Recursive Words

I'm still here

Another week has whistled past. Again, I’m not entirely sure where it went. I didn’t run. I didn’t read. I did listen to music though. I’m listening to music right now - Carly Simon is singing about “coming around again” - she must have seen me

Out of the loop

I think I may have unwittingly succeeded in departing the loop entirely. It’s been a week since I last wrote. I fell off the running wagon this week - only managing one run after a succession of long days and late nights. At least twice I thought “I’ll

Chasing my own tail

Where the hell has the last week gone? Seriously. You look away for a few seconds and several day have passed. Of course I wasn’t “doing nothing” during those days, but then if I even began to explain, you might fall asleep where you’re standing. I’ll have

Father's Day

It’s “Father’s Day” in the UK today - a tradition that seems to have been adopted from the US at some point in the distant past - quite obviously a commercial tactic to sell stationery and chocolates, because what says “I love you Dad” more than a rectangle

The conversion continues

It’s been a bit of a week. The Windows laptop has been handed on to my eldest daughter, and the Amazon tablet has been handed on to my other half. An iPad arrived yesterday. We had a couple of iPads in the family years ago, so it’s not

Re-programming my brain

The Mac mini arrived. And the iPhone. The biggest barrier at the moment seems to be my own ability to learn new ways of doing things, or to forget the ways I used to do things. In some ways switching over has been a good exercise - forcing me to

Going All In

My mobile phone came up for renewal last week. After a few days of abject indecision, I finally pulled the trigger on its replacement this afternoon. An iPhone will arrive through the post tomorrow. After several years using an Android phone as a daily driver, I’m heading back to

The apple doesn't fall far

A few days ago my other half mentioned that she had a couple of Macbooks at work that were being retired, and wondered if I might be interested in them. I tentatively said “maybe”, knowing that we have a house full of computers of all shapes and sizes already. There’

Week One, Run One

After tipping myself out of bed at 7am this morning, I pulled on some running shorts, and headed out of the door to re-start the “Couch to 5K” programme. It’s only been… oh, 20 months since running anywhere at all? Armed with the official NHS Couch to 5K app,

Old friends and unread books

Did you know in Japan there is a phrase for the accumulation of unread books? “Tsondoku”. It means “pile of reading”.

Fake it till you make it

Standing in front of real, living, breathing people - your professional peers - is somehow different.

Preparing to Travel

Who wants to lay bets that the next blog post will come from the hotel room?

Midnight again

There's something about being a taken on a journey. I think so, anyway.

In search of the time thieves

Have you ever wondered if somebody, somewhere is stealing all the time?

Kind of like an exhale

They were so preoccupied with wether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should...

Eurovision

For me it's an escape - a leveller. It's about our common love of music, and at the end of the day each other - because without each other, we wouldn't have anything to sing about.

We know how to spend our Friday nights...

I love people watching - and hospitals are right up there in terms of providing perhaps the most random cross-section of society to watch.

Everything all the time

A close friend messaged me recently, worrying that I was burning myself out. She was probably right. I can't keep this up forever.

Homeward Bound

Now I just need to re-engineer the universe to allow me to read all the books, write in the new notebook, start running again, record content for YouTube, do all the chores, and somehow work.

A walk along the river Wye

If you ever worry that the literary world is diminishing, tell people about a small town in the Welsh borders called Hay-on-Wye, where a literary festival quietly attracts Burning Man numbers.

This world wasn't designed for me

I'm six foot three inches tall. The cottage we are staying in was built several hundred years ago - when people were at least a foot shorter.

A Town Out of Time

Now if you'll excuse me, I have an old Hemingway book, a glass of wine, and an armchair in the sunshine waiting for me.

Four Days Away

I'm probably going to be buying books I don't need from shops I should have walked past.

Every Tomorrow

I can still remember my youngest asking "Why is Katie crying?" - I can remember my response too - "because some people are horrible".

The Midnight Writing Club

I started wondering if there might be some way we could be somewhere on the internet together - being present without being present.