I see him again. In the supermarket. Little pork pie man. Always that two-tone hat. But it’s not The Selecter or The Specials leaching out the phones. I hear rawwwk. Whitesnake, I’m sure. First time I saw him was outside a pub at 2 in the afternoon. Part of a drunken circle that’s holding back […] Read More →
1986. Ahm Maradona. King of the two-a-side village derbies. Ah hear the crowd in my head. You should see the way ah dance through the defence, past daft Gassy, so wiry you could tie a string from his lugs to his toes and fire arrows at the seagulls (hair trigger mental too – hit his […] Read More →
I don’t want to get up. I need to pee but it’s too cold. The issue is pressing but a decision is not yet a necessity. The question is how long have I been here? If I know I can estimate how long I have left to decide, when time becomes of the essence you […] Read More →
Tuesday night saw the launch of A Private Haunting at the fantastic Blackwell’s Bookshop in Oxford. More than fifty people came down to hear me read from the novel and ramble on about my writing. I was joined in conversation by Fiona McPherson, Senior Editor on the Oxford English Dictionary, who asked some insightful questions, […] Read More →
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 →
She went there afterwards. Hours by plane and train and boat. At the quayside, a fat man waited to get on the ferry back to the mainland. A t-shirt that said ‘I Eat Lions’, reading a book called ‘The Stainless Steel Rat’. He was an outrage waiting to happen. Here in this village on the […] Read More →