cracks

Remember when we were kids and you never stepped on the cracks? You always looked down when we were walking together, to make sure. You’d talk and listen and laugh but always with your head down, your slightly shaggy brown hair falling over your eyes and making you unreadable. Remember I’d look up and around [...]

love, music, wine and revolution

Or: Why I don’t like Valentine’s Day. Hmm, ‘don’t like’ is kind of not strong enough to express how I feel, but then ‘hate’ is maybe a little much. I don’t want to spoil it for anyone else if they are into it, it’s just really, really not for me. And when I talk about [...]

When you’re trying hard to be your best, could you be a little less?

Hello there, neglected blog. So, during my big awesome winter holiday (of which today is the last day, boo), I’ve been enjoying lazing around in pyjamas and watching tons of excellent films old and new: from It’s A Wonderful Life (1946) and West Side Story (1961), via some 1980s gems (Footloose, Weird Science, the Back [...]

Here is a strange and bitter crop.

Dear friends, Many of you wrote posts, linked to campaigns and wrote to your MPs and so on recently about the shoddy way the Digital Economy Bill, or what is now the Digital Economy Act 2010, was being handled. I read your thoughts, watched the video, had a look around on the ORG website, and [...]

I can’t go on, I will go on

This month saw Gordon Brown’s beleaguered government issue an official apology for the treatment of Alan Turing, the brilliant logician, cryptanalyst, and pioneering computer scientist who committed suicide in 1954 after enduring persecution and enforced chemical castration as ‘punishment’ for his sexual orientation. Brown, who was born in 1951, stated: “I am very proud to [...]

Don’t let anyone tell you you’re not worth the earth – these streets are your streets, this turf is your turf.

Today’s title is from The King Blues – What If Punk Never Happened? And there are many things, there are so very many things that I could write about Climate Camp 2009, and other experiences I’ve had in the last couple of weeks. None of it would be very coherent or cohesive, though, I would [...]

The silver apples of the moon, the golden apples of the sun.

I’ve been meaning to get around to writing something a bit less ‘oh mama, can this really be the end?’ around here, something rather more reflective of my usual generally pretty chipper life and times. Only, over the last few weeks, life hasn’t been the usual, not really. It’s been just stressful and angry, lonely [...]

Because the tide is high, and it’s rising still, and I don’t want to see it at my windowsill.

Really didn’t want this to be true. Despite everything I’d heard first-hand from my brother*, who is one of the most kind, intelligent and brilliant people in the world, despite everything I’d seen and read and spent hours and hours worrying and arguing and weeping about last week, lacking sleep, lacking rest, lacking the ability [...]

It’s been a long, long time coming, but I know a change is gonna come.

I don’t do this often, but this is important: Please, please, please go to the cinema and watch this film this weekend. The Age of Stupid If you’re in Edinburgh, it’s showing at the Filmhouse for a week from this Friday, with a bunch of events around the screenings in association with the lovely people [...]

Mayday

remember that day when we saw the kite caught in the big tree the little ginger cat from your neighbour’s garden had followed us all the way to the shop the red kite in the big tree and you with grass stains on the knees of your jeans i think every boy in the park [...]

There she goes, my beautiful world.

Up until I was about nine or so, I always thought these were called ‘plain trees’ – no special name, just your common-or-garden, standard variety tree. In London, where I lived, they’re all over the place, so it seemed a reasonable assumption. In fact it’s spelled ‘plane’ and they are London Planes, Platanus × hispanica [...]

This is not the future my mother warned me about.

Important things: Winter food Terminator: Salvation So, winter food is a super important part of making winter livable through, bearable. Adrian Chiles always says ‘have a bearable week’ in his sign off thing on MOTD2, and now every time I hear the word it reminds me of him, could be worse I suppose, but it’s [...]

To wish impossible things

We are walking back toward the towering Koutobia mosque that we’re using as a handy landmark, when we realise it’s 4pm and the resonant solemn call of the muezzin rings out from it, amplified but pure, clear and bright as a summer stream but rich and deep like molasses, dewy, soft thick emerald Scottish moss, [...]

I can’t forget.

From my notebook: Marrakech is hot and red and dusty and everything I thought it would be and more. I wasn’t ready for the sleepy, hungry tough cats and kittens who stalk these streets like quiet implacable kings; napping in ruins, artfully evicting the last little particles of meat and marrow from scrap bones, almost [...]

Hey, that’s no way to say goodbye.

Hey, that’s no way to say goodbye. So whoa, how ace was yesterday, as transfer deadline days go?! Man City, I don’t even know where to begin, Man City started the day with effectively no owner after absolute nutjob of a Thai ex-prime minister billionaire “human rights abuser of the worst kind” fly-by-night Thaksin ‘Frank’ [...]