“Careful or he’ll be after you.” Erm, well, not really. I wasn’t after anybody. True, there was somebody I liked, though they’d never know it because I kept that to myself. Yes, these are my gardening ruminations. The delayed reaction to events long gone, forced to the forefront of my mind by the monotony of …
It’s amusing to think what a quiet life I could have had when I was my daughter’s age, if only I had understood what my best mate was on. True, I would still have had to contend with reactions to my nerdy face and form, forever a source of derision. That was inescapable. But had …
A fine day to resume my role as tree surgeon. Today’s job taking on the hazel and cherry trees blocking our view. Argh, nobody told me I’m going bald. Ignore that. Look: I’ve got myself a new gizmo. It’s at this stage that I wonder what I’ve done. How on earth am I going to …
I am a man who likes routine. Who performs his best when he knows what’s next. I’m not great with surprises or sudden changes of plans. Indeed, in Turkey, I built my own house in a hard-to-get-to village almost solely to escape the social habits of friends and family, turning up uninvited at the least …
What a turn of events, that I should be having a frank discussion with a young man about honourable behaviour. That it should be me explaining that crude misogynistic language should have no place in his vocabulary. That whatever their differences — whatever argument or dispute should come between them — there’s never an excuse …
Time definitely compresses as we age. My youth looms as an epoch in my mind, still occupying me all these years on. Recent decades, by contrast, just feel like minutes and days. Between us, we share recollections of those early days of marriage in west London, returning often as if it was the neighbourhood which …
Is it the collapse of time or memory? The weekend is here again, and I can barely comprehend where the week went. It seems like mere minutes. But then, life as a whole feels like that, fifteen years zipping past in an instant. Were it not for our collections of family photos, I might forget …
I think I must just accept that I have a personality that invites others to be extraordinarily rude to me for no apparent reason. No, it’s worse than that. This rudeness follows an act of kindness, after I’ve gone out of my way to serve them. It seems I exude the notion that I’m unworthy …
Can’t say I’m sold on the AI they’ve got me piloting at work. Every email it’s offered to draft for me has been a pile of pants. Where I would write a nice succinct reply, cutting to the chase, it offers a verbose splurge, which mostly amounts to rephrasing back to the sender what they …
Even stock images can now send me into a melancholy spin. Yes, of course I know that those images of happy, smiley people in posh offices are completely contrived, set up by professional photographers trying to make a living selling content to corporate marketing teams. Still, it had its effect, a few moments spent looking …
For about five years now, I’ve spent a lot of my time writing about… erm… writing. Writing about writing, with nothing to show for it. For a while, somewhere back towards the end of 2021, I thought I would pursue those dreams of being a published writer once more. But, as you will have seen, …
It’s our fault, for settling so far away from our families. We could have stayed Up North, I suppose, to have grandparents near at hand. But then, they too moved to the South West in recent years, near to my sister. A few years back, my parents would take the children for a couple of …
All night long, my heart pounds in my chest, nausea pulsating through my veins. The monitor has already revealed we both have very high blood pressure. We believe it’s stress-induced. All night long, I lay awake, watchful of my beloved’s breathing, intervening whenever it seems her dreams may take her back to those moments of …
You know it’s bad when we say to one another, “If anything happens to me, carry on with your life…” That was with palpitations racing through our chest, shocked by the violent rage that exploded from nowhere. It’s hard to deal with the insults, abuse, and threats that nowadays cascade into our lives, obliterating any …
I sound bitter towards everyone. But, really, I’m bitter with myself. This is me reaping what I sowed.
