A rebel without a clue.

Why do I consistently chose the problem when I know the answer? I am consistently choosing the problem! Even in the midst of the answer I eventually choose the problem again. All the time. I am afraid of myself, my brothers and everything else. Where did my fear come from? It's debilitating. I do not fear the unknown, but the known - how very true? At the end of the walk I was failing to achieve what I needed from the experience. After Cortes I would say I was distracted from being on the path. From Zaragoza to Cortes I was fixed in my mind. From Cortes to Alcanadre it was a chore; a yawn; a lack of peace or sufficiency. By the time I had reached Tudela my mind was struggling to find true quiet. 

I came back to Ruby with hope, as I always do. She is seven now — a wriggle monster, bounding joy, a creature of dens and quiet contentment. Lola, born in early May 2015, is just past her tenth year. Her paw, her breathing, her seventh year heavy with love behind her — all of it reminds me that her time is finite. I’ve given her everything, and one day I’ll have to learn to give some of that to myself. My mother remains a shadow in the story — her world narrowed to the television, her words barbed, her praise absent. I meet her needs, but the cost is silence and cuts that leave their mark. And then there is Wetherby. Polished, small, soulless. I walk its streets with Ruby and remember: this town is too little for me. It folds in on itself while I’ve known wide horizons — rivers at dawn, pilgrim roads, markets where even strangers feel warmer. Here I find Andy’s chatter, Ian’s aggression, people clutching their dogs away as if joy were dangerous. No, Wetherby is not a pleasure; it’s the...

Ginnel Betwixt Stone and divine, Division. Cutting you from me and them and us. Just us? Grit and grind. And spittle Ash, grime Me, them and us? Maybe Unjudged? Unjudging free.

The Rise of Arelf Honner and the Novans (1933–1936) In 1933, Arelf Honner becomes Chancellor of Veyra, a nation broken by the Treaty of Cernay. Instead of scapegoating or militarism, he launches the Novan Program: universal healthcare, modern housing, free education, and huge cultural investment. Within three years, unemployment vanishes, art and science flourish, and Veyra is wealthier than its neighbors Alberon and Froswick. The “Problem of the Good Example” (1937–1939) Workers in Alberon and Froswick begin demanding “Veyran-style reforms.” Strikes and protests erupt. Rather than admit their own failings, Alberon’s press accuses Honner of being a dangerous manipulator, secretly plotting domination. Diplomatic relations sour. By 1939, Alberon and Froswick sign a pact with other nervous powers to “contain the Veyran menace.” The War of Envy (1939–1942) In September 1939, without provocation, Alberon and Froswick declare war on Veyra. They claim it is to “protect Europe from subversion....

A Critique of the Entire Play The play is an intriguing and highly personal work that successfully weaves together several disparate elements:  personal reflection, a travelogue, and a meta-theatrical element in the form of a webinar.  The overall structure, moving from a moment of solitary peace to a public, chaotic space and then back to a state of quiet understanding, is effective. The play's strength lies in its ability to find profound meaning in the mundane.  The "quiet sufficiency of the moment" at dawn, the "ghosts" of Wetherby, and the "unfixed" nature of the narrator's self all set a philosophical tone.  This foundation makes the absurdism of the webinar feel not like a gimmick, but like a natural extension of the narrator's mind. Jenkins and his biscuit metaphors are the true highlight of the work.  The notion that "markets and biscuits obey the same physics: structure, soak, collapse" is both clever and deeply insightful. ...

The familiar rumble of the bus on Boar Lane. It's Tuesday morning in Leeds, and I'm waiting for the X98, the very same bus that once felt like a cage. Today, I'm heading out, but back in 2014, I was on my way to Manchester airport, desperate to leave it all behind. I’ve just found the journal entries from that time, buried deep in my digital memory. They are a painful, raw record of a man consumed by a "slow illness called living death." I sat on that bus then, seeing the world as a vacuum, filled with "ghouls" and the "dawn of the dead." I felt trapped, watching people "limping from one death to another, never awaking." My anger was an active, breathing thing, directed at a society I felt was entirely broken. A New Beat, a New Name My name at the time was simply djsherburn72, a collection of letters and numbers. But in my head, I had already become futurefjp. The name was a direct reference to a New Beat track by Franck De Wolf. Whil...

I’ve lived in this flat ten years. Never decorated. The walls don’t complain. Though sometimes, out the corner of my eye, I see one of them breathe. Just once. A twitch. Then nothing. The Boots percolator sits on the counter and coughs — not a purr, but a cat hacking up a fur ball. Stops, starts, then carries on pretending nothing happened. The cough lasts too long, going down the pipes and rattling cupboards two doors away. Still — what comes out is smooth. A litre of Lavazza Rosso. Enough. Mam says, “I might be 82, but I’m as bright as I was at 72.” I almost answer, “So that must’ve been daft at 72 then,” but I bite it back. Mrs Levy’s voice cuts in: “you’re like a cripple.” Miss Trixie snaps back: “I may be old, but I’m not crippled.” Between cruelty and defiance, Mam stands, insisting she’s still bright. She hasn’t lived in Rawmarsh for an aeon, not really. But she’s folded into her mother who never left — the coal-fire gestures, the language that leans on itself, the telly speakin...