the less I know. But knowing is a bolted horse, you keep chasing after it until you can’t draw another breath. Only fools think they’re smart, who do they measure up against when the night stretches out beyond all reckoning? I look at the shows coming up here and I still want to go, still curious. But I’ve known these places and spaces too long, could do with a change of the scenery. I’ve hung around until I’m a ghost in my own bad novella. Time set in amber. But I’m just catching my breath, watching for the cracks.

I drag the ink. It’s all drawing now, the digital click has set that straight. It takes an hour or two for me to draw a letter, complete with messy sketches and figures I’ve known since school days torpor. When stamps were cheap each week I’d send a few postcards with etched lines and outbursts but missives feel more of an investment now, I’m careful not to mess them up and swerve the costly scrunch. The content is largely unchanged. I scuttlebutt, riff and rant much the same as I did when I was fifteen years in but I’m not as sharp now and the connections take longer to pan from the memories. As long as I can find the grains and a voice I’ll keep scribbling the notes to my bewildered and scattered compadres.

these days but not because of the plague, it started long before that. I always got edgy in a press, remember being in my early teens terrified at a Leeds game standing on the terraces, hearing the endless roar building and swelling around me, so loud you could feel it on your skin and pushing in on you, a pressure change. I had a strange memory flash of that experience last week when I stepped out into the winter-blasted garden and a squall of little birds flew over the house, hundreds of them but silent, and I swear I could feel the downdraft from their wings on my upgazer face. There was no terror in that, more a flicker of the sublime. I didn’t often go to clubs unless I was playing and you don’t feel in the crowd if you’re behind a monitor, watching the hi-hats. I always preferred a pub or bar, a group around a table, the pathways of a conversation. So I caved on cinema a while back. The huge screens and rich colours of the London arthouse glory days are gone anyway, the digital palette looks washed out to me. I’m a bluray recluse, just me and the dozing cat and a whistle from the wind.

was it fear, curiosity, doubt, distrust or was he in love with Death as per Cocteau’s vision? I think none of these. He was disenchanted after the quest for the fleece, he saw that mortals turn, fall or prosper at the whim of the deathless ones and he couldn’t stomach any more of it, he wanted to set the terms and steer the course of his own life. He was defiant. It was outrage enough that the Fates had woven Eurydice’s life span to end on her wedding day and here was Hades drawing out the couple’s suffering for his entertainment. If this is the best of the gods, reasoned Orpheus, then I will be better and in my actions I’ll make agency of my own life and choices even if it means we’re destroyed. Eurydice was taken down at once, they came for Orpheus later but it was all decided the moment he turned. And in this tale there’s all the mystery of our everyday struggles and choices, the swaying scaffolding of the lives we build. We must face or fail our choices like Orpheus, and make the best of what comes after.

these are important, the rest is all a means to an end or diversion. I’ve been padding the boards in my Laurel and Hardy chain gang flappers, humming along to Reasons To Be Cheerful, best intentions, foot-forward. As long as there are things you still want to do then you’re in the game. Clear skies and clear intent, settle the bills and be diligent, get out on the blue slab next spring. There are always new books to read or dream about writing. Days are as fresh and eager to run as ever.

lately, lots of them. Joined a car club after we lost the old trooper and I’ve been riding around in different EVs and hybrids. They’re great but the EVs cost too much and I can’t see how we’ll dig the lithium out of the ground to build enough of them. Maybe another tech will win out? Pics of lithium mining send a shudder, there’s a cost in any breakthrough – often or always to the scarred Earth and the animals that live on it. And I see the modular nuclear pitch and remember worries I had twenty years ago that we’d end up with a grid of reactors every fifty miles across the UK. I don’t have much faith in capitalism saving us. Capitalism is about wanting more. And what will power the machines designed to suck the offending gasses out of the ether? The only answer that rings true to me in a gut sense is to do less, buy less, go less, ask for less and eat less. Anti-capitalism. I get the feeling that a lot of the people working closely in the field think it’s already too late for reductions, the capture idea is the only way out. And massive lifestyle changes. Then I read the excitement from airport bosses about the thousands of planned, restarted Atlantic flights in coming months. And the morning roads are packed. People want cars, why shouldn’t they want cars? The EV promise begins to feel like a fob off to me, telling people they can still have a car when we don’t have the tech or resources for hundreds of millions of EVs. But I’ve tried without a car and it’s a hassle with a family, you have to plan well and spend more time on travel in the business of living. It’s easier with a car. So we got an old one, one that already exists and we’ll try to keep it going as long as we can. I’ll drive to my croft and live off a pan of fresh-caught mackerel. I’ll patch my jeans and spend all my spare time in the poetry books. I’ll try to learn again how precious energy is – both the spraylet of exploding gasoline and the synaptic spark.

they didn’t survive the long winter of the shutdown. And six-pound pints were a hard sell in this patch, the thirsty earners drift into the capital. But I had some good hours in there, talking books and other abstractions. Are those moments preserved somewhere, other than the unreliable memory cells of the extant topers? Are they played out over and over, with the audience trying to bite down the yawns? Or lost along the track somewhere in the gaping night, a torn ticket flicked from the carriage window.

I’ve been mourning it a week or two. White smoke, one of the pistons was burning through the oil and the garage didn’t want to work on it. Two guys with a trailer came and dragged it away. But I’m letting go now, it did more than I’d ever hoped. Not sure now about buying another, the little bites of tax, parking, fixing, fuel and the driving and traffic. I joined a car club, been taking the train, walking everywhere and losing weight. But it’s harder than I thought it would be. We’re nowhere close to giving up the fossil flash, even in this city that pretends to be looking forwards. I found a derelict friend in the back of the shed, got some new parts in and the old ride is badass and road-ready again. Wheels keep turning. The air tastes better when you’re moving through it.

they’d send one of Lawrence’s Coastal Rescue launches to look for you, roaring out of the Solent at 39 knots. I watch it surge by doing about 20, waving to the whooping passengers. We go up high on their wake when all’s safe, zipping back to the red buoy lane and I push the throttle to lock at about 28, aim for the horizon. The spray and the air, life to breathe.

I return from the sea. I’ve been out on the Solent for two days, learning to tie clove hitches, dragging up chains from the briny deep, steering in neutral and then giving it a nudge. I’m prepped for command of a vessel, just stepping out. Follow the green posts, steer away from the red and always sniff out the tide and the winds, they won’t let you rest. Trying something, waiting to see where it leads.