There is an envy of those who can use the written word creatively that I have harboured for as long as I can remember. The craft of ordering letters into words, and words into sentences creating a meaningful and beautiful flow is a rare gift. The notion of writing as a poetic stream would seem close to making visually exciting artworks, and yet there is a distinct difference. Wordsmiths use the same raw material all the time, ordering and reordering, grouping and gathering. They shift and twist letters into tales and stories, express comment and view, devise pithy phrasing. Those of us in the visual trade are magpies, bringing together stolen ingredients from everywhere and made of everything before mixing them together to create something that satisfies aesthetically and conceptually. Art making has far less rules to work to or against, no linguistic system to structure by and no common recognition of material by the audience. A journal then, by its nature, is a personal departure. Because of this, I make no claims of skilled writing, instead, I aim to record my thinking, muse on current interests and comment on the arts and culture and the issues that surround them.