pieces of writing about, well, all sorts of stuff for you to browse in an idle moment – constantly being updated …
Anger management – on mood swings, family parties, and early exits
Lies, damned lies, and … hang on … –
Almost lost for words – on Bob Hoskins’ diagnosis
Nothing will come of nothing –
A series of irritating events –
What a difference a day makes –
Worse things happen in East Chailey –
Circle learning – on Encyclopedia Brittannica
A very English day at the beach –
Here be spiders – on hallucinations
There’s always something around the corner –
Unexpected side-effects may include –
The still small shake of palm –
A funny thing – on identity
Patient or person? Condition or conditional? –
What is truth? asked Pilate – on justice
Plumb in the plums – on cricket and homonymic journalese
Spam du jour – just one mad piece
Displacement blogging – on not wanting to be sliced and diced.
I said what? – on oversharing
Light at the end of the tunnel? – on letting go
What it feels like to be me? – on the absurdity of self-knowledge
Slings and arrows – on Parkinson’s and depression
The Sickbed diaries, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8, part 9, part 10, part 11, part 12, part 13,
Dexter to sinister, part 3 – more on my switch from right to left-handed batting, see also part 4, part 5 and again…
A little knowledge – on finding out something one ought not to have
One day in the east – observations on a funeral
Dexter to sinister, part 2 – more on the switch
Show and tell – on the consequences of diagnosis
From Dexter to sinister – a piece on my imminent switch from right to left-handed batting
The recalcitrant mog – just some pictures of ginger
New beginnings, old endings – on a friend’s moving to Senegal
The better part … – a rant against modern culture
Hard a port! – on the decision to go lefty
One girl called Mo – on a small collision
A time and a place -on time’s inhumanity to man
What brave new world has such people in it – on writing, the process, and the behind-the-scenes …
Look what I found – on finding things in drawers which take you to another time
The mystery solved – just a thought on Shakespeare
Anonymous? – a rant about Roland Emmerich’s crappy ‘scholarship’
Once more, and with feeling – on a short visit back to academia
Some things take strange shapes – on cats, houses, wine and fathers
Go direct to, er – just a whole heap of stuff
A series of unusual events -stuff about moving house
Cabbage – on interviews and what to do with the raw material
An open wound – a short explanation and apology to Cathy Relf
Oh, what’s the bleedin’ point? – just a short burst of unhappiness
Never quite so alone – on a strange occurrence at tango class
Publish and be damned – on another essay of mine being published
When subs attack – a short piece on errant sub-editing
An upstart crow – on Roland Emmerich, Shakespeare and the rather deluded anti-stratfordians
It ain’t what you do – on Nigel Kennedy, Bach and the old technique vs passion argument
Unspent roots – on past, present and future
They also serve – on cricket
Tea and empathy – on Terry Pratchett and assisted suicide
Inspiration or perspiration? –
Charity, celebrity and parkinson’s – see also enough, no more
‘What is truth?’ asked Pilate –
A funny thing happened on my way to the Guardian –
The post-modern apprenticeship –
Memories –
Motion –
Give yourselves a big hug – self-compassion, self-confidence and success
You can’t always get what you want – on vocabulary morphology
Shakespeare, education and independence – just another rant about teaching standards
A day in bed – not as interesting as it sounds
Little epiphanies: thinking about god – on sudden realisations
To shave or not to shave, that is the question – on the removal of pubic hair
Semiotic trichology – on hair and sense of self
The garden of forking paths – on decisions
A little bit of what you fancy – what happens at 3.39am
I think, therefore I … ooh, what’s that shiny thing? – on displacement activities.
You’re godknows? – on disappointment
Waiting for godknows – on waiting rooms
Release the inner slut – who cares what it’s about, just love the title!
A little slice of what the fuck? – On the fashion for hollywood heroines suffering for their promiscuity
Moon on a stick – on telling yourself something you don’t want to hear
Therapy? – on telling someone else what you need to hear.
A la recherche de temps perdu – on time, the past, and stuff
Love and other drugs – not a review, but a reaction see also Prospect director’s cut.
New year haiku – unconnected, but … well …
Great Expectations – on the tale wagging the dog
It never reins – shopping and king lear
Money for old rope – sour grapes rant at the shitness of Radio 4’s jobs for the boy/girls policy …
Whole lotta shakin’ … not going on – on the past, the present, the future, and irony.
Pulled a little cracker, sir? – on incongruity
Clarity, clarity, they’ve all got it … oh, shit – on fishermen, frozen seats and new perspectives
A more eloquent silence – on what absence explains
Full of sound of fury – on a walk by the pier
The silent corner – the force of habit and unanswered questions
Oh Helen, Helen … please fuck off – A response to the crassness of Helen Mirren and Nintendo
Rather a long journey, though a strangely inconclusive one – on how ‘driving’ for 8 1/2 hours on the M25 made me think stuff
Unheimlich – On moving
Knowledge is power? – oh, the usual
Night Terrors – death in the shadow of the night
Cartesian, moi? – on the slow but steady divorce occurring between my mind and my body
A blog in time – a short piece on how we create memory
These pieces are backdated blogs, in effect. They’re short, unedited, and sometimes rather obtuse. They are, indeed, what they are and make no apologies for themselves. They were exactly what I wanted to write at the time, but may well not be what I would write now.
hot lemon and hopelessness – This was written on the evening of the September 7, 2009, I think. The title stems from the rather obtuse fact (and oddly enough, one which I utterly fail to mention, which at this juncture confuses me somewhat) that the new drug I was prescribed prevents me from taking lemsip when I have a cold. Really. How utterly mundane is that?
Performance Anxiety I -When exactly this was written is a little hazy. Suffice to say that it was sometime after 18 November of 2009. I had stood up and been rather nervous speaking in front of the assorted grandees, not least because I was following some particularly fine public speakers, and my own contribution had been relentlessly referenced by several of them. That and I was closing the show, so to speak.
Performance Anxiety II – well, not long after I, i was writing on a plane on my way to San Francisco. the performance which perturbed me at this point was my own, lifelong one. Pitiful mewlings, frankly.
Jane Austen does MMA – This is from the same flight. It’s not profound, it’s not particularly intelligent, but it does demonstrate one thing in spades: how utterly, utterly wrong I can be. I like the title, mind …
Delayed reactions – ah, the joys of travel. And security guards. And how time sometimes stands still.
After the party – does exactly what it says. Mainly mildly hungover ramblings from Dec 2009