How to Get Your Head Together in the Country
I’m having a meeting with old Perry Venus in Hay about updating the website. I think that the night thing has had its day. Something of the Night will stand or fall without my...
Category: Psycho geography
Teachers getting lost
When I’m teaching, I often tell my students not to worry about originality. ‘Originality,’ I tell ’em, ‘is a shibboleth. The only writer who we know for sure was original was Homer. After that,...
What I am wearing
My hair shaven short, by design, though shaped by cruel circumstance. One of two pairs of bespoke Anglo-American spectacles, each identical in shape, but different in colour; a black frame for distance, and a...
In the Woods
The BBC wish to make it clear that distilling alcohol in woods is strictly illegal. One of the excellent Paul Williams photos that didn’t make it into ‘The Longest Crawl.’
A Walk to Bongville
I have been waiting to read Olivia Laing’s ‘To the River’ for a year; I couldn’t afford the hardback when I saw it in the summer in the Penrallt Gallery Bookshop in Machynlleth, but...
Us (us us us us) and Them (them them them them)
It has been a very interesting experience making the programme for Radio Four about the North/South divide. As I followed the line across England on the map drawn up by Prof. Danny Dorling of...
Apocalypse Weekend
Now, here’s a thing. That great man Cosmic Smiles has posted the whole of the ‘Apocalypse Weekend’ Sheep Music feature film on You Tube. I wrote most of the ‘script’. The crew had been...
Marchant, Pembroke… (well, SDUC Lampeter, the Poly of Wales, Lancaster and Birmingham City University, really)
On Wednesday evening I did a talk with Richard Beard under the auspices of the National Academy of Writing at Pembroke College, Cambridge, England, Yurp. The college were kind enough to invite my wife...
Spitfires on the Line.
I’m in the middle of making a short series for Radio Four with producer Mary Ward-Lowery about a series of journeys we’re taking along the line drawn by Prof. Danny Dorling of Sheffield University...
Good weekend so far, touch wood.
We drove to Cambridge yesterday to pick up some stuff, and on the way I bought the Radio Times and i, both of which had favouable things to say about the psycho-geography show on...
Secret Garden Parties
Here’s a lovely photo of the author dressed very much en trende. The autumn is going to be all about knitwear, in my view. These woollen lederhosen, or wollenhosen as I guess we should...
I remember Lancaster
Earlier this evening I was bimbling about looking for something I’d written a few years back. Clicking on long unopened files, I found this. It was written as a commision for a bloke who...
My Dead Dad, by one half of Your Dad
My Dad was a man without qualities. He died at 11.25pm on May 6th, 2010, just as the election results were starting to come in. As his ultimate wife said to me a few...
Soft on bankers, soft on the causes of banking
Just back after a gig in Lancaster and an all-night bimble round some deserted Cumbrian motorway service stations. I put 450 un-Green miles on the clock, so I thought I’d update on my unscientific...
Dreadful Old Man
When old Perry Venus and I were out doing The Longest Crawl, we met a lot of lovely people. One rosy-cheeked old gentleman who we met in a Worcestershire cherry orchard could not have...
