blog archive

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

You only know …

Lies, damned lies, and … hang on …

Serendipitiful

Shakefest

Reading between the lines

Witch hunts and wizards

An ill wind

Almost lost for words – on Bob Hoskins’ diagnosis

Nothing will come of nothing

A series of irritating events

What a difference a day makes

The best ever guitar solo

Worse things happen in East Chailey

Polymathematics

All the gear, no idea

The anxiety of performance

Fantastically free speech

Sunrise in Denmark

The woman in the sun

Circle learning – on Encyclopedia Brittannica

A very English day at the beach

Here be spiders – on hallucinations

Slender threads

There’s always something around the corner

Unexpected side-effects may include

In the swim

The still small shake of palm

The long and winding road

A curate’s omelette

A funny thing – on identity

Patient or person? Condition or conditional?

On narcolepsy

Half a cake

John Martin at Tate Britain

What is truth? asked Pilate – on justice

Any particular reason?

Plumb in the plums – on cricket and homonymic journalese

Atheist? Moi?

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 serveon 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

Feet of clay?

Hiding in the bushes

A funny thing happened on my way to the Guardian

That was the week that was

The post-modern apprenticeship

Memories

Vulnerability

Motion

The gift of choice

On the daftness of pensions

International whom?

Vive la difference?

One more time around?

Spit or swallow?

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



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