scare birds away.

Alt text - I've recorded the journey on google maps from North Essex to Cyprus. We zoom in on the air base on the south foot of the island; above the airbase is a monastery - the Holy Monastery of St Nicholas of the Cats.

We go to street view of the monastery and there a cat looms over the camera.

oh, this is lovely. like a small vocal sample, treated with electronics, running through a cutting edge club hit.

this is a little silliness out of the awfulness. I was curious as to the location of the UK airbase on Cyprus. After finding it on google maps I went exploring. There's a monastery just up in the hills... a monastery with an enticing dedication...

(I added a little Nala Sinephro as a soundtrack)

I had honestly had trouble pulling myself away to continue my walk.

Very pleased I escaped the my job in an edit suite early to instead find time in a field to use iMovie on my phone to sync up rushes of a bird scarer.

Made a friend and spent a while in conversation.

Usually in the middle of a field, but now chattering away on the path. I very much liked the Harry Partch crossed with Grand Guinal nature of this beast. Would flip between rapid EDM to funeral march depending on the breeze. Would spin to slice you.

Dominant Talon is a phrase I should be working more into my everyday speech. :)