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so cool it soothes. But you get nothing back from the desert, only a hot, maddening wind and the taste of salt on your lips.

with the ghost of Nelson and a rushing palette of blues. Africa stands off in the cloud line.

the motivation doesn’t. Wish I was in Paris, sipping a Ricard. Or down at Praa sands. Chewing a burger in Nepenthe, Big Sur. Wish I was five miles up with the Brize Norton jet coming back from the Middle East. It comes in every afternoon and I’d like to see Oxford town from up there. Idle, heatwave dreams. And in my bag I’ve got Lorca and his essay on duende, and Cape Trafalgar in coming weeks, and a book to write by Christmas. But it’s the reading about duende I want most. All is well.

the dry grass cupping a hand, all care gone as the speedo needle twitches. It’s been a hard few weeks. My escapes are only taxi calls, imaginary rides. I put King Bee on and roll into Woodstock. The one I care about by my side.

than granita, but Lucifer taught me how to take my coffee when it hits 30 and above, ersatz as it may be. Wise is the traveller, but always dreaming of the valley not known.

for me, I’m up with the birds prepping the parlour for a second coat of Diamond White. That Age of Leisure ship never came in, everywhere I look I’m wrestling with the daily challenges. I’m at peace with it.

help me write more, let me wring more than a few words a day from the keys? I think they might work better in collaboration, in a band, I can imagine the laughs swapping instruments or singing backwards. But lone wolf scribes have nobody to trade or share laughs with, just the walls to watch and the lonesome afternoon walks. I could get a pooch, all sulks and sad eyes as I hover over the letter pads. But I’d feel guilty for no doggie adventures, no wet grass and no ducks to round up, no yapping at the door bell as the bell never goes. I lie, a guy just bought me a new kettle. The last boiler gave up the ghost after ten thousand coffees, tanker loads of tea. A deliveryman will find me lifeless, while peering through the letterbox, his bell summons unanswered, see me slumped over the 11 inch screen, withered out and wordless. Or I could cheer up and get tapping, oh yeah. Soon as I cut the grass. I’ve got at least eight square meters of grass to tend, it takes a lot of care. And I need to measure up one of the fire doors before I start, get my morning messages out of the way. I don’t need the lateral thinking cards, I need a clock the size of a merry-go-round and a few more hours in each day. Lodger or book bodger.

on the Iron Horse, a memorial day visit to Manchester, a chipped-brick-corner wanderer.

blew in some flying colour, like the exotic, faraway-jungle bug landing on the desert aviator’s sun-cracked glove.

Apologies if I’ve mentioned Antoine and his discovery before.

of layers and masks. If you ignore enough paint chips, wall cracks, leaning doors and scratched glass and can keep adding to the costume you get emergence, you’re at home. Then you have to learn the mood of the rooms and spaces, the random and predicted creaks and clatters, the stair ascents and quiet zones, all inside the roaming of a few private rooms. But hidden under the paint and plaster, the rough fabric does its sentry duty while you flick through Satori in Paris – oh, Jack, there’s barely a page goes by without you calling out for a cognac stiffener, and like Ginsberg said, the ghost of your father leans hard upon you, out tramping the roads – thinking of Brest and how you just missed it in the Brittany mists, a shore too far. I lie here musing on Jack’s words and warnings, my own half-forgotten journeys, the mudslide build up of the years, what chances might yet come.