bookmark_borderWeekend Reading

  • The banana is dying. The race is on to reinvent it before it’s too late
    During the summer of 1989, Randy Ploetz was in his laboratory just south of Miami, when he received a package from Taiwan.
    I can’t imagine NOT having bananas.
  • That Time Coca-Cola Released a New Soda Just to Spite Pepsi
    Few companies have a rivalry as fierce and longstanding as PepsiCo and Coca-Cola and in their never ending battle for soda market dominance each company has gone to some spectacular lengths to screw over the other.
    I find this all the more amusing given I mostly drink water these days (yeah, I’m on my high horse, what of it?!)
  • Nationalism Isn’t Patriotism
    At a time when fascism & authoritarianism are creeping into the global politics of the developed world, it’s useful for us to reacquaint ourselves with the difference between nationalism and patriotism.
    As the rise of nationalism increases, this is vital to know.
  • This Man Says the Mind Has No Depths
    A whole lot of books on the brain are published these days and you can read yourself into a coma trying to make sense of their various messages. So it was with my usual low-burn curiosity that I starting reading The Mind Is Flat by British behavioral scientist Nick Chater.
    The human mind is endlessly fascinating.
  • 100 Brexits
    1) The one where Chequers proves unexpectedly workable. 2) The one where furiously redrafted technobabble saves the day. 3) The one where a digital workaround for frictionless trade solves everything.
    It gets better/worse as it goes.
  • Sugar Boat shipwreck: The River Clyde’s unlikely landmark
    For more than 40 years its rusting hulk has risen, whale-like, from the waters of the River Clyde. But what is the story of the “Sugar Boat”? On the night of 27 January 1974 fierce winds were battering Scotland’s west coast.
    A local feature that I knew little about, love me some local history.
  • Surfing Life Force
    “Going with the flow is responding to cues from the universe. When you go with the flow, you’re surfing life force. It’s about wakeful trust and total collaboration with what’s showing up for you.” – Danielle LaPorte
    Go with the flow.
  • Living with Dolly Parton
    Dolly Parton was one of two women I learned to admire growing up in East Tennessee. The other was Pat Summitt, head coach of the Lady Volunteers, the University of Tennessee women’s basketball team. One flamboyantly female, the other a masculine woman.
    Legend.
  • The Japanese Man Who Saved 6,000 Jews With His Handwriting
    “Even a hunter cannot kill a bird that flies to him for refuge.” This Samurai maxim inspired one gifted and courageous man to save thousands of people in defiance of his government and at the cost of his career.
    Silent hero.
  • The lost art of concentration: being distracted in a digital world
    It is difficult to imagine life before our personal and professional worlds were so dominated and “switched on” via smartphones and the other devices that make us accessible and, crucially, so easily distractible and interruptible every second of the day.
    It’s possibly telling that I’m still struggling to get back into reading books, but can read articles about why that would be good for me….
  • Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch Puppeteer Caroll Spinney Retires After Nearly 50 Years on ‘Sesame Street’
    Puppeteer Caroll Spinney is hanging up his feathers after bringing beloved “Sesame Street” character Big Bird to life for nearly 50 years. The cast member of the long-running children’s show is also the man behind Oscar the Grouch.
    Without Oscar I think Sesame Street would’ve all been too twee. I do love a good grouch.
  • Social robots will become family members in the homes of the future
    I first became fascinated by robots as a child while watching Star Wars. To me, R2D2 and C3PO were about so much more than just the novel, futuristic cool-factor—they were genuine friends and companions to the human characters, and even to each other.
    The utopian future. Robot & Frank anyone? (great movie!)

bookmark_borderWeekend Reading

bookmark_borderWeekend Reading

  • Kitchen machismo off the menu as female chefs blaze a trail in Scotland
    Julie Lin MacLeod worked in male-led kitchens for years, and her experiences there – inappropriate sexual advances among them – served as motivation to open her own place, one that would be run by women.
    Some of the best eateries in Glasgow on this list.
  • 5 Psychological Strategies to Ease the Stress of Perfectionism
    The last three months I’ve been trying an experiment. It’s something that I’ve never done before, and in a certain way, it’s been a huge challenge. However, in other ways, it’s been an enormous stress relief, and I would say a largely successful effort.
    Read for myself, sharing for others.
  • ‘I have an appetite for transgressive women’
    Phoebe Waller-Bridge is sitting in an upmarket restaurant, asking me to teach her how to burp at will. “I can’t armpit fart and I can’t fake burp, and I think that’s a tragedy,” she says. We met about five minutes ago; I’m not quite sure how we reached this point.
    Killing Eve was superb. Prompted another rewatch of Fleabag which still delivers.
  • Why You Should Surround Yourself With More Books Than You’ll Ever Have Time to Read
    Not sure I fully agree but I get the sentiment.
  • Why we don’t have to attend every drama we are invited to
    This week I lost my purse. It had all the stuff your purse usually has in it – bank cards, credit card, driving licence, loyalty cards, stamps (how retro), photos and £50 cash. I was gutted. Gutted I’d have to cancel all my cards. Gutted that I had cash on me when I rarely do.
    Step away from the drama! (life rule 592)
  • One Small Step for the Web…
    I’ve always believed the web is for everyone. That’s why I and others fight fiercely to protect it. The changes we’ve managed to bring have created a better and more connected world.
    Will be following this with a lot of interest. Everything has to start small.
  • You Should Be Eating Pie for Breakfast
    From the moment it opens at 8 a.m. every day, customers flood Chicago’s Bang Bang Pie shop, drawn in by the smell of browned butter and toasted sugar. On a recent morning, peach raspberry was moving fast, as were slices of apple spiked with a slash of cider and baked in a graham flour crust.
    Not actually read this one, just going with the headline!!
  • Students raise money to send a janitor on the first vacation he’s had in almost a decade
    Custodian Herman Gordon has been spreading kindness at Bristol University for more than 11 years. This summer, students of the UK university decided it was time to return the favor.
    Awwwwwww
  • The Joy of Experiencing Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody for the Very First Time: Watch Three Reaction Videos
    Remember when you first encountered Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”? I suspect many of us don’t. It’s not the Kennedy assassination.
    Wow. I’d love to be able to go back and do something like this.
  • Hip Hop Fan Freaks Out When He Hears Rage Against the Machine’s Debut Album for the Very First Time
    I consider myself lucky to have been a child of the nineties. As you know from Portlandia’s tribute to the decade of slack, it was a time when “people were content to be unambitious and sleep to 11 and just hang out with their friends.
    As per above. This is why I keep going to gigs, why I seek out new music. I want THOSE moments.
  • Labels
    For the last 5 months or so, I have been doing some long hard thinking about who I am, something that I probably should have confronted years ago, but somehow managed to bury deep until this year.
    Feelings. All of them!
  • An In-Depth Explanation of Computational Photography on the iPhone XS
    Outside of Apple employees, one of the people most knowledgeable about the iPhone’s camera is Sebastiaan de With, designer of the manual camera app Halide. It is fitting, then, that Sebastiaan would publish what I believe is the best explanation of the iPhone XS camera system to date.
    Geek time. I’ve not yet stretched the XS camera but planning to this very weekend.
  • Raised by YouTube
    The platform’s entertainment for children is weirder—and more globalized—than adults could have expected. ChuChu TV, the company responsible for some of the most widely viewed toddler content on YouTube, has a suitably cute origin story.
    Good that it’s global and multi-culture based. Bad in terms of extended ‘screentime’.
  • Britons Among First to Try Out Carlsberg With Much Less Plastic
    In its effort to use less plastic in its products, Carlsberg A/S will start gluing together the beer cans it sells in six-packs around the world.
    Great idea. Probably not the best lager in the world though, eh.
  • Comedian Shares Stories Of All The Times She Didn’t Encounter A Rapist
    The investigation into sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh have been really hard to watch.
    More men need to read this. Strike that, more men need to UNDERSTAND this.
  • Apple Park
    In Lego.
    This is insane. Amazing. But insane.
  • Why are Apple Watch faces such a mess?
    The state of the Apple Watch is good. Tim Cook continues to hail its popularity, albeit without any hard sales figures. Most pundits felt it outshined the iPhone at last month’s Apple media event. The new Apple Watch Series 4 seems to have been received well by reviewers.
    Could not agree more. Hopefully it’s only a matter of time but, given their track record, I’m not holding my breath (this would be an entire OS upgrade I reckon.
  • Neal Preston’s best photograph: Robert Plant catches a dove
    As far as I know, I’m the only person ever to be Led Zeppelin’s tour photographer. I was just 22 and knew a plum job when it landed on my lap.
    Legendary.

bookmark_borderFit and fat

I stepped out of the shower the other morning, dried myself off, wrapped the towel round my waist and turned to face the sink. I reached up to retrieve my electric toothbrush from it’s charging point and caught my reflection in the mirror.

I don’t really look at myself all that often, I’m not exactly my greatest fan in that respect; I’m all too aware and disapproving of my shape so I don’t tend to dwell on my appearance as all I ever really see is a fat man staring back at me. I know I’m not as fat as I think I am, but there’s one part of my body that I struggle with, all the more now that I’m seeing the difference that a year at the gym has brought to the rest of my body.

So let’s focus on that for a minute, the good stuff, if you’ll excuse the vanity (and believe me, this is more of an effort for me to write than it is for you to skim-read).

For one thing, my arms have definition; my forearms actually have visible muscles, and my neck and shoulders have some new lumps and bumps. I can see the difference in my back and my legs, that walking challenge earlier in the year has definitely helped with the latter (1 million steps in two months, boom!).

Mind you, I’ve always been happy with my legs and still have fond memories of being complimented on them when I was at school (I can’t remember who said it but I’m sure it really did happen). It’s perhaps telling that the last compliment on my physique that I have stored is from when I wasn’t even aware of the term body dysmorphia. No doubt there have been other compliments, but they’ve never ‘landed’ with me which is an issue and part of my problem.

A few years ago I was at a charity burlesque/cabaret show. I knew many of the people there, both performing and attending, and felt comfortable in that company. As it was for charity there was a raffle and I won a prize. A pair of sequinned nipple tassles no less! As I walked up to graciously accept them, someone shouted that I should put them on, specifically that I should take my shirt off and put them on. The terror that gripped me was immediate. The thought of taking my shirt off was too much, I tried my best to laugh it off but it ended up ruining the rest of the evening for me and I left early.

I always knew my weight was an issue, a burden on my mental health, but that was probably the most visceral example of how much it preyed on my mind. And looking back from that point I realised that it’s ALWAYS been ‘a thing’, even as a kid I knew I was fat, or at the very least chubby. Other boys in gym class had flat chests and stomachs, some had definition in the arms and chest. I had neither, I was always a little heavy around the middle. Yet looking back at photos suggest I was pretty average size wise but my (self sabotaging) memory suggests I was, and always have been, fat.

With a father who was a PE teacher I had plenty of resources available to try and understand why my body looked a little different to so many of my friends. In one school of thought my body is a classic Endomorph; “Big, high body fat, often pear-shaped, with a high tendency to store body fat.”

And where does my body store all that fat? Around my belly. No getting away from it, no matter how I try and hide it, I have a classic ‘beer belly’. I am fat. I am fat and no matter what I try and do, how I try and shy away from it, how I try to cover it up, it’s immediately what I think of when anyone asks me to describe my body… right before I change the subject completely.

My self-image has been present so long that I barely even register it as something I can change. It’s who I am, after all, right? I’m fat, always have been, always will be? Yet I go to the gym, I try and eat better, I know that more calories out than in will help me lose weight, I know the benefits of building muscle, the benefits of cardio, the best way to perform exercise x, the proper technique for exercise y (regardless of whether I can actually do it or not), but always, ALWAYS, in the back of my brain I’m just that fat kid that got picked on (ohhh did I not mention that bit?).

Having this as a constant state of thought permeates everything, every single day. From the clothes I wear (shirts that bulge open mean I’m more frequently found in shirts that are a size too big or t-shirts), to what I eat (look at that fat guy eating THAT, no wonder he’s so fat!), to how I hold myself when I walk (if I stand tall maybe people will notice my height first?).

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not debilitating, it’s not stopping me living my life but it is always, ALWAYS there.

And believe me, intellectually, I’m aware my entire body image is skewed. Take, as an example, this question Lynsay poses at the end of her post “what is your favourite body part?”. My first answer, the one that popped straight into my head was ‘my legs’. Which is a great answer, until you ask me why.

“Because they aren’t fat”

Ugh.

Walking home through the parks of Glasgow this past summer, I saw plenty of men employing the now popular vernacular ‘taps aff’ approach to the sunshine. I envy them their freedom and ease, their glib disregard of what others think as they are safe in the knowledge (presumably) that they conform, that they are the “right shape”; there is no shame in their smooth hairless stomachs.

That’s another thing, hair. I don’t really care that I’m balding, nor that I have a hairy chest, but a hairy back seems to be a bad thing and whilst it doesn’t bother me day to day, I wonder how much of my dislike of that aspect of myself is borne from hearing and seeing reactions to it on TV or social media.

But hey, I could shave my back, right?

Equally I could just lose some weight, right? It’s not like I don’t know HOW but in the litany of failures that make up my life, it’s the one that has remained for the longest time. I don’t mind that I’ve failed at many things in the past as I’ve learned a lot about myself by doing so, but being fat is a permanent state, a futile exercise (pun intended).

And so it starts to self-perpetuate. I get upset and annoyed that I’m fat and turn to food for solace. What harm is a bar or two of chocolate, or a share bag of Doritos… and is it really bad if I have pizza for a dinner twice a week?

And there you have it, my body confidence is low all the time, not because I’m bald, not because my beard is more grey than any other colour these days, not because I’m getting an inordinate amount of hair growing out of my ears (why!), not because I’m unfit and can’t touch my toes, but because I am and always have been fat.

It doesn’t seem to matter that I go to the gym three times a week and push myself hard, it doesn’t seem to matter that I can see the progress I’ve made there, that I can lift more, do more, push myself further than before.

All I have to do is look down at my stomach. I am fat.

Body positivity is a wonderful WONDERFUL thing, and some days I will say that I don’t care I’m fat and almost mean it, but not quite, not completely. No matter how many calories I burn at the gym, no matter how many compliments are given, none of that will really matter until I’m happy with me. I’d love not to care, but I do.

My body is weird but I’m not quite able to admit that it’s cool.

Not yet.

But that’s changing.

Ultimately I want to learn to be comfortable with my body, I want to get to a place where I can look at myself in the mirror and be happy with what I see and for me, that means losing some weight. I’m never gonna be the type of guy who is ‘ripped’ with a well chiselled 6-pack, but I’m pretty sure I can at least be a guy who isn’t ‘fat’ (for my own interpretation of ‘fat’ obvs).

On the flipside, why is being ripped and toned with hardly any body fat the image I have of a ‘healthy’ me? I know it’s not realistic for me, but that is the image being pushed and peddled by Mens Health and the myriad of health based adverts thrust into my social media feeds – ever seen an exercise app advertised by someone who clearly already spends most of their life working out? Show me a fat man doing the exercises suggested please. ‘Now bend and touch your toes’… I can’t my belly gets in the way, gahhhh!!!

When I first started going to the gym it was to lose weight and to ‘get fit’ (whatever that means), I set out a long-term goal to hit my target weight and a short-term goal to be able to do 10 push ups as I couldn’t even do 1. Pretty good goals, right? Specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and loosely time based.

Well perhaps not as, over a year later, that long-term goal is still there I’m still not getting close to it. I’ve gotten close before, just by reducing my calories and I’ll be the first to admit I could be better with my diet but my weight remains roughly where it is despite all that effort at the gym, and generally being way more active this year over last. Mind you, I can now do 10 push ups, so that’s good!

Let’s look at the facts. I currently weigh about 107kgs (16st 8lb). That target was 95kg (just under 15st). The lightest I’ve ever been is 96.6kg for reference. Looking at the trend of my weight over the past two years is pretty much a flat line. So clearly focussing on my weight isn’t working, so maybe it’s time for a new long-term goal.

Ultimately I want to look in a mirror and be happy with what I see. And truth be told, aside from that fat beer belly, I can see that my body is changing. I can see the muscles developing on my arms, shoulders and neck, I can see my face is less chubby, my man boobs are now starting to look more like pectoral muscles than A-cups.

Additionally I know my overall fitness is improving. Sure I still get out of breath climbing the stairs but I recover a LOT faster. 10 push ups? Easy! I can deadlift and squat more than my bodyweight, and my bench press is getting close to that ‘bodyweight’ goal as well.

On top of that I feel healthier, I don’t really get ill too much, I’m more flexible and I’m generally starting to feel a lot more positive about this weird body of mine, starting to accept it a little more, starting to appreciate it.

AND – hold the front page – I’m getting the odd compliment here and there so I guess I must be doing something right.

Yet that fat belly remains but it is going. Slowly, for sure, but it’s going.

I’d love to be able to accept my body as it is today, and I think that time is getting closer but it’s not quite here yet. Somewhere there is a graph that charts my changing physique to my acceptance of my body as part of who I am but I can’t quite see where those points cross so, until they do, I’ll just continue to keep on working on it.

Perhaps it is those little changes and the work I’m putting that is actually what is important, perhaps the fact I’m still going to the gym, and still working on ‘me’ is actually more important than the end result itself. I’d like to be the case but it isn’t yet, not quite. But that’s ultimately the goal, to get to a point where I accept my weird body, to get to a point where the end result isn’t what matters, where I’m looking after myself well, eating well, exercising enough and enjoying life to the fullest.

The good part is that it finally feels like that time is getting closer. I don’t think it’s anywhere near. Realistically that target weight is still in my head so until I get to that I won’t be able to know if it’s enough, or not. Yet the signs are there that things are changing.

I’ve not been at the gym this past couple of weeks as I injured my back, nothing too serious but it needs rest. I’m annoyed and frustrated that I can’t work out. That is not the Gordon of a few years ago. Equally in the past I’d have reverted to my comfort eating habits but that doesn’t seem to be happening this time. I’m far more conscious of eating healthily whilst I recuperate, which is not something that would have happened in the past.

Baby steps perhaps but it makes me believe that one day I won’t see myself as just that fat guy in the mirror. One day I’ll see myself without quite so many flaws.

There is one final thing, one final realisation I’ve had recently, that suggests that my own internal thinking may be changing, that I might be starting to feel more confident about my body, that I might be making my peace with it. It’s something I know has helped me with other things in the past, helped me process them. I do a lot of it, but not all of it is shared here; the simple act of writing down your thoughts and confronting them is one thing, sharing those thoughts with others is quite another. So the fact I feel comfortable doing the latter means, hopefully, things are changing.

Thank you for reading.

bookmark_borderWeekend Reading

  • The outrageous plan to haul icebergs to Africa
    If towing icebergs to hot, water-stressed regions sounds totally crazy to you, then consider this: the volume of water that breaks off Antarctica as icebergs each year is greater than the total global consumption of freshwater. And that stat doesn’t even include Arctic ice.
    Given the state our planet is in, this is anything but crazy, and it’s sad that it’s come to this.
  • Steve Kerr and Phil Jackson Trade Coaching Lessons
    Favored to win their third straight championship, Steve Kerr’s Golden State Warriors face more adversity than fans realize. Kerr speaks with his former coach Phil Jackson — who led two teams to 11 NBA championships — about surviving success.
    Mindful coaching of athletes. Something that is starting to pervade football in the UK (and is massively missing in the NFL).
  • This 94-year-old hands out chocolate bars to strangers. And people love it
    Every Saturday, Bob Williams walks into a Dollar General store in Long Grove, Iowa, and buys a box of Hershey’s milk chocolate bars. Williams hands two to the cashiers, a third to the person behind him in line and then sets off around town handing the rest out to anyone he sees.
    Life goals. Except not that weird Hershey’s nonsense.
  • Machine Learning Confronts the Elephant in the Room
    Score one for the human brain. In a new study, computer scientists found that artificial intelligence systems fail a vision test a child could accomplish with ease.
    We need not fear the robot uprising! (yet)
  • A Good Man, and Thorough: The Genius of ‘The Big Lebowski’
    In the published screenplay for The Big Lebowski, a character named “The Dude” is introduced in the stage directions as “a man in whom casualness runs deep.” Of all the Coens’ movies, The Big Lebowski is, at least on the surface, the most ambling and aimless.
    20 years old, still funny. Abide.
  • I Made One Simple Financial Change and It Lowered My Spending
    A few years ago, when I was reporting a story on personal finance, I became fascinated by a concept that behavioral economists call the “pain of paying.”
    How come all these ‘tips’ mean more work. Where’s the one that I can do less but not be worried about money?
  • ‘The Very Top Guy in the Stasi was Personally Involved in Figuring Out How to Destroy Punk.’
    Punk rock was revolution-minded from the get-go, at least about aesthetics. Its political consciousness bloomed later –- most vividly in the U.K., then in scenes around the world. Yet for all the anti-Thatcher, anti-Reagan bluster, punk can lay direct claim to just one full regime change.
    Bonkers amazing. And in the climate of today, apt? How those in power fear ANY challenge.
  • A Prescription for Forgetting
    “You’re dead,” said the meditation guide. “You’ve been dead a long time.” I start crying. “What do you see?” she asked. I whimpered, “My dad somewhere, cremated, maybe a river, gone for decades. My son is older. He has a family. He thinks of me sometimes. I can’t stand it.”
    Life is so complex. Then you add emotions.
  • Paralyzed people are beginning to walk with a new kind of therapy
    Kelly Thomas woke up in a Florida hospital four years ago with no recollection of the car accident that had robbed her of the ability to walk.
    Proof that we still don’t know so much about our own bodies and minds. Wow.
  • How does a food become a trend? Ask cauliflower.
    First came the cauliflower steaks, thick vegetal slabs, roasted and served like cruciferous T-bones. Then there was Buffalo cauliflower, breaded and fried and generally chicken-shaped.
    I asked one the other day. I say ‘asked’ it was a more a good roasting he got.
  • Why do we hate wasps and love bees?
    The researchers involved say that this view is unfair because wasps are just as ecologically useful as bees. The scientists suggest a public relations campaign to restore the wasps’ battered image.
    Wasps are assholes. Screw the science.
  • Urban bees are living healthier lives than rural bees
    Bumblebees are making it in the city. Research published in the Royal Society B found that bumblebees living in urban areas experience healthier lives than their counterparts in rural habitats. Their colonies are larger, better fed, and less prone to disease.
    ‘Mon the bees!!
  • Henry – Rob Delaney
    Note: I wrote all of this except the last paragraph in April or May of 2017. I changed names as well, except for Henry’s. I’m on the bus to go see my son Henry at the hospital.
    A hard read, but honest emotions always are.
  • iPhone XS Camera Review: Zanzibar
    Mambo vipi (what’s up) from Zanzibar! I’m here capturing an amazing Ker & Downey experience at Asilia’s Matemwe Lodge and have been testing the iPhone XS along the way. When I learned about the new camera upgrades this year, I was a little underwhelmed.
    One of my primary uses for my iPhone is to take photos. I am SO getting an upgrade.
  • Reckoning With Pinegrove
    On a muggy July night in 2017, Pinegrove guitarist Nick Levine was stabbing a hot needle of indeterminate origin into my flesh. I was getting my first stick-and-poke tattoo. The design was a single square.
    Been a fan for a couple of years but hadn’t heard of any of this. Not good.
  • Scotland launches an ad campaign that confronts homophobes and racists
    Today, Scotland is launching an ad campaign that confronts transphobia and racism. The campaign is funded by Police Scotland and the Scottish Government under the One Scotland campaign, which aims to tackle hate crime.
    MORE OF THIS PLEASE.
  • Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access to Your Shadow Contact Information
    Last week, I ran an ad on Facebook that was targeted at a computer science professor named Alan Mislove. Mislove studies how privacy works on social networks and had a theory that Facebook is letting advertisers reach users with contact information collected in surprising ways.
    Fuck Facebook. I can’t leave it as a lot of friends and events are on there, but it’s a pain to lock it all down too. But you can.
  • Fortnite Is So Big It Can Bully Sony and Nintendo
    Fortnite is undeniably one of the biggest games in the world, but today we saw an example of just how big it is. Sony’s long-standing (and, frankly, embarrassing) stance against cross-play with other consoles is finally coming to an end, and Fortnite is pretty much leading the charge.
    Might be time to try this?
  • The Man Behind the Scooter Revolution
    Two decades ago, a Swiss inventor laid the foundation for the big mobility innovation of 2018. Like so many inventions, the scooter was a child of necessity: Specifically, the need to get a bratwurst without looking like an idiot.
    Ha, always thought they were built for kids.
  • Christine Blasey Ford shows us vulnerability is strength, not weakness
    Christine Blasey Ford clarified her intentions at the very start of her testimony before the Senate judiciary committee. Three words especially—”I am terrified”—have reverberated.
    Been dipping in and out of the hearings. What a strong woman. What a monster of a man.
  • Bizarre Particles Keep Flying Out of Antarctica’s Ice, and They Might Shatter Modern Physics
    There’s something mysterious coming up from the frozen ground in Antarctica, and it could break physics as we know it. Physicists don’t know what it is exactly.
    Yay science! We know nothing!!

bookmark_borderReading to escape

There were two routes I used to walk to my primary school, both of them down main roads that spanned the top half of the town. One took me down Townhead Road and offered the chance to nip in to a corner shop for some illicit sweeties, the other took me off Bonhill Road and into the lane that ran behind some off the houses, passing a piece of long (and still) neglected waste ground before arriving at the gates. It wasn’t a long walk, 10 mins if you were in a rush and hurried, not that I ever did.

Depending on the time of year I’d change my route on the way home, but most days I simply retraced my steps. Head out the gate, turn left and back past the area of waste ground and its mass of weeds and bushes. It was an odd location to have your first encounter with a naked woman.

My walks home were always slower than my walks to school. It wasn’t that I particularly enjoyed school, I was definitely more concerned with getting there on time than rushing to get into class, but I was just never in that much of a rush to get home. My Mum likes to tell the story of my Aunt Irene, who lived on the route home, phoning my Mum to tell her not to worry that I wasn’t home yet as I’d stopped and was sitting on her wall and had been for a while. Daydreaming no doubt.

Just as I had been the day Aunt Irene phoned my Mum, the day I encountered the naked woman was another one where, no doubt, I was plodding my way home, thinking about everything and nothing, lost in another daydream as I turned left out of the gates and started past the area of waste ground. And there she was, completely naked, sitting up and facing me, her legs spread wide open. To this day I can remember thinking it was an odd way to be sitting, closely followed by thoughts about the state of her pubic region even though I wouldn’t know to call it that for some years to come. I was in Primary Six, aged 10.

That school year was memorable for other reasons mostly because my teacher frequently indulged my burgeoning reading habits. I grew up around books and have fond memories of wandering the rows and rows of books in the local library as a child. It didn’t take me long to graduate from the basement which housed the children’s books, to the grown up main floor with its towering rows of books, shelf after shelf of wonders waiting to be discovered. At home there were several bookshelves crammed full and my parents were happy for me to read whatever I picked up and pretty soon I was reading books like 2001: A Space Odyssey – my first foray into sci-fi, before Star Wars flipped that script – and I found a book of short stories by an author called Richard Bachmann that utterly gripped my imagination like no-one else had before (bonus points if you know who that pseudonym belongs to).

I always used to have a book on the go and in the past have joined in various reading challenges, the type where you aim to read x number of books in a year. However a couple of years of those quickly removed the joy of reading, the time-sapping wonder of being lost in a good book, as it became a purely time-based activity; better read faster or I won’t meet the challenge! As I much prefer to be able to read at my own pace, I’ve stopped doing those.

More recently I’d been attending a Book Club, a fraught activity that only occasionally added to the overall experience of reading the book itself. Not that the books were bad, per se, most of them were wonderful choices but I soon realised that whilst it can be academically interesting to discuss a book with others, ultimately it sucks all the enjoyment out of it for me. I don’t read to think, I read to escape.

I am no longer attending Book Club.

With no Book Club, and no reading challenge to spur me into action, I’ve been in a bit of a reading drought recently, retreating to some old David Sedaris columns (collated into books) which are my book equivalent of binge-watching Friends episodes, and waiting for my reading mojo to return. I have an unfinished Atwood on my Kindle, and I started The Slap but it’s not exactly holding my attention. So I’m currently casting about to find something without much success. Recommendations are welcomed.

One day in primary school, as I’d finished my class work for the morning, my primary six teacher Mrs. Trotter picked out a book for me. Growing up I’d been through all the Famous Five and Secret Seven books, and the book she suggested was of a similar ilk – these days it’d be called a ‘young adult novel’ – and it featured a young boy who spent a lot of his time daydreaming, wandering around, and who was much more interested in the animals he came across than the people he had to interact with. I have NO IDEA why she picked it for me, none, nope, not a clue. The book was called The Boy from Sula and it was probably the first book I can recall that really pulled me in to an imagined world, a book that grabbed my imagination and whisked me away to the beautiful Scottish island world in which it was based.

That’s the kind of book I still enjoy, it doesn’t really matter the subject type or setting, it can be a thriller, a romance, a sci-fi, a social critique, if it’s written well enough to draw me in and let me lose myself for a few hours then it is, by my own loose definition, a GOOD BOOK.

The Book Club I had been attending was, at best, semi-regular and to be honest a lot of the joy was more about the people and whatever brunch was on offer, than the book itself. It started off as a Yelp event but when the Glasgow community was given the Game of Thrones treatment, one attendee decided to keep organising it even though it’s not for me any more, I have been lucky enough to be prompted read some wonderful books because of it; The Other Mrs. Walker, The Sudden Appearance of Hope, All the Light We Cannot See, Station Eleven, to name but a few.

However, and perhaps more importantly, the one thing Book Club taught was when to stop reading.

It doesn’t happen often, thankfully, but as the entire premise of a Book Club is that someone else is choosing the books, I guess it’s understandable that I’ve not been able to finish a couple of them, that I’ve had to stop reading them because I just wasn’t enjoying them.

This may seem obvious but is a complete odds with how I was brought up, a book is not something you do not finish!

As a child, books were granted an almost hallowed status, backed by the hushed tones of the library and the deep frowns that would appear on my parents faces when a book was seen to be mistreated. Respect was a word frequently associated with books, and with all the weight and heft of reverence they were offered, the act of not finishing a book was an insult to every book ever written, or so it seemed. Add in my reliance on books as a way to escape the trials and tribulations of primary school, and it’s fair to say they occupied a fairly elevated place in my world.

Because of that I used to soldier on with books I wasn’t enjoying, determined to finish lest I was to insult the author with my heinous behaviour, or maybe I just felt I was letting down my parents and teachers, the very people who bestowed on me a curious mind and a desire to learn, not to mention their continued encouragement which gave me my love of reading in the first place.

But no, I’m a grown man, able to make decisions for myself. If I want to eat Coco Pops for breakfast I will, and if I don’t want to continue reading a book then I won’t.

Recently this happened with a Book Club choice, the Booker Prize winning The Sellout, no less. No matter how I tried, I just couldn’t get past the pages of rambling descriptions that didn’t seem to be going anywhere. I would read a little, put the book down and pick it up the next night, re-read a few pages, and put it back down. I repeated this for about a week, finally slogging my way through the first 100 pages or so and came to the conclusion that I just wasn’t enjoying this book at all. It’s a meandering show-off of a book that read like it was written by someone who was enjoying the writing process a little too much and left me feeling, well, not a whole lot of anything.

This was not the relaxing enjoyment that I associate with books and I started to resent having to spend the time doing something I don’t want to do. So, I stopped reading it. A surprisingly hard decision to make. But given I had a few decades of behaviours to fight against, the looming Book Club date, the fact that this was a Booker Prize winner (and I’ve enjoyed all the ones I’ve read before) and it isn’t really surprising that I didn’t find it easy to quit a book. I might go back to it some day, it’s still on my unread shelf, and hopefully it was just the wrong time to try and read it but I decided that no, I wasn’t going to finish it. Book Club be damned!

When I moved, and cleared out two entire bookshelves worth of books to charity shops, I found it pretty easy to part ways with all the books I’d read. Those books were in the past after all and I know if I really take a notion to re-read a book then I can always get a copy somewhere. This is despite the fact that I rarely re-read books, I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I’ve re-read ANY book, and two of those re-reads were a certain book suggested to me by Mrs. Trotter.

Books are an escape.

My primary school years were dotted with small incidents of bullying and not fitting in and I quickly found that the way to steer clear and avoid those incidents, even in a classroom setting, was to bury myself in a book. Don’t disturb Gordon he’s reading, Mrs. Trotter would say, and I’d be left alone to roam the Isle of Sula.

I had good childhood, I know I wasn’t unhappy and for the most part my memories of the playground are good ones, but I know I was much happier if left to my own devices, left to dawdle home in a daydream, along the lane that skirted the area of waste ground where I had the encounter with the naked woman, spread-eagled as she was across the pages of a magazine. I can remember toe-ing at the pages of the magazine, flicking past image after image of awkwardly posed women, all in various states of undress. Page after page and I couldn’t help wondering, where were all the words?

My interest waned and with a final kick to send the magazine further into the depths of waste land bushes I headed home, pausing to watch a squirrel run along the top of a wall before disappearing into the high branches of a tree. I wondered what his story was, where he was going, and what adventures he might have on the way.