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Toby Miller @tobytram.bsky.social · 19h

oh, the thrill of an actual letter, from a friend from film school, with his animator's eye for a flourish - somebody I thought I'd lost contact with when I left Instagram.

(I have used Toby's mouse from Green Knowe to obscure my address, so none of you come round and make pizza or cinnamon rolls)

a letter with handwritten address, lots of ink stamps and postage stamps adorn the envelope. I miss this corner of the world.

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Toby Miller @tobytram.bsky.social · 21h

- would you happen to have heard of a joint called The Tinsel Curtain?"

- I may have

Dorothy Malone's bookseller in The Big Sleep.

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Toby Miller @tobytram.bsky.social · 21h

"tinsel? ....stop using your ten dollar words"

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Toby Miller @tobytram.bsky.social · 22h

This isn't related, save for the glitz. There's a nearby pub that has a room for events - jazz night, wargames night, pie judging competition night. One evening the window blind was down, there was whooping inside, and the only hint of the activity was a curtain of tinsel caught in the outside door.

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Toby Miller @tobytram.bsky.social · 1d

I think some of the dutch tilts are just one leg of the tripod sinking into the mud and snow of the impossible filming conditions.

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Reposted by Toby Miller

Longbarrow Press @longbarrowpress.bsky.social · 3d

Many thanks to everyone who's shared and followed this (unexpectedly lengthy) walk-in-progress over the past few days. It's much appreciated. The full thread (128 posts) is below.

Longbarrow Press @longbarrowpress.bsky.social · 9d

A walk from Leeds to Goole, via the River Aire, the Aire and Calder Navigation, the Knottingley and Goole Canal, the New Junction Canal and the Dutch River, 6.45am to 9.52pm Friday 26 September.

An improvised, illustrated thread of indeterminate length, part reflection, part reconstruction. 1/

Shipping containers on the waterside at Stourton, two miles south-east of Leeds city centre.

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Toby Miller @tobytram.bsky.social · 3d

Walking. There’s a new path - signs and gates of pale fresh wood- that runs along the railway line, turns left and then…vanishes.

I retrace my steps and pop out onto the road. A lady walking her dog spots me.

“Did you try our ‘footpath to nowhere’. That’s what we call it around here. Cost £1000’s”

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Toby Miller @tobytram.bsky.social · 3d

My father, rooting about his shelves, found a book he’d inherited from his father. Opened it for the first time. Inside an inscription.

My grandfather, Robert C Miller, was a US airforce metrologist. He developed the first tornado forecast. The inscription is during the development of that forecast

A green hardback of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.

Inside the book an inscription, in beautiful swooping cursive penmanship:

To Major R.C. Miller

For those moments while you’re waiting for the forecast to verify - a few meditations of another misunderstood genius.

Lt. Mac
August, ‘56

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Toby Miller @tobytram.bsky.social · 4d

I should go to bed, but here on the sofa I’m bookended by sleeping cats, one running down her purr, the other making the gentle sound of a cat that can’t catch the object in her dream. This feels an important moment to hold onto for a while longer.

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Toby Miller @tobytram.bsky.social · 5d

I went to my neighbour’s back door to drop one of her cats off (I’ve permission to open the door and drop the cats inside).

Our gardens are a rainforest after today’s downpours.

At the cat flap a drama, with a surprise (enormous) frog and a locked away Tiffin desperate to sell it a timeshare.

A cat flap. Outside, on the rim of the flap, a big frog. Glistening with rain. Sheltering from the storm.

An enormous cat face watches from the other side of the cat flap. Pawing at the locked door. Desperate to play or devour.

This is perhaps how our TV see’s us.

Same shot, only now the cat - Tiffin - has looked up at me, her big eyes full of this evening’s disspaointments

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Toby Miller @tobytram.bsky.social · 6d

This is all new to me. I seem to be catching up on a great chunk of my childhood reading.

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Toby Miller @tobytram.bsky.social · 6d

The collection I am reading is on eBay.

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Toby Miller @tobytram.bsky.social · 6d

Because it made me laugh - from Joan Aiken’s short stories (written in 1983 and cosily evocative of the time*) about young Arabel and her pet raven, Mortimer.

First the Joan Aiken prose, then the brilliant Quentin Blake illustration.

*Arabel’s mother is temp secretary at a pirate radio station.

because we didn't have him last time she came," Arabel went on anxiously, looking at the raven, who had piled a foot-high mound of tea-bags on the lid of the washing-machine, and was trying to stand on his head on top of the pile. He was the wrong shape for standing on his head, and, each time he tried, he fell heavily on his back, and the tea-bags flew all over the kitchen floor. They were getting rather dusty. Mr Jones supposed he ought to stop Mortimer, but he had too much else on his mind.

A lovely Quentin Blake illustration of a raven standing on its head on a pyramid of tea bags atop a washing machine.

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Toby Miller @tobytram.bsky.social · 7d

you can see why Danny Thompson started his career with a tea chest bass. Though now I expect tea chests are £4,000 a pop.

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Toby Miller @tobytram.bsky.social · 7d

Oh, I'd be tempted by that Lute, despite already having several musical instruments I can't really play. But a Lute!

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Toby Miller @tobytram.bsky.social · 7d

At the surgery to have my flu jab.
Any allergies?
No
And you’re ok with eggs…?

I’ve never been asked this before, and my mind immediately goes to the boxes of eggs my neighbour leaves me (from her sister’s hens) and for a split second I think the nurse is going to give me a box of eggs as a reward.

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Toby Miller @tobytram.bsky.social · 8d

So long September. Poor show. You are no longer my favourite month of the year.

October walks in, smoking. A Penguin paperback performatively just sticking out of a pocket.

Wait a minute, you’re just September in a bigger coat!

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Toby Miller @tobytram.bsky.social · 8d

Doors doors doors leading into light.

The Victorian vinery at the local big house. Spent quite a lot of time just with these shadows. There was also a Mushroom House (a long room with soil shelves and no windows, and a good name for a story)

A brick door way leads to a calm and cool
looking corridor, which in turns leads to a room full of sunshine. It could be the centre of the sun, if the centre of the sun is being used to grow grapes.

Shadows stretch the stone tile floor. Three doors, each different, frames the view. There’s a mix of temperatures and moods in this small view.

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Toby Miller @tobytram.bsky.social · 8d

Took a (freelancer) afternoon off to use the last day of my English Heritage membership to wander around the gardens of the local big house - which I am doing whilst thinking and worrying about work.

I do like the strong shadow of a doorknob though, like it’s the entry to a secret door in the wall