Recent Posts

• January 01, 2022

  The Wizard of Oz

  The 4 year old got a book of various bedtime stories for Christmas, and one of them is the Wizard of Oz. They’re all truncated and simplified, but in this edition of Oz, Dorothy, the Scarecrow, Tin Man and Lion make it to the Wizard and he’s just… legitimate. He gives them brains, heart and courage and sends them on their way. (He also sends Dorothy to assassinate another Wicked Witch).

• December 31, 2021

  Twenty Twenty One In Review

  Looks like I did resolutions in December 2020, at the height of Covid. Now that it’s December 2021, at the height of Covid, it’s time to see how they went.

• December 03, 2021

  Sleep

  I picture myself, two or three years from now. By then he’ll be walking, he’ll be having conversations and making very basic jokes. He’ll be in and around the age to start school, we’ll be in a different country. And I’ll be far enough removed from it that I can casually throw out the story to people who are having babies, or having problems with them, with the wise eyes of experience. He was like that, I’d say. He would go to bed around seven, and by ten or half ten, he would wake, shrieking like he’d seen how the world ends. He would be unconsoleable. He would have to be fed, or held down, and cleaned off as he leaked fluids out of his eyes, nose and mouth while continuing to just shriek. And then he’d go quiet. And I wouldn’t sleep at that point, I would go on standby. Waiting for the next one. Sometimes it was at two, sometimes three. He would wake again and his throat would rattle with the force of his rage, eyes still closed. He would continue for an hour, picked up, put down, cleaned up, cleaned out, changed, soothed, wept over, he would continue and continue and continue and then it would end again and I could go back onto standby. It would happen again. If we were unlucky, the hour would begin with five. If we were lucky, seven. He might go on and off for a while but eventually he would be up and clean and so happy, too happy to be mad at, not even aware of what he’d done, and then it’s the beginning of the day and all the things that have to be done have only started. But at least that was a couple of years ago, I’d conclude. Whoever I’m talking to will nod sagely and hope they have it a little better.

• May 18, 2021

  The Canadianification Continues

  Covid vaccines became available to the over 37s in the UK today. I was booked in by 8:44am, getting jabbed next Thursday, May 27. By the time I go home in July I’ll be something like 70% covered, and my parents will be both fully dosed. It’s very much time that I got out of this living room. That is also my dining room. That is also my office. That is also, currently, my bedroom.

• March 05, 2021

  A Personal History of Bright Eyes

  At some point in or around the year 2001, my friend Liz gave me a burned CD copy of Bright Eyes’ Fevers & Mirrors. I only realise now looking at Wikipedia that it was more or less new at the time (and also that Saddle Creek was founded by Conor Oberst’s brother, huh). It starts with the typical Bright Eyes first track, mostly long meandering bullshit that you listen to once to see if it’s worth coming back to (and it isn’t, with the exception of I’m Wide Awake, but more on that later) and then generally consider the album to start on track 2. I really got into it, listened to it a lot. Something Vague made it into my teenage band’s live set a few times, to some extent because it was the easiest one to play and had a fun shouty bit. What I actually wanted to play was The Calendar Hung Itself but I could never master the strum pattern and singing at the same time, so there we were.