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who bought a house out in the woods. He bagged a few acres and he likes his own company. There are times I think he got it right, and often when I ride the train to London and forget to seek out the quiet coach. Gotta love those office catch-up calls. Riding through Pangbourne and into the tree-dark cuttings I press my cheek to the glass and dream of a life in the woods, free from all devices. But I’m just another city-boy faker and I know it. And that guy I know spends two hours a day, every day, stoking his log burner…

above Hambleden today, mindful of the American units encamped here in the run-up to D-Day. I caught mention of them, reading for a book I’m trying to put together. Master of the Light Brigade was born in the village and there’s a Roman fort over the field so these woods should be full of the vapours and phantoms of gone-fighting men, but there was not even a sigh to disturb the circling Red Kites. Blunden’s ears would have pricked up at their call.

by Young kept Edmund Blunden sane in the trenches. You can see how Blunden draws strength from the long poem in his own, Undertones of War. I went in search of Night Thoughts. The great Library of the Dead yields another, time-slaying treasure.

All men think all men mortal, but themselves:

Themselves, when some alarming shock of fate

Strikes through their wounded hearts the sudden dread;

But their hearts wounded, like the wounded air,

Soon close; where pass’d the shaft, no trace is found.

As from the wing no scar the sky retains;

The parted wave no furrow from the keel;

So dies in human hearts the thought of death.

is to start writing. And in that first, high horror nosedive into the white page you’ll never be more alone. Lonely like the wolf calling from a Teton ravine. Lonely like Custer waiting for his relief company to ride over the Bighorn hill. And it never gets any easier, teetering over the first few lines. But at least it scythes us even. Heroes, hopeless and hapless, we’re all alone at the desk, with nothing but the neuron fizz making our fingers flash cold.

said the great, dead-too-young Bill Hicks. I’ve been thumbing though his Love All The People paperback collection this week, looking for chuckles in a blowy Oxford. I’m an old fan of Hicks and can half-recite a clutch of his routines – the incredulous waffle house waitress who catches sight of him hugging a book post-show and tut-tuts, “what yer reading fer?” is a fave – but like all good prose it measures up to revisits. And it stays funny because Hicks was pushing a little further out than most stand-ups, sketching a bigger plan than just dick jokes and observational blather. Hicks had something to say.

I’ve craved laughs after a run of bad news from publishers and peers and an unignorable undertone of book biz disenchantment. This might be caused by a sour and lingering industry-shutdown over the summer or simple flag-bearing fatigue for the book cause but either way it hasn’t chimed well with my latest and most-tremulous of schemes – setting up a small press. In recent weeks I’ve been talking with printers, designers and commissioning eds across several genres, trying to get ideas and fix estimates for launching three YA titles penned by myself. After twenty years of freelancing I feel I ought to be able to publish some books of my own and at least break even, or learn the lesson and retreat shamefaced from the field. There’s a behooven boldness for anyone who wants to call themselves a writer; just tapping out the words is an act of daring. And you can’t live in fear of the unseen ends channeling off from every decision either on the page or in life. You have to ride through the choices and keep breathing and battling and dreaming a little.

At the St Giles’ Fair in Oxford with my kids, musing on the hard work and risks to come, I remembered the words of Field Marshall Foch in a message to his commanders from a 1914 battlefield: Hard pressed on my right. My centre is yielding. Impossible to manoeuvre. Situation excellent. I am attacking. And it struck me that it’s either that, the boldness, or acquiesce. I watched the people on the rides flash by, whirling and shrieking, their faces shot with fright or adrenalized glee, and I thought of Hicks. You have to keep getting on the ride. Bony-fingered misanthropy will only ensnare you and chew you up if you turn away from the ticket booth. So I hopped on the dodgems with my youngest and pushed the pedal to the floor.