Writing.

Creative writing, short stories, general musings.

  • Community

    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.

  • The swifts are back

    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.

  • Untethered

    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.

  • Being a student again

    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.

  • Journeys

    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.

  • Broligarchy

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

  • Operational Efficiency

    “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.

  • Pools

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

  • Motherhood

    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?”

  • The Birds

    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.

  • Leaving the imperfections in

    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.

  • 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.