Language is fossil poetry. This is a story about scent, that strangest of our senses, which arises when a volatile chemical compound binds to a receptor in our nose and sends a signal through our olfactory system to the deepest seat of emotion, memory and learning in our brain. But because this is also a … Continue reading Towards A Dictionary Of Scent
I hold strong opinions. Dangerously strong opinions. The way that the human brain works, strong opinions like mine can lead to political breakdown, financial collapse and even death 💀 Most human beings hold at least a few strong opinions thanks to something called the confirmation bias. Duh, duh, DUH. Because of, I dunno, evolution or … Continue reading 27 Things I Used To Believe And Now Completely Don’t
In 58 days over the summer of 2011, I cycled 4,110 miles around the coast of Britain. A decade later, in the foreshortened world of 2020, what better time was there to set out on a journey I’d always promised myself I would one day retrace? But now, ten years older and wiser, instead of … Continue reading 58 Days In Memory’s Universal Flux Cycling around Britain Part IV
Day 1: Kings Lynn to Boston (66km) Resuming where I left off two years ago, today I rode from Kings Lynn to a canalside camp just the other side of the lovely market town of Boston. I’m dressed for Bournemouth, where it’s already summer, and today I froze in a biting northerly wind. Tomorrow I … Continue reading Round Britain IV: Cycling Diaries Kings Lynn to Ravenscar
I’m currently sitting in Sanders Yard Bistro, hidden away in a historic potted plant courtyard, a sharp cobbled descent down the looming cliff of Whitby Abbey. It’s been more than 300km since I rode out of Kings Lynn, picking up from where I left off in 2020. This is the fourth leg of my recapitulation … Continue reading Cycling Connections from Kings Lynn to Whitby
Ravenscar. The last time I was here I was desperately searching, with the help of my dad (long suffering telephonist for round Britain cyclist) for Ravenscar youth hostel. As darkness, rain and sea all closed in on the cliffs below me, I despaired, and threw my bike, my bivvy bag and myself under a bush … Continue reading How To Sleep In A Tent: A Story 11 Years In The Making
Today I’m going to build on everything that I wrote last week, encorporating as many of your wonderful contributions as I can. In fact, last Saturday, I got so excited by your responses that I had to make a load of changes to the original article, so please go and read that if you haven’t … Continue reading The Man Sloth Mode Diaries Do you enforce and enact traditional sexual scripts of male sexual control to get your rocks off? Okaaay…
For about a year, I did nothing. From November 2016 until October 2017, I was in what I have learned to call man sloth mode. Honestly, apart from writing the first radio series of Foiled (which I never would have done without the impetus of Beth Granville), I can’t remember a single thing I did … Continue reading Man Sloth Mode From November 2016 until October 2017, I was in what I have learned to call man sloth mode.
On Monday, I pulled on a wetsuit and jumped into the ocean with a surfboard. I’ve lived in Bournemouth now for about two years so it was about time. After watching a few pro videos to see how it’s really done, I realised, with some trepidation, that surfing is exactly like snowboarding, except you’re being … Continue reading Surfing And The Blue Mind Surfing is exactly like snowboarding, except you’re being chased by an avalanche.
Welcome to the First Class carriage of the 9.10 from Barcelona to Paris. I wouldn’t normally travel First Class, but these were the cheapest seats by far (€49) — a fact abundantly evident in the crowded aisles of the carriage. There’s a family of five occupying the three seats ahead of me (fair play to … Continue reading The Travel Triangle Heat, Fuel and Air. Oh no, wait – that’s the fire triangle. So what’s the travel triangle?
Science might say that laughter releases endorphins that support your immune system, can provide a palliative to long term illness, moderate sensations of intense pain and reduce your risk heart disease by relaxing your arteries. Journalists around the world have celebrated this vindication of the pernicious claim that ‘laughter is the best medicine’. It’s all … Continue reading Not The Best Medicine You might meet today with ‘inquisitive, ungrateful, violent, treacherous, envious, uncharitable men’. Maybe they’re suffering from a twisted omohyoid.
This vegan flapjack almost caused a riot on the last Thighs of Steel London ‘club’ ride. Dense, nutritious, spicy and with a strong chocolate bite. What more could you want after a beasty climb? The base flapjack recipe is inspired by Andrew Hardwick. Ingredients 125g porridge oats 125g jumbo oats 150g vegan block 100g crystallised … Continue reading Thought For Food #4: Chocolate Ginger Thighs Flapjack
This story is coming to you live from the tramways, Thai eateries and new build blocks of Paris. Yes! For the first time since December 2019, more than 800 sleeps ago, I’m not in the United Kingdom. By my calculations, this is the longest period that I’ve spent inside the borders of the UK in … Continue reading Rudenoise Under the very silly tour guidance of The Tim Traveller, where else, of all the entrepots, bordellos and gin-joints of the world, would we end up but here.
As you may have noticed this week, The News. One of the things that people say they appreciate about his newsletter is that I don’t tend to respond to current affairs. So I won’t do that today either. (Except in this one bolded, italicised sentence, where I hope you will join me in a primal … Continue reading Respect The Hormones ‘I want to see what is going on,’ he said. ‘So many great events are happening, and I’m not there to see them. I’m learning nothing here that will do me any good.’
It’s been nice to spend a little time catching up with some of the new research supporting the thesis behind my (somewhat delayed) 2015 book You Are What You Don’t. The thesis of the book is simple: It’s pretty obvious that we are what we do. It’s less obvious, but no less formative, that we … Continue reading Call Me Baby Are you emboldened to hit CALL instead of SEND? Do you more often swipe right to answer instead of left to reject? Have you learned to love again the sound of the human voice?
I’ve owned the Corollavirus for a year now and today the poor beast went in for its MOT. I’ve just heard news that it’s failed, quite comfortably. In a way, I’m glad — the handbrake was starting to feel really quite dangerous and, while I have no idea what an ‘excessively worn offside front inner … Continue reading 48.3 Mature Trees
I know how enthralled you all were by my breakdown of every single Dylan album (see 88 Percent Perfection), so it was only a matter of time before I inflicted the same analysis on The Beatles. I went through every single Beatles song on every single canonical Beatles album (except Yellow Submarine because: huh?) and … Continue reading The Beatles: Not As Good As Dylan
Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity … Continue reading Is the answer to this question ‘no’? Yes
The end-of-year rush to reach 100 adventures has passed — I actually ended up with 102 due to an accounting error and a wonderful New Year’s Eve hike through Dartmoor. And so here we are again, back at zero. Or one, thanks to a wonderful New Year’s Day hike through Dartmoor. Start as you mean … Continue reading 100 Days of Adventure 2022
Rhabdomancy is the use of a rod (rhabdo-) for the purpose of divination (-mancy), specifically the technique of using a dowsing rod to find underground sources of water or minerals. Needless to say, rhabdomancy is about as effective as haruspicy, the least vegan of all the ancient divination practices. I stumbled across rhabdomancy by complete … Continue reading Word Of The Week: Rhabdomancy
And welcome to the final hours of 2021. Behind us lie 8,744 of those tidy little parcels, sixty minutes each. Sixteen more rush toward you on the railway tracks of time. You’ll probably want to spend those sixteen hours in revelry or reflection, but if you find yourself with a few spare minutes, then here’s … Continue reading 52 Things I Learned In 2021
Leaving the car at the Picket Plain viewpoint, I stumbled quickly through heath and gorse and mud, using the light of the moon to see the pathshine and feeling my way over the contours. I worked my way over the valleys and into the woods, the fractals of the trees in their winter coats standing … Continue reading A Sense of Adventure Psychologists at the University of Bhunkum have found that adding the words ‘at night’ or ‘by moonlight’ to any activity increases its AQ (Adventure Quotient) by an incredible 308 percent.
Your sense of adventure can be sharpened, in order of descending visibility, by haze, mist and — as I enjoyed on Sunday night in the Purbecks — fog. As the waves of the English Channel hurled themselves onto the white cliffs below, clouds of water vapour condensed around the flecks of salt in the cold … Continue reading How to navigate… in fog… at night
And the nights are officially drawing out — we are rattling lungs-first into the long mosquito summer, people of the northern hemisphere! Here in Bournemouth, the earliest sunset of the year passed last Sunday, at 16.02. We are already five days into the race for rebirth. But, David, I hear you roar — what about … Continue reading Drawing Out I don’t know what’s in your 3pm choccy-biccy, but it’s probably against some sort of substance misuse company policy because, come Happy Hour down the Dog & Duck, your wage is topping £30 per hour.
One of the consolations of winter is the growing role of the moon and stars in our lives. Last night, I watched the moon rising in a fine crescent over the sea, backing into the inky gap between Jupiter and Saturn. Together with Venus, these are the easiest planets to spot at the moment because, … Continue reading The solitude of stars Because the stars are slowly parading through our night sky, Draco’s head will once again shine forth as our pole star in about 21,000AD. Assuming we make it that far as a species.
One significant highlight of the past seven days was calculating a formula that tells me exactly where each of Bob Dylan’s 39 studio albums lies in relation to the others… The raw data for my Every Dylan Album formula comes from a personal rating, on a five point scale, of every Dylan song. SKIPPER. I’d … Continue reading 88 Percent Perfect
Dartmoor is the only place in England where wild camping is allowed without seeking permission from the landowner. Unfortunately, reactionary forces are trying to ban camping in many of the most popular places on Dartmoor, including around the quarries of Foggintor, where I spent my first night’s wild camping on the moor in 2020. It’s … Continue reading Litigation not education on Dartmoor
Hobnobs are vegan. Chocolate Hobnobs are not, thanks to the inclusion of something called ‘butter oil’ or ‘anhydrous milk fat’ in the chocolate coating. This recipe began as your humble author melting a load of proper dark chocolate (naturally vegan) over a load of ordinary Hobnobs. Delicious. Especially when sneezing one’s head off on Dartmoor. … Continue reading Thought for Food #3: Vegan Dark Chocolate Hobnobs
There’s a folkloric myth that does the rounds at this time of year and I’m going to start this article by busting it. Humans do not lose an inordinate amount of heat through our heads. The amount of heat lost through your face and scalp is entirely proportionate to the size of your head. The … Continue reading On Sneezing What can you do a hundred times a day at a thousand kilometres per hour?
Unfolding The Map Shelf: Northern Scotland, 2011 There’s something very relaxing about not being able to type. In my case, not being able to type means not being able to work, at least not in the hyper-productive sense. It means more slow time for things like organising one’s map shelf. (You do have a map … Continue reading Bygone Bicycles There’s something exquisite about unfolding the worn creases of a forgotten map and following, again, the inky lines where my pen once traced the turning of my wheels
Brownsea Island is a nature reserve — nature refuge more like — adrift in Poole Harbour on the south coast of Britain. If you’re an avid reader of these pages, you’ll know that I’ve written before about my conservation work with Dorset Wildlife Trust on Brownsea: bruising bracken so that we could clear the forest … Continue reading Brownsea Island: Gorse Gawping Screen eyes down in the soil, keyboard fingers plunging into the minutiae, uncovering the new worlds of stubborn gorse, plucky heather and squishy puff ball fungi.
According to the Pew Research Center, the proportion of citizens who say that having people from many different ethnic and religious backgrounds makes the UK a better place to live has increased since Brexit from 75 to 85 percent. The proportion rises to 92 percent among the under-fifties and reflects a broader increase in support … Continue reading Policy Versus Society The proportion of citizens who say that having people from many different ethnic and religious backgrounds makes the UK a better place to live has increased since Brexit from 75 to 85 percent.
As an eater of a primarily vegan diet, and with COP26 in the news, I thought it was time to address a challenge that is occasionally thrown down in my direction: Does the impact of imported vegan alternatives outweigh the environmental benefits of not eating meat? There many, many angles on this question and I’ll … Continue reading Coconuts Versus The Climate Our government could make huge and rapid reductions to society’s environmental footprint that would dwarf the impact of whether you eat cow or oat milk.
Recorded over the space of a year and bloated with old-time cover versions and obscure live takes of the hits, Self Portrait must have come as a shock to fans of both Dylan the Folkslinger and Dylan the Rock’n’roller. In Rolling Stone magazine, Greil Marcus welcomed the 24-track LP into the world with the famous … Continue reading Self Portrait (1970) Is that all this is? A kiss-off to the Folkslingers and Rock’n’Rollers who didn’t get the message after Nashville Skyline? Maybe, but humour me for a moment…
There are only three more days of cycling left before we finish spelling out Refugees Welcome in the largest bike-powered GPS drawing the world has ever hypothetically seen. After 1,905km and 24,118m of climbing elevation, this is what we’ve got so far: If a picture speaks a thousand words, then each one of those letters … Continue reading Turkish Delight falls out of the sky If a picture speaks a thousand words, then each one of those letters yells a poem.
On Wednesday, we stayed with the wonderful Christine and Hayden in Alton (home of Sweet FA). We shovelled down a spectacular dinner in double quick time: Christine had invited a circle of friends to listen to our stories from the road. I hadn’t prepared a Powerpoint, so instead I gave a impromptu bugle recital and … Continue reading Talking politics with strangers Approaching a stranger to ask for their signature and contact details is pretty daunting when you think there’s a 50/50 chance that they’ll hate everything about you.
Days Cycling: 11 Distance Cycled: 842km Everests Climbed: 1.54 (13,601m) Tiramisús Devoured: 3 Guinness World Records Surpassed: 1 I can’t technically say that we’ve broken the world record because the ride isn’t over yet (nor the record verified), but Thighs of Steel have definitely surpassed the previous record and, with every day that passes, the … Continue reading How to break things: an update ‘I set out to fail,’ he said, ‘and I nearly ended up winning.’
We are now 4 days into our 27 day bike-powered GPS drawing of Refugees Welcome and it’s no coincidence that all the roads around here incorporate the word ‘Hill’. Copstone Hill, Cuckoo Hill, Polson Hill, Beech Hill Cross, North Hill Lane. (There’s also a Cockrattle Lane, but that’s a different story.) Since our departure from … Continue reading Admin or admiration? 4 days into our 27 day world record ride and it’s no coincidence that all the roads here incorporate the word ‘Hill’
On Monday I will hop onto a train and then into a car and travel down to St Austell for the beginning of the second longest bike ride of my life and the first that has required more than a few days’ planning. Spell It Out, a 2,400km world record-breaking ride across the south of … Continue reading ‘We identify ourselves as human beings’ If it passes without amendment, the Nationality and Borders Bill will put UK law in direct opposition to the 1951 Geneva Convention by criminalising people who arrive on these shores without a visa — even when they have a legitimate claim for asylum under international law.
Through the window, as I write, I can see rusty-coloured containers, rusty-coloured cranes and rusty-coloured clouds. We must be approaching Southampton Central. This week I’ve transitioned from bikes to trains, clocking up over thirteen hours on one or other of these coupled carriages, entertaining myself by reading books about Trainspotting and Breath, or estimating the … Continue reading Laughter lines My advice is nothing more than reassurance that the dream still fits the plan. The more people do this sort of thing, the more people do this sort of thing.
Welcome to Liverpool – the world’s eleventh least stressful city, according to research commissioned by a CBD vaping company. Make of that what you will, but, of the remaining British cities, only Manchester and Edinburgh made it into the top forty. After all, with its literary riverside, leafy parks and leftie communities, it’s not impossible that … Continue reading Stories in the lamplight We try to make sense of the scenes illuminated in our lamplight, but really there’s nothing out there but an unbroken string of stories, some told by me, some told by you.
I’m writing this from the west coast of Wales, as the wind picks up its suitcase and prepares to shake out the contents onto the bed of land that I ride through. Storm’s a-coming. Talking of inclement weather, and continuing the Bob Dylan theme of the past couple of newsletters, today’s letter is inspired by … Continue reading Wiener brecwast Greetings from west Wales: a corner has been turned…
Of plumb lines and protractors A couple of weeks ago, I thought I needed a whole new bike—or at least a whole new bike frame. The Dunx chassis that I’d driven a ridiculous distance to collect came out bigger than my old Marin and I worried that my pedal position was more torture rack than … Continue reading Plumb lines and cockpits The upshot of my visit, on a hot June day, to Neil’s upstairs studio was spending a penny to save a pound. Reader: I needed not a larger frame. I needed data.
Since December 2019, for all bar the first month of lockdown last year, I’ve been enjoying the sonic fruits of the labour of two large construction sites. First a purple-hued Premier Inn crunched its way to the skies on our northerly face, an 18-month auditory treat that climaxed with a midnight road resurfacing so stimulating … Continue reading Zero carbon is already here (it’s just not very evenly distributed) And, in the jumbled futures of a planetary ecosystem that doesn’t distinguish by nation state or border, the consequences of that inequality are shared
I spent last weekend in the company of, among others, a 400-year old called Bob. 400 years is a lot of years—something we can rarely grasp when thinking about trees. To put Bob’s antiquity into perspective, 1621 saw the invention of these things called ‘Thanksgiving’, ‘Gothenburg’, ‘the violin’ and ‘the merry-go-round’. John Donne and Thomas … Continue reading 400-year old Bob
Today was the fifteenth anniversary of the #1984Symposium, convened by Documentally to celebrate Eric Blair’s birthday. Even without his bronchial difficulties, it seems unlikely that Orwell would ever have lived to see today—his 118th birthday—but, as we sat around the blooming roses on his grave, we couldn’t help speculating on what he might have made … Continue reading April 4th, 1984
This summer, I’ll be cycling about 2,400km with Thighs of Steel, following a route that quite literally makes REFUGEES WELCOME, while fundraising £100,000 for Choose Love. This is the route we’ll be cycling In a bold attempt to get loads of mercenary publicity for the cause, we’re also aiming to break an official Guinness World … Continue reading Spell It Out
Today, after an absence of four months, I finally made it back to Brownsea Island to help with the bracken bruising. Bracken is a bit of a pest on the island: completely taking over the understory and blocking light from reaching the gentler heathland species. Armed with metal-tipped sticks, we spent the day wading through … Continue reading Bracken bruising and the moth tree Walking along the Avon, from a distance, the trees ahead were possessed with a shimmering sheen, not quite crabapple blossom, not quite the silver of a birch. Something wilder, more of the night
Spell It Out is a 2,400km bike ride along the south coast of Britain that follows a quixotic route which will spell out the words—well, I’ll let you see for yourselves: The ride, organised by Thighs of Steel (obvs), is a direct response to our government’s creation of a ‘hostile environment’ for refugees. Priti Patel … Continue reading No more ‘hostile environment’ We need to tell Priti Patel and this government that our country will always stand for tolerance and compassion and that we will continue to offer a safe haven for those fleeing their homes
[Poetry is] a raid on the inarticulate With shabby equipment always deteriorating The walk ended, as all walks must, at an unexpected tea room in East Coker, being persistently undercharged for an homemade fig quiche, a vegan hot dog (with red onion pickle) and pots of tea in the sunshine. The unexpected tea room is … Continue reading Unexpected tea room The unexpected tea room is my favourite part of any English journey. The tea room that hoves into view at exactly the moment it shouldn’t, in exactly the place it shouldn’t, but, inevitably, must.
