this place
What makes a place, a place? Can somewhere be a place if it doesn't have a name?…
vaccination reflections
One year ago, I couldn’t think about anything but the pandemic. By the time the UK started to take it seriously, I had been worrying about it for more than two months: I had a Chinese coworker who had…
drifting at Angkor
My flight landed at Siem Riep airport after 11pm. Seoul had been cool, but as expected, Cambodia was very hot and very humid, and the airport was crowded and noisy and a blur of colour…
it won’t be easy
Two years ago today, a long-ago ex-lover of mine died.…
stories as crows
Stories are like crows circling in and out of sight in the mist overhead: there's no simple distinction between one of them and another, and the precise flight path of any one particular crow is known only to itself…
Newcastle’s Forth
This is another post about Newcastle history and old maps (my last was about chares); it is the story of the decline and loss of what was once the nicest place in Newcastle.…
oh no, not all this again
Watching the rise of transphobia in the media through 2020 has filled me with a sense of déjà vu. The arguments are all the same as homophobes used in the 1980s.…
the crashed motorcyclist test
When I learnt to drive, my dad taught me, in our slightly rusty Peugeot 304. Having moved back to the area where I grew up, I regularly drive along the road where I had my first ever driving lesson, so I’m often reminded of it.…
writing and writing
It's been a strange summer. It can't be the first year I haven't had a holiday, but it's the first year that a global pandemic has forced me to cancel my holiday and stay at home for month after month.…
the end is nigh
The final hand-in deadline for my MA course is at the start of September, and effectively that will end my two years as a mature student. I enjoyed the classes, the cameraderie with classmates, and the access to university facilities,…
yonder all before us
Time and space are important issues in the novel I’m writing. It’s mostly set in the early 80s, because there were a lot of things I remember that I wanted to write about. That’s not a problem at all.…
where the story began
When I started my MA course in Creative Writing, I told a few people the story of how I started writing. I had an inspirational teacher at the age of 9, that's the shortest version.…