My Dad was a Coventry man. So was his dad, and his dad, my great-grandfather, the gloriously named Herbert Harry Harris. There are fewer Coventry Harrises now (hello, Uncle Mike) but when I was a boy there were plenty and we went there often. My memories of early childhood visits to Coventry, are mostly like …
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 …
In the first week of June, I broke three needles in the sewing machine that Miriam, Esther and Silas gave me for Christmas, and I stripped and rebuilt my bike. So I ordered more needles from the venerable haberdasher's William Gee of Dalston, got on my clean bike and went to get them. I tweeted …
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 …
I’ve been back from my holiday less than 24 hours and, weirdly, I’m already having trouble remembering exactly what happened. I know that sounds ridiculous but it’s really hard to get an overall sense of the thing. We stayed with our friend Isa and her family in Laramie, Wyoming, but instead of a sweeping cinematic …
My friend Ed came over to my house on Wednesday, to eat roast chicken and drink wine and laugh. I’ve known Ed for a long while and the talk was full of remembering other evenings, other friends and other dinners. Food is good like that. Tom knows that feasting pricks the memory such that one …
I’ve been thinking about remembering. I flatter myself to think that I have a good memory, for the useless as well as the useful. Sometimes they’re the same thing. For instance, I once won £20 from a quiz machine at Heston services on the M4 for knowing which sport is associated with the Drysdale Cup. …
On Monday, I went to a memorial service for a former colleague. These things are often a duty or an obligation, and it’s true that they're seldom an unalloyed pleasure. But this time I really wanted to be there, to honour the person we were remembering. At first, my colleague and I weren't exactly friends. …