clinging to the wreckage

  All is quiet and calm in this empty room. A hangover is my only company. There are very few friendly words lighting up the screen and, often, any attempt to connect is greeted like an attack. In the end… it matters not. Happiness and contentment are our own responsibility and ours alone. It is not easy for any of us to allow others into our lives and, in most cases, people already have a partner, a family, one or two close friends, and they seek nothing more. That is natural.                     The cat has eaten and now sleeps, fat and flat, in the bed of its favourite truck. The owner of the truck is American Airlines staff and is usually travelling around the world, so the truck remains mostly undisturbed. This is the wisdom that cats apply from their vast observation. In the world of the World cup, England and Argentina both won last night and will play each other in the semi-final on We...

  I walked into our office in Nice, France, and, as usual, the team, most of whom I have known for ten years or more, one by one jumped up to hug me, shake my hand, chat and joke with me. There was a new face, too, a beautiful one. I approached her last and introduced myself. She said ‘My name is L__, and you are like Obama.’ I laughed out loud and asked her what she meant. She said ‘I have never seen someone walk into a room and bring it to life the way that you did… everyone loves you.’ I was humbled and flattered. Such beautiful words from the beautiful L__. And we are still in contact to this day as she travels around the world.                     And today… awaking to a note from a friend of twenty years telling me she had a romantic morning as a way of reminding me that we should never flirt. And then begins an adventure of the nightmare kind; I set off in search of the third parcel in ...

I awoke from a dream, laughing. The dream was of a brilliantly funny Scotsman I had once worked with. In it we were drinking whisky in the morning and then found ourselves at a ball. I was mixing a drink that was reacting and producing steam, the Scotsman was behind me somewhere, watching, and he shouted ‘deid mahn’ (dead man in his strong Scottish accent.) Everyone burst out laughing, including myself… but my laughter was real and woke me up. I lay in bad laughing for a while and then simply started to ponder life at 3am as one tends to do.                     A note has been sent… and was greeted with a death-like silence. The note I wrote was sent to a former lover whom I met just a few months before the pandemic arrived. It was wonderfully intimate, and it was a deep friendship, too. I was mesmerised by her voice, her beauty, her compassion, her curiosity and sense of adventure. Over time, for ...

Recently I decided to go and rummage through the iTunes store for Slayer albums. I have a few, including the classics, but not all. I discovered that they released an album in 2009, before their guitarist died, called World Painted Blood , an interesting title, so I purchased it. It is very good. And appropriate in a world painted blood red by politicians and greed.  At 06:30 I walk to the office. The temperature is already 28 degrees Celsius and I start to wonder if I should leave this city, this State. However, I feel connected to, almost enslaved by, the poor homeless cat that waits for me each morning on the ledge outside the door of the building. She refuses to come inside, but I can tell that she enjoys this process of waiting, seeing me appear with a bowl of food, waiting for me to place it on the floor nearby, leaping down and eating before retiring to the bed of her favourite truck where she remains until the temperature is too high and she retreats to cooler areas....

  The soothing fire of a shot of scotch. A delicate memory of a beautiful and passionate past encounter. The recognition of time and change, of things rearranged. And then, sadly, awaking to an end to the ceasefire and the depression that sets in as a result of that. But I just finished reading Bread of Angels by Patti Smith and the image at the end of the 'Bay of Angels’ in Nice, France, made me feel nostalgic. It is a place I have been fortunate enough to visit many times, and the view is spectacular. I have visited with great friends and even a lover and, yet, all this time, I never knew that Patti Smith stayed at the Hotel Suisse and that, before her, James Joyce had also spent time there during a crucial phase of writing Finnegans Wake . Literature is beautiful. The world of books and literary history is a world that I am grateful to have discovered a passion for and, honestly, as I grow older, one of the things that terrifies me most is knowing that, one day, this all comes ...

  Reading a book in the pool as the sun starts to set, ripples of light reflect from the water and hit the page. The scene is beautiful in its flickering tranquillity and yet every book that I read of late is about neglect and death and suffering and sorrow.               I’ve been thinking of the significance of months. For instance, September. I was born in September. I moved from England to Spain in September, I moved from Spain to Cambridge, MA, USA, in September and then I moved to Dallas, Texas in September. I became a US citizen in September and, one year later, my friend, Jill, who attended my citizenship ceremony, died in September. The queen of England died on my birthday in September. Then there is December. Every second December for six years I met women whose names all began with ‘S’ who became my girlfriends. Finally, my mother died in December.             ...