Last December 8th, on a chilly, damp evening in South London, I experienced a sporting epiphany. It wasn’t the moment I finally realised I was never destined for Olympic glory. No. That had already come, many years earlier, when, in every sport I attempted, it quickly became clear that I would always be commended principally …
I had to go into the Ashmolean Museum Reserve Collections yesterday, to choose some objects to teach with next term. Now this is mostly very good. First of all, without giving away any crucial security secrets, the reserves are in a deep, dark basement, so it was relatively cool. And second, museum reserves are fundamentally …
I came to the sea this week and I swam in it and was remade. It’s breathtaking, the sea: the scale and unspoken threat of it, the sheer blank, power of it. And this is no ordinary sea. This is the deep, grey North Sea of Northumberland. And these are no ordinary swimming places. These …
There are many things I am not good at. I am a terrible guitarist. I cannot draw. I am barely numerate. But of all the things I do badly, the one at which I suck the most is undoubtedly cricket. Now, I grew up watching my Dad play cricket and I longed to be good …
On Saturday, I went to visit my friend Julian at his allotment. It’s an unpromising scrap of South London tucked in behind a pub; a chaotic patchwork of plots nestling alongside the waterworks in the shadow of the prison. We sat for a couple of hours by Julian’s shed, hemmed in by peonies and ranunculus, …
I am not a patient man. But I am quite capable of mistaking idleness for patience. It’s a clever trick. The mark of my last year has often been to do nothing and to think I’m patiently biding my time whereas in fact, I’m just impatiently and fretfully getting nothing done, hoping things will get …
The future troubles me. I worry about all sorts of stuff. These are not global concerns. I’m good with the great shifts of human and planetary history. No. With me, it’s the little things. When I was waiting for my children to be born, I fretted over what we would call them, about whether they’d …
The Census for England and Wales on Sunday was the first to record that my children are now all technically adults. This was the third time they’ve appeared in the census (and my sixth), each one a momentary snapshot of our individual and collective lives: who we are, what we are, where we are, where …
I like to think I know my friends, and what to expect from them: not much from Jack, who lives a mile away, but extreme affection from Steve, who lives in Australia. But occasionally, they surprise me. Last week, a friend of mine found an old piece of broken pottery in a rabbit hole and, …
Once upon a time, I went to watch my son Silas play lacrosse. Afterwards, as I stopped to put on a jumper, I took off my glasses and put them on the roof of the car. Now driving is pretty much the only thing I can do without glasses. So, I drove. I remembered, of …