The Deserving Poor

It’s long been forgotten, but there was a mini-recession between 2000 and early 2003. It occurred largely due to the dot com bust, an event which seems a mere firecracker going off in comparison to the nuclear detonation that is our present crisis. However, I was negatively affected by the downturn: the company for which […]

Review: “Red Plenty” by Francis Spufford

[AMAZONPRODUCT=0571225233] It’s rare to see anything brave or daring emerge from a mainstream publisher these days. For the most part, they are inhibited by those who cling more dearly to accounts ledgers than fine literature and as a result are perpetually unprepared to take a risk on anything new. Truly, they seem to be more […]

Slavoj Zizek: Living in the End Times

A lengthy but illuminating exposition of Zizek’s latest batch of ideas:

Losing Generations

It has been nearly a month since I graduated. My life is slowly returning to its normal rhythms, and typical work weeks and work days lay ahead for the foreseeable future. My initial thoughts about moving to America have faded, lost in the incessant drone of talk radio, which I perhaps misguidedly tuned into in […]

An American Mess

I think it was while we were on Avenue Franklin D. Roosevelt in Paris that my father told me that he and my mother wouldn’t be visiting Europe in 2011. We were taking a stroll after visiting an exhibition of Spanish art at the Musée Jacquemart-André; they were going to have a wander, I was […]

Graduation Daze

As I write this, I am sitting on a futon in Rotherhithe. Just outside my window, the sun is up, and powerful breezes are gusting through the yard. A bird sings a cacophonous tune. To my left, my suitcase, prone on the floor, awaits being refilled with what I’ve taken out of it before I […]

Cuts and Casualties

Yesterday, I became aware of a horrific case in Peterborough. The local primary care trust, in its infinite wisdom, had left a man (named Terence Burch) who is paralysed from the neck down due to a spinal infection, without the care to which the trust had said he was entitled. His wife Angela, exasperated by […]

Farewell to Yesterday

It is difficult to predict, but my blog posting may become more sporadic for a time. This is not due to a lack of things to write about; no doubt the worrisome news that is presently streaming out of Whitehall and Westminster will continue to flow unabated. However, I have a lot to do over […]

Better and Worse

My grandfather liked to tell the following anecdote: one day, a man is walking down a street, when he spots his friend approaching him. Upon closer inspection, the man notices that his buddy has a rubber band around his head. Upon greeting him, the man asks, “Why do you have a rubber band around your […]

To Breed or Not to Breed

Last night, I spoke to my father on the telephone. There were a number of matters we discussed, some heavy, some lighthearted, however one thing he said particularly stuck in my mind. He stated that a chapter in my life was ending, another was soon to begin. He finished off the conversation by reminding me […]

Me And My Blog

Picture of meI'm a Doctor of both Creative Writing and Manufacturing and Mechanical Engineering, a novelist, a technologist, and still an amateur in much else.