Diary
The Phat Stacks
I’ve been having a frustrating time this week with taxes. As a recidivist wastrel, filing my tax return is usually straightforward. I just pop my income and expenses into the online self-assessment thingy with one hand while eating a burrito with the other. My earnings tend to be minuscule compared to those of normal, non-workshy […]
The Station
Our local railway station must have been designed by Satan himself. Every detail has been expertly sculpted to cumulatively unhinge the once-sane commuter. It is a work of total design genius, the Mackintosh House of Hell. At first, the station seems quite charming. There’s a bucket of flowers maintained by Friends of the Station and […]
The Reaction Test
After an unusually busy day working in the capital, I scurry to the National Museum of Scotland to meet my wife and her parents. My in-laws are visiting us from Canada and today had been their Edinburgh day. By the time I reached them, they’d already seen my favorite items in the museum — the […]
The Netflix
Enjoying some time in bed with the sniffles, I decide to sign up to Netflix — or “Net Flicks” as I naively thought it was called until today. When did I get so old? Why can’t we live forever? A universally popular TV-streaming service, I think, probably beats staring at the formation of cracks in […]
The Letter
Friday night and my arm is worn out. Not for the reason you’re thinking of (honestly, madam, where do you get it from?) but because I’ve been writing a letter. Yes, a proper, long-form letter with an old-fashioned pen and paper. Two sides of A4 if you must know (and you must). A friend wants […]
Wash Your Neck
Every now and then, something from my working-class childhood floats up in memory to give me a shudder. The Nit Nurse, for example, or a scene glimpsed through a Blackpool window in 1993. And then there’s Athlete’s Foot. Whatever happened to it? The 1980s was a golden age for Athlete’s Foot, a festive dusting of […]
Shits All Over a Nectarine
I like peaches, they’re my favourite fruit. But you always have to eat them in your least-favourite suit. Poetry! Maybe I’ll start each of my diary entries in this way from now on. Tune in next week to see if I stay true to this dream, idly cooked though it was in the fires of […]
Luke
I found myself thinking today about Luke. You remember Luke. He was the chap who, when I was on work experience at the council, occupied a corner office designed to segregate him from the others lest he distract them with his exquisite beauty. He was the one who taught me how to skive by playing […]
Except My Genius
The customs officers at JFK do not take kindly to flouncers, flaneurs or fops. If you ask me, they’ve had it in for us since Wilde’s “nothing to declare” jibe, or “Geniusgate” as they call it now. Back 2009, I was rather full of myself. I’d been recognised a couple of times as a comedian, […]
Mr Peanut (MD)
A few weeks ago, in downtown Montreal, we noticed a large truck emblazoned with the festive colours and corporate iconography of Planters Nuts. I wouldn’t like to describe it here as “a truckload of peanuts” because I have no idea. For all I know, there was just one single, highly pampered, peanut inside or maybe […]
