Being a somewhat organised person, I start each year with a Strategic Planning Document, aka New Year’s resolutions. Obviously, this is a joke at my own expense because no normal person has a Strategic Planning Document. It also reflects my brief time as a long-ago employee of a large government…
Category: Blog
The day job
Thank god for my day job. Early last year, one of my unpublished novels won a first-chapter competition. The main prize was editorial advice and the possibility of being introduced to agents. As any unpublished writer knows, trying to get the attention of an agent is like a shipwreck survivor…
Private hell
I spent two days last week in hell. I don’t know if Hieronymus Bosch’s complex and lurid depictions of hell include a person with their head in a bucket while being variously tormented by a fish-headed demon, but for me, hell is nausea. I’d never had labyrinthitis before. The sudden…
The impossibility of London
Earlier this month, I went to London for the first time in almost two years. My last trip was in February 2020, just before lockdown, when ‘the Chinese virus’ was still a news story with no implications for my own life. I stayed with friends, a couple who have finally…