Rainin. Not even a streak aw white or flash aw blue, just flat grey sky, mist risin up through the gorge to meet it. Always with the rain in this place. Ever the grey. Though havin never been here how would ah know? It’s Creepy Dan’s fault. Again the claim that his mother flung herself […] Read More →
5 hours from Oban on a Calmac ferry that reminds me of a sports centre c. 1987. But there’s still a romance about ferries. I love them. Until I’m doing the Buster Keaton stagger with my lunch in my throat. A small fortune could have bought us plane tickets. There’s romance in the turbo-prop too; […] Read More →
The DVD and vinyl stalls. Salisbury market. Stall man asks me what I’m looking for and I tell him Can, Faust, any kind of Krautrock. He shrugs, turns to a tap on his shoulder. Any wrestling DVDs? This guy in waterproof trousers, a red and white striped shirt open to the waist, big glasses and […] Read More →
A grand, respectable town house on a bourgeois boulevard. Smart and grey painted. Where the Arrow Cross fascists and the Stalinists once did their body and soul-mangling. People hang around outside, groups of high school students messing around, a shouty group of Italian tourists. No-one hung around back then. Imagine another beautiful blue morning, 60 […] Read More →
A large envelope in the post.   Unexpected. Like the start of a story. I open it, a letter from my aunt. She’s just finished reading the enclosed manuscript. Found in a box maybe, that’s what happens. An attic, dust through beams of skylight.   Did I put the box here and forget or did I never […] Read More →
Misty Track
The pull of the Himalayas, the Alps, high peaks of all the world, I get it. It’s the all-conquering stuff I don’t. Man against nature. A world for wannabe Bears. Grylls that is. What a weird conceit. Imagine telling Basho you’d ‘conquered’ a mountain. A roar of laughter, sake everywhere. Or John Muir. Biting his […] Read More →
He’s at a party he doesn’t want to be at. At Christmas, there’s only so many excuses you can roll out. A huge house by the sea, took him an hour along the coast road to find it. In the moment between tipping his head back to down another drink and lowering it again a […] Read More →