In February, it felt like work took over my life. I do like the job, but I’m not enjoying its current form, with a limitless capacity for absorbing my energy. Weekends in February were mostly spent recovering, with some dreadful headaches. Work is also the reason why these monthnotes are so late. I enjoyed meeting up with colleagues in Manchester and Croydon, although I could have done without the long train journey.
My sister dropped off Rosie the puppy to stay while she was on holiday. It was lovely to have her to stay, but I think a dog will be too much trouble as a permanent pet. I also had my friends Naomi and Emma visit (the latter visit described on Emma’s visual diary). Emma lived in Hebden Bridge for a few years and introduced me to a few eating places I’ve not tried yet.
I walked 304,820 steps last month, an average of 10,886 a day, which is good enough. The highest total was for a day exploring woodlands with Rosie and Emma. I’ve not been particularly healthy this month. My scales have been broken and I’m in no particular hurry to find out what they have to say.
My writing was also underwhelming in February. I ended up dropping my usual daily writing towards the end of the month as work swamped me. Rosy had a look at my next South Downs Way pamphlet, and pointed out some huge flaws. This sets me a little behind, but I hope to pick things up in a few week’s time. I also received a single-line rejection for a long story, four months after sending it out. Submitting stories is relentlessly unrewarding, and I’ve had enough of it.
I did make a recording of a new story, A Slice of Heaven on Earth. It’s about how much the Devil loves fruitcake.
I didn’t read a great deal this month. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow was very readable and full of 90s gaming nostalgia. The plot was predictable and emotionally manipulative – but it was a good book to get lost in. I re-read House of Leaves with Katharine, and enjoyed the experience of sharing the book, even at a distance. I also finished Nice House on the Lake, which didn’t quite live up to its early promise.
The best book of the month was Paul LaFarge’s The Night Ocean, which was recommended by Tom. It starts out as a novel about a queer HP Lovecraft, and then becomes something even more wonderful. The book does not shy away from Lovecraft’s faults, but still manages an empathic portrayal. There are also appearances from William Burroughs and some wonderful jokes about fandom. A beautiful book about long, sad lives.
I also watched very few TV shows or movies this month (I’m definitely picking up a theme here). I tried a Shudder description but, while I was excited about the idea of watching some of the films, in practise I couldn’t get into them. Time loop movie Meet Cute was too frustrating to finish, even as part of my project on time loop movies – although I might try again in a month or two. I did watch all of Happy Valley, which was dark but contained some great footage of the Calder Valley.
I’m continuing to listen to new music, and the Spotify algorithm appears to have responded well to that. I’m also finding good tunes on the Misfits 2.0 and Our Generation playlists, although neither are really age-appropriate.
The stress of work is giving me some strange dreams, including one where someone was so angry with me that they threatened to break every bone in my body, in alphabetical order.
January has been an unobtrusive month, as shown by how few photographs I’ve taken. I started the new year with my friend Lizi and an appalling migraine. I visited Blackpool for a weekend with Muffy in between strikes, and went to the Midlands for my Dad’s birthday. Much of the remaining time was spent hibernating. Hebden Bridge weather is as intense as I was promised, with more snow making the pavements treacherous for a week.
My work project continues to be tough. I can feel myself responding to the stress, particularly with weird dreams and disrupted sleep patterns. But this is the job I want to be doing, and I’m OK with where things are for the moment. Enduring a stressful project seems a little harder with remote working and not having all those friendly, informal interactions with colleagues. I should have had a visit to London at the end of the month to meet my team in person, but that was cancelled due to train strikes.
I walked about 288,000 steps last month, an average of 9,287 a day. My Fitbit lost a few day’s totals, which is frustrating. My highest count was for a hike with some colleagues from the Manchester branch of my company. I also had a decent hike with Commoner’s Choir the day after their Hebden Bridge gig – that walk should be featured on one of Clare Balding’s Ramblings show in February. I’ve not been eating particularly healthily, although things are improving. I put on a couple of pounds, which I am going to try and remove in the next couple of months.
I’ve done very little decent writing this month – again, due to work. I did write a couple of pieces for the Wednesday Writers, which I was fairly happy with. I need to get both of them posted online, I think. I’m waiting on a review of the next South Downs Way volume, and working away at another one, due for release in the summer.
I’ve got my reading under a little more control recently, including catching up on a lot of zines (Hwaet continues to be essential reading). I enjoyed the McSweeny’s retrospective, which contained a great deal of detail about publishing. Girlfriend in a Coma was an interesting re-read, although I didn’t like it so much this time round. I also caught up on The Constant Gardener, a post-Cold War Le Carre book that I’d missed at the time. Joe Hill’s short story Pop Art (from his collection 20th Century Ghosts) was sad and well written, using a weird concept, (a child is friends with an inflatable boy) and taking it very seriously.
The TV highlight this month was Atlanta, which concluded with another weird and uncompromising season – one of the best shows I’ve seen in some time. I also finished Andor, which was well made, but I don’t really see the point in ‘Star Wars for adults’. I watched the first episode of The Last of Us, and found it too faithful to the video game – like a very expensive Twitch stream. I might have watched more, but NowTV’s ads are increasingly intrusive. It amazes me that paying to see a TV show gives a worse experience than pirating it. I’ve also been watching The Rig as background. Very sad to hear that Netflix cancelled 1899 – although I would still have watched the first season if I’d known what its fate would be.
I watched several films over the month. The most inventive was One Cut of the Dead, which used its low budget for a brilliant concept. Smile and Knives Out were slick without quite grabbing me. I enjoyed Glorious for its high-concept plot about a haunted glory-hole – and making a spirited attempt at living up to that. Bodies Bodies Bodies was fantastic, telling its story about murder in a mansion flawlessly. I also tried watching The Lighthouse which seems like a good film, but did not work for me.
One of my aims for 2023 is to listen to more new music, rather than the same 90s hits I’ve been playing for years. I’ve managed to find some great new music, notably- Ethel Caine’s Preacher’s Daughter album. Spotify has played several songs by Samia, but it was only when the album Honey emerged I realised these songs came from the same artist. I’ve also enjoyed tracks by Vot and Lizzie McAlpine; a new Princess Superstar record; and Caroline Rose’s haunting single Miami. Not bad for the first month.
My musical explorations were helped by new chart podcast Pop Could Never Save Us. Episode 1 looked at a recent UK top 5 and it turned out to be pretty good. The hosts provide interesting context – I now know how the SP1200 sampler led to the Wu-Tang production style. Escapism was a catchy and clever number one, and Messy in Heaven and the new SZA single were also worth listening to. Episode 2 featured a review of a 1959 chart, which included a digression into skiffle’s origins. I’m hoping this makes a good replacement for The Content Mines, which ended its regular run this month. I’m going to miss it.
As work has taken over my life, I’ve had less focus on British politics – probably a good thing. The little I have seen supports the feeling that Britain is falling apart through underinvestment and corruption. It just doesn’t feel like there’s much hope, and I can’t see Labour offering enough compelling reasons for people to vote against the government. There’s none of the rising optimism I remember from New Labour’s ascendency, no feeling that things can get better.
Writing up these notes, I can see how much work has loomed over January. Things are improving, but if I have another month like this then I am going to look at moving to another project.
December was dominated by settling into my new job. Things are chaotic at present, with five hours of meetings some days, and little time to do my actual work. I’m mostly enjoying it but the job has sometimes felt vampiric. Christmas preparations were continually blown away as work took all my energy, and I sent many of my cards late and never got a tree. I didn’t transition to a crunch-mode lifestyle, so my diet was very poor. Things should calm down at the start of next year, but this was a tricky month.
I have done a few things other than work, with Kaylee coming to visit, and Vicky bringing Libby the Greyhound after Christmas. I also worked on the Discordian Parish Magazine, which we’re selling via etsy. I’m enjoying the social side of working in an office in Leeds, including the office Christmas party where we went to a darts venue. Hebden Bridge had snow in December’s second week, which looked beautiful, but turned the streets into a dangerous ice-rink.
I walked 317,061 steps in November, an average of just 10,227 a day, with the highest daily total being for a walk to Howarth. That trek also included a wintry fresh water swim – very short but invigorating. I also had a good snowy walk to High Brown Knoll with Lola the Labrador. There was a failed attempt to walk to the Bridestones where we left too late in the afternoon. We might have annoyed the boggarts, since Jamie’s shoes fell apart. My weight remained pretty much unchanged through the month.
Elon Musk managed to turn twitter into a fiasco with surprising speed, and this spurred me to start using my Mastodon account. First impressions are that Mastodon is slower and quieter, but it’s also friendlier, with some of the feeling of early twitter. The local moderation seems to work much better than the one-size-fits-all approach taken by Twitter or Meta. It’s a very different experience, but could be a good replacement. I’m @orbific@mastodonapp.uk.
With the end of the year, I’ve been thinking a lot about my writing and decided that I’d rather not spend so much energy on submitting stories to publications. I’d prefer to make my own little story zines, or other artefacts. I’m excited about the prospect, although self-publishing brings its own challenges.
I read 9 books in December. Last One at the Party was a sort of lit-fit versions of the 80s kids comics where only one person survives the apocalypse. Robin Ince’s Bibliomaniac was a cosy book-tour diary that should not have worked, but was a good book companion and got me excited about second hand bookshops again. Keiron Gillen’s Immortal X-Men was fun, but much of the wider plot was inscrutable. I think current Marvel continuity is very much aimed at people who want to be reading the whole X-Men franchise. I don’t really have the attention or the funds to keep up with plots across several ongoing series.
I agreed with most of the points in Laura Bates’ Men Who Hate Women, but sometimes the journalistic/sensational tone did not work for me. The issues Bates discusses are indeed sensational and horrifying, but I would have liked some deeper analysis. For example, while the men described are awful, there’s an odd tension between the sympathy for the boys and young men who are being radicalised, and how those embedded within the communities that were described as evil and irredeemable. Quibbles aside, it was an important book, and a brave one too, given the viciousness of the communities Bates wrote about. Violence and misogyny have been normalised in our culture, and sadly Bates’ book is not making the impact it should.
One Man and His Bog was an account of walking the Pennine Way in the 1980s. I found the humour a little forced, but the Goodreads reviews suggest many people disagree with me. Also disappointing was Robert Anton Wilson’s Cosmic Trigger 3, where Wilson had drifted from multi-model agnosticism to gammony opinions about feminism and PC. I also published a blog post listing my favourite books of 2022.
I watched the rest of The Peripheral, but never felt as gripped as I wanted to. Inspector Lowbeer stole the limelight once she turned up, making me wish she’d been the show’s focus. I watched a little of Netflix’s Turkish linguistics dystopia Hot Skull, which was interesting but didn’t quite take for me. Star Wars prequel-prequel Andor was mostly relegated to background watching. It was exquisitely made, but I wasn’t sure what aspect of the story required it to be set in the Star Wars universe. I did love much enjoyed seeing Cleveley’s seafront repurposed as the resort world Niamos. Just after Christmas, Disney Plus finally dropped the new season of Atlanta. I’m enjoying how disinterested this feels in being a regular show.
I watched 7 films in December, with highlights being Norwegian kaiju flick Troll, and star-filled drama Cop Land. X was a surprisingly good slasher film, with some editing that was so weird and disconcerting that I fell in love with the film. Saint Maud was a slow movie with a surprisingly strong payoff. Silent Night was a very dark Christmas movie that surprised me with how grim it was prepared to get. Even more than the film itself, I loved the reviews by outraged viewers who felt it went Too Far.
Some odds and ends:
After getting some awful headaches at the start of the month, I’ve been completely off coffee. However, I do have cravings for decaf most mornings.
Last December we had the log4shell issue, and this year we had the disasters at Lastpass. I’ve closed that account and updated all the passwords I had stored in that manager. Very frustrating.
Tim Harford hosted a podcast episode called The Conspiracy Theorist Who Changed his Mind which had some interesting discussion of how people do not change their views from argument, but rather from community. Some interesting lessons there.
November has been a busy month, dominated by the excitement of a new job. The remote onboarding was incredibly efficient, and it’s great to be part of a company with such energy and enthusiasm around technology. I’ve been enjoying dropping into the office in Leeds once a week, and made a trip to Newcastle at the end of the month. The role itself offers some big challenges, but I’m starting to get up to speed.
My free time has also been fairly busy. I visited the Thought Bubble Convention in Harrogate where I met El Sandifer and Penn; had my covid and flu jabs; went out dancing for the first time since the pandemic, at the Golden Lion in Todmorden; had a number of visitors in Hebden Bridge; and went to an epic bonfire in the midlands. At the start of the month I visited Leeds Trinity University to talk to a transmedia class about ARGs, Digital Folklore and how they can go wrong. The research for this was fascinating, and it was an opportunity to think deeply about a lot of things which was valuable in itself, even if I might not use the material for another talk.
I walked 307,702 steps in November, an average of just 10,256 a day, with the highest daily total for a walk around Withens Clough reservoir with a friend from Cragg Vale. I got soaked feet on this trek, which has been a problem a few times recently. Walking about the valleys in winter will require more robust footwear. I sneaked on a couple of pounds of weight, mostly through poor diet and snacking in the workday. It’s not a huge problem, but is something I need to keep an eye on.
I did a fair bit of writing during the month. I started out the month with FlashNano, a November writing challenge, but abandoned that after 10 days – trying to write a story a day wasn’t feasible while starting a new job. It was a good experiment, and useful to see that I could turn out a decent story in 30-90 minutes, with a few of them good enough to submit. I’ve been trying to send out more new work, submitting four new stories – Cinnamon, The Things We Don’t Talk About, Something in the Way and The End of the Second Hand Bookshop. I also published A Wedding Like Mariah’s on my blog. As we come towards the end of the year, my stats are 55 submitted, 6 accepted, 35 rejected.
I had a couple of new stories published. I’m delighted to have another story in the Horror Zine, who have printed Still Alive at the End of the Summer. I’ve also had Stragglers published by Flash Fiction Magazine.
I’ve continued reading lots of books. A Likely Lad by Peter Doherty is an autobiography where the subject comes off very badly. It was interesting to see how unrepentant Doherty was about the degradation of his addiction. I’d always seen him as someone who threw his talent away – but reading this book, I began to wonder if it had thrived because of his drug use, and he simply took it as far as he could. Our Wives Under the Sea was an excellent literary novel that tended towards cosmic horror. Malcolm Devlin’s And Then I Woke Up was an clever twist on zombie movies. It was notable how short the book was, given its inventiveness. It also featured some great jokes about looting supermarkets in video games. I finished Grant Morrison’s Luda mainly through perseverance, forcing myself to finish it. Morrison is a great writer, but I find his longform prose unengaging.
Meet me in the Bathroom was an oral history of New York music in the noughties. It starts in the period when I was living in Hoboken (the Strokes’ first gig was in September 1999). I did see one of the bands mentioned in the book, the Mooney Suzuki, who were bottom of the bill for the Donnas and were one the greatest live acts I’ve seen. Sadly they never quite took off. One of the most interesting things was how new technologies influenced the scene – the people with the first digital cameras became important, and blogs became influential, the first stages of making a paparazzi-life lifestyle universal. Changing technology was also used by TV on the Radio, who hid CDR-s in “furniture stores or bookstores”. The book also included a great theory that new musical movement depends on having their own particular style of trouser.
Harry Cole and James Heale’s quick-turnaround biography of Liz Truss was mocked when her premiership was over before the manuscript was submitted. The book is a good summary of Truss, and goes beyond the disastrous time as PM and the gaffes that made her famous. It was a good political book in that it was well-written, often gossipy, and explained the events in such a way that they made more sense. Hopefully I’ll write a proper review in the next few days.
I made it through November without watching any movies. I watched most of The Peripheral, which was beautifully made but somewhat unengaging. Netflix’s 1899 was fantastic, a mystery box show that delivered on a lot of its strangeness. I was slightly thrown by the ending, being unsure if 1899 was a single season or not. It was also announced that Westworld will not be getting a fifth season, which actually feels like a relief. The show has never returned to the heights of the first season. I would have watched another season, but it has mostly been disappointing.
I started playing Dying Light 2 on the PS4. In many ways this is a remarkable game, and I couldn’t believe they’d packed such a detailed open world onto a BlueRay. The parkour movement system was stunning, and I loved navigating between rooftops. But, ultimately, playing was a banal experience, with too much bad acting and fetch quests, so I stopped. While playing the game was compulsive, it also felt like I was switching myself off for an hour or too.
With the new job, I’ve been paying less attention to parliamentary politics recently. I’ve been ignoring the World Cup, an event I normally love and watch as much as I can. I don’t think a boycott of Qatar’s hosting achieves much, but the events around this World Cup have made it feel uncomfortable rather than fun.
A quick miscellany:
Cat Vincent’s post on 1000 days of covid is essential reading about the coronavirus and how those still sheltering have been neglected. I wrote a brief response.
A great joy of Radio 4 is interesting documentaries about subjects you’d never thought about. A drive down the M1 was enlived by Exit Game, a ‘drama documentary’ about the professional men’s football youth system, where the odds seem even harder than on creative writing courses.
I subscribed to Sam Kriss’s substack as I love his writing and cannot bear to miss his occasional subscriber-only post. An example: “The American novelist is standing in the middle of a charnel house, with blood dripping off the walls, writing little autofictions about the time someone was rude to them in their MFA.“
Twitter is so far surviving a difficult transition period, but I have set up an account on Mastodon – @orbific@mastodonapp.uk. This is a very different social network to Twitter, but I am growing excited about its potential.
I’m back to the occasional caffeinated coffee, which is not good for me, and resulted in an awful sleepless night while in Newcastle. I’ve also developed a bit of a decaf habit, which seems to be driven by my longing for proper coffee.
The year is starting to turn colder, which the current energy crisis is making particularly noticeable.
I’ve set up a Google alert on my own name. Not so much for vanity, but because I like reading obituaries, record releases and corporate announcements by other people with my name – they’re little alternate universes. I was delighted to learn that there is a James Burt Parkway in Auburn, Alabama:
November felt like it flew by at points. But, in writing these monthnotes, I realise how much I made of those thirty days. That’s a definite benefit to writing monthnotes.
October has been strange, with a two week break between jobs expanding to fill the entire month (basically, there was a problem with a third-party referencing system). A surprise month off sounds ideal, and it’s enabled me to spend some time on the house, catch up on a few projects and also to get myself a little better organised (which I’ll talk about at the end). Having said that, I’d rather have been working, particularly given the recent economic chaos.
Autumn has settled into the valley, and it looks beautiful with the trees changing colour. I can’t believe I’ve already been living here for three months – I still feel moved when I see the sunrise in the morning. Lou Ice came over from Sweden for a few days of hiking. We also had Plathfest, which Helen and Sophie visited for. Ilkley literature festival hosted a talk from John Higgs and it was good to catch up. I’m still exploring the valley, and last week went up to the trig point at High Brown Knoll with a borrowmydoggy friend, Lola the Labrador.
There was not as much walking as last month, when I was on the Coast-to-Coast trail. I still managed a total of 370,083 steps, which was an average of 11,938 a day. My highest total was 32,645, walking back from Haworth to Hebden Bridge with Lou. My weight has been stable, which is remarkable given a careless diet.
Despite not having worked all month, I’ve not submitted any new stories. I’ve written five new pieces for online and offline workshops which just need a quick review to be sent out. Six stories were resubmitted in the first half of the month, bringing my stats for the year to 47 submitted, 7 accepted, 32 rejected. Instead of submitting more writing, I’ve mostly been finishing off old blog posts, including one about a visit to Heptonstall that I particularly liked.
I did read a lot of books this month – 10 in total. The Anomaly was a literary airport novel, and felt a little like a TV show (an adaptation is in the works). There is No Anti-Memetics Division was one of the freshest pieces of horror I’ve read. Holly McNish’s poetry collection Slug was a lovely format, as it included the talk around the poems that you get in live performances that are usually dropped from books. John Higgs provided a combined history of the Beatles and Bond in Love and Let Die. Twyford Risingwas a history of the M3 road protests, and an important glimpse of resistance in the 90s. Adrian Hon’s You’ve Been Played was a good, critical view of gamification. Swedish Cults by Anders Fagers has finally been translated to English and was an enjoyable read. Andrew Gimson’s recent Boris Johnson biography was an absolute car crash of a book.
I didn’t watch much TV, other than the web series about Kanye Quest 3030, where two Australian comedians finally solved the mystery. I tried The Midnight Club, but it had too much of a young adult vibe for my tastes. I caught several films. Crimes of the Future was well-acted and visually stunning, but the story didn’t grab me. Incantation was a creative found-footage movie, but the in-story filming sometimes felt contrived. 20,000 days on Earth, the Nick Cave documentary, was a re-watch with Lou, and proved almost unbearably sad given the tragedy that was lying in wait for Cave. Bullet Train was a fun cartoonish movie, very much post-Tarantino, but about 20 minutes longer than the concept could bear. Desert Coffee was a good Netflix documentary on Slab City. I also watched Haunters, which was a disturbing documentary about haunted house scares in the USA.
I’d been waiting to see Kevin Smith’s Tusk in the cinema. I figured there would be a big Brighton premier at the Duke of Yorks, but for whatever reason that never happened and I never got around to seeing it. Lou-Ice suggested watching and it was fun, despite some sloppy editing (the scenes from wife-beater Johnny Depp went on far too long). But, for all its ridiculous, over-the-top nature, the film was tragic, with Justin Long did a great job of portraying a man whose humanity was ripped away.
I continued playing The Last of Us Part 2, collecting all the main trophies. I finally completed Stray after a long break, then bought Red Dead Redemption 2. I’m finding that incredibly hard to get into, so ended up completing The Last of Us Part 1, which I’d also ignored for a long time. I love The Last of Us games for the atmosphere, ruinporn and world-building, but both Joel and Ellie are terrible people. I’d rather be playing positive games in that world, working towards better things.
The real world continues to be alarming. We had another flurry of posturing about nuclear weapons, which makes me anxious. Everyone seems reconciled to the idea that someone is going to use a nuclear weapon before long. Trident is not making me feel any safer, and maybe unilateral disarmament is a good thing. In the UK, we’ve had more political chaos, and a couple of power-cuts in the valley. As entertaining as I find the parliamentary side of the political situation, I am shocked at how poorly-managed the country is right now. It feels inevitable that something is going to go very wrong this winter.
Having five weeks off has been interesting. Having recently read Four thousand weeks, I was aware of the need to be selective about what how my time is spent. And that turned out to be true – five weeks is a long time, but I’ve not had enough time for large new projects, instead mostly progressing some old ones. I finally launched a basic site about the Pennine Way and started with Dan on Mycelic/Discordian Parish Magazine.
I’ve become much better organised over the past few weeks by following the advice in James Stanier’s book on management – keeping email and to-do list and calendar separate. It’s also made me feel healthier and distractible than I did beforehand. Even so, I’ve still achieved less than I would have expected, which makes me aware that I need to be selective about how I spend my time, particularly once I start work again. The non-work activity that is most important to me is writing stories, and I need to double-down on that. I’m thinking about trying to submit one new short story a week – that sort of arbitrary goal can be useful for developing something.
September felt like a transitional month. I was still settling in the house, and slowly moving things into the right places. There’s a lot to do, and I was grateful to my sister and her husband for coming by to strip down the ivy and creepers. The old flat in Halifax had to be cleaned and handed back. I also wound up my job with Mindera, which I finished on the last day of the month.
Along with all this, I went out hiking for a week on Coast-to-Coast with my brother-in-law. Katharine came to visit and, inspired by a guardian article, we took a hike in Bradford, which turned out to be a little underwhelming. I did get to see an original Lowry painting, though. I think we had a copy in the house when I was small, and the original turned out to be much larger than I expected. I did local sections of the Pennine Way with James Spratt, including my first wild swim in Gaddings Dam reservoir. Vicky brought her greyhound Libby to visit and I discovered that greyhounds are weird creatures, nothing like other dogs. I was surprised to learn that they chatter their teeth to express joy.
With the long hike included, I walked 536,907 steps in September, with a maximum of 46,870 on the second day’s walking on the Coast to Coast. This means a daily average of 17,896, which is the highest for some time. My weight continues to float gently downwards, although only by a pound and a half, despite a sometimes poor diet.
The Guardian’s Bradford hike
My writing has been a little slower this month, with only six submissions, and one new story finished but not sent out (James Joyce’s Ulysses as a Cursed Object). For the first time, I had all of my current stories submitted at the same time (11 in total). I withdrew a couple of stories from submission (Wreckage and The Leech Catchers) as I didn’t feel they were as instantly appealing as my other pieces, but they might emerge somewhere eventually. The month ended with a flurry of rejections, bringing my stats for the year so far to 41 submitted, 7 accepted, 29 rejected. I’m more excited about writing than ever, and looking forward to playing with some ideas before I start the new job. Three stories were published:
I’ve been reading some great books this month, although in a disordered way, switching between them. Of the books I finished, three were non-fiction books about music – it’s as if reading about music has replaced getting into new bands. Curious about how the Beatles went on to make Abbey Road after the finality of Let It be, I read Ken McNab’s And in the End. There is a lot in the book about business dealings, shareholdings and corporate takeovers, but I guess that is a reflection of where the Beatles had found themselves. Nicholas Soulsby’s Dark Slivers focussed on Nirvana’s Incesticide, and produced a surprising number of fresh insights and revelations about Kurt Cobain. The book-length Nick Cave interview Faith, Hope and Carnage discussed Cave’s creative process and spirituality, as well as being a provocative engagement with grief.
Grief was also a substantial theme of Ru Callender’s memoir What Remains?. I’d expected this to be good, but I was surprised by how good. I discussed this a little on Twitter, but plan to write more soon. Storyland by Amy Jeffs managed to be more engaging than most books of myths, and contained many I’d not read before. I was inspired to read No Country for Old Men by the movie, and loved the grit of the language. Olivia Laing’s Everybody was another triumph – less cohesive than The Lonely City maybe, but it brought together people including William Reich, de Sade, Malcolm X and Nina Simone. There was also an amazing section on Ana Mendieta, an artist I couldn’t believe I’d missed out on. I also read a novel about music, David Keenan’s This is Memorial Device, which I think I need to revisit, as I don’t think I gave it as much attention as it deserved. It seems a book that would be better suited to physical form than on a Kindle. Finally, Sally Jenkinson’s new pamphlet Pantomime Horse, Russian Doll, Egg was released (for sale here), and it was a powerful and moving work. September’s reading might have been disordered, but I read some amazing books.
I didn’t manage much TV, although I finished watching Better Call Saul with Kate Shields. It was a great show, but I’m not sure what story it wanted to tell. And maybe telling its story alongside the events of Breaking Bad harmed it in the end. I saw several movies. Everything Everywhere All At Once was delightful, and as good as everyone promised. Kes was an interesting period piece. I watched The Return (2005) with James Spratt and it was somewhat disappointing. Withnail and I was quotable but the alcoholism just felt sad. I also made two trips to the cinema. The Forgiven was great, and I enjoyed watching a drama with no CGI, spaceships or superheroes. Nope was more my usual fare and was excellently constructed, although it didn’t grab me as tightly as I would have liked.
It’s been weird having such a long time between accepting the new job and finishing the old one. I’m looking forward to getting stuck into some new challenges. In the meantime, I’ve updated my programming blog with some missing content that was only on linked in. I also reviewed Dave Farley’s Modern Software Engineering book, which was excellent. I’ve got a couple of weeks off between the two jobs and I’m hoping to play with a few tech things in that time.
It’s been another battering month for the UK politically. Liz Truss came into power then a few days later the queen died. This meant that politics was out on hold despite the ongoing crisis. I was away for the mourning period, although this meant I caught a few TV screens where the BBC news seemed to be doing nothing more than interviewing people in the queue. When politics returned, Truss failed to solve the energy crisis for many people then unleashed the worst budget of my lifetime. Along with the nuclear posturing over Ukraine, this continues to be an anxious time.
Something musical I’ve enjoyed recently – Alison Rose’s acoustic version of the Nevermind album. Acoustic covers can be a cheap trick, but this album draws out how good the originals were.
At the start of August I finally moved into my new house in Hebden Bridge. Even now, four weeks later, I’m still overjoyed to be waking up here. It’s been a particularly idyllic time to arrive with the good weather, and I’ve reminded myself not to get too used to Hebden Bridge being dry. The move itself was shoddy, with no attempt to prepare bedding, or keep things tidy enough that I could find my chargers. I’ve now moved all the boxes to one room and am working to make each of the rooms cosy. It’s going to take some time, but I’m looking forward to it.
The day before I moved in, Tom messaged to say “Now you can start getting stressed about maintenance”. And yes, I am discovering that an old house will require a fair bit of work. To start with, I have a whole host of trailing plants that need to be brought under control. I’ve bought a ladder and garden tools and am slowly dealing with the creepers. I’m enjoying the prospect of this new workload. Reading Four Thousand Weeks last month made it clear that there is never enough time, and we just have to choose how to spend it.
The other exciting news is that I have accepted an offer for a new job, starting in October. The interviews for the new job took place either side of the move, which in retrospect was crazy. I’ve loved working at Mindera, and would recommend it to anyone looking for a new type of company. In the end, it comes down to geography – as much as I love remote working, I want to move to a one-day-a-week hybrid model. I went to Leeds for the company barbecue and met some of my new colleagues and am incredibly excited about working with them.
Despite the move, I’ve been getting on with regular things. Kit had been booked to come visit weeks ago, in what turned out to be a couple of days after the move, but it was good to have him help me settle. I went to an excellent talk on Coin Trees with Wil, one of the Cerne2CERN pilgrims. I also attended a one-day Arvon workshop at Hebden Town Hall with Amy Liptrot and Will Self. Amy was particularly inspiring, filling me with ideas about place writing. On Bank Holiday Monday, I had a visit from another pilgrim, Dan, and his sheepdog Molly. Other than that I’ve been trying to discover all the little paths in the woodland behind my house.
Walking continues to be little more than a maintenance dose, with a total of 339,822 steps for August. An average of 10,962 and the highest 20,734 when I was moving house – more activity than distance that day. My weight has continued to float downwards, but slightly more slowly than last month, with another 2.2 pounds disappearing without effort. As the house purchase became stressful last month, I started drinking coffee again. Even just having one or two coffees a day was affecting my concentration and sleep patterns, so I needed to stop. I lost a Saturday to caffeine withdrawal, which felt like an awful hangover. Hopefully I won’t need to do that again.
I wrote two new stories in August (Little Piggies and The Leech Catchers) and sent six submissions, with my stats for the year standing at 35 submitted, 6 accepted, 21 rejected. That means I had 9 rejections in August, which I feel pretty OK about. Three stories are due to be published in September.
I’m picking up the pace of the pace of the submissions now, which is good. Submissions are hard work and involve a spreadsheet, but Chuck Palahniuk recently wrote about how you need to love all parts of the writing process. I sometimes feel anxious about running out of places to send stories – there are markets closing all the time. But Dave Farley’s Modern Software Engineering has been a good reassurance about the importance of making small bets and learning from those. The more I submit, the more clearly I can see which elements of my writing are working for other people. For example, I’m focussing more on characters than concepts, which is producing better stories.
Out of the books I’ve read this month, the highlights were Hannah Gadsby’s Ten Steps to Nannette, which provides an interesting glimpse into how her austistic mind works. Chuck Wendig’s The Book of Accidents was an interesting novel that felt very much influenced by Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, and one I wished had been a little less cosmic. Dave Farley’s Modern Software Engineering was a good guide to the state of the art in the discipline. Sally Coulthard’s A Short History of the World According to Sheep was very much in the quirk-non-fiction genre kicked off by Longitude, covering a broad swathe of history including some interesting details about Halifax’s history.
Despite how much was going on in August, I managed to watch a fair amount of TV. Netflix’s Trainwreck: Woodstock 99 was a good documentary, although showing the footage of sexual assaults seemed unnecessary and violating. I tried The Sandman but gave up after a few minutes – I love the comics, but the adaptation felt twee and overly faithful. I’m glad other people are enjoying it so much. Westworld season 4 managed brief moments of genius but was, overall, tired and confused. I’ve also been catching up with Better Call Saul. I’m not sure why I’d stopped, particularly in the middle of a pandemic with so little else going on. Kate had been hyping it, and I’ve been enjoying watching remotely with her. Just a few episodes to go!
When Kit came up we watched Nicholas Cage metafiction The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent which was both fun and about twenty minutes too long. I also went on my first trip to the Picturehouse in Hebden Bridge to see Alex Garland’s Men. While I have quibbles with the movie, it was a great one to see in the cinema, with some amazing visuals.
Politically, Britain continues to feel like it’s in decline, with nothing good coming down the road. The energy price increases are shocking, given that they make it impossible for so many people to make ends meet. It seems incredible that a government would put a large proportion of the country in a position where rent, food and energy have risen to the point they simply cannot afford them. And that’s to say nothing of the costs to business, schools, and nurseries, which threaten a horrifying economic contagion. It’s terrifying, particularly given the lack of engagement by the Conservative party, who are distracted by their leadership campaign. I’m expecting Truss to take action once she is in power, but even so, putting people into a position like this is unacceptable. Nobody should be made anxious about how to heat their homes. The job of a government is to look after its people.
In just a couple of day’s time, I’m moving to Hebden Bridge! This has been in the works since mid-March, and the purchase has been a long and difficult process. But it all worked out in the end. There’s a huge amount to do, both before and after the move, but I am very excited.
Throughout much of July, it looked like the house purchase would not go through, so I tried to keep busy. I caught up with my old friend Liz in Leeds; Jen and Dave from Liverpool Arts Lab came by to pick up the Bodge back issues (it was a little emotional to say farewell to them). I also had visits from Naomi and Kate Shields. I went out with my niece to celebrate Mum’s birthday (everyone else had the rona), and got to see the pigs. A trip to sign paperwork also meant dropping by the Mindera offices in Leicester. I even tried to distract myself from house woes by attending a vogue class – ouch! My poor toes! Everyone was very friendly, but it felt weird to be the only man in the class, particularly when I had 20 years on everyone else.
I went to visit Muffy in Blackpool, and we watched Thor: Love and Thunder. In theory, Muffy lives a short hop down the train line, but returning from Blackpool on the Sunday took over 10 hours. It really does feel like this country is falling apart. Among my misadventures were a ride with a racist taxi driver. In my haste to exit his cab, I left my Kindle behind. Further problems in July came from an incompetent hosting company causing DNS issues and knocking out my email out for a few days.
I’ve not been doing much walking recently, and a planned hike along the Pennine Way was cancelled due to the mid-July heatwave. My step total for the month was 352,571, with an average of 11,373 steps, and the highest total being 27,341 on the day I was trapped in Blackpool. I also missed my daily target for the first day since probably 2019 – only by 32 steps, but that gives you an idea how stressful everything has been. I’m not sure if it’s been better eating habits, stress or the heat, but I lost 4.9 pounds over the month with very little effort. I’ve not been drinking since May and feel much better for that, although I am having a daily coffee again which I need to stop. I’m also benefitting from Sooxanne’s recommendation of Floradix, which seems to be reducing my tiredness.
I wrote one new story this month (The Appalling Fate of Henry Fluffstock) and sent 4 out. My stats for 2022 so far are 29 submitted, 5 accepted, 12 rejected. Two of July’s acceptances were for long horror stories, which is great. I also launched a new South Downs Way zine and didn’t really tell anyone – although I did get a very positive review from ZeenScene. I also read at the Todmorden open mic, which was great fun.
My reading in July has not really flowed, and I’ve found it hard to concentrate, despite reading some excellent books. One of the best things I’ve read in some time is Oliver Burkeman’s 4,000 Weeks. This turns the usual productivity advice on its head by starting with the fact that there will never be enough time, and we will never feel on top of our workloads. “Productivity is a trap. Becoming more efficient just makes you more rushed, and trying to clear the decks simply makes them fill up again faster”. Burkeman uses this as a basis for liberation. Highly recommended, and something that deserves its own blog post at some point.
Zakiya Dalila Harris’s The Other Black Girl was an excellent novel about racism, which sometimes felt like eavesdropping. Danny Goldberg’s Serving the Servant was a biography of Cobain by his manager, and an interesting angle on a singer who claimed to shun success. Bodies by Ian Winwood was a good book on mental health and addiction in the music industry, which I read following an brilliant excerpt in the Quietus. The awful journey from Blackpool was eased somewhat by standing in a crowded train next to someone reading Tabitha Lasley’s Sea State and getting to talk about what an excellent book that is.
Thor: Love and Thunder was everything a Marvel movie ought to be (including being a little disposable). I also watched Jennifer’s Body and Netflix Internet-horror Cam.We’re All Going to the World’s Fair was an interesting and moody film about the Internet and isolation. Everything Everywhere All at Once was as crazy and creative as people had promised. Sadly, I only got to watch the first half, as my friend wasn’t into it, but it’s definitely a film that demands to be rented again.
The TV highlight for July was Atlanta season 3, which was both flawed and one of the most interesting shows I’ve seen in years. Westworld continues its recovery – while not reaching the first season’s standard, the show is a massive improvement on seasons 2 and 3. One of my favourite things about ‘prestige TV’ is the discussion around it, and The Prestige TV Podcast has been excellent on Westworld and very, very good on Atlanta. I didn’t end up continuing with The Lazarus Project – there was just too much going on for me to follow much TV.
Stray on the PS4 is a short video game where you play a cat. The puzzles were perfectly pitched, with just a little struggle needed, and being a cat was fun. I also started replaying The Last of Us Part 2 on a permadeath mode.
When driving I listen to one of the two CDs in my car (Philip Glass’s Metamorphosis or Lana Del Rey’s Blue Banisters), or Radio 4. Travelling back from my Mum’s birthday, I listened to a radio 4 documentary Children’s Homes: Profits Before Care? The report was shocking, laying out how much the country pays for private children’s homes, how profitable they are for international players such as the Abu Dhabi Sovereign Wealth Fund, and how much worse the outcomes are for children in such homes. It was a shocking explication of how poorly we are being served by privatisation. The show is still available to listen to online.
British politics has continued to be a car-crash, with the Johnson government collapsing quickly – surprisingly due to someone else’s sex scandal. I was appalled that his ministers quit due to him being unsuitable for office and then left him in place. The Conservative leadership election is being played out against a background of a record-breaking heatwave and increasing energy prices. Both of these are terrifying, in the long-term and short-term respectively. For the energy cap, the government is faced with a choice between supporting energy company profits or people being able to heat their homes. It looks like we are choosing the profits, which makes plain the implications of years of privatisation. I don’t see this ending well.
artwork by Heather Peak and Ivan Morison
In a milestone of aging, during July I was asked by a teenager whether I “knew what hip-hop was”.
June has been a slow blur. The days are getting longer, and a dense heat is settling into my valley, more muggy than hot. The month started with the four-day Jubilee weekend, which seemed like a lot of fuss over nothing. I had my friends Sophie and Katharine both visiting and, with Katharine, walked a section of the Pennine Way, south from Ponden reservoir to Hebden Bridge. On the Saturday, I drove all the way to Brighton for one evening so that I could attend Rosy’s birthday party. It’s a long journey, and not one I’m likely to make often, but it was good to see everyone. The journey was made easier by stopping off at my sister’s both ways, where I got to see my parents, and of course, my niece’s pigs.
The following weekend was another celebration of Rosy’s birthday, with a boat journey on the river Thames. It’s been a long time since I went on a boating holiday. I loved it – the slow pace, red kites gliding above us, and finding good places to moor. The following week, I had my own birthday which was a little muted, before doing the Yorkshire Three Peaks with work (I’ve blogged about this in detail). June’s final weekend was spent in Blackpool. It’s been good to get out and about but I do wonder if I should have spent more time locally. Maybe soon. At the end of the month I had a visit from my old housemate Sooxanne, who came up for a little co-working.
My Yorkshire Three Peaks walk was the longest day’s hiking I’ve done, with a total of 66,178 steps. I managed a total of 367,125 steps for the month, which is an average of 12,237 a day. My weight was exactly the same at the end of the month as it was at the start, despite trying to eat a little better. I guess I need to put more effort in.
I’ve somehow managed to read 50 books so far this year, and most of them have been pretty good. I started June with Tender is the Flesh by Argentinian writer Agustina Bazterrica, one of the darkest things I’ve read. The book describes a world where, due to a virus, animals can no longer be eaten. Instead, humans are farmed and slaughtered for meat. The book was pitiless and uncomfortable. Leaving Mundania by Lizzie Stark described the author’s experiences with larping. This was entertaining, particularly when she described the world of Nordic larp.
I’d expected Andrew Allen’s Dictionary of Sussex Folk Medicene to be dry and obscure. Instead it’s one of the most vivid local histories that I’ve read. After finishing it I had a much clearer idea of life in mediaeval Sussex, and learned about oddities such as toad-eaters, leech catchers, and the use of walnut leaves to induce dwarfism – a historical precendent for the characters in Geek Love. I enjoyed Ben Myers’ new novel The Perfect Golden Circle, a strange and vivid book about crop circles. I also read Lucy Easthope’s When the Dust Settles, an account of her career in disaster preparation. It is terrifying in places, and scathing about how the Tory austerity has hollowed out disaster planning. A deeply worrying and unsettling book.
I’ve not watched a lot of TV this month. While Katharine was visiting we watched The Pennine Journey, an 80s documentary following a group of teenagers walking the trail. It was fascinating to see how different documentaries were back then. I also finished watching Dispatches from Elsewhere. The show was uneven, going from a stunning opening episode to a slightly flabby middle section, but the series was open-hearted and daring. Dispatches from Elsewhere was based on a documentary called The Institute and it was interesting to watch the source material for that. I tried watching Happy Valley, a police drama set around this area, but it was too grim for me. Is watching people being sexually assaulted really mainstream TV? I started a few new series at the end of the month that will take me into July: Atlanta Season 3, Westworld Season 4 and Sky’s The Lazarus Project.
I watched some movies this month (as well as The Institute). The Batman was yet another grimdark Batman story, making me long for the fun Adam West version. Sunshine felt like a bland cover version of Event Horizon, and I’m not sure why they made it. Being Frank; The Chris Sievey Story was a fascinating documentary about the man behind Frank Sidebottom.
After clearing my backlog in last month’s deluge of submissions, my pace this month was slower with only 3 things going out. My piece Holiday Wardrobe was read at Liars League by Jennifer Aries. I also wrote two new stories, a flash fiction called Glitch and a micro fiction about a bath haunted by John Lennon’s ghost. The next South Downs Way zine went off to the printers, and will be out next month. In July I’m going to focus on writing a batch of flash fictions about technology. And maybe work on the long-delayed book of clown stories.
I’ve also been doing a little blogging. Mostly things I didn’t want to let pass without mentioning, such as the return of Buck 65 and a ritual I was involved with back in March. I’ve finally got my programming blog running again, and had a piece on Test-Driven Development published on the Mindera blog. I also started a new website, which I’m adding content to but not announcing just yet. The only visitor so far was a bot in the early part of the month, but I’m enjoying working on it, slowly building to the point where it’s found or it’s detailed enough to announce.
It’s been another dramatic and chaotic month in politics, and it’s hard to keep up with everything. Covid is still in the background, despite the government actively ignoring in the hope it goes away. Throughout the pandemic, we’ve been dreading my parents catching coronavirus. Finally, after two years, my Dad caught covid – at the Download festival, no less. It was soon passed on to my Mum. We’ve been fortunate that the NHS has provided excellent treatment, reducing the virus to little more than an irritation, but it’s a reminder that the pandemic has not gone away. After growing lax about mask-wearing for a time, I am not back to wearing one more regularly, particularly in trains and shops. I’ve still not caught a symptomatic infection, and I’m not enthusiastic about the idea of coming down with it.
I did a lot during May and, looking back, it seems to have lasted a really long time. I started with a trip to Stratford to see Tom, which included a surprise boat ride. There were day trips to York and Blackpool, as well as a couple of hard days hiking, walking the Pennine Way between Malham and Ponden. I made a trip to Scarborough for Chillercon, which was inspiring, although travelling back to Halifax on the Sunday was complicated.
I also made my first trip to Brighton since moving, where I saw Rosy’s new show, Musclebound. She’s talked about this over the last few years and it was felt both strange and exciting to finally see the show. It’s an excellent piece, and I can’t wait to see what people make of it on tour. It was lovely to catch up with lots of friends but, even so, it was returning to Halifax that felt like coming home.
May has also been the most sociable month I’ve had since the pandemic started. I went on a couple of Ramblers’ walks, and attended Tod Writers and the UFO meet. I also finally made it to Halifax’s spoken word night Turn the Page, which was a lovely, warm community. The Centre for Folklore, Myth and Magic has opened in Todmorden and I visited for a talk on the UFO meet. I also had my friend Sophie come to stay. All this social activity was tiring, but it feels like I’m settling up here.
I’ve done more walking this month, which I suspect is down to the longer days. I walked a total of 380,559 steps, which makes a daily average of 12,276. My longest daily total was on the Pennine Way from Malham. Having been so busy, I managed only one fast day, but managed to lose about half a pound through sensible portion control.
I’m feeling a lot happier with my writing. Having hemmed and hawed, I’ve established a proper flow to my work. This involves new stories being submitted, as well as catching up with my backlog, and I sent out 18 pieces this month – more than ever before. Sending out the stories felt very positive. I wrote two new pieces of flash fiction – one about crypto-currencies and the other about a holiday, and I’m delighted that the latter was accepted by Liar’s League. I also have 2-3 booklets close to finishing, so something new will be published in June or July.
I read a lot in May. I’m not sure how I ended up finishing ten books, but it was a good mix. Among the highlights were:
Andrew McCloy’s The Pennine Way was a fascinating overview of the trail and its history.
Amy Liptrot’s The Instant was vivid and enjoyable, but could have been longer.
Plain Bad Heroines by emily m. danford was a compelling character-based gothic.
Bad Actors by Mick Herron was a fun, easy read but with less of the spark of the earlier books in the series.
Despite his reputation, I enjoyed Johann Hari’s new book Stolen Focus. Although it could have done with more fact-checking (at one point it mentioned an “85-page newspaper”), but its discussion of social media’s effects was striking.
A Libertarian Walks into a Bear was recommended by Tom. What happens when a group of small-government libertarians take over a town with a bear problem?
I finished William S. Burroughs vs the Qu’ran by Michael Muhammed Knight the same day that I learned Hakim Bey had died. Knight’s book is a transgressive and likely-blasphemous look at his muslim faith, which starts as a biography of Bey. Knight abandons the problem because he cannot find a way around Bey’s disturbing and problematic views. Knight’s writing is excellent about his membership of the Five-Percent Nation. It’s a messy, difficult book, and one of the most provocative things I’ve read in years.
Chums by Simon Kuper was heralded by some good newspaper excerpts. The book looks at how 80s Oxford has influenced the current state of the UK. Kuper blames the ascendancy of a shallow, bombastic Oxford-style for the current problems in the country.
I’ve not watched many TV shows or films. Pentaverate looked promising, but ended up being crude rather than witty. Dr Strange and the Multiverse of Madness was the usual Marvel-by-numbers: entertaining but not worth thinking too much about. I started watching Obi Wan Kenobi until it was obvious it wasn’t going to be as good as The Mandalorian (the only good Star Wars spin-off since 1999). The best thing I saw was South Korean mediaeval zombie thriller, The Kingdom; both epic and creepy, I’m taking a short break before Season Two rather than wolfing it down in one go. I’m now rewatching Dispatches frome Elsewhere which I started earlier this year and didn’t finish. I think I’m enjoying the early episodes even more a second time. The acting is phenomenal and delivers a script which could easily have felt hokey.
That state of the country has been depressing recently. Johnson seems to have evaded any censure from the Sue Gray report, while Starmer finds himself tangled up in the blowback from it. It’s a pretty good metaphor for parliamentary politics in general: Starmer makes good, clear points in PMQs, only for Johnson to sweep them aside. It’s depressing that this is the best we can do as a country. I’ve been grateful for the light relief of the Vardy/Rooney trial.
Looking back, May was quite a month. Socialising so much has made me nervous about infection, but I seem to have been OK. June looks like it could be at least as much fun.
