Warning! Profligate use of exclamation marks ahead! Good grief! I have just about had enough of the internet, following me about like some creepy stalker-hawker! So yes, I confess, I am a man of a certain age but I don’t in any way identify with the irresistible slip towards terminal decline. So why does the … Continue reading EXIT, PURSUED BY A BEAR
The Earth is flat. I know this because I have stood on Brighton beach and held up a ruler to the horizon. Yup, flat as a pancake or maybe a pizza, one with melted feta and caramelised onions, case closed. The idea that the Earth is a ball spinning at 1000 miles per hour is … Continue reading THE CREDIBLE LIAR
Much is said about the nightmare of Christmas, about how commercialism has destroyed it, about how children see nothing but the next present, about the cabin fever of being locked away with recalcitrant relatives. According to an ever-so-slightly desperate media Christmas is little more than a sponsored binge before the diet season, when retailers conspire to … Continue reading AND SO IS THIS CHRISTMAS?
I only have one son left to walk to school, his older brothers having graduated to bicycles and secondary, and my morning stroll with Joa has become a worn path I will be sad to no longer tread. There is however one part of the school circuit I won’t miss, the social collisions with other … Continue reading COMPELLED TO COMMIT NICETIES
On Tuesday just gone my Volvo’s plip failed and I couldn’t get into the car. I was temporarily insensible, flummoxed, stabbing the lifeless plip at the door, peering helplessly in through the side windows with thoughts of vehicular infidelity. I deserved better, a vehicle that welcomed my approach, one that would let me in. I … Continue reading MY WHOLE IS OTHER THAN THE SIM OF MY PARTS
Some scientists don’t seem to grasp how unlikely humanity is, they have been scouring the local universe for decades for any planet that just might conceivably support life and every time they think they’ve found one it is trumpeted in the media as being another potential Earth, one we can visit because it is only … Continue reading THE ACCIDENTAL HUMAN
If Cornwall didn’t exist then someone would have to invent it. God maybe. It is a place of ineffable beauty, a land of savage seascape, cleaving rivers, cumulus forest, rolling hills, buried churches and horizontal weather. It has some of the most glorious empty beaches you will ever see, assuming a local tells you how … Continue reading WHERE THE SUN SHINES AND THE RAIN FALLS
I don’t know if I have mentioned it (I have) but we live in a flat, well actually to be accurate an apartment, as it is on two floors and not flat, like a flat. We have always got on with our neighbours in a typically English kind of way, polite nods when passing on … Continue reading THE DISARMING URGENCY OF FIRE ALARM DIPLOMACY
Why are humans so much smarter than they need to be? It is something that I often think about, because I can, because for some reason I am able to consider the human condition. What is that about? Does it make me happier? I doubt it. You won’t find a dog having an existential crisis. … Continue reading THE FEATHER AND THE CANNONBALL
I have spent years believing in the absolute uniqueness of the individual. That all of our experiences are singular, subjective and altered via perspective. When a ball hits the ground is it falling, stationary or rising? The truth is often open to interpretation. It is why I didn’t have a wedding video because I didn’t … Continue reading THE TRUTH IS WHAT I SAY IT IS
THE ACCIDENTAL HUMAN 