Last week, when the shops reopened, I went down Byres Road to Rymans. I adore stationery and spend more on it than is necessary, but there are worse vices. Stationery, even more so than books, must be physically browsed. You can read a book review or an excerpt on Kindle,…
Category: Blog
The cost of creative living
I thought I’d finally lost my basic cognitive functioning in the Maryhill Road Big Tesco, trying to match up the light bulb specs of my two new Made.com light fittings (hall and kitchen) with Tesco’s own classification. According to Tesco, E14 is SES (small Edison screw) and E27 is ES…
Toasted (Neighbours II)
I’ve hardly seen my neighbours since I moved to Solo HQ in October last year, apart from the dog walkers in the communal drying green. The dogwalkers all pick up the poo—the panopticon effect of being surrounded on four sides by walls of windows?—but I have to wonder about the…
Alone in Tallinn
When I jumped ships from English teaching to freelance copy-editing for the Moscow Times, I needed to procure my own visa. The usual solution for freewheeling foreigners was to pay a visa agency for an invitation, then fly to a third country to apply for a biznez visa. This is…