Brief observations from a holiday in northwest Crete – the home of kalitsounia, daredevil pilots and herds of cats Crete is the birthplace of Zeus, the god of sky, lightning and thunder. (His birth was a clandestine affair, and took place in a cave to avoid the attention of his paranoid and infanticidal father, Kronos). […]
Crete: gods, fighter pilots and cheese parcels Read More »
This is how it begins, although it ends very quickly: I’m with my wife, standing in a shared greenspace in a coastal region. We’re very close to our house (which is not our real house) and we live on what looks like a newbuild estate. There are multiple people around us, returning from the beach
Dream diary: Civil Defence Alert and Nuclear Shockwave Read More »
A wine bar in Soho. On the wall, there’s a black and white portrait photograph of a well-dressed, elderly lady. She’s smoking a cigarette. One can imagine she’s probably wearing her best frock. Maybe she’s attending a grandchild’s wedding, in the East End. I stare at the picture for a moment, then I make my
London Lucky Dip: fireworks and a window cleaner’s eyes Read More »
I’m supposed to attend a superhero fancy dress party very soon, and I may have found the perfect accessory. I find myself on the second floor of a cosy independent clothes shop. It’s evening, sometime in late autumn, maybe in the past. I’ve discovered a replica of the cowl that Michael Keaton wore in his
Dream diary: the bargain Batman Read More »
I’ve been introduced to the next big technological innovation: cars that shrink or expand in a matter of seconds. For reasons that I cannot remember, I’m the new custodian of one of these vehicles. In its current state, it looks like nothing more than a large radio-controlled car, roughly the size of a shoebox. When
Dream diary: test-driving the future Read More »
Day four of our brief visit to Kefalonia, and the pockets of my swimming shorts are filling up with rocks We have arrived, by dint of a wrong turn, at the wrong beach. This is not a sandy beach on the southern tip of the island, but a pebbly beach further north along the eastern
Kefalonia: stray cats and spanakopita Read More »
The fishing boats follow the fish. The turtles follow the fishing boats. The tourists follow the turtles. A small group of visitors clusters around the edge of the quay at Argostoli, waiting for the reemergence of a loggerhead from beneath the stern of a sleek 11m sailing yacht. Loggerhead turtles glide in the these waters,
Kefalonia: loggerhead turtles and strapatsada Read More »
The place is already humming with activity by the time we arrive. The temperature is in the high 20s this morning, and many South London families have made a beeline for the paddling pool, high on the common. The circular pool is secluded from the rest of the common, surrounded by a hedge and an iron
Crossing the Gates of Eden Read More »
A carpark in Croydon. Speaking to a male acquaintance with growing incredulity, a woman is relaying an urgent phone call that she recently took from a friend. “She said ‘I was repainting my flat, naked.’” The woman pauses, then poses the obvious rhetorical question. “Who paints naked?”. This seems a reasonable line of inquiry to
London Lucky Dip: painting naked and adopting house plants Read More »
Gilbert Arenas is virtually unknown in the UK, where only the most famous and marketable NBA players enjoy any name recognition. In 2021, the Guardian described him as a ‘clownish Steph Curry antecedent turned podcast host.’ I wouldn’t have any idea who Arenas was, but for encountering a strange and memorable magazine profile in 2006:
The Mid-Noughties Ghost of Gilbert Arenas Read More »
