Category Archives: life

He started it.

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Unravelling: a history of love and knitwear.

As I pulled it on this morning, it happened. My reaching hand tunnelled down the sleeve, and then suddenly everything was confusing. My hand was still half-way down the sleeve, yet my thumb waggled in open air. A new hole. … Continue reading

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Identity.

I am a gardener, a writer, a Londoner. I am English. I am a geek. I am a cook, a painter, a slow examiner of minute details (you are rushing me, however slowly you go). Despite being shoehorned into a … Continue reading

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Resolution for 2013

Here’s my resolution for 2013: I’m going to embrace my dark side. The wages of not-sin are dull and mean. I’m at the right age to go “Evil Queen”. Being good is hard work: I have tried. In 2013 it’s … Continue reading

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I was strictly forbidden from touching the piano.

I glide through life not remembering anything. Films, faces, dates, days, years, they all slip through me like elvers through a too-coarse net, and I go on unregretful, unburdened by both the memory and by my own inability to remember: … Continue reading

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I am wearing fur.

I love Leveson as much as the next chap, but there comes a point – after, say, reading the first 300 articles on it – where you think “I can’t add anything to this. People who are better known and … Continue reading

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A flock of sorrows.

When you have had a very sad thing happen in your life, it is going to come back at you, sometimes. You’ll go through the first few years after it, looking at the world through it, filtered by it, as … Continue reading

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The Crow Ground, autumn, a general update.

The soil has all been scraped off the Crow Ground. Scraped off and arranged in an enormous pile with a flat top, like a low-rent sculpture of Table Mountain out of Close Encounters. The mound of what was rich habitat … Continue reading

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I have a problem.

I have written a book. I won’t beat about the bush: it is a bloody good book. It has crocus bulbs in it. A piano. Under-sea trains. A terrified horse running in the woods. Copyright infringement with extreme prejudice. A … Continue reading

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Why I like men who dress as women, and women who dress like men.

‘I’m not ashamed to dress “like a woman” because I don’t think it’s shameful to be a woman.’ – Iggy Pop So there’s reason #1: men who dress as women don’t hate women. They just don’t. Aesthetically it’s fun. It … Continue reading

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