A year ago at Christmas I got a book, a collection of stories by Adrian Tomine called Sleepwalk which touched me deeply. I had come back from Prague, where I had spent Xmas with M’s family, and my notebook. I had been dog-sitting for hours every day as they went to visit M’s grandmother, who was seriously ill in hospital, and I filled page after page with scrawlings, sketchings and ideas. Read the rest of this entry »

In my time writing this blog, that is, trying to, trying not to, writing those desultory pieces in the useless downtime I could not set to any other useful purpose, I have scratched the surface of what it is all about so little that as often before, I tend to feel it is better not to have opened my mouth, put pen to paper, fingers to keyboard at all, than to settle for something so inchoate, that will inevitably allow people to know me less rather than more. One of the things I have barely mentioned is my notebooks. Strange, given that, I suppose, looking back, these notebooks, full of thoughts badly expressed, drawings, poems, names of novels and stories, song lyrics, inventions, angry jottings, ideas for anything from monetary systems to bicycle, camera and guitar designs, stories, of course, are a more consistent part of my behaviour since childhood than anything else. Also, they are the place I sketched out (literally), my ideas for this site which has, of course, come to be nothing remotely like the eccentric but coherent and characterful website I first planned out. Read the rest of this entry »

My immune system’s down. I’ve been smoking for a while now. Took it up again when M was away in Prague for a couple of weeks. I’ve been away for a while now. My priorities once again completely shifted. This blog wasn’t going where I wanted. I didn’t have time for it. It was taking time from what I needed to do. I was only making myself more misunderstood. Failing to get through to anyone. Read the rest of this entry »