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What I Go To Pride For A lot of my life these days involves trying very hard to be a decent person in the wake of a very expensive education that taught me to be an entitled prick. Mostly. I still vividly remember the assembly during my first year of school, where a visiting priest […]

I have honestly not been as nervous for a new series of Dr Who since the announcement it was coming back ten years ago. Last year I was utterly overjoyed to hear Jodie Whittaker was going to be the next Doctor, a woman. Not just a woman, but one who I’d been watching in some […]

I’ve been writing about music a lot lately (in case you hadn’t noticed) which isn’t really surprising since I occasionally describe myself as a failed musician. The truth is I never really tried to make it. I’m not sure if it was fear of failure, crippling self-doubt or that my father was right when he […]

As a heterosexual, white, cis-gendered, public school educated bloke it is a difficult thing to write progressive and, dare I say it, feminist literature in the 21st century without being called a patronising wanker. Nevertheless, I try – because I am a patronising wanker. There are a million excuses of history and upbringing and conditioning […]

Back in the mid-80s when I was a kid, TV was a grey miserable place, filled with bad-cockernee-accented kids wearing big coats and taking heroin, drowning in swimming pools or dying of an aneurysm in the back of teacher’s cars. The psychedelic joy of the Magic Roundabout, Jamie and the Magic Torch and the Clangers […]

When the four minute warning comes a knocking, will I greet it with a sigh, a shrug of the shoulders and a quiet sense of English resignation? Will I pour myself a drink, light myself a cigarette, and wish I still had a stash of something stronger from the bad old days – I miss […]

Nearly four years into this blog, ostensibly about writing, the creative process, and what an utter ballache the whole thing is, I am back writing about writing here again – as opposed to pets, politicsand unhappy travels. This blog has fulfilled its original purpose twice over now and taught me one very valuable lesson. Stop […]

My summer hat this year has been getting an undue amount of attention. I got it from a charity shop in Exeter for two quid with the intention of tricorning it. I’ve always wanted a straw tricorn, and never yet found a straw hat with a wide enough brim. I did not tricorn it in […]

I may have been a bit hasty when I claimed that turning forty would make no difference to my life.Not entirely, I mean I haven’t joined the circus, faked my own death or gone to live on a boat. But when the big number actually flashed by I did some introspecting – like any self-respecting […]

The dust has settled on the general election, and it is clear that absolutely nobody has got what they wanted out of it. There’s a lot not to like about the whole thing, despite the sense of hope it engendered in those of us who lean a little bit left. Make no mistake, this election […]