Life Litter

Do you have a cave? If you live in Paris, you might. In that case, you will pronounce it like what a whale does when it gives birth. Or what Bostonians do to a turkey at Thanksgiving. Cahhhhve. It’s kind of a basement but French people will tell you, actually, a basement is a “sous-sol” (literally: under-soil), a place that can also serve as living quarters. La cave is something else entirely. It’...

“ … and they will read our diaries to find out what we were … ” Joel and I had a fight the other day about AI. Not a debate: a fight. I’m reading Bleak House at the moment — a novel about a protracted argument — so this seems appropriate. At least the Jarndyces were rowing over a pot of gold. We had a fight about AI. What a thing to fight about. What dorks. I’m kidding, of course. Joel is my thoug...

⬅️ READ PREVIOUS I got an unexpected email the other day. It reminded me that deliverance arrives in unexpected ways, at unexpected times. Let me explain. Earlier this week, deliverance came at the dentist’s. About three months ago, I went for a long overdue check-up and the dentist did an X-ray. “Oh, you have a cavity. You’ll need a filling.” I was surprised. I’d made it to the ripe old age of 38...

“Oh please give us something for the little bird’s wake …” The Wren in the Furze, The Chieftains There’s certain music that speaks of my childhood, and of Christmas. The Chieftains’ album The Bells of Dublin is the perfect Venn diagram overlap of the two. Have you ever heard the album? Go have a listen. I made Joel listen to it this weekend. It’s very… below-decks-on-the-Titanic. He liked it, but...

One minute it was there, the next minute it was gone. My suitcase, pinched off a train somewhere between Paris and Vienna. Did it contain items that will cost me thousands to replace? Yes. Are they of even limited commercial value to anyone else? Probably not, apart from a Patagonia jacket (eBay onsell value: circa 200 bucks). Was there anything irreplaceable in it? Not really — apart from my sket...

“My heart in hiding …” — The Windhover, Gerard Manley Hopkins I went for a walk today. It’s been a long Covid-y week and it felt great to pull on my boots and head up the hill in front of my house. I’ve got a few thoughts rolling in my head and I’m wondering if the walk will make any of them any clearer. Reader, I leave that to you to judge. One of the things I kept thinking about was an interview...

⬅️ PREVIOUS ⬅️ ⬅️ READ FROM THE BEGINNING I grew up on skis. Let me explain. In upstate New York, the temperature falls below freezing in November and usually doesn’t re-emerge until March. We had a thermometer outside the kitchen window. Winter mornings, I would check it. Minus 10 or 20 was pretty normal. I remember it being minus 40 sometimes. On those days, you had to make sure your neck warmer...

I wrote this week about a weird old hobby of mine: When I lived by the river in London, I used to go mudlarking – a bit obsessively – along the Thames foreshore. Mudlarking is kind of amateur archaeology, basically looking for cool things in the mud and pebbles along the riverbank. The detritus of 2,000 years since Roman ‘Londinium’ is plastered in the mud; things that people dropped centuries ago...

It’s funny because in between the stars you can see millions more. That’s something Joel’s sister said last week, when we were camping in Wales. Joel has three kids from his previous marriage. I have one. Together, we have none. Sometimes, I grieve for those children we’ll never have. Mostly, I think we’ve probably got our hands full enough already. Still. I grieve for the life I’ll never have; th...

I had to go into London for work on Friday. My weekly excursion to London means one thing: a nice lunch. I live in the countryside now, so I think about this city lunch for days and plan it well in advance. Caribbean jerk chicken and Ethiopian curries used to be quotidian; now they are the stuff of dreams. This week, I fancied sushi so went to the conveyor belt place near my office in Liverpool St...

Once, years ago, I was sitting in the middle of the backseat of a taxi in a hot southeast Asian city. The taxi had no air-conditioning. Both windows were open but there was no cross-breeze. SPLAT. A perfect dollop of white bird shit landed on my thigh. The taxi driver turned around with a beatific smile and waggled his brows in an impressed kind of way. “That’s very good luck, you know.” He did no...

Welcome back to The Notebooks. If you missed the last, this is where we were . If you’re coming in fresh, The Notebooks is a piece of long form writing, based on a true story, served in weekly instalments. You can read it yourself or listen to me read it in the VoiceOver. Pieces in The Notebooks may have a song-matching, like wine and cheese. Song-match this piece with: L.E.S Artistes, Santigold ....

Welcome back to The Notebooks. If you missed the last, this is where we were . If you’re coming in fresh, The Notebooks is a piece of long form writing, based on a true story, served in weekly instalments. Pieces in The Notebooks may have a song-matching, like wine and cheese. Song-match this piece with: Avett Brothers, Famous Flower of Manhattan . Not your quick-release serotonin fix, The Noteboo...

⬅️ PREVIOUS On a hot afternoon in late July 2006 on an Amtrak train between Albany and Penn Station, I was sitting behind a woman watching a movie on a laptop. She had a blanket over her despite the heat. After a little while, I became aware that she was masturbating under it. I know. Right there on the train. It was really weird. I had seen men masturbate in public — most notably, the man with a...

⬅️ PREVIOUS I often hear people ask what would you tell your younger self? What wisdom would you impart? I’m not at all sure this is the right way round. Growing older strikes me as an act of forgetting, so why should I have more answers now, the older I am? I don’t even know where my keys are. I actually think it’s my younger self that has all the answers. She was a master of juking the system. I...

The eagle-eyed among you may have spotted that this is a new sub-section of Life Litter called Awkward Encounters. I’ve been racking my brains trying to work out what theme(s) unite my posts here because everybody likes a theme, a structure, a story. What I have landed on is that most of my posts seem to be about me being awkward, in various interactions with other people. So many of them. It’s qu...