Archive | January, 2009
Stopping Heathrow expansion

Stopping Heathrow expansion

28 January 2009 · Thinking · Comments { 0 }
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Night Bus published

25 January 2009 · Published work · Comments { 0 }

My short story Night Bus was recently published in issue 13 of Smoke: A London Peculiar. Among all the young, drunk people on the top deck of the night bus, one quiet, middle-aged man stands out as different, and starts to attract unwelcome attention.

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“The Politics of Experience” by R.D. Laing

19 January 2009 · Reading · Comments { 0 }

What if the “delusions” reported by patients during psychotic episodes were not symptoms of a disease, but valid descriptions of their experiences?

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House style

17 January 2009 · On the Holloway Road · Comments { 1 }

The editing is finished. The book is at the printers. An enthusiastic blurb appeared on the Legend Press website, so presumably they’re happy with it too (or perhaps they’re just happy it’s at the printers). I am relieved and scared. I am also pondering some of the odd little changes made in the name of [...]

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The Triumph of Triviality

15 January 2009 · Reading · Comments { 2 }

We are the people of tomorrow, we have more stuff than anybody’s ever had before, and we are so stupid and self-absorbed that we can’t even bring ourselves to care about our imminent destruction of the planet (voting on the X-Factor, now, that’s a different story). We are trivial. We are foolish. We are wilfully ignorant. We are lost.

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Americans in the gulag

13 January 2009 · Reading · Comments { 0 }

Just caught a fascinating piece in the Times Literary Supplement about the thousands of Americans who, either out of idealism or to escape the Great Depression, moved to the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Many of them were then swept up in Stalin’s purges and ended up in the gulag system. It’s a piece of [...]

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Proofing

11 January 2009 · On the Holloway Road · Comments { 5 }

Have been immersed in reading the proof copy of my novel for the last few days. I hate this part. Not reading my novel – it’s not that bad! No, what I hate is proof-reading, editing word by word, line by line, second-guessing myself, looking up each fact, each spelling, each grammatical rule. Writing it [...]

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RIP Pick More Daisies

10 January 2009 · Living · Comments { 4 }

My favourite cafe in Crouch End, the cafe where I wrote most of my novel On the Holloway Road, has just put up a notice saying it has fallen victim to the credit crunch and closed down. It was a shock to me. The place was perfect for writing. It had friendly staff, American-diner-style bottomless coffee, [...]

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New short story published

7 January 2009 · Published work · Comments { 0 }

My short story Safety was recently published in Carillon Magazine. A woman tries to keep herself safe from life by never leaving her flat in her gated community. But eventually, of course, she has to leave…

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Consume less, live more!

1 January 2009 · Thinking · Comments { 0 }

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4OPFl2Kxhs&hl=en&fs=1] From Friends of the Earth, http://www.foei.org/en/get-involved/livemore. Seen originally as a cartoon in New Internationalist, August 2008

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