Walking: the Oxford Canal and Stratfield Brake

I didn't think I'd get a chance to walk this weekend, as T was out quizzing yesterday and today we were having lunch with my parents, after which T was heading off to Wantage to watch the Superb Owl with his Best Friend. It was a lovely sunny day, though, and the countryside looked so pretty when I drove a ridiculously long way round to Sainsbury's yesterday in the interests of charging up the car battery a bit, and I realised when I was on the bus home from town just after three o'clock that the afternoons have drawn out enough that there would still be a bit more than an hour of proper daylight left when I got home, so I dashed in, changed into walking clothes, grabbed my walking poles for extra stability on icy bits and set off down the canal.



I was planning to walk down the canal to the bridge for the Stratfield Brake nature reserve, go round the reserve and back up the canal, but the towpath was icy enough that the going was a bit slower than normal (I was very glad of the poles) and by the time I'd got to the lake in the reserve I realised that it was only about a quarter of an hour to sunset and I didn't want to risk being still on the icy towpath when it got dark. I could have walked home via the road, but that seemed a bit boring, so I just walked through the birchwoods and out to the bus stop to catch the bus home. It wasn't a very long walk - only about three miles - but it was good to get outside and have some fresh air and sunshine.

Uniforms

A knitting designer I follow on Twitter, Karie Westermann, tweeted last night:

I'm really fascinated by minimalist capsule wardrobe plans. I mean, yay for create 45 looks out of 5 pieces, but I use my clothes to play with identity & so my wardrobe is full of weirdness.

This made me think a bit, and I realised that I am the complete opposite: I could have 45 pieces of clothing in my wardrobe (I probably do, or even more than that), and I'd just end up making versions of the exact same outfit out of them, and not wearing the ones that didn't fit that. What that outfit is has changed over the years; in the early to mid 00s, it was trouser suits, and then even though I thought I was playing with clothes and having fun with my appearance I was basically wearing A-line skirts with fitted tops, and then jersey dresses. Now I've stopped wanting to spend time thinking about what to wear and it's trousers and jersey tops (frequently stripy) all hte way. I still own quite a few of the jersey dresses, and even some of the A-line skirts (though the trouser suits are long gone), but I don't wear them because they don't feel like me any more.

Apparently my sense of who I am is very much wrapped up in having a consistent look.