blog

I once saw a boy get run over, and it’s something I’ve never forgotten. Telling a friend the story recently, it occurred to me how a written account might be of general interest. Essays can be at their most illuminating when they plainly describe events without analysis. Classic journalism, I guess.

My latest essay then, is the description of the accident I saw, put as objectively as I can. Names have been changed, for the usual reasons.

As it’s Valentine’s Day and I have no date, I’m going to treat myself. I’m listening to the eight pieces of music I would take to a desert island. I won’t list them, but I have taken a screenshot of my MP3 player with them loaded & ready you can see here if you want.

I have written before about suffering from Anxiety. It’s not something I’ve often done, because I don’t want to come across as self-indulgent or over-intimate, in what is a public, detached forum. And there are other risks too. On the whole, I decided it was something best not shared with strangers online.

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Blakes Road, the book I am writing, is the story of a walk I took last year from England’s south coast to London. Specifically from Felpham, near Bognor Regis in West Sussex, to Bunhill Fields, a cemetery in Islington. The distance was something around 70 miles, and it took four days walk, meaning the book is divided into four chapters.

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Mental illness is often romanticised but in actuality offers nothing. Some naively see it as some sort of spur for artistic expression, but it’s nothing of the sort. All it creates is destruction.

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I have been suffering with a problem for nearly three years: I sigh - or yawn, or both - all day everyday. It may not sound like much, but believe me it is. 2008 & 2009 were the two worst consecutive years of my life. They drifted by like a grey daydream, and I had no idea of why or how to solve it. I was just… well it’s hard to explain. Sad is the emotion, but it’s not right. Unresponsive is probably better. It’s like my heart went slowly to sleep, and I descended into a prolonged emotional torpor from which there was no escape.

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