Archive for the Life and times category

“Whoah this blog is great, love studying your articles”

Let me tell you about my new habit. My new dis­turb­ing habit. Except it’s not that new. It’s been going on for a few months. But it’s still quite dis­turb­ing. Even by my stand­ards. Which are, as you’ll have real­ised, fairly broad. So. My still dis­turb­ing but now almost famil­iar habit. Swear­ing at myself, out […]

Poison and vacuity in equal measure

Where has my ima­gin­a­tion gone? As ques­tions go, this is up there with the likes of “how long is a piece of string?” or “who put the ram in the rama lama ding dong?” I’m not expect­ing you to offer an answer, unless you par­tic­u­larly rel­ish a chal­lenge, because there most likely isn’t one. Yet I’d still […]

The private tangle

It’s extremely rare that I come across a piece of writ­ing to which my instant, entirely genu­ine response is: “The defin­it­ive art­icle on this sub­ject has finally been writ­ten. I can for­get everything I’ve ever clum­sily tried — either expli­citly or impli­citly — to put into words on the topic, tying myself in lin­guistic and […]

Dropped caps

I have achieved the rare dis­tinc­tion of becom­ing a ste­reo­type, of indul­ging in beha­viour so tedi­ously hack­neyed that no one would dare to write it into a piece of fic­tion because they would be accused of deal­ing in the worst kind of dra­matic cliché. Because tonight, I sat and stared at a blank white screen for […]

Things to do with your hands when not writing #1

While sit­ting in the dark, move your fin­gers in front of the glar­ing light being pumped out from your laptop screen. If you con­cen­trate hard enough, you’ll soon be able to con­jure up some short dra­matic scenes per­formed in sil­hou­ette, with your digits por­tray­ing each of the char­ac­ters. As long as there are not more […]

You know you’re getting old when …

This is hope­fully going to be a very short-lived series — of one — mainly because I will soon be too old and decrepit to write lists, due to my senile mind fail­ing before the second item. You know you’re get­ting old when you go to a hip ‘n’ hap­penin’ rock gig (oh God, I […]

[Insert leg-related pun here]

To those read­ers who might well be of the opin­ion that I haven’t been doing enough to main­tain this site’s hard-won repu­ta­tion as the nation’s premier Legb­log, I humbly offer the fol­low­ing small anec­dote. The scene: yes­ter­day after­noon, in a grey and unin­spir­ing cor­ridor near to my grey and unin­spir­ing desk, loc­ated within a grey […]

Political incorrectness gone mad

Here’s my ironic approach, then. Write an entry for Blog­ging Against Dis­ab­lism 2007 in which I blatantly put on dis­play a whole slew of dis­grace­fully dis­ab­list words. Shock­ing though they are — and hope­fully you are all nod­ding vig­or­ously in agree­ment and think­ing to your­self that you wouldn’t dare use such phrases even in private, […]

Back and forth and back again

Des­pite the num­ber of years that I’ve been wear­ing this deep groove into the blog­ging tread­mill, I still don’t appear to have grasped the fun­da­mental point that us blog­gers are really not half as import­ant as they/we think they/we are. Nor the fun­da­mental point that the sum total of someone’s exist­ence is not greatly enhanced […]

Strange day (second in a never-ending series)

In truth, this strangest of strange days happened one and a half weeks ago, but I still haven’t quite recovered from the fact that, for a few short minutes, I was stand­ing in my under­pants (not just my under­pants, but my trousers were cer­tainly round my ankles at the time) in front of the ageing, […]

Strange day (first in a never-ending series)

There was a space of between five to ten minutes early this after­noon — as I stood with half my body tightly wrapped in cling film and stuck down with pre­cisely scissored lengths of gaf­fer tape, hav­ing a part of my ana­tomy encased in a quick-setting mould made from wet elastic band­ages, all the while […]

My new appellation

“I hate Macs. I have always hated Macs. I hate people who use Macs. I even hate people who don’t use Macs but some­times wish they did. Macs are glor­i­fied Fisher-Price activ­ity centres for adults; com­puters for scaredy cats too nervous to learn how proper com­puters work; com­puters for people who earn­estly believe in feng […]

Of rings and bonds

The morn­ing dawned through the nar­row slits in my half-sleepy, half-asleep eyes, and I con­sidered the day ahead. Sat­urday. There was a nag­ging sen­sa­tion, a feel­ing, that there was some­where I was sup­posed to be today. Then it slowly began to dawn on me. I should have been get­ting dressed up to the nines and, […]

Voyeurism for beginners

Or to put it in a rather less suc­cinct but more under­stand­able way: Recent Mundane Activ­it­ies I Have Under­taken For Which I Sud­denly Appear To Have Gained An Unex­pec­ted Audi­ence (All Appar­ently Appre­ci­at­ive, Though Vary­ing In Num­ber): • Sleep­ing. • Hav­ing a night­mare. • Eat­ing por­ridge. • Stand­ing (albeit on one leg). • Watch­ing Amelie […]