Michelle Barker

Open Mic Night

2026-06-16T00:00:00Z

My band played our first gig last night: an open mic night at Mr Wolf’s in Bristol. It was raw and chaotic, we couldn’t really hear each other all that well and we made a lot of mistakes. But I’m still feeling good about it.

When we arrived at the venue we didn’t even know if we would play at all — there was no drum kit set up, and the guy who ran the evening hadn’t turned up yet. When he finally arrived he asked our names about three times before promptly forgetting to book us a slot, then when he finally did he wrote my name down as “Catherine”. It didn’t matter, he was a lovely guy and at least we got our slot in the end. The drum kit he set up can only be described as “ramshackle” — a wobbly drum stool, a battered cymbal, a hi-hat that didn’t rise — but that’s fairly in keeping with open mic nights I remember playing back in my youth, so it was pretty much what I was expecting.

Fortunately my bandmate, Nil (the lead singer and guitarist), had invited a few friends and colleagues along to watch. I didn’t invite anyone (or at least not until it was far too late for any of them to make it) as I was feeling too shy and thought it would be good to get the first one out of the way for practise. But in fact, having some friendly and supportive faces in the crowd gave us the boost we needed.

Just like when I give a talk, I was so nervous before getting up on stage, to the point where I seriously doubted my ability to get through a single song. But once I sat down at the kit and started playing I finally felt calm. We made a ton of mistakes. But we had fun, and we got through all three songs with our heads held high. And even though we messed up, nobody died. Everyone was supportive and kind, and now we know that even when the worst happens it’s really not that bad and we can still carry on. Watching the videos back I’m struck by the fact that the mistakes we did make sounded much worse to me at the time — to a casual observer, they’re far less noticeable. When I watch them I can’t stop smiling. I’m looking forward to the next one.

Playing Music Live

2026-06-15T00:00:00Z

Tonight my band, Green Sirens, make our live debut at an open mic night in Bristol. It’s been 20 years since I’ve played music live. I feel like I usually feel just before I deliver a talk: nervous, excited, scared I’ll be facing an audience full of professionals who are there to find flaws in what I do. All the same irrational feelings, when really it’s a much bigger deal in your head than in real life, and no one cares that much. It’s only an open mic night, after all. I hope I can relax and enjoy it, as I usually do when we’re rehearsing and I’m pretty sure I used to do back in the old days with my high school band. But playing live as a 42-year-old feels like it comes with more baggage than in your teens. People expect you to be good, I guess. I must be a far better player than back then – I’ve spent years seriously knuckling down and practising like I never did when I was younger. My technique has definitely improved a lot. But I still never really feel I’m a good drummer, far less a great one. I play for fun, and because it feels good, just like when I write: it’s absorbing and consuming, and I feel a deeper connection to something bigger. That’s what I hope to get from playing live too — that and the rush of adrenalin you get after doing something that scares and thrills you. I hope it’s like I remember.

The Poisoned Lake

2026-06-10T00:00:00Z

At the bottom of the deepest ocean, there is a lake. Where dense, ultra-salty seawater sinks to the ocean floor, it forms a toxic pool of unfathomable depth, deadly to all but the hardiest of undersea life. Somehow, strange muscles, hundreds of years old, thrive on the banks of this mysterious lake. But most sea creatures brave or desperate enough to cross it meet their end in its murky depths. Eels venturing from the safety of their caves to hunt on the lake tie themselves in knots as the deadly toxins claim them. Shimmering silver fish twist and turn gently on the current, their embalmed bodies doomed to float upon the surface, washing up on the banks of the lake and adorning its shores for years to come.

With its surface of soft, pale mist, the lake looks peaceful and ethereal, inviting, even. Its calm appearance belies its deadly secret.

Deadlines

2026-06-07T00:00:00Z

Self-imposed deadlines can be useful, when the work is something you actually really want to do. Last month when I set myself the challenge of writing every day, having that daily deadline meant I prioritised the thing I wanted to do (writing) above almost everything else. This is especially useful for giving yourself licence to push the mundane but time-insensitive tasks (such as vacuuming the house) to the bottom of the to-do list, although, of course, those tasks all have to get done eventually. And setting writing as a high priority meant I was more likely to do it earlier, when my brain was at its freshest and the ideas could flow freely.

On the other hand, deadlines are far less fun when you don’t have any say in them. Right now, my course (the Computer Science MSc I’m currently studying) feels like one deadline after another. For me, deadlines are a great way to make sure the work gets done, but at a cost of enjoying the work far less (and stressing about it a lot more). I get why assessment is a necessary part of education, but I would appreciate the time to just enjoy learning. It makes me think about my son’s education too. Next year (the last year of primary school) he’ll be doing his SATs, with all the stress of revision and exams that involves. It feels like too young an age to get bogged down in all that, to worry about being judged when learning should still be fun.

As a web developer, all my best learning happened (and still happens) without deadlines. Later on, once I started giving talks and writing articles, I still learned a lot. The process of doing those things certainly helps consolidate learning, exposing gaps in my knowledge and sending me down new rabbit holes. But the stress of having an externally-imposed deadline prevents that part from being fully enjoyable. The fun part (and where I feel I learned the most) was being able to tinker, try things out, and play. I’m looking forward to having some time without deadlines soon.

Reflections on a month of writing

2026-05-31T00:00:00Z

When light hits a surface and bounces back to our eyes, we see a reflection. Our face in the mirror is perhaps the most familiar one we see, but it is not our true self. It is a distorted image, flipped by the light. And so it is disarming when we see ourselves as others see us, through another’s webcam or video. Any reflection of ourselves should be honest, but it can only be as honest as our own perspective allows. Perhaps that is the perspective that really matters. Bats use echolocation to orient themselves in three-dimensional space, the reflections of sound waves helping them locate prey, find their way and circumnavigate obstacles. In a similar way, we can take the opportunity to reflect on our experiences, to consider not just what we’ve achieved but how we want to move forward.

I’ve come to the end of this month-long challenge to write every day, which feels like a natural point for reflection. I began this challenge with the simple goal of just writing something every day. It didn’t have to be perfect — the aim was to get the creative part of my brain working again, like a muscle. To build a habit, which I think is one of the most important and under-sold aspects of being any kind of artist. For the first week or two this was easy, and I woke up every day full of ideas and excited to write. But then real life took over: dealing with work and university deadlines, as well as half-term childcare, meant my time and energy levels were depleted. Some days (though thankfully not many) I struggled to write anything at all, feeling my battery drained. On those days I had to be disciplined in forcing myself to open a new document. What helped was having the IA Writer app on my phone. I often use this on the train for drafting notes and blog posts, and being able to open it up and jot down whatever was on my mind while I was waiting for my tea to brew, for instance, made it easier to get in the mindset for writing. Usually just a few lines were all it took to open the floodgates for the words and ideas to flow. Occasionally it was a bit harder, and on those days I allowed myself to publish shorter pieces. I didn’t set myself a word count, so the the length of pieces ranges from a single paragraph to stories of almost 2,000 words.

One thing I especially enjoyed was the challenge of crafting short stories. Writing stories was something I loved to do as a child, but somehow I convinced myself in adulthood that it wasn’t my path. Knowing that I only had a day to write a story from beginning to end really focused my mind around structure and narrative in a way I never truly have before. Before we began this challenge, my friend and I talked about stories where nothing much happens but you feel like you’ve been on a journey anyway. We’d both read Orbital by Samantha Harvey and I had just finished the Monk and Robot series by Becky Chambers. Both are quiet and contemplative, and I had these in mind while writing the stories here. Knowing that a story doesn’t need to contain epic adventures or thrilling plot twists to transport your reader is remarkably freeing.

A conclusion I drew from the process of writing was that you can access a far deeper truth through fiction and poetry than simply by reporting facts. This is true of any art, I think. The pieces I poured most of myself into were the stories and poems. These were the ones where at times I felt I was channelling raw emotion onto the page. I hope they succeeded in carrying some of that emotion, that humanity, through to the reader. But even if they didn’t, they were incredibly valuable for me.

I’m ambivalent as to whether sharing my writing on social media is overall a good thing. On the one hand, I would like people to read (and hopefully identify with) the things I’ve worked hard on. On the other hand, the people-pleaser in me has to resist the urge to compulsively check my posts for “likes”, and catastrophise when there aren’t enough. It’s also made me give my posts a social hierarchy, where I deem the stories and longer posts worthy of sharing and the smaller journal-like entries not interesting enough. I know if I was talking to someone else doing a similar challenge I would tell them to just share it all and it doesn’t matter if people read it or not. But in my head, sharing my thoughts every day is tantamount to spamming people. (This is why I’m not a TikTok influencer.)

Another goal of this challenge was to find more writers to follow and to spend more time reading other people’s work (as opposed to social media posts). I have found a few writers whose work I love (Matt Gemmell and Robert Kingett are two of those), but I would still like to discover more. They are the perfect antidote to doomscrolling.

So, what’s next? I plan to continue writing, maybe working on a few longer short stories (I have a few ideas percolating away). Although I intend to take a break from the pressure to write every day, I still want to maintain the writing habit. Aiming to hit “publish” at least once a week is, I think, a worthy goal. I like to think my writing has improved as the month has worn on, but the big leaps are only visible from a zoomed-out perspective, once you’ve been doing something a while. I am starting to notice things more: both in my writing and in the world around me. To be more observant, more intentional. If nothing else, continuing writing is worth it for that alone.

Lastly, please check out the writing of my wonderful friend, artist Jessica Bartlett, who inspired me to join her on this challenge, and whose beautiful, poetic meditations are like a cool breeze on a sticky summer’s day.

Book review: Children of Memory, Adrian Tchaikovsky

2026-05-30T00:00:00Z

This is a book that would certainly fit into the category of “epic” sci-fi, spanning as it does vast intergalactic distances, countless millennia, and various intriguing alien races. But the story it tells is fundamentally human. The focus of the book revolves around the human colony on the far-off planet of Imir, as observed by a crew of highly intelligent aliens with far superior technology, and a young girl, Liff, on the planet itself. As the humans’ last-ditch hope after fleeing a dying earth, life on Imir is hard. We are treated to glimpses of the founding days of the colony and the tough decisions made by the founders.

The story introduces us to different depictions of intelligence and invites us to ponder what it really means to be sentient. Of these I found the corvids the most fascinating: highly capable birds who can only make sense of the world as a complementary pair, their “intelligence” only existing as something shared between the two of them. The question of their sentience is one that is never truly resolved, and also preoccupies their fellow crew members.

As the story unravels, we learn about the problems that befall the nascent colony. Despite huge leaps in technology and the great adversities overcome, human nature remains fundamentally the same as it ever was. As the colony’s struggles become apparent, we see its inhabitants grow ever more inward-looking and distrustful of outsiders. The fragmenting of reality that follows could be read as symbolic of the fractured reality that we now live in thanks to today’s technology and hypercapitalism, where we can never be quite sure what the “truth” is.

Although on the face of it Tchaikovsky depicts artificial intelligence as equal in complexity to human (or indeed other alien species’) intelligence, in this case the “AI” is in fact a former human whose brain and experience has been digitised. We also encounter another, more sinister type of intelligence, one that is made up of the collective experiences of all of those it has consumed. Again, there are some parallels with what is happening today. I don’t think of this as a “pro AI” novel, but one that invites us to consider the age-old questions of whether machines can truly be intelligent, and what we mean by intelligence at all.

Despite Miranda’s entreaties to help the people of Imir, we cannot but wonder if the “help” on offer would in fact be tantamount to the colony’s destruction. This is the sort of philosophical sci-fi I’m here for.

Funfair

2026-05-29T00:00:00Z

When you’re ten, the funfair is a place of excitement and adventure. Of exhilarating, brightly-coloured rides with flashing lights, booming music, smoke machines. Of games of chance, with exciting prizes for the lucky few who can master them. Of ferris wheels and helter-skelters, taking you up high for a never-before-seen birds-eye view of an otherwise familiar place. Of the scary ghost train, where you enter if you dare. Of rainbow candyfloss, dodgems, bouncy castles and magical memories.

When you’re the parent of a ten-year-old the funfair is an extortionate death-trap, where every ride is an opportunity to part with your hard-earned cash in exchange for a terrifying few minutes of wondering whether this rusting metal bar is really enough to prevent you from being flung to your certain doom. Where you’d really rather a game of hook-a-duck didn’t land you with a giant knock-off Disney stuffed animal, or a cheap plastic sword to cart around for the rest of the day. Where a terrible, overpriced coffee doesn’t soften the blow of a fiver for a bag of spun sugar that you know will extend bedtime by at least an hour.

Sometimes parenting is just about ignoring the rational parent within you.

The Weeds

2026-05-28T00:00:00Z

Eleanor hacked at the brambles until her hands were blistered and sore. The midday sun beat down on her as she dug determinedly into the dry, stubborn soil, yanking up roots and tough, thorny stems. She’d been at it all morning. Sore and dripping with sweat, she stepped back to admire her handiwork. It was a start. A patch was starting to clear and she could see the brown, dusty soil underneath. A patch where she’d promised herself, a year ago, in the full flush of honeymoon, that she’d plant a vegetable garden.

They’d fallen in love with the house at first sight. A small Georgian terrace built in traditional Bath stone, the building shone gold when bathed in the light of the morning sun. Its long, narrow back garden was full of possibility. A secret garden. What they hadn’t banked on was just how much work the house needed. They thought they’d gone in with their eyes open, but pretty soon the cracks had started to show. They’d made a plan, budgeted for the things they needed to prioritise: a new boiler, replacing the bathroom window, renovating the old kitchen. But it wasn’t long before one unforeseen problem after another began to rear its head. An inspection had revealed faulty wiring. A February storm brought down roof tiles and resulted in water damage. James’s job had taken him away for weeks at a time, leaving Eleanor to do much of the work herself, as well as juggle her job and caring for her increasingly frail mother. They wanted kids someday soon, but Eleanor didn’t know when they were going to find the time. All these problems, combined with the pressure to get the house into a liveable state had left the garden badly neglected. Eleanor looked out at it guiltily as she poured herself a glass of water from the tap and splashed her face to cool down. She savoured the shade for a moment. The house did look nice now, she thought. The downstairs part, anyway. The bit that James’s parents coolly surveyed when they visited — her choice of furnishings going mercifully unremarked upon, yet she felt she could always detect a faint whiff of disapproval. The ever-present pressure to be the perfect hostess meant she couldn’t ever really relax and enjoy her surroundings, the ones she’d worked so hard on.

She wondered if it would ever be enough, if she’d ever be done. James didn’t seem to feel this pressure. He’d come home from work and just sit and relax for the rest of the day. But somehow there were always a thousand things on Eleanor’s to-do list.

Now it was time for the garden. The thing she had really been looking forward to. But she felt like she already had a fight on her hands. She tried to imagine this time next year when she could sit out in the sun, drink in hand, watching the birds and butterflies dancing among the flowers. That day seemed a long way off. She sighed and stepped back out into the heat.

By the evening she’d cleared a slightly bigger patch, the brambles and weeds piled up ready for a bonfire. It was back-breaking work, and by the time she finally laid down her spade at the end of the long day, she was tired and irritable. “What’s for dinner?” called James as he walked through the front door after work. Eleanor knew he was only joking, but she glared at him anyway. “It’s okay, it’s okay. I’m heading out to the gym anyway.” He held up his hands in mock protest. ”I’ll pick up a takeaway on the way back.” Eleanor couldn’t remember the last time someone had cooked her dinner, but at that moment she was glad to be let off the hook anyway. She still had to drop some shopping over to her mother, and those visits always took longer than she planned for.

Eleanor and her mother had never had the easiest relationship, but since her stroke a few years ago she’d come to depend on Eleanor. The stroke had left her with limited mobility, which was difficult enough. But more than anything, it had isolated her socially, her memory often failing her and leaving her easily confused. So she’d stopped going out, relying on a steady stream of carers — when they turned up, anyway. It was one of the reasons Eleanor and James had decided to move to the area, to be close by. But it meant Eleanor had one more responsibility. She called in or took her shopping over most days, and often her mother would want to chat about her no-good father and his new wife, who Eleanor thought was perfectly fine. This evening’s visit lasted nearly two hours before Eleanor had made her excuses and left, managing a quick dinner of Chinese takeaway at home before crawling into bed (James’s mother would never approve).

The next morning she woke up aching but determined to make a bigger dent in the garden. Despite her sore muscles and sunburnt shoulders, she donned her gardening gloves once again and strode purposefully out to the far end of the garden. A small cloud of disappointment passed over as she saw the cleared patch wasn’t as big as she’d remembered. Frowning slightly, she brushed it aside.

Yet another day passed in the blazing heat. In the frequent breaks Eleanor afforded herself, she phoned carers and plumbers (the house still had plenty of issues she had to deal with), planned meals and took care of the washing. She was grateful not to be at work, she supposed. At least she worked in a school, so she had the summer off. On the other hand, she didn’t quite know when she was going to get a break. This certainly didn’t feel like a holiday. And each time she returned to the garden, Eleanor swore she could see thorny shoots of brambles springing up in the places she’d already cleared.

On the third day, she was certain. When Eleanor returned to the garden, the brambles grew thicker than ever. Fighting back tears of frustration, she hacked away at them, fought them as hard as she could, her hands raw and bloody, thorns scratching her all over. When she finally collapsed into bed that night she felt only despair. She had nothing to show for all her hard work. Nothing.

She awoke to the full moon shining brightly through the thin curtains of the bedroom. Eleanor could have sworn some sound had roused her, but when she sat up in bed all was deathly quiet. Eerily so. Suddenly not remotely sleepy, she tiptoed downstairs to the kitchen, careful not to wake James who was snoring beside her. Opening the patio door that looked out onto the garden, she stopped in her tracks. Her garden was no longer a garden. It was a dense thicket. Twisted tentacles grew in gnarly knots, illuminated by the moon’s silver glow. A thick, impenetrable forest of thorns. The hairs on the back of Eleanor’s neck suddenly stood up with the feeling of being no longer alone. The garden was a living thing. She could almost hear it growing, the creak of its branches as it reached out to her with its spiky limbs. She walked towards the sprawling mass as if hypnotised. But as she did so, she didn’t feel afraid. In that moment she felt like she understood the garden.

Like an old friend, the garden held out its arms and seemed to open up to greet her, a passageway opening up before her eyes. As she continued forward she expected the tangled forest to become darker and darker, but instead the moonlight seemed to shine ever brighter, revealing bejewelled boughs and fantastic blooms the like of which she’d never seen before. The thorny branches were no longer her enemies, but her protectors, and her guides.

The garden (if she really was still in the garden) seemed to stretch much further than she remembered. When Eleanor felt like she had been walking for hours, she came to a clearing in the forest. At the centre of the clearing was a round, silver pool, just a few metres across. The surface was a perfect mirror, with not a single ripple to disturb it. Its enchanting bluish glow may have been the reflection of the moonlight, or might just as easily come from the pool itself. All Eleanor knew was that it was magical, and it was here for her. She moved closer, until she could see her own face in the mirror surface. She could see the lines of worry fading, the tension disappearing from her reflection. The sandy earth at the water’s edge crunched between the toes of her bare feet. In that moment the world felt far away. A different world called to her. She stepped back, took a running jump and plunged beneath the surface.

Eleanor didn’t remember how she got back to her bed that night, but she awoke early the next morning, remarkably refreshed. She looked out at the garden as she drank her coffee. It was no longer the imposing thicket she remembered from last night, but nor was it tame. There was still something of the wild about it, something a little mysterious. Eleanor didn’t work in the garden that day, or the next. Instead she took a little time to herself. Went to the library. Pulled up a chair on the small patio and read in the afternoon shade. One day, she would dig out her own little corner of the garden, plant her vegetable patch. But for now, the garden wanted to be wild. And Eleanor wanted to be wild too.

She still goes down there at night, when the moon is full. That’s when the garden is truly hers. Somewhere to escape, to swim in the cool waters of another time and place. Another life. A place to keep her dreams alive.

Human

2026-05-27T00:00:00Z

The dawn of day
The sparkling dew
The rising sun
The fresh
The new
The air
The sea
The breeze
The heat
The ground beneath your feet.

The sky above
So blue
So clear
The warmth of love
The chill of fear
The steady hand
The long walk home
Unique, but not alone.

The summer rain
The girls
The boys
The shattered dreams and broken toys
The hopes
The fears
The growing pains
A creature to be tamed.

The love you lost
The love you gained
The rage
The grief
The tears
The pain
The beating heart
The dark of night
The dying of the light.

A thousand different journeys

2026-05-26T00:00:00Z

We must have walked this path a thousand times, my son and I. A thousand journeys, each one a little different as we’ve grown, changed and (mostly) become wiser. When my son was small he was also restless, with a ton of energy. Still is, in many ways. Always moving, never still. We’d wake up at dawn, sometimes before, and I’d be thinking of ways to keep him occupied so we didn’t both go stir crazy. So we’d walk along the path, in the direction of the park. Sometimes we didn’t make it that far. We’d be stopped by a bubbling stream, or a half-dead worm needing to be rescued, or a ripe blackberry bush, or just a patch of dirt that was inexplicably fascinating.

A little later, the path was our route to preschool, becoming part of our daily routine. First a slow walk, then on a balance bike, then later on a little green bike with stabilisers. When preschool re-opened after three months of closure during the pandemic, it felt like momentous changes had taken place and I was walking with a different child altogether.

The same path was where we took the stabilisers off and my son really mastered his bike. Every day for a week during the second Covid lockdown he’d ride up and down the path, with me holding onto him a little less each time. We walked down the path every day during the lockdown for our daily exercise (when conditions permitted), often to the Big Field where we’d run around and roll down the hills. It was there that I met the mother of one of his school friends, who has since become a good friend of mine.

Once my son started school, we walked along the same path in the opposite direction. That five-minute walk was a part of the day I treasured. Now he walks (or runs) to school confidently by himself, without a backwards glance.

In summer, the area around the path became our playground. We’d take the walkie-talkies and spend an hour playing hide-and-seek, running for miles over bridges, around the copses and through the fields. Always meeting back on the path.

These days our walk together (or often our ride together) is a ritual. In the dark evenings of autumn and winter we look out for bats. In the summer we enjoy the cool evening air. Sometimes my son rides his scooter, showing me his latest tricks. Sometimes we come up with games, or have imaginary Pokémon battles. And sometimes we just talk about what’s on our minds, and enjoy walking the path together, while it is still ours.

Sunny Bank Holiday

2026-05-25T00:00:00Z

The radio this morning announced that today has broken the record for the hottest day in May ever in the UK. Here in Wiltshire the temperature reached 32 degrees, more than many of us Brits can comfortably tolerate. Climate change concerns notwithstanding, we are lucky to have some sunny weather during the school half term and Bank Holiday weekend — though less so when it’s unpleasantly hot. And of course, climate change is a difficult thing to dismiss. The notion that while this might be the hottest May of my life so far, it might well be one of the coolest for the rest of my son’s life.

Today, however, we enjoy what we can. We managed to get out on a family trip to Lacock for a walk around the cool abbey and grounds, with plenty of shady spots to be found and ice cream afterwards. All this means I’m excusing myself from writing very much today. Let’s see how tomorrow works out.

Beaches

2026-05-24T00:00:00Z

The sea is in my soul. Growing up in Cornwall, my vividest memories are of beaches. Jump in the car and a short drive along winding country roads would bring you to the nearest beach. Every family holiday involved camping in my dad’s 4-person mountaineering tent at Mother Ivey’s Bay, a mere hour’s drive from where we lived, sometimes for weeks at a time, every single day spent swimming, running and playing on the pristine beach. We’d wake up before 6am (with the arrival of the gulls) and walk down with our bodyboards, my dad, my sister and me, plunging straight into the cold, grey sea before anyone else was up. Spending that first golden hour, while the beach was deserted, letting the primal call of the sea deep into our bones before heading back to the tent for chocolate porridge (my dad’s speciality made from mixing hot chocolate powder and porridge oats) cooked on the little camping stove. At night we’d walk there again by moonlight, watching for bats and listening to the sound of the waves.

The beach was where we grew up, where we took risks, learned the dangers. From a young age I understood the sea’s power and brutality, more than once getting wiped out by the merciless waves. As the tide came in we’d take turns jumping off the rock, waiting for the perfect moment for the swell to carry us to shore. On calm days my dad would take me out farther than I’d ever gone before, where the seaweed forests grew, where we could no longer see the sandy sea bed. We’d swim round the cliffs, all the way to the next bay along, where the lifeboat station lay. (I was a strong swimmer from an early age.) Every time I felt the deep thrill of danger mixed with excitement. I understood the sea’s wildness. You enter the sea with respect, as it can so easily turn on you.

Later on, the beach came to symbolise freedom. My friends and I would drive down to the beach for the day during the summer holidays, after school had ended to escape the confines of small town life.

The wild ones have a special place in my heart. The undiscovered coves, away from the beaten track and the tourist hotspots. The ones that involve a treacherous climb down a crumbling cliff path, where the reward is a place that feels special, where no lifeguards patrol and you enter the water at your own risk. Those beaches have formed my dreams ever since I was young. For a long time I had the same recurring dream where I would be swimming at an impossibly beautiful beach and the waves would begin to get higher and higher until they became terrifying. I would always wake up at that point. These days I dream of paddling in the shallows in calmer waters, where the sand stretches for miles.

Standing on the shore still sets my heart racing. The threshold between the known, familiar world and the vast unknown. I still feel it calling to me. These days my opportunities to swim in the sea are far less frequent, and I take every one of them I can. I live a long way from the beach now. But the beach is still home.

Beginning

2026-05-23T00:00:00Z

The first line is always the hardest. I sit in front of the blank page with its cursor blinking, aggressively or invitingly, wondering what I’ll write. I know that if I can first uncork the bottle, the rest will flow. It’s the decision paralysis that gets you. The temptation to turn back before you’ve even started. Sometimes you just have to begin, not knowing where it’s going. Forget about all the things you think you need before you can embark. You don’t really need any of them. Once you’re on the trail, the woods close in behind you and the only way is forward. A meandering path through the thoughts in your head, only forged by putting one foot in front of another, testing the ground underfoot, backtracking when it’s too thorny, too overgrown with weeds. Finding alternative routes, easier paths made by those who came this way before, but which combined with your own journey make something new. Streams to ford, distractions or unconventional paths to uncharted lands full of new wonders? An uphill climb until you finally break out above the tree line to survey the landscape below. How far you’ve come. Is it far enough, or do you forge ahead to higher peaks, where the path is more treacherous and greater dangers lie? Where the journey is more perilous but the rewards far greater?

Community

2026-05-22T00:00:00Z

One of the most significant things that inspired me as a web developer was the sense of community. Through conferences, meet-ups and just being online a lot, I found a tribe of like-minded people who were all similarly passionate about web standards and making fun, creative work. This community spurred me on to make better work, to think and discuss more, to write about what I learned and even to speak at conferences where, in turn, I made new real-life friends, grew my community even further and, hopefully, helped others too.

A community is fundamentally different from a network. When you’re networking, you’re thinking of how an interaction can benefit you and your interests, business or personal. A community is a bunch of people getting excited about stuff together. A community lifts each other up, helps each other out for no other reason than that it brings joy and it’s a kind thing to do. What I loved about the web development community is that we’d share each other’s work enthusiastically, and riff off each other’s discussion points to create new, interesting work of our own. Often someone would publish a blog post dashing off their thoughts about a particular topic and then someone else would pick that up and run with it, writing a blog post of their own. The original thing would take on a new life, become an evolving conversation. Naturally some of it benefited our careers and led to new opportunities, but that was a side-effect of being really excited about something, not the sole aim.

That’s not to say this community was always harmonious all of the time — sometimes there were internal disagreements, occasionally ones that threatened to cause bigger rifts. There is the wider community as a whole which is, necessarily, a broad church, and of course you’re not going to see eye-to-eye with everyone. But then you have your “local” community — I don’t mean geographically, but the people you talk to most often, whose work and ideas you share. The ones who inspire you the most, who keep you going.

I’ve written this in the past tense, but a lot of this stuff still happens, the community is still there. I just don’t feel as strongly a part of it anymore. For me, it started roughly when Twitter died and the wider community fractured around different social networks. My friends were no longer all in one place. But mainly I’m burnt out on the current state of tech — the rapid enshittification, the layoffs, the AI rammed down everyone’s throats telling you that your craft, the thing you invested time and love and a huge part of yourself in, is now worthless. There are a lot of people who can still keep going and are still making creative things online, and I respect and envy them. But personally, the only way I can keep from spiralling is to opt out. To close my laptop at the end of the working day and no longer think about coding. I don’t want to spend my free time writing polished articles, making demos or preparing talks to be gobbled up by some LLM. I want to create messy things with my hands and my brain.

But I do miss the community. Now that I no longer go to conferences and write articles I have less and less to contribute to the conversation. But I still care a lot about the people doing good work in this community. Without being an active part of it though, it’s harder to stay in touch with people.

After this burnout I’m finding new ways to be creative again. One of those is by writing. I’m enjoying freeing myself of the shackles of having to write about a particular topic, instead writing whatever’s on my mind, in whatever style I choose. I wake up every day excited to write, knowing I have no obligation to write for anyone. But I haven’t found my writing tribe yet. My good friend and artist Jessica Bartlett inspired me to join her on this writing challenge, writing something every day in the month of May, and doing it together has been great for motivation. I get new ideas from reading her writing and a boost of creative energy whenever we talk about it, knowing we are both pushing ourselves to try something new, to be vulnerable. We are, so far, a community of two. But I would love to meet and follow fellow writers (especially amateur ones!), to be able to discuss our work and encourage each other. Of course, the online community for non-technical topics is not as active as the one for web development. Or perhaps I just haven’t found it yet.

For now I’m remembering that a community is not just the people you meet online, or the people who share the exact same interests as you. Communities grow organically, and sometimes bring disparate people together around a shared purpose, fleetingly or for the long haul. Communities look out for one another, and are greater than the individuals who make them.

The swifts are back

2026-05-21T00:00:00Z

In the last few days, the swifts have returned. Surely the bellwether of summer, I hear their high-pitched trills and spot them soaring and swooping, twisting and turning joyfully as I settle down at my desk. Always moving, never resting. A life spent on the wing.

Sometimes they swoop low over my head as I walk along the path outside my house in the early evening, catching me by surprise. But mostly they stay up high above the rooftops, darting through the skies at extraordinary speed and with unimaginable agility as they catch insects mid-flight. Only their calls alerting us to their presence, reminding us to look up.

Untethered

2026-05-20T00:00:00Z

Elkin couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t been on the boat. He knew at one time or another he must have been somewhere. A long, seaweed-encrusted rope trailed from the bow of the small, weather-beaten wooden dingy. An umbilical cord. He supposed at some point it must have been tethered to something. Here he was nowhere, drifting freely on the wide open ocean, with no landmarks as far as the eye could see, the sun, moon and stars above the only markers of the passing of time and place. He had the vast open skies above him and the endless expanse of sea to call his own. But this little boat was all he knew as home.

Elkin counted himself lucky in many ways. The oceans were beautiful and rich with life. The abundance of fish, which he scooped freely with his net, and the fresh seaweed he gathered and dried in the sun meant he was never short of food. He had shelter in the form of a large canvas, which he could hunker down under in bad weather. But something was missing. He had a sense that life was carrying on elsewhere, just out of reach beyond the horizon. The more he thought about it, the more he craved connection. He watched the fish swimming in their shimmering shoals in perfect synergy, a wonderful world beneath the waves, and the gulls flocking high overhead. Swarms of luminous, harmonious jellyfish turned the ocean below into a magical, alien forest. Occasionally Elkin caught far-off glimpses of larger and more mysterious creatures, illuminated by the sinking sun that turned the sky pink and gold. Dark shapes rising and falling, jets of water sparkling in the fading light. He felt a deep longing within him. What must it be like to be no longer alone?

Sometimes Elkin thought he glimpsed a headland far away in the distance. At night he would fancy he could see distant lights on the horizon. He couldn’t be sure it wasn’t his eyes deceiving him. He longed to turn his boat towards these mysterious lands, to see what awaited him there. But without a sail or an oar, he was at the mercy of the seas.

One day a lonely outcropping appeared, unmistakably, on the ocean’s surface. As Elkin’s boat drifted closer, he could make out a small, rocky island, not much bigger than his boat. A solitary tree clung stubbornly to the black, barnacled rocks. It wasn’t much, but it was somewhere to rest. Elkin longed to moor his boat for a while, to climb to the top of the tree and see a little further beyond the horizon. The boat drifted tantalisingly close. Elkin reached out, rope in hand, grasping at the slippery, seaweed-covered rocks. But he couldn’t get a purchase on the treacherous surface. He grabbed desperately, the sharp barnacles scratching at his arms and hands, the choppy waters repeatedly throwing him back, splintering the boat’s hull on the rocks. Elkin cried out in frustration as the current swept him and his boat farther and farther from the island, until is was a distant speck on the horizon. That night he felt a deep, crushing sadness, heavier than he had ever felt before, that threatened to drag him down into the depths of despair.

As Elkin sat shivering numbly under the full moon feeling the weight of his sorrow, an unexpected sound roused him. It came from close by. He turned his head just in time to see one of the mysterious creatures breach the dark surface of the ocean not ten feet from the boat, letting of a huge jet of water spray high over Elkin’s head before sinking below again. Just below the surface of the crystal clear water, Elkin glimpsed the creature’s huge eye, ringed in white, old, wise and full of understanding. Without words, it seemed to say to him “Don’t worry. You are not alone. You are loved.” The creature sunk down into the depths and was soon swallowed by the blackness, but Elkin was left with a feeling of warmth and strength. He slept soundly that night.

The next morning Elkin awoke to gathering clouds. As the day wore on, a strong wind began to whip up the gun-metal grey sea, rocking the boat this way and that. Elkin had weathered storms before. He bedded down under his tarpaulin, protecting himself and his few belongings as best he could, as large waves began to batter the boat. Torrential rain hammered at the canvas. Water sloshed into the boat, and Elkin was repeatedly forced to abandon his shelter to bail out what he could. The little boat scaled and crested enormous rolling waves that smashed it down mercilessly. Elkin was thrown around, tossed against its wooden sides, until finally, in the early hours of the morning the waves began to die down and he was able to crawl, bruised and battered back under his tarpaulin, utterly exhausted.

When he finally awoke, the sea was calm. The sun was high in the clear blue sky as Elkin crawled out from beneath his shelter to survey the damage caused by the storm. The boat’s hull was badly battered, but thankfully not letting any water in yet. It was in need of repair though. The tarpaulin was already almost dry in the midday sun. But the old rope was missing. His one link to a longed-for, lost home. Despite all his time on the ocean, this was the first time Elkin had felt truly untethered. Just then, he heard a familiar noise, like a soft, deep sigh. The creature had returned, its black glistening back and large dorsal fin rising out of the water as it blew a jet of water into the air, as if in greeting. But this time it wasn’t alone. A smaller shape rose up by its side, and as Elkin lifted his gaze he saw there was another, and another, until he realised there was a whole pod of these magical creatures surrounding him, guiding him. A family. “Come with us”, the creatures seemed to be saying. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

Suddenly Elkin knew he didn’t need the boat anymore. He took one last look at the place he’d called home, knowing he would remember it fondly but that their time together was at an end. Smiling, he breathed in the salty sea air, savouring the feeling of the warm sun on his skin. Then he dived swiftly and gracefully into the ocean’s cool embrace. As he did so, the water seemed to open up for him, to make space and draw him into its depths. He could see the creatures so clearly now, large and lumbering, yet so graceful, their long, low calls to one another like gentle, soothing music. “Welcome”, they said to him. “We’re so glad you could join us.”

Elkin looked down at his own body, moving freely through the water, marvelling as his arms and hands started to feel stronger and become more paddle-like. His torso began to elongate and develop fins, and his legs grew together into a long tail. He shook off the last vestiges of his former self as he transformed into who he truly was. He realised that he belonged to the sea, that he no longer needed to drift on the surface. His family was right here. Elkin reached out to the others and they swam together joyfully, communicating wordlessly as they spun, dived and tumbled in the current. There was so much more of the ocean to explore beneath the waves. Elkin was finally free. He was finally home.

Being a student again

2026-05-19T00:00:00Z

I’m currently studying part-time for an MSc in Computer Science. It’s an interesting experience being a student again. The course is entirely online, which has its advantages: I can fit it in relatively easily around work and anything else I want/need to do. But it’s a far cry from my arts degree 20 years ago, which was entirely studio based. I do miss the interaction with my peers, and I feel that shared experience can be a good motivator. The work is mostly interesting, but it could certainly be made more so by sharing thoughts and ideas with others.

Learning about the theoretical side of computer science is something I missed out on over my career path as a self-taught developer. I’m enjoying the process of following loose threads and understanding how programming theory connects to my own work. The coursework is challenging and there are frustrating moments. Coming from a creative background, I often get an instinctive moment of panic when I come across a page of unfamiliar notation, or when I’m introduced to a new concept. Sometimes it’s hard to fight the intrusive thoughts telling me that it’s too difficult, that I’m not cut out for it. I have to remind myself that I taught myself to code, and that I’ve figured out plenty of complicated stuff before. Breaking problems down into bite-size steps is the key.

Studying for me is about building a deeper understanding of the field as a whole. I don’t know what my end goal is, and during these uncertain times it seems almost laughable to have one. But the way I see it, arming myself with more knowledge can only be a good thing.

Journeys

2026-05-18T00:00:00Z

Journeys are time to think. If not to relax, at least to collect your thoughts, to pause and to process. They are the spaces between places. It could be said that a good journey is a forgettable one. Uneventful, nothing out of the ordinary. The ones that went according to plan, where we arrived safely and punctually at our destination. These are the journeys we hope for. But the journeys we remember are the ones that defied expectations. The ones where we met someone new, or where we took an unplanned detour. The joyous ones spent travelling with friends or family, embarking on unexpected adventures, or the hellish ones where we’re stuck in traffic or delayed unavoidably by broken down trains. They are the journeys that leave their mark upon us. Travelling with another person is one way to really get to know them. A shared journey can cement a relationship, or expose its cracks.

As I get older, I look forward to train journeys as opportunities to spend time alone, reading or listening to music or just thinking without any pressure to accomplish something. Sometimes they’re a chance to focus on writing without interruption. Other journeys are ones of anticipation and excitement. I try to appreciate them in the moment, to look out the window and observe the world from a different angle, rather than looking forward to them ending.

Broligarchy

2026-05-17T00:00:00Z

The future is coming.
The future is coming.
The future is coming.
So why aren’t you happy?

The earth is on fire.
The earth is on fire.
The earth is on fire.
So why aren’t you happy?

We’ve poisoned your water.
We’ve poisoned your water.
We’ve poisoned your water.
So why aren’t you happy?

Your children are dying.
Your children are dying.
The future is coming.
So why aren’t you happy?

You’ve burned through your tokens.
You’ve burned through your tokens.
You’ve burned through your tokens.
So why aren’t you happy?

We’ve plundered your homeland.
We’ve plundered your homeland.
We’ve plundered your homeland.
So why aren’t you happy?

We promised utopia.
We promised utopia.
We promised utopia.
So why aren’t you happy?

We’ve torched your reality.
We’ve torched your reality.
The future is coming.
So why aren’t you happy?

The future is coming.
The future is coming.
The future is coming.
The future is coming.

Why aren’t you happy?
Why aren’t you happy?
Why aren’t you happy?
Why aren’t you happy?

Operational Efficiency

2026-05-16T00:00:00Z

“At OpTeq, we don’t just help your business excel; we build the future, together.” The room broke out in applause as the presentation drew to a close and the well-groomed North American executive smiled brightly, her smooth, honeyed voice flowing like melted butter through the rapt audience. Frictionless.

“Now that’s what I’m talking about!”, boomed Homespun Analytics’ bombastic CEO, Nathan, as he walked out into the glow of the spotlight, microphone in hand. “I hope you’re all as excited as I am to see the value we can add to the company through this great partnership and maximise operational efficiency for our clients!”. Celia looked around at the sea of beaming faces around her: marketing people, managers, engineering leads. All were dazzled, some beginning to whisper excitedly amongst themselves. Celia already had a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. It was her fellow software engineers Celia was most surprised by. Didn’t they realise what it would mean for them? She caught the eye of a peppy young graduate named Jamie, who had only been with the company a few weeks but was already endearing himself to everyone on the team. Even the CEO knew his name. In Celia’s experience, a general rule of thumb was “last in, first out”. She wondered if Jamie was at all worried. But he just grinned and gave her a thumbs up.

As she walked back to her desk in the spacious, open plan office the company shared with three other local businesses, Celia reflected on her job and what had brought her here. She had joined Homespun Analytics five years ago as a Senior User Interface Engineer, with 15 years of experience under her belt. Mostly it was a pleasant enough company to work for, and the work was interesting and engaging. She loved the complex puzzle of marrying human needs with the intricate and thorny challenges of programming. Her colleagues were nice, and her experience and diligence had earned her respect and autonomy. She was generally left to her own devices when it came to her own work — mainly because, as the only specialist, no one else really understood what she did. They sort of just expected well-designed, beautifully-crafted interfaces just to happen, and although they were appropriately wowed when the software products materialised, they didn’t see the layers of research, requirements analysis, client conversations and endless debugging that went on underneath. She didn’t mind this so much — after all, it was a privilege to get paid to do a job that was on the whole fairly enjoyable. She hadn’t had a promotion in the entire time she’d been there and, at times, felt kind of invisible. But she had a good work-life balance and wasn’t expected to work out-of-hours or stress herself out over work, so she counted her blessings.

Celia had a bad feeling about this OpTeq, though. The presentation was slick enough. A “a fully automated, data visualisation and analytics platform that works at scale” sounded very promising, no doubt, to the executives and upper management charged with selling Homespun Analytics services to industrial clients. The software looked visually impressive too, with a huge array of options for clients to choose from that would take Celia months, if not years, to build out from scratch. It would almost certainly cut their project delivery time and would free up engineers to focus on the complexities of secure deployment and integration. It was a stark contrast to their own bespoke software, carefully crafted in collaboration with clients and built to meet their precise needs but which, after all, came at a considerable cost. Celia could see the limitations of the software, but on balance, would those limitations really matter to those responsible for budgeting and selling them?

It was a few weeks later that Nathan gathered everyone together in the conference room for a surprise announcement. He’d only been with the company six months and was fond of big announcements. “I’ve very pleased to announce that we’ve signed a contract with OpTeq”, he declared to the packed room. “We’ll be rolling out staggered integrations, beginning with GPK contract starting in July. I’m convinced that this will be the best way for us to expand our offering to our clients and deliver operational excellence better and faster.” He sounded a lot like the OpTeq presenter.

Celia was due to start work on the GPK project but felt a little apprehensive. “I’m not technically sure what my role is anymore”, she relaid to her line manager, Greg. She couldn’t imagine how her work designing and developing the UI was going to fit in when the new platform gave clients a ready-built solution. “Leave it with me”, he replied. “I’m sure there will still be plenty of work for you when it comes to integrating it into client workflows.” Celia was not exactly reassured.

The OpTeq software integration path was clunky and not really designed for the kinds of specialist industrial clients Homespun Analytics worked with. Celia’s work involved many frustrating conversations, and she often felt like a mediator between the client and OpTeq. She came across plenty of bugs in the software but had no idea who to report them to. “It feels like we’re telling clients what they want instead of asking them”, she complained to Jamie in the break room. “They all just get the same solution in the end.”

“I don’t know”, replied Jamie, uncertainly. “They do seem to love it.” It was true. Clients were impressed with how quickly the team could put something interactive together, and the other engineers were happy they no longer had to deal with another complex step in the design process, one that involved messy interactions with human beings. It hadn’t been long enough to see whether the solution would really stand the test of time, but it appeared everyone was already sold.

Celia started to hear rumblings of financial concerns though. Apparently after the initial discount period had expired, subscription fees for OpTeq would increase. The company couldn’t justify passing the additional costs onto clients. Savings would have to come from elsewhere.

It was late October when Celia was finally called into Nathan’s office. A representative from HR was already there. “We just don’t have the work for you,” said Nathan sympathetically, explaining why she was being laid off. “The platform does it all, and it’s really everything the clients need.” Celia nodded numbly, holding back tears. She wasn’t surprised. “I just thought I had a little more time”, she thought to herself.

The job market had changed since last time Celia had been seriously looking. Before, she had been head-hunted by companies competing to offer good money for her prized expertise. Now the only jobs on offer were poorly paid and sounded depressing, soul-destroying even: babysitting an AI agent rather than using her creative brain for problem solving. She applied for them anyway. Sometimes she received a polite rejection letter, clearly written by a chatbot. Mostly she was simply ghosted.

One day, wandering the aisles of her local supermarket, idly perusing the discount shelves and wondering if she could still afford the expensive coffee, a familiar voice shook her out of her reverie. “Celia!” It was Jamie. “It’s great to see you”, she smiled genuinely. “Are you on your way into the office?” He blushed, looking down at his feet. “No”, he replied. “Didn’t you hear? I got laid off too. OpTeq bought the company. They just wanted our sales team’s experience working with industrial clients. They didn’t need the rest of us. I guess you could say I’m on my way into work. This is where I work now.” He gestured to the surrounding aisles, and Celia spotted the bright green logo on his polo shirt, half-hidden beneath the flap of his black bomber jacket. “I’m so sorry”, Celia said, with feeling. She had hoped at least Jamie, with his willingness and optimism (and yes, youthful naivety), would have landed on his feet. “Don’t worry.” He flashed his winning grin. “I’ll be fine. I’m going back to school. I’m going to study regenerative agriculture. I’m getting out of the tech industry. It’s not what I thought it was.”

Celia thought wistfully about Jamie’s bright future while she paid for and bagged her groceries. She was still crushed that a career she’d once loved had been ripped out from beneath her when she’d invested so much of herself in it. It still hurt that her hard work, creativity and expertise had meant nothing in the end. But it occurred to her that it didn’t need to define her. Maybe it was time to draw a line under that chapter in her life. To cultivate new relationships. To discover who she was, not what she was. The ground felt a little more solid under her feet as she stepped out into the sun.

Pools

2026-05-15T00:00:00Z

Inside everyone
is a magical pool.
I want to dive in
and swim in them all.

Motherhood

2026-05-14T00:00:00Z

It’s hard to overstate the impact of motherhood. People can tell you of course, friends who have had children talk of sleepless nights and are unable to commit to plans for a while, making excuses and leaving early. But you can never really know until it happens to you. You can never really comprehend how your entire sense of self becomes refracted through the lens of someone else’s needs, how at times that shift is so great, so completely fracturing, so world-shattering that you feel yourself breaking apart entirely. I can only liken it to the feeling you get when as a child, having wandered too far, are hit with the terrifying realisation that you are lost, entirely unmoored. It was this realisation that hit me like a freight train in the dead of night, in a hospital bed after 60 hours without sleep, a heady mix of hormones and a cocktail of drugs still sloshing around my system following emergency surgery after my son’s birth. The feeling that I’d done something that could never be undone. That the person of three days ago was dead and gone, and my life would never, ever be the same again. And in the deepest, darkest recesses of my mind, that small voice: “What if I’ve made a terrible mistake?”

Almost every mother I know has some variation of a traumatic birth story. There are some who describe their own experience as “blissful”. I’m happy for them, but I cannot relate. My own pregnancy and the birth of my son was beset by complications, some anticipated (following a previous health condition) and others arriving completely out of the blue. We knew there was a high likelihood of a premature birth, and while we mitigated the risks, we were very lucky that our son was born relatively healthy, eight weeks early. That mean that he was taken away to intensive care as soon as he was born, and the first five weeks of his life were spent in the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) while he gained strength.

Giving birth was the most excruciating feat of endurance I have ever experienced. After any comparable experience, the normal bodily response would be to take some time off to rest and recover. This is not an option afforded to new mothers. Imagine running a marathon and then being yanked immediately back onto the treadmill. As early as an hour following the birth my first job as a new mum was to attempt to express vital milk from my body that was woefully unprepared for the task, for a baby that was not by my side where he should have been, and then continue doing the same every three hours (day and night) to prevent my milk supply from drying up. I cannot tell you what a failure I felt like in those first few days, firstly for not being able to keep my son safe where he should have been, then for being unable to make my body do what it needed to do to keep him alive.

Finally bringing him home was a shock of another kind, bringing with it the endless cycle of feeding, cleaning, changing nappies and interminable nursery rhymes. Spending an hour getting ready to leave the house, then waiting at the bus stop for 20 minutes before deciding it was all too much and heading back home. Suffering through baby groups wondering why my son couldn’t enjoy them like the others, why he screamed all the way through mother-and-baby yoga when all the other babies were happily occupying themselves while the zen mums smiled beatifically. And then going back to work, functioning on a few hours of broken sleep, feeling like I was failing at this aspect of my life too, even while my rational brain knew I was just trying my best.

To be a mother is to live with constant guilt. Guilt for never doing enough, for not being the perfect mother or anticipating their every need. Guilt for not “having it all”, for not performing as well as you feel is expected of you at work, for putting your family first. And guilt for neglecting other relationships: friends, partners, family members. For letting text messages go unanswered, through sheer exhaustion or simply because there is just so much in your head all the time and something has to give. Guilt for not living up to society’s expectation of motherhood, for losing your sense of self, and for feeling guilty, so guilty, all the time.

For a long time I tried to compartmentalise my role as a mother, to not let it affect my work, to excel despite my responsibilities. But a gradual shift happened over the years. Now I understand that it’s part of me, it’s who I am, and I like the person I have become because of it. I’ve learned to let go of the guilt and embrace motherhood, making room for that part of myself without losing the rest. Not to wait for opportunities to claim back my sense of identity, but to proactively take them. Not because of some big revelation or discovery, but just time passing. I look at my son, this little person who it a part of me and yet is not me, and feel nothing but awe. To watch someone grow and change before you and form their own sense of identity, with their own thoughts, opinions and personality is nothing short of magical.

Now my 10-year-old son stands on the cusp of adolescence, bringing with it a whole new set of daunting challenges. I hope I can help him navigate this strange new world. And I hope that when missteps inevitably happen, I can accept it as just part of life, and keep from letting the guilt back in.

The Birds

2026-05-13T00:00:00Z

The birds flitter industriously, feeding and preening. The sun illuminates their gleaming feathers, a riot of red, blue, gold and green. Half-camouflaged by the long grass, the cat watches jealously, mesmerised. Without really knowing why, she craves their bright plumage, feels its pull. With her tunnel vision, her eyes are like saucers. She only has eyes for them. She has no thought beyond her desire for possession.

The weeds have grown up thick and the trees and bushes are in full leaf. It’s the perfect time for birds to gather up food and fatten themselves and their families. Youngsters are just leaving the nest. It’s also the perfect time for a cat to strike lucky.

The birds are too trusting. They’ve lived comfortably for far too long, have never needed to fear predators. Their evolution hasn’t programmed them for this new threat. They simply continue about their lives, dancing, swooping, soaring, because it’s what they must do.

The cat watches and waits for her moment, unseen and unheeded. One flies a little too close, and it’s then she pounces. Got it! Now the lifeless form is between her jaws, and she doesn’t care, she only knows instinct, this is her purpose. The first kill of many.

Now it’s easier. Trying different tactics, honing her skills, dispatching her prey with cold, calculated efficiency. She is the perfect killing machine. This is what she was born to do.

There are others too. When her litter is reared, they too will head out into the world to become ruthless killers. She will teach them her skills. With each generation, the machine will be refined, sharpened, perfected.

The people do not mind, or else they are blind to it. After all, the cats kill other vermin, not just birds. They are providing a service. Democratising pest control. And the beautiful feathers make attractive ornaments, after all, far more impressive than those that can be hewn with mere human hands. And so they begin to rely increasingly on the cats. The cats are rewarded, growing strong and fat. The birds are depleted, but really what do they add but a bit of colour? A distraction. An inefficiency.

Some people caution that over-reliance on the cats could have unforeseen consequences. After all, they are wild beasts at heart. They cannot truly be tamed. But those concerns are dismissed, the ones who raise them labelled “enemies of progress”. “You can’t put the genie back in the bottle,” everyone says, without really knowing why.

Without enough birds to harvest it, fruit rots on the trees. Insect populations grow out of control, off-balance. Flies spread diseases. The people become sick. Rats move in, attracted by the rotting food. They sift through filth, they consume filth, they excrete filth. They prey on the nests of the last remaining birds, prizing their nutritious eggs above all. The bird population is in a death spiral.

The cats are emaciated. Although they are unable to feel shame or regret, their numbers dwindle. Without the birds, food is scarce. Humans have long since given up on feeding them. They beg for scraps of food, but all that’s left is the detritus left behind by the rats. The rats have grown too large, too cunning. The cats can no longer catch them, and cannot compete with them. The world is theirs now.

Now there are no birds. Birds no longer spread seeds far and wide, fertilise the earth with their droppings or keep insect populations in harmony. The ecosystem has collapsed. Crops fail. People starve. Through their fear and desperation, they turn on each other, fighting amongst themselves, casting blame, anything but looking inward. With resources now scarce, everything is a competition, and strangers aren’t to be trusted. This land used to thrive, but no longer. It is stripped of nutrients, of comfort, of joy. Some of them start to wonder why they brought the cats here in the first place.

Leaving the imperfections in

2026-05-12T00:00:00Z

One thing I enjoy about this month-long writing challenge is that I can release myself from the pressure of delivering a perfect finished product. By setting myself a hard deadline of writing and publishing something every day, there can be no long refinement phase, no ruthless edit where I agonise over what makes the cut. I generally give pieces a quick pass over, changing the odd word here and there, fixing grammatical errors (there are probably still plenty I miss), but they are more or less published just as they are, in all their raw messiness. I’ve also set myself a rule that once a piece is published, I can’t go back and tinker with it, save to fix spelling mistakes and typos. It’s liberating to know that once a piece is out in the world, I can draw a line under it and move on. It can be frustrating too — sometimes I later think of ways to elaborate on what I’ve written, or things I could have said differently. But these are all lessons I can pour into the next day’s writing, a fresh blank page, another chance to express myself. I like to think that my writing will gradually improve over the course of the month as those lessons are absorbed and become part of me.

That’s incidental really, though. Letting go of the idea of perfection gives me the chance to write and think freely, without consequences. Each piece of writing is not here to be judged or fussed over. It doesn’t matter if no one reads what I write, or if it doesn’t chime with them. The important thing is I’m expressing something within myself.

This extends to illustrations too. I’m enjoying the lack of control that comes from using brushes and ink, loosely making marks on the paper. At the same time, by using only brushes and black ink, I’m freeing myself from decision paralysis. The illustrations that accompany some of these pieces of writing aren’t designed to sum them up perfectly, but to be an extension of the writing, to further express what’s in my head. It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t make perfect sense to the reader, but I like to think it connects on some level because it is raw and unfiltered. The illustration at the start of this piece wasn’t even meant to be here. It was just me making marks on the paper, getting used to the feel of the brush. I drew another version afterwards, but it didn’t express the feel of the moment: it was too perfect, too designed, and so I discarded it.

I wish I could tell my younger self to worry less about perfection. In the past I have approached creative expression far too timidly. Partly this is the wisdom of hindsight, but I’m sure my own embrace of imperfection is also partly a reaction against the eerie polish of generative AI slop. I used to do a lot of digital illustration, but now that feels too perfect, too machine-made, too far removed from self-expression. Writing too is flattened, smoothed out, made too perfect by gen-AI. It doesn’t tell you anything about the person that created it because, of course, there is no person (other than the creators of all the stolen training data, who are erased from the output). There is nothing to read between the lines. These days I would much rather see the hand of the artist in any work of art, not just despite its imperfections but because of them. Imperfect is human.

10:57pm

2026-05-11T00:00:00Z

I don’t usually walk this way late at night. If I’m heading home late at all (a rarity when you have primary-school age children) it’s usually on my bike, whizzing down quiet roads bathed in the orange glow of street lamps, rarely taking the time to observe my surroundings closely. So walking home in the dark is something of a novelty. The night is cool and the sky is clear, a sprinkling of stars glimmering overhead like glitter strewn carelessly. There is a sharpness to the air. The waxing moon hangs low and heavy, not quite full. Venus and Jupiter shine bright, their trajectories familiar by now, like old friends.

The area I live in is quite safe, a comfortable, family-friendly suburb, although of course, as a woman walking home after dark, there’s an ever-present awareness of the possibility of danger. We are taught to fear the night, not enjoy it. The luxury of being able to walk at night without this sense of apprehension is one I envy. But really, who has this luxury? In the dark, we are all seen as predators or prey.

Most families are tucked up indoors this time of night, and so as I turn off the school road and onto the path that in the daytime is usually a busy thoroughfare for parents and children, all is quiet. So it is with a certain alertness that I continue carefully.

I know the badgers live here. Occasionally I see them, a fleeting glimpse of their silver coats in my bicycle headlights before they scurry into the undergrowth. I’m picking my way slowly and deliberately down the steep, treacherous path now. Several of the street lamps are out and haven’t been repaired in years. But this, the darkest corner, is also the safest for those who don’t want to be seen.

As I approach, I spot him. The glow of a striped face staring out of the darkness, illuminated by moonlight. He makes no sound. We are both motionless. This time, he doesn’t run. Something passes between us. An understanding. He inches forward cautiously, eyes on me the whole time. There is a wariness in his stance — after all, strangers aren’t to be trusted — but no fear. After dark, all this belongs to him and his kind, and I am the visitor.

I take a few small, slow steps forward, giving him a wide berth, letting him know that I mean no harm. It’s only then that he turns and ambles slowly back into the bushes.

The Watcher

2026-05-10T00:00:00Z

Spring.

The sun’s delicate rays are beginning to warm the spot by the window. The spot where she likes to sit, a watchful sentinel on patrol. A plump pigeon struts, proudly, pompously on the tarmac. Doesn’t it know all this is hers? A soft breeze ruffles its feathers and her ears twitch at the rustling of the hawthorn and elder and dog rose, which are only just in leaf. A sudden high-pitched wail startles her and she turns instinctively towards the sound. A child with a grazed knee. A harried parent, torn between exasperation and sympathy. Sympathy wins this time, as she envelopes the child in a hug.

The rumbling of a car’s engine as he leaves for work, as he does every day. She knows it will soon be followed by the sound of the door opening, as mother and child depart, laden with bags, always in a hurry, a flurry of activity for a few brief minutes before all is quiet again. The mother will be back soon, but the house will be quiet until much later. She wonders what goes on in there.

The sparrows are fledging. They flitter about like little paper aeroplanes, barely visible, hard to focus on any single one. She knows catching them is impossible from this side of the glass, and yet she hunkers down, mesmerised, some instinct inside her still hoping for a chance.

The sound of the car door slamming sends them scattering, startling her too out of her reverie. He’s leaving early this time. The curtains in the house are still drawn. Much later, out come the mother and daughter. They look more flustered than usual, in more of a hurry. The mother is red-cheeked, her tone clipped. The daughter’s hair is unbrushed.

Summer.

She yawns and stretches, her fur glossy and shining in the warm sun. This is the perfect time for dozing here, curled up, listening to the sounds of the humans as they bustle around getting ready for the day. Blackbirds chirrup their morning song. Doors slam and car engines stutter. Footsteps crunch on gravel path. The sky is blue and cloudless.

The girl is walking with her friends. Their laughter reaches her ears and she stretches slowly, arching her back, as cheerful “goodbye”s are called and the front door opens. He isn’t home yet. Later he arrives, carrying an enormous bunch of flowers. All the windows are open to the world and the happy sounds of families chatting and cooking together with distant music playing drift on the breeze.

Later, much later, as the sky begins to turn pink and gold, the mother steps out onto the doorstep, glass in hand. She looks tired.

Autumn.

Leaves of red and gold skitter mesmerisingly in the wind. There’s a chill in the air, but the spot by the window is still cosy for now. The crunch of leaves as small children run and jump delightedly. He leaves in his car as usual today. This time he doesn’t return until late evening.

The girl walks alone today. Her friends have already been passed, their usual chatter nothing out of the ordinary. But the girl walks with her head down, shoulders hunched against the wind. When she reaches the house, she doesn’t go in. She sits on the doorstep, scratching at the dirt with a small stick. After a few minutes she stands up, takes a deep breath and opens the front door.

His voices rouses her from her slumber. He’s outside, on his mobile phone. Daylight is fading. It’s almost dark when he goes in. Raised voices from inside the house.

Winter.

She is curled up snuggly, her blanket of fur a blessing against the cold. The trees are leafless now. Fewer birds flutter, but the squirrels are active, gathering the last of the food for their stores before the long, cold nights draw in.

His car leaves earlier and comes back later these days. She’s become more accustomed to the sound of his voice talking on his phone outside the house, despite the cold. The front door opens and the girl leaves for school. She walks alone now, independent, self-sufficient. After a kiss goodbye, the mother turns back towards the house, and she can see her eyes are red-rimmed.

She wakes up to the low, guttural grumble of a van by the side of the road. He is there with another man. Loud voices calling to one another as together they move objects from inside the house, loading up the van. The mother is nowhere to be seen.

Sometime later, the sound of doors slamming. The mother emerges, a warm cardigan wrapped around her against the chill, slippers on her feet. They stand apart, not touching one another. They both look sad. They talk in low voices. Somehow she can sense this is the last time she will see them together. The engine starts up again with cough and a splutter. A mournful, steady sleet starts to fall as the van departs.

Spring again.

Fresh flowers are planted in the window boxes. The sun is finally beginning to lend its golden warmth to the front garden, and life is beginning again. The girl is taller now, and walks with her head held high. She yells “goodbye” to her mother, and races to meet her friends down the road.

A man comes to erect a long wooden post with a corrugated sign on top. Later, a young couple come to the house, accompanied by an official-looking woman with a clipboard. Smiles are exchanged. They look around appraisingly. Half an hour later they leave, looking happy and excited.

The pigeon is back again, gathering odds and ends for its nest. A pair of goldfinches too, making a rare appearance, flashes of colour among the branches that are already beginning to green. She yawns, stretches and curls up contentedly in the sun.

Perception of time

2026-05-09T00:00:00Z

Most of us experience the phenomenon of time seeming to speed up as we get older. When you’re young the days seem to stretch out forever. I can still recall endless summers spent exploring the fields and woodland out the back of our house growing up, or holidays at the beach, a constant source of excitement and adventure. These days, by comparison, it can feel like a year passes in the blink of an eye.

A recent podcast I listened to explained scientists’ current understanding of this phenomenon: when we’re young, our lives are full of novel experiences. We’re constantly doing things for the first time, so our experience of time becomes marked by these occasions. When we’re doing all these new things, time seems to go by quickly, but when we look back on it it feels like a long, significant period. But as we age, we have fewer and fewer of these waypoints by which to mark the passing of time and so when we look back at the past few years they seem to blend together. It’s one reason why Covid seemed at the time like an interminable age, but when we look back on it can have the feeling of a distant dream. Don’t get me wrong, this is not to trivialise the experiences of those who suffered badly or lost loved ones. But for many of us lucky enough to pass the period relatively uneventfully, although not without its challenges, there were far fewer shared experiences to reminisce about.

I’m no scientist, and this probably isn’t the best or most accurate summary. But it’s an idea that has stayed with me. I often worry I’m not making the most of my finite time on this planet and go through phases of booking various events to try and fill my time with memorable experiences: family trips, gigs, cultural experiences and such. But constantly seeking novelty isn’t a sustainable way to live. I have a theory that memorable experiences can also come from looking at the world in a different way. Observing what’s around us and tying to see it from a different perspective. Letting new ideas in and giving them the room to grow. Being fully present in the moment. Music, art, writing or simply talking with friends (especially ones whose lives are different from ours) can all help us see the world anew, as can learning. Walking down the same street is a new experience when you learn its history. The same woodland becomes a new place when you learn about the native birds that reside there. Opening our hearts and minds doesn’t halt the ticking of the clock, but it means we can look back on time spent knowing that we really experienced it.

Making a mark

2026-05-08T00:00:00Z

Mark making with indian ink and brushes by my son and I

Every mark you make is different from any that’s ever been made before.

You can never draw the same line twice. You could draw a thousand lines and each one would be unique. A million variables — the grain of the paper, the way the bristles of the brush soak up the ink, the tilt of the pen nib — all of these add up to a moment that is unique, never repeated. All the atoms in the universe wouldn’t be enough to count the number of possible variations. Another person could never replicate it faithfully, nor could a robot — nor could you yourself, no matter how hard you tried. This mark could only be made right now, in this moment, by you.

The you of this moment is different from the you of yesterday. Of ten minutes ago. Of 30 seconds. The next one will be different again, and the next, and the next. The lead in a pencil is worn down a little further. The memory of the previous mark can’t help but inform the next one.

A mark might be correct, or it might be imperfect, but it is inescapably of the moment. It might be trivial, or hugely significant. Dashed off freely, or agonised over. Only ever yours.

A kind of journey

2026-05-07T00:00:00Z

Being on a train was something John Thurlow could get on board with, so to speak. As a native of Ontario, back home he didn’t catch the train much. In Canada, if you wanted to get the train somewhere, you usually had to drive a good few hundred miles to the nearest station, and even then you’d be lucky to find one that’d take you where you want to go. But here in the UK, pretty much everywhere had a railway station. Even some of the tiny little hamlets that had no business calling themselves a town. You could spend days hopping from one train to another, and that’s what John Thurlow did. He didn’t get why British people complained about it so much.

He liked being back here. After he and his wife separated some years ago, John Thurlow had been in something of a funk. You might even say he had become depressed, not that he liked to dwell on such things. John Thurlow’s grown-up children had long-since left home and started their own families and had busy lives. Like many middle-aged men he’d let friendships slide, wrongly believing they’d always be there, and that the security of his work and family was all he needed. Now he’d belatedly realised friendships needed tending, like a garden, otherwise they’d get overrun by weeds and when you finally picked up your trowel to plant something there’d be nothing much left. John Thurlow didn’t want to get into that situation again.

It was on online community that first got John Thurlow out of his funk. He’d been a prison officer for 30 years, and was two years away from retirement. He looked forward to this with mixed emotions. John Thurlow was well-respected at work. He was what you’d call a burly man. Tall, well-built, reasonably fit for his age, silver-haired, with a thick, bristly moustache in the old style, he was a serious-looking fellow. He didn’t smile much, but that didn’t mean he was never amused. He just had that kind of face. When a joke really tickled him it would manifest as a slight twinkle in his eye, a small smirk concealed beneath his bushy moustache. He wasn’t a laugh-out-loud kind of guy.

The prisoners liked John Thurlow because he commanded respect. He wasn’t the sort to bully anyone, nor did he try to be all pally with the prisoners, not like some of the youngsters that come in these days. Or else they’re all wide-eyed and timid, too afraid to instil some discipline when it was needed. Those sorts didn’t last long. He was well-regarded by his colleagues too, his decades of experience lending a calming presence that helped diffuse any tense situation. John Thurlow didn’t mind his job, although he was always glad to head home at the end of the day. What really interested him was the psychology of it all. He’d taken some Open University courses a while back when he’d seen the same offenders coming through the prison system again and again. He’d got pretty curious about what drove people to reoffend.

It was this curiosity that eventually led him to the paranormal community. He’d always been a little intrigued by the occult. He and his wife used to jokingly read their horoscopes in the paper over breakfast, neither of them actually believing them, of course. But watching shows like Most Haunted made his hair stand on end. He liked the idea that their were some mysteries just beyond our grasp, waiting to be unravelled. So when he came across a Facebook group that organised visits to so-called haunted houses, he thought “Why not?” Now he’d been visiting sites with paranormal goings on for years, even organising a few himself. He loved researching the history of the places, reading about their legends and past unexplained sightings. That’s what brought him to the UK. There was so much history here, so many places to visit. He’d arranged to meet up with a few folks from the paranormal community in Derby, after spending a few days visiting extended family down south, hence the train journey.

John Thurlow really couldn’t be happier to be on a train travelling through the beautiful English countryside. Looking out the window at the cloudless blue sky, he couldn’t resist sighing aloud “What a beautiful day!” The young woman furiously typing on her laptop beside him looked up reflexively. (Well, he supposed she wasn’t that young, but everyone looked young to him these days.) “Oh!”, she exclaimed delightedly as a flash of bright purple caught her eye. “A lavender field!” A small smile escaped John Thurlow at that. It really was far too lovely a day to waste on work, and he was pleased to have distracted this woman’s attention for a moment. She looked like she was only too happy to be distracted too. They got to chatting a little bit. “So what brings you to the UK?”, she asked, detecting his Canadian accent and obvious enthusiasm for British life that, somehow, the British people he met never seemed to share. “Well...”, he paused, not knowing quite how to put it. In his experience, there were two kinds of people when it came to his talking about his paranormal investigations: the ones who couldn’t wait to confess their own experiences with the occult, and the ones who looked like they couldn’t wait to get away from you. It was why John Thurlow rarely brought up his hobby at family gatherings. He was a little afraid of being carted off far too early to the nearest nursing home. From this woman’s slightly raised eyebrows, he suspected she might be in the latter camp.

“To tell you the truth,” she responded cautiously, after he explained the reason for his journey. (John Thurlow wasn’t one for evasiveness.) “I’m a bit of a skeptic”. John Thurlow took a breath before answering. “To tell you the truth,” he confessed, “I am too”. It was something he’d never really admitted to his friends in the paranormal community. “What I really love,” he continued, “is talking to people. Hearing their stories. What they’ve seen, or what they think they’ve seen. Oftentimes there’s some kind of explanation for why they’ve seen or heard a certain thing. People are suggestible, you know?” The woman nodded. “In fact,” he went on, “in the roughly hundreds of paranormal cases I’ve investigated, there’s only ever been two I couldn’t explain. Mostly when people hear weird sounds in an old house, it’s something wrong with the plumbing. Or sometimes there’s some deeper psychological cause that you learn just by talking to people, finding out about their history. A lot of women who’ve suffered traumatic childhoods, domestic abuse, that kind of thing, have the propensity to believe in that kind of stuff. It’s an outlet I guess. Seeking some kind of explanation for a world that’s treated them really badly.”

“Wow, really?” the woman said, eyes wide. He could tell she’d never thought about it that way. He supposed few people had. Being a little kinder and more understanding to people who appeared to believe some pretty crazy stuff was probably a good idea, in his view.

“What about the other two cases?”, the woman asked after a moment. “The ones that couldn’t be explained?” John Thurlow’s eyes twinkled. “Well, life wouldn’t be half the fun if everything could be explained, now would it?” he remarked. “I’m quite happy to let some mysteries go unsolved.” The woman grinned.

“Well, this is my stop”, said John Thurlow, standing up to collect his luggage. “You travel safe now.”

“You too,” replied the woman. “Have a wonderful adventure!” John Thurlow smiled to himself. He certainly would.

Sunrise over Sellafield

2026-05-06T00:00:00Z

Decaying, great, grey husks of concrete loom over faceless, corrugated metal boxes and prefabricated cabins, with smokeless chimneys towering over all. Imposing chainlink fences topped with razor wire separate the outside world from this metropolis, only accessible through fierce steel turnstiles and layers of security. It is truly the city that never sleeps: after all, the flow of nuclear waste never stops.

Night-shift workers in high-vis emerge from windowless rooms into the early morning air and file out through the barriers, another set arriving to take their place. It’s remarkably quiet. There are no bustling cafés on site to grab coffee and stop for a chat. No parks to gather and spread a picnic blanket. Only rugged hills and wide, open, blue sky to greet you, and a long trek home.

Here, at the end of the world, one of the most hazardous places on earth is surprisingly calm. Perched as it is at the edge of a vast expanse of sea and sand and sky, wildlife can thrive here undisturbed. Sunshine yellow gorse grows abundantly. Swallows swoop and gulls soar over the dunes by the tiny railway station, whose trains take you on a meandering route along the coast, past tiny villages and endless beaches.

To a visitor, getting anywhere feels like an age. ID must be verified, documents checked and photographs taken, then passes must be issued — your ticket through the turnstiles, as long as you’re escorted at all times. After a bus ride, it’s a mile-long walk past nameless rectangular buildings with designations like ‘B7125’ and ‘D4711’. Pipes high above channel liquid waste, encase in several feet of concrete. Steam hisses from vents in pipes below ground level. Tall cranes begin the slow process of carefully dismantling crumbing structures. The ancient dome of the old reactor sits silent, a reminder of the site’s past. An illuminated sign declares the last environmental incident occurred 347 days ago. I don’t know whether that’s reassuring or not.

Access to the High Level Waste Plant, the most secure area of the site, requires yet more security procedures. Personnel in this area require dosemeters to monitor exposure to radiation. Still further in, shoes and socks must be exchanged for the ones issued by plant workers, belongings must be left behind in a locker and protective gear donned. Inside, glass panels six feet thick offer a glimpse of the vitrification process. It’s sobering knowing a human on the other side of that glass would be dead within seconds. Only robots can work here, behind the glass. Robotic arms must repair other robots, their discarded parts left piled up at one end of the room. Nothing is ever getting out of here. What will become of this room when it finally reaches the end of its useful life, many, many years into the future? Someone, somewhere will be responsible for ensuring no one can ever set foot here.

The control room is the beating heart, where technology of a past age must deal with the challenges of today. Where humans navigate the tension between the monotony of the everyday and the possibility of catastrophe. Where the consequences of a procedure incorrectly followed may be disastrous, but there is also camaraderie. These workers won’t see the sun for another twelve hours.

In the vitrification plant, highly active liquor is processed into stable glass, which is buried deep and plugged with 20 feet of concrete to be cooled and stored. The smooth concrete floor is warm to the touch. Far into the future, long after we’re gone, people will still need to manage this waste, to make it safe. How many generations of grandchildren will watch over this facility? Maybe one day all this work will be done by robots, only a skeleton crew of humans remaining to monitor them. And then one day far into the future, maybe in a few hundred years, maybe more, there will be nothing left for humans here. Communities will disappear as their livelihoods vanish. And perhaps in a few thousand years from now, a mere blink of an eye on the cosmic scale, this land will finally be reclaimed by plants and animals, and a unique ecosystem will thrive. Nature will heal over this scar.

Labour of love

2026-05-05T00:00:00Z

One of my favourite parts of the creative process is the bit after the ideas have crystallised and you just have to knuckle down and do the work. I remembered this after seeing an artwork that involved lots and lots of straight lines drawn on a wall in interesting geometric patterns. Once the artist had come up with the idea and refined the design, well, someone had to get on with the business of making it a reality. Plenty of successful artists employ people to do this work for them, being far less interested in the execution than the idea itself. I used to help out with exhibition installs when I worked in a gallery years ago. One artwork involved bending hundreds of stainless steel nails in half with a pair of pliers, before they were hammered into a wall. Sitting for hours alongside other members of the team repetitively bending nails left my hands covered in blisters. But the feeling of being part of a piece of art as it came together was gratifying. Don’t get me wrong, spending day-in day-out doing this in a factory would be unbearable. It’s the end result that makes the labour satisfying.

It’s the same feeling painting a wall or sanding down a piece of furniture. I guess it’s why people like colouring books too. For me it’s a sort of meditation. The knowledge that a monotonous task will end with something better than before. That’s what separates it from drudgery. There’s the excitement of anticipation: you can visualise the result, but you can’t really know how it’s going to turn out until you get there. But the work can’t be rushed, it must be done at a steady pace.

With art, there are often creative choices to make along the way but they’re smaller, less significant choices. While the early ideas phase of an artwork can be exciting, it’s the space after that when I feel the most calm. In a piece of writing, it’s when the words flow easily because I already know what I want to say. It’s the feeling that I’m channelling something beyond my usual mundane self, and part of the creative process that I wouldn’t want to skip over.

I’ve never seen Star Wars

2026-05-04T00:00:00Z

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, there was a planet called Ewokland, home to (you guessed it) the Ewoks. They were a fierce and proud people, but also incredibly cute. This cuteness caused many foes to underestimate them, and meet their gruesome fate in the tangled forests of Ewokland, where no one can hear you scream. But little did they know, on some other planet, a dastardly villain was hatching a plan to conquer Ewokland, ostensibly for its rich oil reserves, but mainly just for kicks. In fact, no one really know why he wanted to invade Ewokland, as the economics just didn’t make sense, not to mention it was just plain barbaric and violated interplanetary law. But everyone was scared of this bad dude, whose name was Darth Vader, because he was a bit unhinged and had his finger on the Death Star’s nuclear button. Also, he was somebody’s father or something, so it was quite important to appease him, although no one really knew why. Everyone kept saying to “take him seriously but not literally”, until he literally blew up a planet and they all belatedly realised he was quite serious indeed.

Oh, I’ve just been informed the Ewok’s home world was called Endor. So, anyway, Darth Vader was hatching his plan and amassing vast forces of storm troopers and whatever the evil equivalent of X-wing pilots are called. First he reached out to the president of the Ewoks and offered to broker a trade deal, taking the Ewok’s oil reserves off their hands in exchange for “protection”, but the Ewoks, suspecting foul play, rebuffed him. This made Darth Vader very angry. He did not like it when things didn’t go his way. The Ewoks, in turn, taunted him with memes that made him look very stupid, and if there was one thing Darth Vader hated it was looking stupid. Like all dastardly supervillains, he was very thin-skinned. So Darth Vader began gathering his forces in earnest, in preparation for a full-scale invasion. The economy was so tanked on the Death Star thanks to Darth Vader’s terrible monetary policies, that most of its inhabitants had no choice but to enlist in the storm trooper army in order to feed their families.

Meanwhile, some good guys, led by a plucky young upstart called Luke Skywalker, got wind of this evil plot. Mainly because it was all over the front pages of the galaxy’s newspapers. Nobody really needed military intelligence anymore, because the evil guy always just came out and said exactly what he was thinking.

The good guys were none too happy about Darth Vader’s plot, partly because they knew that once Darth Vader had Endor under his control, they would be in the firing line next. So they gathered a meeting of the leaders of all the space faring nations to discuss a response. Han Solo was all gung-ho about sending troops to invade the Death Star and capture Darth Vader, until Princess Leia pointed out that Darth Vader would nuke them all faster than you could say “Jabba the Hut”. Chewy said something very wise and important that no one took any notice of because it just sounded like garbled nonsense.

In the end, the team hashed out a package of very reasonable-sounding economic sanctions that they put to Darth Vader with the view to dissuading him from his evil course of action. That’s when Darth Vader threatened to cut off all their communications. Oh yeah, it turned out that all the good guys’ nations were entirely dependent on the Death Star’s communications network, with no one thinking to question this technological dominance until it was far too late. Without a comms network, the good guys would just be floating impotently in the darkness of space for all eternity. That seemed like a pretty bad outcome to the good guys, so after a bit more hand-wringing they all decided that they would politely ignore the threats coming from the Death Star, and instead sent their supreme leader (not sure of their name) on a state visit there.

The state visit went as well as can be hoped. The supreme leader bit back their disdain and attempted to use their “soft power” to wield influence. No one had to seriously get their lightsabers out. In the end, Darth Vader got distracted by some shiny humanoid robots presented to him by the supreme leader and decided not to launch a full-scale invasion of Endor for now. He sent a small exploratory band of storm troopers down to the planet, and these were swiftly and brutally dispatched by the ferocious Ewok army. Nobody minded much. The good guys all breathed a sigh of relief. The destruction of the universe could wait until another day.

Happy Star Wars Day, everyone!

Art

2026-05-03T00:00:00Z

The other day I was invited by a friend to the opening evening of Spike Island Open Studios, an event where artists would literally open up their studios to show a curated selection of work, or sometimes their work-in-progress. It made me realise I hadn’t gone to a place with the specific goal of looking at art in years. It’s something I used to do a lot of, particularly during my university days and in the years after. I’d book trips to London to meet up with friends and see exhibitions, sometimes spending the whole day traipsing round various galleries, catching up over coffee in the cafes afterwards. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when I stopped, but the end of a long relationship in my late 20s may have had something to do with it. I felt it wasn’t my world anymore.

Art show openings are a weird thing because you’re ostensibly there to look at art, but really everyone is there to get drunk and soak up the vibes. Because of the crowds it’s hard to stand back, take your time over a piece and let the work speak for itself. Your attention depends on whether something grabs you in the first few seconds — or, sometimes, whether the artist is on hand to “sell” you their vision. And there’s a lot of art I just don’t get. But that’s ok, not all art resonates with everyone all the time. Sometimes it snags on something in your brain in a specific time and place, in a specific set of circumstances, but sometimes it never does. Sometimes it’s just for the artist. Even the stuff I don’t get is fascinating in many ways, as it’s a little window into someone’s head, someone who thinks entirely differently to you. Sometimes you can see the questions they’ve turned over in their head, the journey they’ve been on, what moments have clicked for them. I used to think art has to have some kind of message, but really art doesn’t have to have any purpose other than to express some part of someone, and it doesn’t have the responsibility to do it articulately.

Where money becomes involved with art it gets a little murkier. Artists have to make a living, after all. Does art have more responsibility to be “crowd pleasing” when it’s receiving public funding, for instance? I applaud any artist who can truly maintain their integrity in the face of financial hardship, or commercial success.

Art requires work on the part of the viewer, but in a world where we rarely stop and think, putting in that work can feel like a luxury that many people don’t have. I understand how art gets a reputation for being elitist. It sometimes demands you educate yourself before you can appreciate it. But occasionally a work of art grabs you out of nowhere, rings pitch-perfect against the tuning fork of your soul, and penetrates layers deep within you. That’s when you feel a moment of connection to another human being, one perhaps you’ve never met, but you’re suddenly seeing the world through the same eyes.

A few people inspired this post:

Ana Rodrigues, whose recommendation of The Creative Act by Rick Rubin has sent me on a path back to creativity, and whose blog is always an inspiration.
Jessica Bartlett, the artist and good friend who invited me to the open studios, and who inspired me to join her in the month-long writing challenge.
Hidde de Vries whose talk Creativity Cannot Be Computed helped me clarify my thinking around AI and gave me hope for humans.
Max Naylor whose beautiful paintings spoke to something in me that I couldn’t put into words.

Postcard of a painting by Max Naylor

These are my thoughts. Tell me yours

2026-05-02T00:00:00Z

I woke up early this morning, my head fizzing with ideas. This is not a day for writers’ block. It’s been some time since I published any writing, and longer still since I’ve felt excited about writing. But I’ve loved writing ever since I can remember. I used to love writing on my web development blog, but the tech world has become so tarnished for me that I can no longer muster up the energy to write about it.

But, you know what? Screw it. I don’t have to write about technology. I can write about hating the tech industry that I (stupidly, naively) built my identity around, only to have it shattered. In fact, I can write about any of the millions of other things I’m interested in that have nothing to do with the tech industry. I can write about things that aren’t real, and I can write about things that are all too real. I can write about writing, like I’m doing now. It’s my blog, and you don’t have to read it if you don’t want to.

A friend of mine told me that she was planning to try and write something every day in the month of May, and that’s what I’m trying too. Maybe some days all I’ll manage is a few lines, but the fact that someone else is sharing the challenge makes a difference, I think. Making a connection to others by writing something that might help someone else is what I used to love about web development blogging. I’m realising that connection is what I crave in everything I do.

So this is a new, blank page, a fresh chapter. And with this blog comes a stripped back, minimalist redesign of my website, because I want to be able to write and think without clutter. The world is all ready too full of it.

I don’t expect many people to read this, and I’m fine with that. I don’t want to hear what you think of my writing. I want to read what’s in your head. What’s made you laugh, what’s made you cry, and everything in between. I want to hear what you make of this strange and beautiful world that is our only home for such a brief time. The mundanity of everyday existence, and the events that had such a profound impact that they transformed your outlook forever. I want to look into the space in your head and see the world through your eyes expressed in your words, that are only yours and no one else’s. Because you are not a machine. Maybe this is the start of a conversation.

These are my thoughts. Tell me yours.

Talking About Writing

2026-05-01T00:00:00Z

At a crowded art show, my friend and I found ourselves sitting at a table at the end of the evening talking about writing. Somehow, separately, we had both landed upon the resolution to explore our writing practice. Neither of us is what we think of as a “writer”. But what is a writer, except someone who writes? And whatever your reason for writing, if you write, aren’t you therefore a writer?

Why we write is more complicated. Does writing have to be read? Are you a writer if you’re writing only for yourself? I think I’m writing for myself, but why? Because I have something in my head that needs to come out. Because writing is the way I make sense of my thoughts, of the world. The same reason artists make art, I guess, but I never felt important enough to label myself an artist. I was happy enough to be “creative”.

Do I want someone to read what I write? Is it vanity to want that? After all, wouldn’t it be nice for someone to (metaphorically) pat you on the back and say “aren’t you a great writer”? But, to me, it depends on whether you can sufficiently detach yourself from your work and release it into the wild. I think when you do that, the work is no longer your own. It becomes something for someone else to read and interpret and, just maybe, find their own meaning in. Those are the magical moment that make writing, and publishing, something worth taking a risk on.