One rainy night recently I lost my keys. I dropped them as I ran for a bus in Brixton and didn’t notice until, almost on the doorstep, I felt for them in my pocket and they were gone. I was very upset. My keyring has among its many links a piece of bike chain, coins …
On Monday, I rebuilt my bike. It’s a twice-yearly ritual and one of my most satisfying. Stripping it down to the bare frame, every part laid out on the kitchen table from the bottom bracket to the brake blocks, everything examined and inspected, cleaned and polished, is a ruminative, meditative exercise. It’s the moment when …
Morning, Chris. Let me start by saying that I’m very happy to be here. Happy to be out of the house, glad it’s Monday. Part of this, obviously, is that I love my work, my colleagues, my students. But it’s also something else. You see, it has emerged, over the past couple of days, that …
I read the news today. Oh boy. Some days, I wish the news really were fiction and today is a morning like that, because it’s a morning, like too many these days, when the news seems barely believable. The dreadful fire now burning in West London is too awful to contemplate, and the thought that …