misc.
Coincidence? Maybe.
One of the great mysteries of the universe is the birthday phenomenon. You know, the one that says that if you’re in a group of twenty-three people, there’s a 50% chance that two of you will have the same birthday. OK, that’s interesting. But what’s more interesting is how likely you are to discover that two [...]
Fifty-four
I know I’m prejudiced, but I don’t think it helps to be a huge success early in life. Too much struggling to keep up the good work, too many people saying (cf, Woody Allen) that they liked the earlier funnier stuff better, too much of a sense that life is a long, slow dwindling of [...]
Oxford redux
So I dusted myself down from the hunt (hosed, more like — I was soaked to the skin and covered in mud), staggered home from West Sussex and fell into bed. The damned clocks would choose last weekend to go forward, so up at 6am to get dressed and organized for the Oxford Literary Festival. [...]
Wrestling With The Angel
Every writer I know has lousy days and weeks when nothing goes right, waking up each morning to do battle with the little voice in the back of the head that shrieks “YOU’VE LOST IT!” We’re all in the same leaky boat. One of my favourite e-mails came from Hilary Mantel, to whom I wrote [...]
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