Hallucinating other people’s reality causes serious problems. But sometimes it can be turned into something useful. Sometimes, when I was teaching English, I used to read my students’ essays twice. Once for what they wrote. Once for what they actually meant. (I’d like to say that’s why I was notoriously late in doing my marking…
I remember standing at the front of a screening at the Plaza Cinema in Truro, maybe a hundred and twenty people in the room, and I’m doing the intro. The big version. Full Pat. Telling them about this film, what it meant to me, why I chose it, why they need to see it. And…
A friend of mine is a personal trainer. Good at what he does. Gets results, genuinely cares, the kind of coach people stick with. He asked me to look at his messaging because something wasn’t clicking. People were following his content but not signing up. Likes but no bookings. So I asked what he knew…
I remember marking essays at midnight in the early-nineties, a stack of Year 10 English homework on the kitchen table, and there was this one kid. Bright, a little difficult, the kind who’d argue with you about everything and be right about half of it (the ones I really liked, to be honest). He’d written…
I was about eight. I’d found a record I loved – I can’t remember which one now, probably something like “Devil Gate Drive” or “The Monster Mash” – and I needed someone else to hear it. So I traipsed down the 89 rough-hewn stone and concrete steps from the cliff-side bungalow where I lived, knocked…
Come and look at this.