I’ve got hugely into the Beatles recently. Enormously, madly, deeply – I can’t stop talking about them. It’s crept up on me, this fascination. I’ve always liked their music, of course – who doesn’t – but for most of my youth it was just the obvious ones: Hard Day’s Night, Help, Yesterday, Twist and Shout, I Want To Hold Your Hand, that sort of thing. Growing up, they were a warm-sounding, upbeat, jangly guitar band with pleasing harmonies and interesting nasal voices. That was their appeal to me, and it was enough.
Continue readingIf You’re Struggling With Mental Health, This Might Help (I Hope)
After my week in New York with Annie, I had a lot on my mind when I came home. Foremost were the conversations we’d had about mental health – my own, in particular. See, Annie’s been medicated a long time, and I couldn’t help but notice, spending so much time with her, how quickly she bounces back from things – especially in comparison with myself, whose day (or even week) can be derailed by the most minor of disappointments.
Continue readingNew York Pt 6 | Birthday Crawl
Well I woke up and it was my thirty third birthday – a few texts from friends, a couple of cards to open I’d brought with me, and when Annie woke up we had breakfast and I watched TV on the sofa while the girls got ready.
Continue readingNew York Pt 5 | MoMA
Now, at this point in these dairies I couldn’t blame you if you’d quietly begun to wonder whether we got drunk every single day of the trip. Well – more or less, yes. But not really on day five, which is the day I’m writing about now. No: day five was one of culture. With just a smattering of boozing.
Continue readingNew York Pt 4 | Crowd Work
Two months have now passed since the trip I am attempting to describe, because life, as it is so wont to do, got in the way. But I hate to leave anything unfinished – so let’s test how good my memory is.
Continue readingNew York Pt 3 | The Middle of Little Italy
Day three started with a mean hangover – nausea and general slug-brained pungence, obviously, but twentyfold worse was the beer-fear. I never got post-alcohol anxiety when I was younger, at all. I could take my top off and whirl it above my head, stun everyone around me with a loud and crass story about my own ass, twirl around a stripper pole and wake up in a hedge, and at 9am I’d open my eyes, dust myself down and go about my day. With each creeping year, however, my ability to shrug away such buffoonery diminishes. These days I’m riddled with guilt if I forget what someone’s job is.
Continue readingNew York Pt 2 | NYPD
Annie wakes up late – always has. Due to the jet lag I was up at the crack of dawn, and lay on my sofa bed looking at my phone for, oh, a good two hours before I heard the usual high-pitched stretching yawn-screech that signifies Annie is awake. She stumbled through to the living room in a baggy black tee and tartan boxer shorts, her platinum hair mashed into a high David Lynch wave by her pillow.
Continue readingNew York Pt 1 | The Counter-Surprise
It was to be a surprise visit. On the seven-hour flight over, that’s all I thought about, even as I sipped free red wine in plastic cups and watched a succession of films on the back of a headrest – the surprise. I imagined it any of fifty different ways, planning my entrance, my opening line. I’d thought briefly about opening with “Miss Kissiah, I presume,” but when I workshopped it with friends the week before flying out, nobody got the reference so I dropped it.
Continue readingAthens | The Seven Thrones
T’was the morning after. The previous night out had been aggressively mediocre; a dozen of us went out for dinner, but the bill splitting was chaos and in the end I ate nothing and shared a bottle of wine with Tom, to make things simpler. I know that doesn’t really make any sense, but it seemed a practical idea at the time.
Continue readingAthens | Museum Ad Nauseam
I woke up in the morning and went down to breakfast; Alan joined me soon after, looking pale.
“Dude, I shouldn’t have had the whiskey last night. I threw up last night,” he said. “On the floor in my dorm.”
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