Diary
You’re On Holiday
You’re on holiday in California, admiring the view at Big Sur, when you approach a local to ask for directions. The man panics. “It’s no good!” he shrieks, looking around helplessly, “I can’t do it!” and then he leaps into the canyon. Only the canyon’s not a canyon. The Californian passes through it with a […]
After the Storm
It’s been an atypically social week, something friendly lined for every single night and three of the days. So many pint glasses and ticket stubs has meant putting my Street Fighter health bar into the red and storming the treasury in a way not strictly compatible with the lifestyle of a twenty-first-century person of letters. […]
Vasculum
To the Botanical Gardens to volunteer as a guide for Doors Open Day. I show thirty lusty octogenarians (and my pal Graeme) around the botanical library, a place I know well having catalogued the entire collection as a side-project. Hypocrite idler, I know. The visitors are fresh from a tour of the fern house, so […]
Climate Change Does Not Spark Joy
To the Glasgow contingent of the International Climate Strike where I march with thousands of truant schoolchildren, shouting “Fuck You, Boris Johnson!” Look, they started it. Among their midget ranks I loom like a benevolent periscope, admiring the sights from high above their heads and providing a convenient landmark for other marchers to orientate themselves. […]
This One’s Fine
I am afraid of spiders but delighted by ants. I always want to know more about ants–about their culture, the ways they communicate, what sort of music they’re into–but I don’t want to know anything about spiders. Even a picture of a spider lifts my intestines up into my chest as if I am in […]
