Metamorphosis

さよなら Sayonara, 2025: welcome to 2026

It’s the time of year when, as a writer, you can choose to be intentionally evasive about the turn of the year, or you can toe the editorial line. In the past I’ve found myself feeling slightly melancholy about New Year’s Eve; not for trepidation about what’s to come, but for time spent – good or bad – that will never be recovered. It’s an arbitrary calendar date, yet so is a birthday, and still we mark them as lines in the sands of time, like kids drawing hearts with driftwood before the tide pushes onto the beach and washes them away.

Drawing hearts with driftwood is fun, though, and waves lapping the shore create a blank slate for more hearts to be drawn the next day. So let’s celebrate 2025 for what it’s been, and look forward to what’s in store for next year.

A Cornish beach at Padstow

2025 has been a year of change and of challenge. Everything is different now yet also just the same. Every new year it’s like this, yet it’s not every year that you discover that your central nervous system and thinking brain were chemically detached from one another for almost as long as you can remember. It’s not every year that you discover why, with accompanying tears, terror and – yes – the odd tantrum here and there. But coming out of chronic dissociation doesn’t just boing out of the shadows one day and shout hiya; it’s a long long process that has been unfurling for possibly decades.

Two strays in Kutaisi, Georgia

In the meantime I’d been busy living and I still am, but in a chrysalis phase, hunkering down for what’s next to come. I’m still exhausted, have seizures, my left arm doesn’t have its full range of motion, my joints crazily cavitate (or click, to everyone else) and slowly slowly, emotional texture is beginning to return. It’s the difference between sketching with a crayon and a fine liner: less big, less dramatic and frankly more elegant. It’s also a rebirth of self-will, of intrinsic motivation for ones personal goals, instead of being pulled in every which direction at the behest of whomever is shouting the loudest. Everything seems a lot less like a fight for survival, and I know what I don’t want, though am less clear on how to monetise what I do. While I thought that my life narrative made sense before, it makes much more sense now, and it’s clear why I’ve increasingly focused on small people stories, on tales of real lives and of resilience.

Crepuscular rays over Topola, Serbia

So while there have been some challenging times this year, there’s also been light, like crepuscular rays beaming down from a dark cloud. There have been research trips to Croatia, to Serbia, to Bosnia and – just to make a change – to Georgia and to Iraqi Kurdistan. I’ve had the wonderful opportunity to spend periods with family in Scotland and in Cornwall, and at the homes of ageing relatives, and with friends. It’s been a great joy to rediscover how much I love to write, and I have started penning a full-length book as well as starting up here on Substack. Thank you to everyone who reads my words, and looks at my pictures.

These two charming Georgian fellas at Rioni station offered to marry my Mum

I’ve shot countless studio shoots and have met some wonderful people, and improved my studio skills. I’ve worked pro bono for Unseen Tours, a superb charity that trains Londoners with experience of homelessness to become tour guides around their local areas – this is particularly exciting as it means that my first exhibition will be forthcoming in 2026! I’m also collating images for another potential exhibition in Bosnia, and consolidating the back catalogue. I’ve run a large London photo walk for the Foto app, I’ve connected with you lovely lot on Substack and have (mostly) ditched other social media, focusing instead on good old reading. In Kurdistan there was the privilege of meeting like-minded photographers with the Raw Society, and incredible experiences in Lalish – holy place to the Yazidi religion – and and in Akre for the spectacular new year celebrations. If there’s one place that shows triumph over adversity, this is almost certainly it.

Newroz, or Kurdish new year, in Akre

So, 2026. Exhibitions, a week in Kosovo, finishing my book. I have lofty ambitions to resume learning Serbian, to actually finish reading a pile of books on Yugoslavia that’s bigger than the Accursed Mountains¹. There are universities and MPhils to research, and plenty of World Stories waiting to be told my way - and I can’t wait to tell them.

Happy New Year to each and every one of you. May it bring you laughter, love and light.

1. A mountain range that separates Kosovo from Albania