It’s a fortnight since I wrote my last blog on - you guessed it - Coronavirus, which certain persons close to home suggested was alarmist, depressing, over-reactive etc. But it wasn’t hard to guess that where Italy led we would follow - even if we are a few paces behind. If I sound like a…
Half Moon Lane can be chilly at this time of the year, but I am basking in the warm glow of a job well done. It's nearly a week since a very successful event at Herne Hill Station and I am still asking myself how we did it. In under six months we planned and…
I am going to shamelessly plug myself this week. But why write a blog if you are going to be shy? I thought I'd finished writing my story The Scholar & The Black Spider six months ago, but every time I looked at it I saw that it needed a wee tweak here and there.…
In 1979, at the start of my second post-graduate year in Oxford, I was awarded the prestigious and lucrative Osma Studentship. I was required to spend at least six weeks in Madrid. Not that I was complaining. I immediately spent a good chunk of the money on a Shergold double-neck guitar (so far, not a…
In 1983, as previously confessed in this blog, I was living in east Oxford grinding away at my thesis. One of the other post-grads I got to know was Paul (a Pole with a German passport), who was studying at Wolfson and, in theory, writing a thesis on Hölderlin. We became friends. He had a…
I'd had enough of working for a living, at least for a while, so I moved back to Oxford to be with my girlfriend Hilary. I joined Bernard's band, together with my old schoolmate Andrew, our fellow housemate Wiff, and a young classically-trained drummer from New College called Paul. We added a female singer, a…
Until this year, I'd never written anything longer than a few thousand words (apart from my M. Litt. thesis, and that was more than three decades ago). I suddenly got the urge to write a story. Its origin was an entirely uneventful trip to an art gallery in Mayfair. I am a terrible typist, but…
The Wight Stuff 