Tag Archives: handwriting

The writing of names

Friday 5th June 2026, 2.30pm (day 5,398)

Names and pens, 5/6/26

Attending a ‘Names Festival’, along with a grand total of fourteen other people, seemed a hassle-free way of bringing the working week to a close. These are all names, of the four others sat at my table: three in Chinese and one in Bengali. It was suggested I add my own name, but we just have that boring old single script to work with and it was written out on my name badge anyway so I kept myself an invisible presence, at least in terms of this particular, ephemeral document.

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House deeds

Sunday 24th July 2022, 4.45pm (day 3,986)

House deeds, 24/7/22

Property is on the mind at the moment. It’s nice to have an excuse to pull out the collection of deeds to the house; when we moved in here 21 years ago we inherited this huge envelope full of documents, the oldest of which (the one at the bottom of this shot) dates back 210 years, to 1812 — although our house was built around 1890, the plot of land on which it stands was first enclosed and sold in that year. Anyway, I love these deeds, their copperplate handwriting and archaic terminology (‘messuages’, ‘indenture’). Should we ever sell this place I’m going to pretend these don’t exist, and keep them.

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