Writing
A lot of people have now died. That much is clear. John Barker, the steam circus proprietor, was crushed between two wagons at the original Norwich Cattle Market in 1897 while setting up a steam roundabout. He suffered fractures to the spine and breastbone, punctures to both lungs, and broke
Writing
How do you think it would change your identity, and your writing, if you could no longer go walking - and what would you do to fill that void? (Betty Lou - Twitter) I have thought about this a surprisingly large amount. I have not been walking as much over
Writing
The quiet often floors me here, on the green edge of the city. It’s quiet in an entirely different way to the very rural house I moved from, where agricultural machinery and speeding cars cut sharply through a bigger emptiness. At night, the silence is thick, but a few
Writing
The reason I swim is different to the reason I used to swim, yet the same. I originally swam because I wanted to carry on drinking beer and eating lots of crisps without beginning to resemble a balloon, and although that intention has not varied in the intervening years, it
Writing
I reached consciousness just as the first rays of dawn lit the room and the first sound I heard was a gull squawking in my hallway. Because the night had been hot, I had left the back door of my new bungalow in Norfolk open, and I now regretted it,
Writing
We’ve all done very well at forgetting it very quickly, but there was a time not all that long ago when people arranged to meet in a place, sometimes even quite a vague place, well in advance, then trusted each other would be there, having no reason to assume
Writing
If you happen to follow me on social media, you have probably already seen Clare Melinsky's wonderful, psychedelic cover for Ring The Hill, but I thought it was high time I showed it off here too, as it's everything I hoped it would be. Tomorrow morning
Writing
My birthday falls on what is usually the exact part of the year where spring takes its cardigan off, revealing the bright t-shirt underneath made of summer: May 20th. It’s my favourite time of year and this time around it took me by surprise. I woke up, the garden
Writing
I am from a Place, but I have been around a bit, so maybe the truth is that I am from lots of Places now. I am also not originally from a Place in the way that some people are from a Place. I am not from a Place in
Writing
Mike touched my hair. I thought what had touched my hair was some furry dust that had gathered into a kind of dirt stalactite, which you often find hanging from the deep recessed window frames in the now disused prison at Shepton Mallet, but it was Mike. “Oh yeah, they
Writing
Any vaguely rigorous account of this, my most recent February, must be at least partly swimming-themed. Swimming dominates my thoughts right now. I do it almost every day and can feel it changing me - physically, but mentally too, more. But I’ve never been particularly adept at it, in
Writing
I was talking to my mum, a little prematurely, about what I might do when my tenancy is up at my current house. I’m not quite sure how we got onto the topic as originally we’d been talking about the time we went on holiday to Dentdale in