Recursive Words

Life

Pottering

How on earth did I get from listening to tunes and hanging washing out to tip-toeing around the edge of gender politics and hate speech?

Life

Cult Movies and Atomic Apparel

None of the principal characters ever died. The robot almost always malfunctioned. The suave leading man always kissed the girl.

Life

Favourite foods

I'm pretty basic. I don't like fussy food - I can't be bothered with it. I like warming, filling food. Home cooked food.

Life

An Adventure in London

It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.

Life

Everything, everywhere, again

The blog to end all blogs I stood up about six months ago, before quietly shuttering it in a fit of “why am I doing ANY of this?” has been resurrected, and has essentially become the “source of all things”.

Escape

Escape has become a theme recently. Escape from obligation, escape from expectation... escape from lots of things. It's a temporary escape, but sometimes needed.

Trying to slow the hell down

Maybe I’ll take a step sideways, sit down, and actually try to read some blogs tomorrow, rather than relentlessly charge towards the next thing, and the next thing, and the next. I need to SLOW THE HELL DOWN.

A Day in the City

And so here we are. We survived a day in the city together. London is always exciting to arrive in - as is any big city, I imagine - but it’s also nice to leave it behind too.

Everything, Everywhere

After watching the inexorable march of Substack towards the same commercially driven hellscape as countless platforms before it, I’ve been scouting around for alternatives. Once I started looking, I quickly discovered a quiet exodus of similarly minded writers going on right under my nose. A small army of similarly

Nine days

What the hell happened to being genuine, thoughtful, honest, or empathetic?

Strawberry jam on toast versus the common cold

While brushing my teeth a few days ago, it occurred to me that I haven’t been sick for quite some time. Months. Not since this time last year, when I ended up at the doctors for perhaps the third time in twenty five years, and ended up being prescribed

The one where I flooded the kitchen

While taking a break from work this morning, I wandered into the kitchen and decided that the clothes rack had been standing in everybody’s way for quite long enough. While folding the clothes from the rack onto the dining room table, and putting various other things away (my daughters

Faking it

A few days ago while walking home from town the cogs at the back of my brain started turning. I’m not entirely sure why they started turning, but they did, and I wrote down what was turning over and over, which was lucky really, because moments later the universe

Escapology and Weird Dreams

I discovered this morning that I can’t listen to a podcast and write at the same time – I end gazing into space and listening rather than writing anything. My multi-tasking abilities are that bad. It’s been a week. A relentless week. A relentless few weeks. Months actually. I

The Extroverted Introvert Corollary

A few days ago I made the colossal mistake of setting foot into the “social internet” in search of hopefully kindred spirits - or “unicorns” as I labelled them at the time - fellow recorders of life’s exhalations. The wonderful thing about writing a blog - to me at

The Saturday Spoons Ritual Continues

I woke with a start at 7:30am this morning - to the sound of a door being slammed downstairs. Cogs turned in my head, and a memory conjured itself from somewhere that my middle daughter is doing the morning shift at Wetherspoons - which of course made me think

The almost impossible search for unicorns

I started writing a blog before the word “blog” had entered common parlance. Yes, I’m that old. In the late 1990s the only way you could publish words to the internet was via a self hosted website, or via one of the earliest social platforms such as Geocities -

Escape

It occurred to me this morning that I’m not so much living in an escape room - rather an escape life. Except I’m not really trying to escape - just becoming increasingly aware of guard rails in all directions. Of course they’re not outwardly obvious, in the

An accidental Swiftie

Some years ago - while chatting with an old friend (and wonderful singer) in Oklahoma, the subject of music came up, and I asked what she was listening to - for recommendations. At the time I was on a bit of a folk music kick. She recommended Rascal Flats, Keith

When does today become tomorrow?

While writing this (after procrastinating famously for the last hour), the clock is busy ticking past 1am - or rather, it did so about 10 minutes ago. I’m ridiculously tired, but also aware I’ve not written for a few days, and want to at least empty some of

The Table for One Problem

It’s Saturday morning, and you find me sitting in the middle of the huge Wetherspoons in town - escaping the house for a cooked breakfast and a “bottomless” coffee. After a couple of weeks burning the candle at both ends, I’m “treating myself” (that episode of Parks and

Not good at switching off

After burning the candle at both ends over the last few days, I pushed back a little today. Or rather I had all the good intentions of doing so, and then did nothing of the sort. After standing up a number of programming tasks for the team around me to

Breakfast at Wetherspoons

This morning you find me holed up in a booth at our local Wetherspoons - part of a huge pub chain that stretches across the country. I’m sitting in the booth with my laptop, tapping away, and occasionally looking up to meet the gaze of older people wandering past

Hello midnight, old friend

I’m sitting in the dark of the junk room - the last person standing in the house as the new day arrives. I’m listening to “Seasons of Love” from the original cast recording of “Rent”. Love this song. I’m trying to write more often, but find myself

Burning the candle at both ends

Last weekend I installed a writing app called “Day One” onto my laptop, with thoughts of using it to empty my head into about anything and everything - a place to unload. And then I didn’t write anything at all for nearly a week. I’m still using it,