consigns me to the hammock, gets me dreaming of rivercraft and the long evenings at the Blue Anchor. But I’ve work to do, lines to write and a fence to stake into the ground before I get to paddle in the Ionian Sea.

and lights flash on the dash. It took me days to spot it, not wise enough to stick my head under the car and scan for damage. But there it was, plain in sight as the UXB melodrama, the hero poised with wirecutters. Could it be I saw the same wire loose when the wheel was off for a check a few months back? Why didn’t I say anything to the mechanic? There’ve been so many repairs of sensors, leaks, broken parts of late I’ve lost track, I confess. But I shall swap out the battery and restore the flow with a loom, send a gush of charged particles to the motor assembly and chase down any other faults until the dash is clear. Living is engaging, fixing the broken wires.

to avoid the car snarl out west, roll to the store in Old Headington. There is a corner maze of passageways and flaking stone cottages here, a sweep of grand trees that border the park. Atoms trapped for centuries. Too often I take the still air of the past for granted as I move about this town. Tonight I’m meeting a pal in a pub that’s more than 400 years old. Hardy used to sit in there, mapping out Jude the Obscure. And in all that inhabited past are deeds foul and fair, our inheritance to probe, bury, triumph or regret. The rain lifts old memories out from the cobble stones.

lasted a day before the cat lopped it with a claw. He takes against flowers and butterflies, I can’t figure the coded instinct. I think the rain is getting to him. It’s getting to me too. I’ve been out trying to tape up the car to stop rivulets reaching the engine bay, the old glass sealants were discarded in an engineering quest. Snapped spark plug. Teams of mechanics and a gulping bill but it rolls again. Was almost the last mile. I haven’t been lucky with mechanix lately. I dream of riding ponies along the headland or bobbing over clear waters in a skiff, never opening another tool box. Shunning worked metals. But I can’t swerve my caretaker role. I need more work, need to tap the keys but the rain keeps luring, keeps me window gazing. Everyone waits for their weather to lift.

and tests its hosts. I’m in the last days of a big book, have been for a while, ready to see it ashelf. I’m full of plans but can’t find the buttons to press. Went to say goodbye to my aunt in Saltaire. Been up and down the M1, old friends and new starts. Four new tyres waiting to roll. Just smoothing out the maps, ready to venture out. But that wind still blows cold.

and all the lives imagined, words on the page are just the icing on the cake. There’s fiction everywhere you find people. You can hear it in how they talk about their past, their dreams, the way they’ve shaped the world they see. Any act of imagination is an act of making fiction, as is most communication. And any gathering, chance encounter or exchange no matter how plain or unimportant it might appear reveals a new, sparkling cache of words to scatter into the air, if you only have the gift to coin them.

linking the quadrants around the peninsula where I live. You know them when you wander out there away from the houses, the long misty stretch where the fields flood, the 4am ring-road drag track for bikers and their lonely howls, the asphalt lanes and dimpled barriers and litter caught in the bare trees. I feel like I know them too well, these tin can arteries, speeding out on my messages. I’d like the council to go further, ban cars from the whole city, force us onto the bikes. Then I can work on my squall grimace, teeth clamped, eyes a-fire like Ahab’s as I peddle out for a croissant and a cup of joe. But a little part of me will miss the screen out onto the highway, the lines sliding into the fog.

with the New Year storms that punch at the glass and wobble the zinc panels ten feet over my pillow. Been reading Robert Stone, bottles of Lucky lager in grid-street desert towns. “The mind is a monkey,” says Hicks, one of the players, steeling himself for a decision. Just go, do and live with the consequences. I’m not so sure, things don’t turn out well for Hicks. I mull on departures driving down to the shop in my trundler hatchback. I’m anchored in these roads and routines it feels but I know it can all change in a second, there are things I want to see. For six months or more I’ve been reading and dreaming on Daedalus and how he borrowed from nature to emulate the gods. I want to wade into the sea off Knossos and bob about under the higher realm, studying the cliffs for the opening to the Labyrinth. And I want to get back to Amsterdam, to pay my respects. And there are a dozen other planet pilgrimages and yearnings, they’re all open to me and on my mind, have been for years. I only need to earn the passage.

and the downs glowing bright in the last of the bright winter days. Tramping over the chalk I forget about what’s happening in the news, which is good. What difference do my frettings make in the blizzard of current affairs and realpolitik lever tugging, whether it’s going on five miles away or five thousand? I’m drawn again to what’s local, the worlds to roam on my study shelf and the lace of streets I can bike to in thirty minutes. I’m laying stores in for the long nights, the world I can explore inside the lightfall of a candle.

and I had to go rummaging among the pipes and clips and rubber caps packed around the engine bay to snap the bulb free. While they still make the spares I can keep the wagon rolling but you begin to accrue ailments. I try to stay on top of them but on damp November mornings you can feel the ache in the chassis and the tut-tut of grumpy, aged motors called to duty once again. They begin to yearn for the oil-pooled wrecking yard, the embrace of the crusher and the last star-bright flash of light as the melting pot settles over the burners.