it’s been all bloody go here at the HQ of the Official Hawkinge-By-Hythe Historical Society. First, I had those man sniffles, then a sudden change in weather gave me a migraine. And then I got lumbago. Look, I hate making a fuss, but I’m putting my foot down – carefully, because of the lumbago – whoever has the Morgan voodoo doll, could you stop now, please? The internet tells me “lumbago” is an “outdated term for lower back pain”, and I agree. We should all be using the more evocative German...
5 days ago • 1 min read
Made you look, you dirty duck. Made you look for nothing. That’s the version we sang as children after tricking someone into looking at nothing. Or “gnaw-tin” with the proper Irish accent. Different places around the world have different versions of the song. Perhaps you were a dirty crook rather than a duck. Or at risk of being turned into turtle soup. But the game is best played in Germany, where they don’t seem to know it. When we moved to Heidelberg, our flatmate Anne loved to suddenly...
12 days ago • 1 min read
Listen. Do you hear that? Numbers, floating in the air around us. Trying to tell me something. Listen. It can’t be a coincidence because in my next book, The Cat Wore Black, radios come to Hawkinge-By-Hythe. People love them. Radio gives them all sorts of things. Music, news, entertainment. And when the station stops broadcasting at night, the radios transmit strange random numbers. Which gives them the willies. Then I read in Wired that plastic surgeons use the formula of the Fibonacci...
19 days ago • 1 min read
as the days contract, leaking inky night into the cold evenings, we need more music. And there’s a final Bandcamp this year, on December 5th, so here’s what I think you should get. AVTT/PTTN is The Avett Brothers (American folk-rock) with Mike Patton (Faith No More, Fantomas, Mr Bungle, etc.). And that’s exactly what you get: Mike Patton doing things to rock songs. Sold, but I still want that next Fantomas album, please. Next! There’s something very wrong with a world where the Sleaford Mods...
26 days ago • 1 min read
I knew I was special while still a child. Eating spoonfuls of Marmite is probably what gave it away. Do you know Marmite? Australians have a similar thing called Vegemite, if that helps? Okay, look. Imagine soya sauce. Now imagine someone dumped enough yeast into soya sauce to make it thick and sludgy – mmm, thick and sludgy! That’s Marmite. Don’t get me wrong, I ate other things as a child. Cheese sandwiches. Tomato sandwiches. Er, cheese and tomato sandwiches. But those were meals. If I...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
I’m a sucker for great names, and today I’ve got one of the best. There’s a German guy here in Georgia selling wine. And his name is: Hilarius Pütz. Go look up Hilarius Pütz Wines. I know you don’t believe me. See? Hilarius is the name of a 5th century pope, as well as the 4th century bishop nicknamed the Arian Hammer. From the Greek for “cheerful”. A popular male name during the Middle Ages, since the 20th century eclipsed in popularity by the female version, Hilary. I can’t be as certain...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
My uncle was the joker in the family, and he had 2 favourite jokes. One was about a dog in the Wild West searching for the man who shot his paw. The other was to pretend outrage whenever he saw an ad for “DC Exhausts.” There were a surprising number of these ads in Dublin, usually on the backs of buses. My uncle’s initials were DC, so he enjoyed pretending it was a public service announcement warning that he, DC – my uncle – made people tired. Rather than it being an ad for car parts. He...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
Hey there, Instead of writing, I was procrastinating with a newspaper article on interior design. Then I wasn’t procrastinating, because I had my story. Seven Secrets Interior Designers Don’t Want You To Know: 1. Interior design is all about lamps. You can replace an interior designer with a truckload of fancy lamps. Bear in mind, though, lamps are for ambiance, not lighting. Only use bulbs that provide about as much light as a hot carrot. 2. All interior designers want to tell you about...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
Hey there, While still in school, my friend and I (Hey, John!) went to the Aran Islands by ourselves for Halloween. Nowadays, you’d be arrested if you let your children go alone to a group of islands off the west coast of Ireland, but back in the “good old days,” it was fine. Actually, around that time, myself and John wrote some poetry, so possibly we were *sent* to the Aran Islands to make us stop. Who can say? Anyway. Everyone got into the Halloween spirit. Either you put on a mask and...
2 months ago • 1 min read
