Margins
Notes on reading, walking and small things. A demo blog: sample writing to show what a works blog looks like.
8 Oct 2026
Most advice about reading is about reading more. Fifty books a year, a hundred, a list ticked off in January and abandoned by March. I've started doing the opposite. One book at a time, a chapter a night, and a pencil. What changes The first thing is that you remember it. Not all of it, but the shape. A slow book leaves a room behind in your head that you can walk back into. The second is that you argue with it. Margins fill up. No. Really? See p. 40. A fast book is a conversation where you only listen. The point of reading is not to have read. I can't remember where that line is from, which is rather the point. How - One book. Finish it or put it down for good. - A pencil, not a highlighter. Highlighting is agreeing; writing is thinking. - Stop mid-chapter when it's going well. You'll want to come back.1 Oct 2026
The top deck at one in the morning is a kind of church: everyone facing the same way, nobody speaking, the windows full of a city that has forgotten we are in it. A man asleep against the glass. Two girls sharing one pair of headphones. The driver, somewhere below us, keeping faith.17 Sept 2026
On Sundays I leave the house with no plan and turn left whenever I feel like it. It sounds like nothing. It isn't. A walk with a destination is a walk spent arriving; a walk without one is spent noticing. The blue door on Canning Street. The cat that lives in the launderette. The way the light comes off the canal at four o'clock in October. Three rules, loosely held: 1. No headphones. 2. No map unless you're properly lost. 3. Stop for anything that makes you curious. I've lived here eleven years. I'm still finding streets.30 Aug 2026
My first flat had one room. Bed, desk, kettle, a window onto a wall. I wrote more there than anywhere since. I think it's because there was nowhere else to be. No other room to wander into, nothing to tidy that would take more than five minutes. These days I have more space and less focus. So I've made the desk face the wall again.