Bye-Bye, Critic
A midday errand to the chemist's turns talkative — the Turkish shopkeeper, learning I once wrote film reviews, has some pointed thoughts on critics and their knives.
EssayTalk on the Tube
A night in Tooting for Sweeney Todd, then the train home, where the old appetite for eavesdropping returns — a book of Ibsen, a seat refused.
EssayHow Does One Make a Gin and Tonic?
A drink before Romeo & Juliet at the Rosemary Branch turns instructional — the new barmaid, Czech and teetotal, asks the customer to talk her through the gin and tonic she's about to pour him.
EssayFugitive Spaces
A morning's wandering on the working Thames at East Greenwich, two days before Christmas — somewhere between witness and trespass.
EssayThe Waterfalls of Riverside Park
A Sunday Nor'easter turns the gutters to torrents, and a walk towards the Hudson becomes a wade — knee-deep through a flooded Riverside Park, photographing the storm's own waterfalls down the stone steps.
EssayOn the Ice at Christmas
Somerset House's summer terrace is an ice rink now — mulled wine, three women arguing the proper way with cloves, a skater who could be my father, and a woman who has hurt herself on the ice yet worries only that her distress might trouble a stranger.
EssayAn Urban Fox
A barking dog, a crane's long shadow, and a well-fed fox who stops six feet off — the start of a brief, courteous, wholly one-sided acquaintance.
EssayA Most Serene Sunday
A clear Sunday and six rolls of film, and a whim that turns a Queen's Park errand into Little Venice — a hundred narrowboats with their silly names, a soot-dark church above the water, and an afternoon serene enough to forgive any decay.
EssayA Hint Within the Riddle
A soft, out-of-season evening draws a walk from Gospel Oak up to Parliament Hill — the first real scent of Spring, paragliders hunting the thermals, and the overheard pleasantries of families on the Heath.
EssayMadness in Berlin
Three friends, drunk and on the wrong train before New Year's Eve, count in broken German until they spill out into the snow — where a discarded orange chair starts hissing a single word back at them.
EssayCotton Echoes the Sky
A drive through rural South Carolina, where the flat land repeats itself like rear-projection — racetrack, hound pack, red-capped hunters — and the cotton fields take their colour from the late-October sky.
EssayA Bicycle in Barons Court
Outside Barons Court, where the mansion blocks sit sealed against the street, a woman wobbles past on a bicycle — a slab of white garden lattice under one arm, threading the pavement posts without stepping down.
EssayThe Oranges of Valencia
A few January days in Valencia's old quarter — the sheer plenitude of the Mercat Central, Turrell's light at the IVAM, and a city that comes alive at night.
EssayNew Year's at Brighton
A New Year's Eve in Brighton among strangers — a child marshalling guests up flight after flight, champagne on the pebbles at midnight, and a host groping for words for the old pier's wheeling birds.