A rebel without a clue.

1. He started the day with a missed dose and the nervous system’s theatre. Venlafaxine down at 37.5 for weeks, then a slip — and the night turned cinematic: paralysis, spiked in a dark club, the body unable to stir while the mind wrote a reason. He woke with that thin feeling people get after REM has been loud — as if reality is only half-latched. So he did what he always does when the mind runs off: he opened the back patio. Cool air. Blackbird. Strong Lebanese coffee. Not a diagnosis, not a drama — just the world being the world. He thought about taking his blood pressure, then knew better: don’t measure adrenaline and call it truth. Walk Lola first. Let the body settle on its own. Later, sat with his mum, he watched Small Prophets. He enjoyed it, then felt the ending wobble — the show promising alchemy and delivering Erinsborough, humour that landed for him but not for her. His mum didn’t catch the sight gags; she just found it strange. He could feel that quiet loneliness of liking ...

It will be three weeks this Thursday (20th February) since I was under the scalpel (or laser) of Adam Budgen at the Nuffield Hospital to remove what's been stopping my previous life (other than alcoholism) since COVID: a Morton's Neuroma. It's gone. I can't feel it anymore. The area around the operation is tender, etc., but I can't feel the alien body I could previously (at least since I struggled to Segovia in December 2022 having to walk through excruciating pain for 10 kilometres before any 'civilisation' was reached). Nothing nearly so obviously painful was stopping me walking over twenty kilometres in the morning and ten in the afternoon since I got used to blisters, knee swellings, leg pain or shoulder soreness (back in 2013) which really was helping me see clearly and happily within this structure I fail otherwise to inhabit. I've just realised I can see through the gap between to the two toes where the operation has been. All the swelling has gon...

He woke before the light had chosen a side. At 5:20 the room felt whole but he did not. The old tide stirred — not loud, not catastrophic — just that familiar inward pull that said alter this. He named it. He did not obey it. He opened the window. Cold entered without ceremony. Beans reheated. Rice finished. Coffee poured. Nothing mystical occurred. He observed that nothing was missing and did not trust it fully, but he stayed. At 7:15 he left the flat. North Street accepted him without applause. Sunday debris. Cleansing crews. Vinyl apologies for inconvenience. He moved south into Um and did not belong to it, nor reject it. He walked. Workhouse posts stood where discipline once ruled. Beggar’s Hill rose. He climbed it. The cemetery widened his vision. Elland Road sat below like a secular altar. The city did not instruct him; it merely existed. The flick of a switch occurred without sound. Cross Flatts opened. “Stronger Together” written in municipal hope. He felt less singular. He con...