Writing.

In the month of May I’m trying to post something every day. I might or might not succeed, and that’s OK. Sometimes it might be creative writing, sometimes thoughts on books I’ve read, things I’ve seen, or places I’ve been. Sometimes it might be rambling, occasionally you might even get coherent thoughts, if you’re lucky. Who knows! What I can promise is that it will always be 100% human.

  • 10:57pm

    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 Watcher

    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.

  • Perception of time

    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.

  • Making a mark

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

  • A kind of journey

    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.

  • Sunrise over Sellafield

    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.

  • Labour of love

    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.

  • I’ve never seen Star Wars

    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.

  • Art

    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.

  • These are my thoughts. Tell me yours

    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.

  • Talking About Writing

    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?