I discovered this morning that I can’t listen to a podcast and write at the same time – I end gazing into space and listening rather than writing anything. My multi-tasking abilities are that bad. It’s been a week. A relentless week. A relentless few weeks. Months actually. I can’t really share any of the reasons why…

A few days ago I made the colossal mistake of setting foot into the “social internet” in search of hopefully kindred spirits – or “unicorns” as I labelled them at the time – fellow recorders of life’s exhalations. The wonderful thing about writing a blog – to me at least – is the bubble of…

I woke with a start at 7:30am this morning – to the sound of a door being slammed downstairs. Cogs turned in my head, and a memory conjured itself from somewhere that my middle daughter is doing the morning shift at Wetherspoons – which of course made me think about a cooked breakfast, and a…

I started writing a blog before the word “blog” had entered common parlance. Yes, I’m that old. In the late 1990s the only way you could publish words to the internet was via a self hosted website, or via one of the earliest social platforms such as Geocities – which experienced “enshittification” decades before Cory…

It occurred to me this morning that I’m not so much living in an escape room – rather an escape life. Except I’m not really trying to escape – just becoming increasingly aware of guard rails in all directions. Of course they’re not outwardly obvious, in the same way as a locked door – they’re…

Some years ago – while chatting with an old friend (and wonderful singer) in Oklahoma, the subject of music came up, and I asked what she was listening to – for recommendations. At the time I was on a bit of a folk music kick. She recommended Rascal Flats, Keith Urban, and a new teenager…

While writing this (after procrastinating famously for the last hour), the clock is busy ticking past 1am – or rather, it did so about 10 minutes ago. I’m ridiculously tired, but also aware I’ve not written for a few days, and want to at least empty some of the utter idiocy from my head, lest…

It’s Saturday morning, and you find me sitting in the middle of the huge Wetherspoons in town – escaping the house for a cooked breakfast and a “bottomless” coffee. After a couple of weeks burning the candle at both ends, I’m “treating myself” (that episode of Parks and Recreation will never leave my brain –…

After burning the candle at both ends over the last few days, I pushed back a little today. Or rather I had all the good intentions of doing so, and then did nothing of the sort. After standing up a number of programming tasks for the team around me to pick up at work this…

This morning you find me holed up in a booth at our local Wetherspoons – part of a huge pub chain that stretches across the country. I’m sitting in the booth with my laptop, tapping away, and occasionally looking up to meet the gaze of older people wandering past in search of a seat –…