I’m sitting in the dim of my room, early evening of a hot, hot day, begrudging the fan that only spins air that tickles and taunts, never really cooling. It’s only November and already summer has fallen down upon us like a ton of bricks. As I sit wishing I could throw my annoyance at the weather-gods, I wish I had spent my late afternoon at the beach or the pool, for then I wouldn’t be so prematurely weary with summer. Instead I spent my free time reading and snacking on tea and biscuits. And now I think of the time I’ve shamefully been a-wastin’, and all the thousands of other uses I could have put my afternoon to.


This permanent shadow of doubt that lingers over me, leaving me with a perpetual sinking feeling that there is something else I should be doing is much worse than the unwelcome heat. However I rack my brain I can’t think what it is I should be doing. And that, quite simply, is because there really is nothing else I should be doing. Yet despite no task being forgotten or mislaid, I suffer under the inescapable feeling that whatever is not work, is morally reprehensible time wasting. In those free moments in which I pick up my book, I am haunted by an impeccably guilty conscience drummed into me by years of study. Ill at ease I look over my shoulder, watching out for the essay that must be hanging over my head like an axe about to fall.

But there is nothing there, and so I begin to fret. Because surely, there must be something I have to rush of and do? Surely there must be something I don’t want to do but have to do, ready and waiting to disturb my free time?

Here I could begin my thesis, on the ultimate unattainability of true freedom, but instead, I think I shall devote my time to learning how to master the art of joyously doing Sweet Fuck All.

One Tragic Moment

I saw someone getting CPR today. Driving home we came to an intersection where a car and a motorcycle had come head to head in a way they were never designed to. A man lying prostrate surrounded by a crowd, his body hopelessly floppy as a stranger pumps at his chest, breathing for him on the kerbside. I didn’t see the accident, I didn’t see whose fault it was or how the motorcycle must have flown and skidded, flinging its two passengers aside. I didn’t see the witness hastily pull over and spring from their cars. All I saw was the chaos that ensued, desperate moments in which from one tick of the second hand to the next, someone’s life becomes a big flashing question mark. The scene is bubbling and boiling, spinning around a helmet and a mangled bike.

It stirs a mixture of emotions to drive past, a mere witness to calamity as I carry on about my way.

But imagine you were on your way home, driving up to a traffic lights, switching radio stations, hitting the indicator -then all of a sudden the moment is torn open by an enormous roar – the screech of brakes, metal on metal, skin on bitumen. Instead of carrying on home like all regular trips along this road, you become the difference between life and death for this motorcyclist, as you rush to his aid. Others stop, their way barred by blood and crushed metal. They call emergency services, direct traffic around the accident, stop the life from flowing out of someone’s arteries and onto the road. Will you walk away from this a hero? Will you walk away from this heavy with regret, despite the fact that you did all you could do, and nothing but God could have saved him?

Imagine instead you were driving straight along the street, you indicate right, turning when the way looks clear and then, seemingly born out of air itself, comes a motorbike carrying two people, and it is you that drives right through them. Their bodies crush the front of your car while the front of your car pounds the life from them. When the screeching ends you stand by the wreckage and you breath. You panic. You’re bleeding but you’re ok. You’re ok but you may have just killed someone.

In an instant, one tragic moment, your world and theirs become permanently entwined. Others drive past, deeply aware it could have just as easily been them, and carry on their way.

I hate apostrophes.


The plight of the poor, humble apostrophe seems to be the talk of the town. The demise of the proper use of the apostrophe is a reoccurring topic amongst grammar-nazis, practically every time I open a newspaper an apostro-freak or other grammar enthusiast is busy mourning the end of the English language as we know it. Today, buoyed by another violent disagreement with the evil piece of punctuation, I’ve decided to weigh into the debate just to register my opinion that I don’t give a damn that no one respects them anymore. I hate apostrophes. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not some kind of radical anti-grammar anarchist, nor do I suffer from a lack of belief in good spelling (i just fail, time and time again, at exhibiting this quality.) But apostrophes baffle, bemuse and down-right abuse me. Despite getting top of English in high school and having a university degree (gloat gloat gloat) I still haven’t got the hang of the bastards. You may have already noticed, in fact it may be painfully, torturously apparent to you that I don’t really know what I’m doing with apostrophes but let’s (the little blue line that just appeared there informed me I was missing a certain ‘ )be frank, if I could go back in time and find the guy who invented apostrophes – he’d be dead in an instant. It’s not my fault really. It’s the education system, its the rise of the “Microsoft Word will fix it” mentality - society in general (but never the individual) is to blame for the fact that apostrophes, long division and the ability to spell tomorrow and tomatoes correctly and consistently (without spell check), remain outside my understanding. So, having got that off my chest, all I have to do now is sit back and wait for the day when the apostrophe finally ceases to torment me and passes firmly into the realm of antiquity...