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October 9, 2013

Split personalities

I remember as a kid being on holiday and going to some sort of country fête-type thing. On one of the stalls was this guy with a CB radio. I was fascinated by the idea that from this one box this guy could communicate with people from around the world. He asked me to name a country and said he’d try to find someone to talk to from there. I said Tristan da Cunha, and he unsurprisingly couldn’t find anyone. I wasn’t a smart arse, I promise. I just liked Tristan da Cunha for some reason. And I liked the idea of speaking to other people over the radio. I liked the handles they used, the anonymity and the freedom.
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September 19, 2013

Freshly Pressed – Welcome to all you new folk and a quick question

A big hello and welcome to everyone who has come across this site after seeing my recent post on the WordPress Freshly Pressed page. I hope some of you consider following this blog or subscribing to the RSS feed or just pop back at some point or other in the future. A huge thank you to everyone who has followed/commented/liked already. If you really can’t get enough of my waffling, I’m on Twitter and Tumblr too. Blogging is a huge amount of fun no matter who is reading, but it would be wonderful if some of you great folk could stick around. Read the rest of this entry »

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September 16, 2013

I remember when this was all fields

Jonathan Franzen is telling us what he thinks is wrong with the modern world. Rebecca Solnit sees the changes to our world post-internet as profound and troubling. These are two recent examples of the personal essay as a wail against life today, particularly life with technology, the internet, etc. Both these articles, at least to some extent, look back to supposedly halcyon days and see technology etc as the destroyers of an idyllic past.
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April 18, 2013

Towards Tescopolis

There was an interesting article on the Guardian website the other day from one of the judges of the Granta list of best British novelists under 40. Now, as this list is collated every ten years and I’m now in my thirties, unfortunately I will never be a Great Young Novelist as decreed by Granta. We shall overlook the fact that I haven’t written a novel, or anything approaching one, and probably never will, and perhaps focus for a moment on yet another sign of me slowly getting old. I was just about willing to accept that I was never going to be a professional footballer, but I figured being an acclaimed novelist was less time-dependant. Little did I know. I guess I better aim for a Nobel now. Anyway, back to that article… Read the rest of this entry »

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