I bought new pants last week. This is not a common occurrence. I am careful to keep my things in good order but pants, like everything else, are subject to the law of entropy. Pants wear out. Even mine. So, I bought new pants. But as I always do, when I do buy new pants, …
The end of November is frightening. December arrives and we’re suddenly sliding inexorably towards the holidays, towards the end of term, towards rest - but also towards deadlines and cut-off dates. These, to me, are moments of extreme stress. Once, when I was a student, I found myself very, very lost on the wrong side …
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 …
For about a year now I’ve had an unpleasant rash on my forehead. I have a back that packs up from time to time and a shoulder that periodically keeps me awake at night. My right ankle is a bit shonky from getting kicked playing football against Stockwell YMCA and then falling downstairs onstage during …
Christmas makes me feel a little vulnerable: the pressure to get it right; the sheer, spiraling cost of it; the need for everyone to be jolly. What if I fail? It makes me want to run away. I went for a run recently, in the countryside, and found myself in a field where, in the …
Today, Chris, is not a good day. Immediately after I leave you I am off to the dentist. Now my dentist is very nice but I would rather walk blindfolded the wrong way down the M1 than have to visit him. I am scared of the dentist. So scared that I seldom go, which everyone …
When I was small, I didn’t like the dark. It wasn’t that I thought there were monsters lurking; it was a physical thing. I didn’t like the darkness of it, the thickness, the feeling of it closing around me. I didn’t like the unknown silence of it, the quietness into which my own heartbeat might …
I was in the car yesterday when I suddenly realised it was Tuesday morning and I’d forgotten this Pause for Thought. Forgotten to write it. Forgotten to come to the studio. Forgotten the whole thing. It was a horror show. I pulled over. I started to go over the previous 24 hours to try to …
Like many of us, I’m back to work today, the first Monday of the new year. As soon as I leave here, I’ll be on the bus to Oxford with a long to-do-list: lessons to prepare, courses to plan, colleagues and students to see, admin to keep up with, research to start, writing to finish. …
It’s half term. We are surrounded by our children. Actually, my family are all on holiday while I’m at work and I am in no way grumpy or ungracious about that. Obviously. But it’s had me thinking rather wistfully about the summer, when we went all together to Brighton for a day of beach, fish, …