I’m thinking of adopting a fox. Not like the animals you can adopt at a zoo. At the zoo they say to the kids: come on, adopt a hippo or a penguin or a lion, but they don’t mean it really. Instead, what they mean is that you essentially pay for the food bill and […]

Read More A Fox In The Grass.

The trick to dying is making a good job of your timing. James Dean timed his death very poorly – firmly on the way up and at that time in his life easily one of the coolest human beings in existence; he must have been kicking himself. Vincent Van Gogh was the same, dust to […]

Read More The dying art.

I’ve had an idea for a song. It’s about freedom. No, it’s about community. No, it’s about triumph over adversity. No, it’s about cultural oppression. No, it’s about mental health issues. No, it’s about rainbows and machine guns. No, it’s about fear and friendship. No, it’s about world peace and Winnie Mandela’s favourite rent boy. […]

Read More Eurotrash.

I shall, I must confess, be watching some coronation stuff this weekend. I won’t watch all of it, because it’s true what they say when they say that life is too short, and because on a deep level I couldn’t really care less. But I won’t watch none of it because it is a rather […]

Read More On Coronation Nation.

I wish I had a pair of Freddie Mercury’s shorts. To be honest I’m surprised it’s not been one of my life goals from a very early age. Just imagine, I might have thought as a lad, what it must feel like to belong to a pair of shorts that once belonged to the lead […]

Read More Fit For A Queen.

Did I miss the memo, by any chance? Did I not quite take in all the minutes from the last meeting? Have I been hiding under a rock for too long? Should I even bother crawling out from under my rock to ask questions no-one will care to answer? Certainly don’t answer that last one, […]

Read More Get Them Out Of Here.

There are many places to look if you want an educated glimpse into the sort of ideas that people bandied around, all willy-nilly, in Germany in the 1930’s. Perhaps one might start with Frank McDonough’s The Hitler Years, Triumph 1933-1939. You could also take on both of Ian Kershaw’s volumes on that same little moustachioed […]

Read More Right Up the Gary.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Elvis lately. He’s always there to be honest, as the sun and the stars, always with a chair at the top table. Not Elvis Costello you understand, because Elvis Costello is like woke culture, retrospective book re-editing, cider or vegan sausages: I know they’re there, but I don’t care […]

Read More Dear Mr Presley.

Apparently the record for running 5km outdoors is 13:29. That’s in minutes and seconds, in case you were struggling. I’d definitely be struggling if the only way I could save the world was by running that fast. In fact, struggling isn’t really the best word. I’d be fucked. Buggered. Brutally murdered and dumped in the […]

Read More On Park Run.

As usual January is going so very, very slowly and you would think that the least I could do would be to think of something worth doing. Alas, that is simply not the way I am programmed. Rather than think of interesting things that could go right, but could also very easily go very wrong, […]

Read More F*ck it.