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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

All I can say is that my life is pretty plain.

Here’s something I wrote in London: I went to Tate Modern with Don and Martin. We looked at Shibboleth, the Doris Salcedo crack in the Turbine hall, and raised our eyebrows; made lots of jokes along the lines of ‘kids, don’t do crack’; noted trying-not-to-sound-surprisedly how many people there were, late on a wet Sunday [...]

She’s so high.

So I have just returned from The Camp for Climate Action, which was an incredible experience on very many levels. I’m so enthused, so excited and so horrified by various things I’ve seen and heard – I was absolutely cream crackered last night as we got no sleep the night before and travelled all day, [...]

They removed all trace that anything ever happened here.

Memories of London come flooding, unbidden, into my head one morning at work as I innocently type an address label for the city. Memories of talking, walking, sitting, looking, resting, laughing and of not realising how much I loved the place, its honest communal air, its grimy stones and slabs and wood and water, until [...]