Everydaystranger

So in two days it will be 2006. 2006. Sounds like some kind of sci-fi movie, where we should be able to read each other’s thoughts and ride a hovering scooter to work, travelling on the inside of a tube as we skate through a clean, organic recycling type of environment.
I think the [...]

A year ago I was struggling with Christmas. I had in myself the sad and commanding sounds of being a grown up, the demands that Christmas should be catered to as an alter to tinsel, shopping, and commercialism. Christmas was for kids, and I was a kid stuck in a grown-up’s body, thus I [...]

A few Fridays ago Angus, my mate Peter and his lovely wife, and Jeff and his wife all went to have an evening Christmas break. As is our yearly tradition, I reserved us all rooms at a Hotel Du Vin, home of The World’s Greatest Showers Ever. This, despite the fact that my [...]

14 December 2005
Dear Laptop Who Hates Me But Which I Use In Lieu of a Diary Because That Way I Don’t Have to Carry Too Much Crap In My Already Crap-Filled Bag,
I am flying to Helsinki for business meetings. I am in the front row seat, the seat that allows one to take one’s [...]

I have just got home from the airport after spending three days in Helsinki for business (more on that later).
Champagne is chilling in the fridge.
The house in Ovaltine has been sold-contracts signed and money exchanged.
We are free-the house is no longer ours.
And you know what? We talked to the owner of our beloved Blackberries, [...]

Alone again, I sit down on the floor, my back resting against the couch. I fold my freezing feet under me and look at the black coal dust laying here, there, everywhere on the living room floor. The shape that Bob made against the wall is there as well, and if I look [...]

I sit down quietly on the couch, wondering what the hell is going on. I feel chilled and grab the well-loved throw off the back of the couch, wrapping it around myself. From under the couch comes a bump and a jolt as one of the cats decides the coast may be clear.
A [...]

I awake to a sound downstairs. I sit up in bed, wondering if I just shouted out “Maggie!” in a threatening tone it would mean that by eliminating one of two probable sources of the noise they’d both stop. The faint sound comes again-the sound of something being knocked over-and I sigh, throwing [...]

Yesterday I walked along a tree-lined avenue in north London. Enormous sycamore trees dropping leaves the size of dinner plates lined the way. It was a clean, cold day, my fingers tucked into gloves and my nose freezing and pink. The ancient church across the way tolled its bells at noon, and [...]

TV is of critical importance to me.
I’m not eschewing the need for books. I go through 2-3 books a week but perhaps as a card-carrying American, I feel the need to have a TV. People with no televisions are not artsy in my world-they are strange, lost in a generation gap that somehow [...]

Sometimes I feel I am standing on the edge of a ledge. It comes suddenly, this feeling, and I never know why it comes or what triggers it. In my mind, the sun is always up and a light wind in the air blows my hair in front of my face as I [...]

‘Tis the season, so naturally it poured down with freezing cold rain yesterday. I’ve found work is already getting calmer and quieter as everyone has visions of sugarplums dancing in their heads and are preparing their lists to Santa. I took the opportunity to go to Sainsbury’s yesterday afternoon, as Angus’ daughter Melissa [...]