Reading and Writing

This is a post I’ve been kind of putting off for a while, but I’ve given in and started writing it. One of the reason I want to write this is to explain a bit more about me: I’m dyslexic and I’ve known this for a long time, since it was discovered in primary school, so both reading and writing are a big thing for me. I’ve always had to do both as part of school, and to be honest school really didn’t fill me with motivation to read or write – we never seemed to do anything that tickled my interests, from constantly doing Romeo and Juliet, comparing poetry, I don’t know if it was the way it was written or it just being old, but I never seemed to get it. Just didn’t make sense and I found it very boring and didn’t really enjoy it. I just didn’t seem to tickle my interests, but it all changed when my dad took me to see ‘Touching  The Void’ in the cinema in Belfast when it first came out.

I found it so inspiring that I wanted to try winter climbing. When I found out it was based on a book of the same name by a climber called Joe Simpson, telling the story of his and his partner Simon Yate’s expedition to climb a mountain in Peru, I asked dad to buy the book for me. He did, so I started reading it (it took me a couple of months but I read it). At around the same time I was on a program called DDAT (now the DORE program) to help develop part of my brain that hasn’t developed very well when I was younger. My parents had tried help with different things, but I didn’t think I really understood why I had do all this extra work compared to the others in my class but the DDAT program I wanted it do. As I was reading another one of Joe Simpsons books, in the waiting room to get tested again which I had to do every 6 weeks, one of the staff commented that it was ‘one of the best things to see – a client reading in our waiting room’. This gave me a big confidence boost and since then I’ve read a lot, mostly climbing books, -Joe Simpson, Simon Yates, Andy Cave, Andy Kirkpatrick and now I’m getting into a bit of fiction with Clive Cussler, Dirk Pitt and Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl. It’s been a bit on and off but I’m still reading, and my library of books has grown from a few climbing books, to lots of books, and now I have a Kindle it’s going to grow even more. Just wish I had the space for the real thing!

book

Writing is another area I wasn’t that motivated with. Like I said before, school really didn’t help with the motivation (rather, it put me off), but reading about climbing and all these trips away inspired me so much. Andy Kirkpatrick’s books and his blog have especially inspired me – seeing what another dyslexic can achieve, by himself and with the support of family and friends as well as he enjoys messing around with climbing gear like I do but on a larger scale. So I thought I’d give it a go myself too, to help with my confidence with writing and help my spelling, and maybe one day I’ll be writing a book. But at the moment I can write about my climbing, my climbing style, put up some of my photos online and talk about the photos. Then maybe I can get my head into gear to write some gear reviews on my blog, when I find a new bit of climbing gear I want to play with and learn to use.

Maybe this will help inspire others reading my blog and give them the same inspiration that others have given me.
It may take me a while to put some stuff up, as it’s still taking me some time to put what’s in my head onto paper so to speak, and read over it, and get my friends to read over it and help me spell-check it before I post it online.

Hopefully I can keep it up!

My first roll of film.

This is the first roll of film I have taken in a long time.

I got back today my first roll of black and white 35mm film from the developers, pretty much all the photos are by me bar one, and a lot was experimentation as this is my first roll of film I have taken with a camera since at least 2004 which is just before the time my parents got their first digital camera that I was allowed to us, but also my dad’s film camera was a water proof film camera  and was robust enough that I could put it through its basic uses when I was so young.  I should see if I can find it when I’m next home and see what the photos came out like.  Most of the images are taken from around my work at Newhaven in Edinburgh but also a few from my flat in Marchmont in Edinburgh and the Meadows in Edinburgh as well.  The Image below wasn’t taken by me but on my camera but show the depth of the the shot in black and white.

Mel on her phone.

Mel on her phone. This Picture wasn’t taken by me.

All these pictures where take on an My Olympus OM2N with one of my 3 different lenses, using Ilford 400 film and got it developed at http://www.blackandwhitefilmprocessing.co.uk/ who specialise in developing black and white film and send you prints but also scan the images in and put the digital images I have taken on a CD so I can easily share the images on flickr for all people to see.

Newhaven lighthouse, Edinburgh.

Newhaven lighthouse, Edinburgh.

All the images I’ve take in 35mm are here.