Category: Other

I am pleased to announce things seem to be storming forwards on the short stories front. I have found an amazing designer to put together something, and I am really impressed with how well he has read the vibe of the book and come up with something unassuming which should make people turn back to it and go ‘Ohh, that makes a whole lot more sense’.
I finished redrafting at about half three this morning and instantly sent the book to as many people as I could find in my inbox who might be interested. This morning even more people on Facebook and Twitter have expressed an interest so I’m hoping I will have something to show for all these restless nights.

I think when it’s all finalised I might take a little break before starting in on the next thing. I have so many plans and so many things to do but I can’t keep going like this. I’ll take Easter to relax, and think about how my lot killed your Lord and then I will start in on the next phase of operation Schiernecker.

My thanks to everyone who now has a copy of Where Did All The Money Go? in their inbox.
I look forward to your thoughts, tips, reviews, whatever.

Peace&love.

It’s hard to think of yourself as being privileged. We are raised to want, to crave, to keep up with the Jones’s.
if you were to be placed in a line of privilege however, against everyone else in the world, I think you would be surprised.
There are so many people in the world who spend every day trying to make it through, just trying to survive that day. Making sure they can get enough food to get by. Trying to ensure they have somewhere to sleep.
The fact we don’t need to worry about those things means we are privileged.
It should be a right for every person to have shelter and fresh water but unfortunately that isn’t the world we live in yet.

When you think about it, the tenner you donated to Comic Relief because Harry Styles crying and holding a baby with malaria made you cry is the tip of the iceberg of what you could afford to give.
There are so many occasions where I look through my bank statement and can’t work out why I needed to withdraw yet more funds. If we all just took a moment to think about how wasteful we are, and how lucky we are then maybe it would push us all to give a little more to people who can’t order in a Domino’s when they ‘can’t be bothered to cook’ or buy a new shirt or dress for each weekend so they don’t look the same in their Facebook photos.

We are selfish. We could do so much more. Why don’t we?

Tick followed tock followed tick followed tock.
Black and white footage of horses on the incoming surf.
A pint of the black stuff.
There’s a lot to be made of it.
As a nation, and especially as a generation we are far too impatient for our own good. I look around and see people buying things on credit because they couldn’t possibly wait until they actually had the money themselves. I see people paying over the odds for a product they won’t use before it drops into the sale. I see girls who can’t wait for their hair to grow so pay out ridiculous sums of money for real hair extensions. I wonder if we wouldn’t all be a bit better off if we didn’t jump in to our decisions as quickly as possible.

Of course there’s a time for action, I’m not saying every choice in your life needs to be sat upon but the majority of the money we spend is wasted, and a lot of that I believe is down to an inability to wait. Tired of wasting too much money in the weekend immediately proceeding my monthly payday I decided whenever I wanted something I would add it to a wish list instead of buying it straight off. A month later I could decide if it was something I still wanted or whether it had just been a passing fancy. The fact of the matter is by the time you reach your mid-twenties you are pretty set for the things you need, and everything else is simply something you want.
I want more books. I have shelves full of them but I want more.
I want a new car, but until I can afford one and until my current ride (Pancetta) is no longer fit for purpose that simply won’t happen.
I want a house, but until I have the money I am entirely stuck.

Another example is the kind of benign platitudes that fill Facebook of a Monday morning.
‘Want to stay in bed’
‘Why isn’t it the weekend’
‘Sometimes I wish I could gun down everyone in my office like the Boomtown Rats song’.
Without the week you are so dreading you cannot get to a weekend. Without getting up and facing that Monday morning you claim to be dreading there will be no Saturday or Sunday. Without going to work there will be no money for you to waste on that weekend.
The ugly truth is most people spend the week griping about how it isn’t the weekend yet and then fill their bodies with drink and drugs to a point they forget the majority of the weekend anyway.

When you strip all of the wants away, there is really only a very limited amount you actually need to keep going.
Stop just taking. Start waiting.

This morning I went for a run.
I decided to run as far as I could and then run back, knowing I would be forcing myself to run further than usual just to get home. All was going well until my ankle gave out about two miles in and I was left to hobble home.

As I was wandering the suburban nightmare that makes up my running track I had a good chance to think. I need time like this. There is always so much going on and so many people around I struggle to put things in order in my head.
It turns out, having thought about it at great length I very much enjoy my own company. There was a time when I wanted people around me constantly but I grew beyond it. Others haven’t, or won’t.

My thoughts are it says a lot about a person if they are happy to go somewhere alone. I once worried what people would make of me but it really is none of their business.
As a rule my friends run late. I don’t think they ever consider how that changes things for others, those obliged to turn up for everything annoyingly early…me. There was a time when I couldn’t stand being kept waiting, when I was self conscious and worried they would never turn up, that I was a joke in some way. It turns out they just can’t keep to time and I needed to chill out a bit.

I never would have wandered into a cafe solo and sat and had a coffee a couple of years ago. A part of the problem is my hometown. Anyone sat by themselves reading is obviously an asylum-seeking paedophile witch and should be burnt at the stake.
Working up in London has made me realise how satisfying it can be to just lose an hour somewhere different. It does wonders for the internal feng shui.

My freelance work has also led me to embrace a social taboo, going to the cinema alone. The first time I wandered around Soho until I found the screening rooms I didn’t know what to expect, or how I would feel to be alone in a cinema.
When you rationalise it, there’s no real difference between going to the cinema with twenty people and going there alone.
It’s not like you sit chatting, unless you’re an erstwhile cunt.
I’m not saying I will be rocking up to the Empire in Basildon on my jack jones anytime soon but it wouldn’t be too much of an effort to do it if there was something I really wanted to see and couldn’t wangle a free screening or my girlfriend into accompanying me (like The Muppets).

I’ve got to the point where I could quite happily go travelling alone. If anyone wanted to send me on an assignment to New York or India I would be totally down with that.

I think everyone should just take some time to free themselves from everyone else and just listen to themselves. You might learn something.

Today celebrates one year since I started writing this blog.
At the time I was going through some things and thought it would help to write them down, to reason things through to myself.
Since then I have written near enough every day. On some days it has been a struggle, but I pushed myself to do it. My good friend Ben told me it was essential as a writer to write every day and recommended the idea of a blog to me. It obviously worked because when I sit down to write anything now I don’t find myself staring in dread at a blank white page. It pushes me to fill it as quickly as possible.
From here on in I won’t be writing a blog post every single day. I’ve proved to myself I am able to do it, and I need to take the time to work on other things. I am still a blogger. It’s taken me a year to set up a domain, I’m not just going to drop off now. I’ll only post when I have something fulfilling though. I read other blogs and realise a lot more thought and concentration goes into what they’ve expressed than what I gurgle onto the screen each morning. While I’m very much a fan of how and why I write I don’t think expressing my every single thought and process is necessary anymore. I’m in danger of becoming like the people I hate, those who put “I hate Monday ugh, wanna stay in bed lol” as a Facebook status.
I’ve got a lot of exciting things on this year, and I’m looking forward to sharing them.
I just wanted to say thank you for sticking this little experiment out with me, thank you for your insight and I’ll see you in the future.

N.B.
Since I started this blog in February 2012 it has been read in 54 countries. That absolutely astounds me. Thank you so much.

One year in. Still going strong.
I should probably write something deep and meaningful shouldn’t I? You know…. to mark the occasion.
Love one another.

No.
That’s already taken.

I have a dream?

Again. Good. Very good, but done.

I guess what I would like to say is you are perfectly capable of achieving whatever you want to achieve as long as you stay set on it as being your goal. If you stray it becomes harder but you can steer back to the path.
Think of what it is you want to do, and head for it. It’s your patronus.

I woke up this morning to a new David Bowie song. It’s sort of like Christmas in that you’re too tired to really comprehend the gift at your feet. I’ve listened to it twice now, waiting for it to sink in.
The problem I have with David Bowie’s return is history. I grew up listening to Hunky Dory and Aladdin Sane. The versions that play on a loop in my head have the crackles in place where the vinyl catches. They’re a part of how I grew up and they are extremely important to me. Someone coming in and attempting to change that legacy is difficult, even when it is David Bowie. That’s how I feel about The Stars.

The video is exactly what you would expect from Bowie. He had to find someone as androgynous and awesome as himself to play his wife, and Tilda Swinton fits the part. I also like the idea of Bowie going into his local shop and saying “hump day”. It has an air of Smashing Pumpkins about the effects in it but maybe that is just me.

My problem with the song is it sounds like Bowie is shouting over the top of the band. It’s so close to being spectacular yet there is that going on. For a guy well in his sixties though, look at him go. I’ll be buying the new album.

Last night I uploaded two songs from my new EP to BBC Introducing.
I honestly think they’re the best thing I’ve written in a long time and I can’t sit back and just let me and mine be the only people who hear them.
It might not amount to anything but I’ve got to try right?
The fact is my music is a lot better than most stuff on the radio. That isn’t even me being big headed, stuff on the radio is shit. I am better than shit. Fact.

All it will take is one of my attempts to crack through and everything will follow alongside. If my book sells then I throw in my music, and visa versa. I will always write and I will always record and the idea of earning a modest living doing those things is the biggest of my dreams.