Introduction

2003, or "The Year Of The Castle", was perhaps my most entertaining - and certainly my most messed up - year to date. Before even the start of the year I had an inkling it might be this way. Living in a near-derelict house, surrounded by the ruins of an 800-year-old castle, with cliffs and beaches and gorgeous scenery, I could hardly have dreamed of living in a more inspiring, or remote, location. When added to this I had an explosive combination of flatmates - or "castlemates" - and a social life that was hellbent on screwing myself and everyone else up as much as physically possible, it looked a good bet 2003 might be quite fun.

Fun it was. But not without its ups and downs, or its unexpected turns.

The idea of recording the year in photos had occurred to me only in late 2002. Anticipating the year ahead being interesting, and a little more varied than a regular 9-to-5 existence while living in a city centre flat, daily photos seemed like a good way to record a potentially memorable year for posterity. This was in the days before digital cameras, for me at least, so it was all done on regular film. This was not cheap: just a humble dishwasher on minimum wage for the most part, I estimate I spent over 15% of my annual budget that year on film and photos.

There was little in the way of planning or organisation in the project. Very little thought had been done on implementation. How hard could it be, I reckoned. Just point and click every day. This ramshackle approach, combined with recklessness, sabotage and downright stupidity, makes for a minor miracle the photo diary survived the year intact. Luck, it strongly seems, was on my side in 2003.

Anyway, after years of delays, and gathering together masses of loose papers, slowly re-writing notes, typing up scrawled entries, scanning photos and getting everything to make sense, here it all is. The Photo Diary 2003.

------note on editing and layout------

The internet was not the original intention for the photo diary. Instead, and as seen within the photo diary, it was meant to be collected together in book form. This is still my intention, one day. But for now, I need to get this thing up, instead of having it sit on my hard drive. Therefore, for now, the layout is for function rather than aesthetics. I've also added annoations for clarity.

There has also been a little editing for content, for obvious reasons (if you knew what the content was...). This is marked with an asterix.