All the things I do instead of writing…
Adrien Brody is a great actor. He plays every part he takes with an amusing seriousness, and The Pianist made me cry, a lot. Unfortunately, with the exception of that film, his greatest gift seems to be picking the worst scripts ever created. I just wasted some more of my life watching Splice, a 2009... Continue Reading →
On the 20th June, we drove out of Finsbury Square towards the Blackwall Tunnel with a car full of ropes, hardware, a posh tent, an ultra-light cooker and in my case absolutely no idea what I was letting myself in for. It was my first climbing trip to the Alps, and while I had done... Continue Reading →
I've been on two short climbing trips recently - or more accurately one climbing trip and one bouldering. We decided on a long weekend in the Frankenjura, a part of German that is known in German as the "Fränkische Schweiz", not to be confused with "Sächsische Schweiz", which is another big climbing area, but is... Continue Reading →
In an effort to prepare for the hideous chaos that will be the London Olympics in 2 weeks' time, I ran home from work yesterday. For some reason, I constantly think that Liverpool Street to West Hampstead will take me an hour to run, which it never does. So after an hour I got a... Continue Reading →
The recent purchase of Instagram by Facebook amused me, not least the idea that a company valued at 100 times' earnings feels it can spend $1 billion on another company that makes no money at all. Basic economics obviously don't trouble people's consciousness any more now than they did in the South Sea bubble. The... Continue Reading →
I dislike horror movies. The world is full enough of evil people to find the idea of watching sadistic cruelty on screen very unappealing. Perhaps people like the comparative relief that their own everyday hassles aren't quite on the same scale. A nasty boss making you work late is after all not quite as bad... Continue Reading →
The thing that makes travel writing so difficult is that one starts to live in the moment so immediately, and absorbs the reality of a very different environment. I then no longer think to make notes of moments that would be utterly bizarre if they happened in England, but so unremarkable here that it seems... Continue Reading →
In a bored moment, I wondered whether climbing really is all that dangerous - so of course I googled it. As most people know - or certainly most people who've worked with Google AFS - the predictive text that shows up when you type in a search phrase is ranked in order of search frequency,... Continue Reading →
I spent a week in March 2012 on a Jagged Globe Introduction to Winter Mountaineering, based in Ballachulish, near Glencoe in the Western Highlands of Scotland. On the whole, it was a great course and a really good holiday. Unexpectedly though, its major feature was a lot of reflection on the nature of aging, and... Continue Reading →
I don't know what planet Danny Boyle was on when he accepted the screenplay for Sunshine. I have obviously completely forgotten about The Beach, and my dislike of anything involving Alex Garland. In fact, I think I'll try to weave the question of whether people like The Beach into all first dates from now on.... Continue Reading →
The resting writer 