Two days after my head-cracking spill on black ice, I still had a headache. I felt distressed and slightly nauseous. I knew that I was probably overthinking it and that worrying wouldn’t help. Too bad: my capacity for rationality and emotional restraint is not an abstract spiritual power but embodied…

I spent my first two months in Solo HQ without a table. I’d ordered a dining table from Made.com, and the website indicated daily, via pictogram, that it was shipping. With pessimism appropriate to the times, I interpreted this to mean stuck in the Brexit container backlog in Southampton. At…

‘Why don’t they open up drive-ins?’ says my mother, during one of our Skype chats. ‘Drive-ins would be safe.’ As a kid, I was taken with my brothers to the local drive-in, a converted paddock on the outskirts of town near the airport. I saw the first Star Wars from…

  I drink less now, said Bear. Without you around. He’s come over to help me paint my kitchen and I’ve offered him a beer. -You always drink more than me. He shrugs this off as a scientific, body-mass issue. -I don’t drink every night anymore. You were always ahead…