In northern Holland there’s a bar that’s spooky as hell. You descend a flight of steps, beckoned from the street by the unearthly orange glow of a room lit only…

Alexa misheard me. I was after ‘Scipio’, a gentle rock/classical track from Sky, but instead I got something a lot heavier, ‘Scorpio’, by someone I also misheard and straight away…

From the ground to the sky. Or, a quick trip down the Piccadilly Line.      The Piccadilly Line is a ladder, with rungs all the way down from Cockfosters to…

From July-October 2022, I did a sponsored Million Steps Challenge for Diabetes UK. Friends were hugely generous, and I look back on it as quite an adventure, often setting off…

The Twinkle.      I think the idea was to stop me going mad. I was becoming abrasive and quick to let people know about it.  So let’s go to Dublin.…

     Well, I couldn’t just call this piece ‘Politics’ could I, no-one would read it. They probably wouldn’t go near ‘Politicians’ either, as millions of words have been written about…

What a Wonderful World…      …it would be without us.      I watch a lot of nature and wildlife programmes. They’re real balm to the headlong madness of living as…

This is the narrative for a piece called The Scourged Back, see also The Virtual Venue or The Shop. Strong stuff, and a true story. Trigger Warning. At the end…

     A couple of friends and I went hiking for a week, and covered quite a bit of the Lake District. We were 6th-formers, me at a school in Cumbria,…

A short motivational tour.      If students seem discouraged, I often tell them that playing an instrument can take you to amazing places all over the world, and that I…