Michael Gove is standing in a public waste disposal site in west London, objective reality dissolving around him, surrounded by a semicircle of imaginary attendants he has made himself from discarded rubbish; mop-handle spines, coathanger arms, sofa cushion bodies, and rotting rubber football heads. “These are my attendants, Leapy Lee,” he cried up at me,…
On the quay at Port Isaac yesterday evening, lit by a midsummer moon, I stood before an assembled shoal of grizzled Cornish fishermen, fat Henry V in Fred Perry, waving my Olivier award like a sword. “I know you. You’ve survived storms at sea, gales that tear trees from fields. You’ve withstood winds that raise…
Stay alert! On Twitter, Tom Tugendhat, The Conservative MP for Tonbridge and Malling, is talking. There! He is thanking the prime minister for his “very clear message”. Tom Tugendhat! On Twitter! Now! He is enjoying the sheer coral sea clarity of the prime minister’s Sunday statement, like sunlight shining through spring water in Waterford crystal!…
Few British prime ministers have guarded their privacy as admirably as Boris Piccaninny Watermelon Letterbox Cake Bumboys Vampires Haircut Wall-Spaffer Spunk-Burster Fuck-Business Fuck-the-Families Get-Off-My-Fucking-Laptop Girly-Swot Big-Girl’s-Blouse Chicken-frit Hulk-Smash Noseringed-Crusties Death-Humbug Technology-Lessons Surrender-Bullshit French-Turds Dog-Whistle Get-Stuffed FactcheckUK@CCHQ 88%-lies Get-Brexit-Done Bung-a-Bob-for-Big-Ben’s-Bongs Cocaine-Event Spiritual-Worth Three-Men-and-a-Dog Whatever-It-Takes I-Shook-Hands-With-Everyone Herd-Immunity I-Want-to-Thank-Po-Ling Squash-the-Sombrero Johnson. We do not even know exactly how…
Every Tuesday at 8.45pm, I stand in the silent lane alone and bang my Le Creusets in support of a group of brave people who must never be forgotten; unsung martyrs who, through no fault of their own, have found themselves working at the very heart of a terrible unfolding disaster of an unprecedented scale…
During my mandated morning meanderings my mind returns to one of my favourite books, Arthur Machen’s 1924 non-novel, The London Adventure. Alternatively titled The Art of Wandering, the absurd work is 96 years old but has never felt more contemporary. The haughty writer-narrator, newly bound by the responsibility of fatherhood, must now write for money…