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Sop
People don't believe me when I say I'm soppy. I cry at ads. Honest. To prove it, I like this:
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And anyway, we lost
I have met the man who wrote this. He is exactly as the piece sounds: full of himself, war-hungry. My favourite paragraph:
Nick hadn't always been a mercenary. For many years he had been part of a Reconnaissance Commando unit in apartheid South Africa's elite Special Forces, seeing action across southern Africa. I found it hard to identify ( Read more... ) -
Water
When I was an intern at The Nation in New York, Christopher Hitchens was on the staff. I think he's a fabulous writer, but what I remember about him was the office story that he paid for his mistress's abortion with his wife's credit card. Anyway here he is being drowned. Two stunning things: it takes five seconds. And who on earth invented this? I ( Read more... ) -
RRR
OK it's been a while. I had this book to write you see. Now it's finally, finally done and I have abandoned shit for a day of firsts and R's. The first R is for roller coaster. I am writing about roller coasters for the Telegraph, because they asked me to, so I drove to Alton Towers - 3.5 hours each way - for a 45 second ride on Nemesis, apparently ( Read more... ) -
Puns
A Salt and Battery. Etc. -
Grown-up
I have written for the Guardian, Independent and even the Economist, but for some reason writing for the New York Times has made me scared like nowt else. I mean, they fact-check (unlike publishers). -
Music
This has made me smile. Thank you, Dr. Carl Winter of UC Davis. You have to listen to the words, obviously, to find out how to stop microbes spreading all over the land.
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