in my room, I sleep about eight feet from four bare glass panels and the clouds. We ran out of money at the end of the build, there was nothing left for steel tracks or blinds. And then we got used to the light and the moon and mostly stopped thinking about shades. I like it when the storms set in at this time of year and beging pounding away, with me safe under the duvet. Like Melville said, you need a cold toe outside the covers to fully understand your greater comfort. When it really blasts there’s a whistle under the zinc sheets and the wind yanks at the open window. It came on strong last night, I woke with the touch of cold rain on my face, snuck across the room by the gale. And this skystreak droplet waved away the smoke of a dream I was riding, one I get a lot, with me lying shivering under blankets in a lampless campervan, parked up in a mountain pass layby, alone, long after midnight, a blizzard all around, worsening and already banked over the wheels. A heavy snow has its own sound, a twist on silence. And then there’s a gentle tap at the strip of window above my head. I sit up and put out my fingers to slide the fabric back on its runner, to see who’s summoning me out there from the quiet.

and I know I’m lucky to have it, I want the wood to fight off whatever microbes are burrowing into it. Just a few seconds out of phase I stand in the doorway, staring up at the branches lacing the contrails. There’s some harmony restored gazing at living things, things registered by your fading senses that go on being outside of you. And then I come in for a coffee and a biscuit.

padding down to the garage to collect the car. I waited it out in a driveway recess, a private gate and a sandstone house set back behind the trees. Corners unknown stand under the sky, a few steps can take us bang into another life. And I cling to my unexpected sights and discoveries in my travels, faces and signposts and shopfronts glimpsed over the decades and never forgotten. There is so much to witness and investigate, an endless bounty of sights. But in a moment the rain has moved on and so have I, resuming my plod to the oil-stained yard, the key-strewn bench and my tin-silk cocoon. I must stop driving and walk about more, kick up the pavement fragrance, eyes open to the world.

of nuclear obliteration in the air again, a musty memory from the ‘8os I thought was gone for good. And there’s absence in the house, all the air currents and clicks and creaks of the house are changed, yet to settle. I have that sense of something momentous about to happen but it never comes, only the days padding by my desk chair, flicking me what-now glances as they lope along. So I try to work. The bull-man haunts me even on my river walks, I’ve been writing up dialogue and sketching him out, must close this week. Finish something and move on to the next, hope one of them sells and earns you a ticket onto the water.

on an early croissant run, I’d forgotten the fair was in town. Once a year the college closes the grand old street runnng into the centre, to demonstrate ownership and spin the bright lights as they’ve done for centuries. I pick my way through the cables and splatted candyfloss, treading carefully for my pastry shop. I should kick the habit but I’m weak. I like to eat bold from the bag, on the hoof, Belmondo quick-stepping down the alleyways in his mac, some backstreet business on the far side of the show that can’t wait. But I’m only making for the hatchback in a 30-minute bay, the roll home to the desk and more hours at the keys. I’m brushing the crumbs from my cuffs as I click through the gears.

and the funeral rites. In the evening we wander by the faithful hound amid the throng, find a show. The town struts in the glare of the sun but the heat mugs me, back at the hotel I’m too tired and too hot to sleep. I lie panting in the shadows tormented by visions of rising seas and cracked fields, riots and mobs and a lost political class all out of ideas. The night dies in the hours before dawn and the air blows in fresh from the firth. Before 8 I’m out on the cobbles, chasing up a coffee and a pastry. There’s so much to be done, so much to see. Step out and shrug the fear.

short-lasting though they might be. The ceaseless in/out tidal slosh of earning afflicts most of us but in different ways and scale. Some commodities are equalizers, fit for all palates. Others are kept hidden and apart in the walled gardens of the rich. I’m out in the wider enclosure.

across to Samos but the sea has a life of its own. I watched it surge up on the west side of the island, biting at the shore. I’d want to stay close to land and I’d want those ranks of oars and fifty Argonauts – or an outboard or two – to keep me off the rocks. Even with the water blue as the cloudless sky it rages and churns. It’s calmer over at Faros where we’re staying, you can step over the pebbles and float out but where the island stops the wind bursts through and the sea comes bolting into the strait, slicing white along the peaks. I went walking the track between the thyme clumps on that headland, with the early morning sun lighting a path to shame Apollo. And my mind is full of dreams of gods and wine and boats.

crests Shotover Wood and we’re down into the next village to eat pancakes in a cafe terrace. There are homes and silent glades here I never guessed at, unseen views to the plain and the motorway embankment curling away to the Cut. We step off the track to let a rider pass. Tramp a few miles and you’re in another land, a stranger in your own town. How can I know the world and the people in it when I don’t even know what hides in this wood? When all of us are passing riders or walkers, not even a word exchanged.

but I suffer for it, knee feels strapped and bruised for days afterwards. Goes back to my meadow smash on the bike, the bollard looming out of the night at high speed and the bone-tingling crunch. Been semi-lame ever since. You take loping and shifting about for granted until it’s snatched away and I’ve grown cautious. Not for me the cat dance over the zinc roof, I shuffle and test every surface in my approach shoes. Reckless was better, I miss it. Reckless and you don’t even know it and when you do it’s gone.