I’ve been back in the UK a year now- my longest continuous period in the country of my birth since 2003 when I left for Japan- and many times up til now, with a double whammy today, I’ve been hit with the feeling that- ‘this is not the country I remember.’ Lots of things could potentially explain this. First I’ll explain what the double whammy was. We went to nearby Romford to go to the cinema, a little town on the edge of East London (If I say I live in London someone invariably says- “Mate, that is Essex, ha … Read More

Since my Dad’s moved in with his mom (my grandmother) he’s been reorganizing her Kent farmhouse, which involved bringing a few older bits of art to the fore. Here is an image of one of my late Grandfather’s factories – a man after whom I appear to have been named (John Grist). I’m not entirely sure what it made. It does look impressive though. I’d like to see a photograph of the actual factory it represents, but perhaps they don’t exist anywhere. Dad? My grandfather was in industry (maybe oil?) and also worked on the bomb squad in World War … Read More

My first year in Tokyo was 12 years ago now. I was 23, I think, 6 months after finishing university. It was mad, heady, crazy days- a drunken extension of my Uni days but one where I had a job and a ready-made community of folks to hang with in my language school’s students. I mention this not for any special reason of nostalgia, though both SY and I these days sometimes think about how we miss the ‘simple life’ of our two-room apartment in our latter days in Tokyo, with walkable commutes and loads of great restaurants nearby. I … Read More

I did some work on chapter three of Zombie Ocean 3 today, and made myself tear up about the ordeals poor old Cerulean is going to face. It is a hard life for him, without a doubt. SY says- “Why does it have to be so miserable?” Me- No great answer. A story needs ups and downs? But why can’t we all just get along? We had a good chat about writing yesterday while having a long lunch in the only nice restaurant in this little town, an Italian place where the lunch set takes 2 hours to eat. At … Read More

Today we painted the tile kitchen floor. Of course first we sanded it, with 40 grit sandpaper under our booted feet, skating around without a care in the world. Yesterday I bought a belt sander, a fairly serious bit of equipment, and had a go at sanding off the glaze on the tiles with that- necessary because with the glaze, paint won’t stick to the tiles. It bit a bit of glaze off each time, then almost immediately the grit was stripped off and the belt was just heating up the tiles, burning the glaze a splotchy black. They weren’t … Read More

A full, knackering day today of decorating, shopping, exercise, sanding down tiles (photos soon), using polyfilla for holes, and tidying up, that was kicked off with this long and tortuous exchange- re: our broadband is down. Broadband fiasco (9-10am) I called to our broadband provider and try to arrange an engineer visit to fix the fault on the line. End up trapped in an automatic voice recognition computer loop for 30 minutes, asking me if I want to book Monday or Tuesday (only- which I couldn’t do) despite calling and recalling multiple times trying to lie my way to a … Read More

Today during a training day at work, I came across this piece of wisdom scrawled on a toilet cubicle wall: It gave me real pause. Fascinating, and so pithy. This completely sums up my philosophy on writing and self-publishing, on blogging, on just about anything. Lots of thoughts went through my mind- with regard to blogging- that until I started this blog up, I was certain I had nothing interesting to say on a daily basis. So I censored myself in advance. I wanted to put something out there in blog format- but I was stricken with doubt. Making it … Read More