on rails

I’ve not written from a train in awhile. I’ve not been on a train in awhile. Oh, I’ve been on the the tube and overground and that sort of thing, but those aren’t really trains. Real trains cross countries and borders, not cities. 

I’m off north to Scotland to drink wine and catch up with friends and wonder once again why I don’t here anymore. 

Last weekend I ‘performed’ at the Cornbury Music Festival, sometimes called ‘Poshstock’. There was wine and music. I learned I like the Peatbog Faeries more than the Gipsy Kings and survived on about 2 hours sleep over 48. We danced. We drank. We ate pulled pork. We angered bees sleeping soundly in their hive and had to run away.

I expect this weekend to be every bit as good. Perhaps without the getting chased by bees part, however.

return flight

5 Brothers was closed, so I waited in the queue at the Cuban Coffee Queen shack by the bight for a con leche. The sun hadn't yet broken through the cloud. Two guys sat on one of the benches, sipping away their morning java, yacking. They were tan and young. The conversation went something like this:

"It got really bad with the drugs and the booze. Woke up in a hospital handcuffed to the bed, cop there waiting for me to come 'round."

"Well, Key West can do that to you."

"Oh, no man, this was way before I came to Key West."

happened

So some stuff has happened in the meantime. In that gap created between times I’ve written here. I’ve been back to Scotland, and sat in the sun on Islay sipping whisky and beer and eating something fresh from the sea. When the breeze died the midges appeared and fed on us, but it was breezy on the beach when we popped the Champagne and drank it even though our legs hurt. The sky so blue it pierced. And Loch Indaal sapphire, but for the odd white horse. The hills and fields an undulating green banner between them with the white buildings of Bowmore dotted against it all, tall black letters spelling the name of the distillery and town all at once.

I went to France and made wine. The Vermentino bubbled in its ferment like a bath with too much Imperial Leather poured in. It tasted of lemon barley and oats. The mist rolled in the from the sea and crept up the hills and mountains. I drank old Armagnac and stumbled in attempts to speak the language. Loose schist and pebbles fell beneath my feet as I stooped to pick bunches of grapes high up in the hills behind Banyuls. Thibault and I drank beer in a bar by the beach and we talked about wine and women. Andy and Julien and I drank strong Belgian beer next to the sailboats in Argeles after work and I don’t remember what we talked about, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the pretty Italian girl on the picking team came up once or twice. Her name was Luna. Everyone fancied her. I fancied the other one. I don’t remember her name. One night we decanted a couple of wines, Andy and I, and stayed up late in the gallery drinking and listening to music. The wines opened and we talked about them and the world around them. We drank all the whisky I brought and more. I returned to London but wasn’t quite sure why.

Summer turned and the leaves fell and now autumn is almost gone as well.

The Red Sox won. I stayed up late to see.

Mezcal, Old Fashioneds and Sazeracs stood lined on the bar, with shooters of sangrita to chase. We drank them, too many of them, and stumbled out into the Soho night. My bus never came, so I grabbed another. 

Wine sipped, glugged and sometimes spat. Old friends caught up with over beers and burgers. Plus ça change. 

I wrote and edited and amended and did it all again. I checked proofs and drafts and covers. I submitted and re-submitted. I drank pints and chatted with my publisher about costs and dates and rates and boards and dust jackets. I waited and then corrected again. I got it right, I think. It got sent to press, that book of mine, and soon it will be real. 

And now it’s now, and there’s a journey soon. 

elsewhere

I’ve been thinking a lot about elsewhere recently. I don’t know whether it’s simply a periodic bout of overwhelming nostalgia, boredom with here, or just a random path my mind has chosen to wander. But elsewhere is certainly where it’s wandering.

Elsewhere has taken many forms.

Sometimes it’s Islay; the ferry pulling into Port Ellen, the round parish church in Bowmore and the patio out the back of the Lochside hotel, sipping a Feis Ile dram and a pint of ale in the sun, the Paps of Jura in the distance to the north. Then I journey up to the Assynt Peninsula in November, then further to Cape Wrath. The sky’s so low you can touch it; a menacing grey that creeps closer when you’re not looking. The slate sea crashes against jagged black bedrock and explodes into turquoise capped with white foam. Looking out and knowing it’s just the Atlantic for a good portion of the world until you reach land again.

In a blink it’s India. Morning by the Ganges in Varanasi as the sun comes up, showing just how vibrant colour can be. Pungent on the nose. Countless people praying and doing laundry. Hearing the lap of the river against the wooden hull of the small boat, the sound of the world waking up drifting over the water. Goats, pretty much everywhere.

Or I’ll start in Jerez de la Frontera, sitting at the bar in Nono’s, watching him tap a cask of Palo Cortado for my afternoon libation. Watching the pigeon on the bar eat seeds out of a matchbox and sipping a bottle of Cruzcampo, a copa of sherry on the side. I don’t even know if Nono’s still exists. I hope it does. From there I’ll drive down to Cadiz and wander along the sea walls and breathe in the ocean air.

If it’s an evening wander, it’s probably Fenway. Drinking a watery beer in a cramped box seat while munching on a hot dog and spilling pretty much everything as I jump up to cheer as Papi drives one into the Monster seats. More Boston. Walking along the brick-laid sidewalks on the Hill, watching my step where the tree roots have pushed up the bricks like a crooked set of teeth. Grabbing a slice from the Upper Crust on Charles St before wandering over to the Common and noticing again how much smaller the little league fields seem these days.  

And then, out of nowhere, I’m sat out front of the Café Sola in Collioure, drinking a beer and looking out over the bridge towards the Mediterranean. Maybe later I’ll walk down to the pier and listen to water on the rocky beach. It sounds just like rice crispies after the milk’s been added; snap, crackle and pop.

A cocktail at Bramble in Edinburgh.

Brunch at Louie’s, watching the storms come in.

Walking on the wet grey sand in Humboldt, transfixed by the Pacific.

These journeys all cover old ground. I’m not going anywhere new, just revisiting where I’ve been. I don’t know if I’m haunted by my past or if it’s me that’s doing the haunting. Lingering long after the event, looking for something lost that probably wasn’t there in the first place.

Isn't that a song lyric?

 

Buy my book. Please.

bunny lady

There’s a pretty lady who brings a bunny to the small park by the river. She keeps it on a lead and follows it as it hops along the grass, nose twitching at the odd blade. It’s a big bunny; almost a fat hare. Large grey splotches dot its white fur. The small park sits next to a playground, and often children will forget all about climbing on the plastic pirate ship and rush over to the grass to pet the bunny. Their enthusiasm turns to timidity when they reach the rabbit. Parents sing out a chorus of ‘be gentles’ and ‘be carefuls’ as their toddlers crouch down with outstretched arms. All the while the bunny’s nose twitches away and its eyes always seem to be casting a sideways glance. The pretty lady smiles at the delighted children as they pet the rabbit in wonder, and then return to their parents brimming with the excitement of it all.

I’ve never known anyone to take a rabbit for a walk. If it were you telling me, rather than me telling you, I’d have a hard time picturing it. It seems on the one hand quite a peculiar thing to do. And yet, if you have a bunny rabbit, and there’s a nice bit of grass nearby and the sun’s out, why not take it out for a stroll?

 

Buy my book. Please.

due date

I can fill my lungs without doubling over in a fit of coughing, which can only be considered an improvement. I've run 40 miles in the last two weeks. Winter's grip still holds tight, and snow floated about in a lazy fashion this morning in West London. It's an early wake up call tomorrow; a trip to Manchester to show some folks some wine. 

I decided out of the blue to restructure my book, Salt & Old Vines, this afternoon. I don't even remember how the idea came to me. I think I was choosing a playlist for getting started with writing and was thinking about some of the troubles I was having with some of the bits and not really knowing how to tell the whole story and then I had a moment of clarity. It startled me somewhat, because I wasn't really worried or thinking about structure at all. The structure seemed obvious from the beginning. And that's probably why it bored me. 

So I dropped my publisher a line and was like, um, I'm changing the book structure. 

And he asked: how?

And I told him and he was like, um, well, if it still works?

And I told him it would be better and so he didn't respond to that because obviously I had utterly reassured him.

With my deadline for a first draft March 6th (or 8th - it could be 8th… can it be 8th?), I'm mildly panicking. I finished the first draft of my novel on New Year's Eve 2006. I didn't want to go into 2007 still needing to finish it. An enormous party, great Champagne and friendly adulation accompanied it. Fireworks burst above a house in the middle of nowhere in Scotland and I went to bed drunk and knowing I'd written a whole book. 

That book is sitting in a box at the moment, changed but still needing a rewrite. 

This book won't have fireworks on completion, nor will there be '85 Dom Perignon to slurp in celebration of emailing it to the nice chaps at Unbound. I'll just hit send and set about rewriting what I know needs changed already. I might crack a beer or two while I edit. But getting it finished is just the beginning of something else. Something I'm not familiar with and quite looking forward to.

 

Buy My Book. Please.

pale light

Limping from bed this morning. My calves hurt because I ran yesterday; for the first time since the last time I wrote about running. I woke up early enough to do it again today, but the ache has caused pause. I'll take a day off. 

The day's pale light starts a littler earlier. Not early enough be useful, not yet. It doesn't hang around too much longer. It will still be dark when I walk home from work. 

Two weekends in a row of old friends, good food and too much drink. I discovered that the Red Socks Carignan 2010 that I made is a perfect match for haggis one week and that Fuller's ESB goes great with guinea fowl pie the next. At one point there was a great jukebox and a pub in Essex rang with the tunes of our university days. It had the curious effect of making the beer slip down faster and in perhaps greater quantities than normal.

I'll shake the rust off and get ready to face the week. Should be a good one.

 

Buy My Book. Please.

morning tumble

I find it easier to get out of bed at 530 than at 715. I'm not sure why, but at 530 there's no flailing for the snooze button and crawling back under the duvet, curling back into the bit still warm. I tumble out and rub my eyes. The cat looks at me funny, if he's there. Sometimes he's gone for an early breakfast, and is returning up the stairs, surprised to find me stumbling down in the other direction. My legs take awhile to work in the mornings, due to a condition called 'getting older' and getting down the stairs is precarious to say the least. At 715, I know I can get away with a minute here or there. An extra 9 in bed can be made up by skipping a shave or espresso. In fact, my espresso machine is on the fritz at the moment. Verging on calamity, that.

At 530, though, there isn't time to mess about. If I've set my alarm for so ungodly an hour, it's because I have something to do. Make wine; catch a plane; make a train. Something that just won't wait is afoot, and somewhere along my staggered road to being a grown-up, I've managed a degree of diligence in such things. I don't like it. I like waking up at 930.

930 is early enough that you can have breakfast without it reducing the appetite for lunch, while still giving you the satisfaction of not waking up at 530, 630, 730 or 830.

In any case, I made my train with ten minutes to spare. The tube was quiet, and the train nearly empty. Heading north as the bleak turns to dreich. It's a random trip, this. I'm not sure what on earth I'm doing, but hopefully I'll work it out by the time I head back tomorrow.

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poor lager and cocktail sausages

I'm waiting for the rain to stop, so that I can go for a run without drowning. The cat is feeling mischievous and lingers just around the corner, or peeking out from under a chair, somewhere he feels unobserved, where he can watch and plot. As soon as he realises I've seen him, he bolts, disappearing up the stairs. Or he just starts nonchalantly licking a forepaw, as though he was never really interested anyway. 

Last night I brought a few wines to my local, wines that I'd made, as they'd asked to try them. The owner and the manager liked them. I liked them. It was that nice time in a pub just before it gets busy on a Friday. Everyone walking through the door genuinely happy to be there, to be finished with the week. We sat and we chatted and tasted and folks arrived and drank their beer while we sipped wine in the corner. A spittoon made a brief appearance but was put away because it was a Friday evening, and there's little point spitting on a Friday evening.

After the pub and wine I went to a friend's office for beer and nibbles. Friends and strangers milled about and when the good beer ran out, the bad beer was drunk. It was late when I left and the walk home seemed particularly long. I was full of poor lager and cocktail sausages. It wasn't raining, but the streets sounded damp and wet. 

The rain's just got harder. I ate some eggs and bacon so have to wait a bit longer if I want to run. By then it will be dark and the mud along the river thick. The cat's not hiding anymore. He's napping on a chair behind my desk. 

It seems the perfect sort of day for ignoring everything I have to do.

stop. hermit-time.

There's a dangerous friction between the number of words I have to write in the coming weeks and the amount of times I'm expected to appear in either a social or professional context. I'm not good at saying no to people. I like seeing my friends, raising a glass or two. I'm easily flattered - the idea of being needed professionally plays well to my vanity, and having spent a year unemployed (freelancing, of course), I'm loathe pass up on opportunities to help out, and even get paid for it.

I like being useful, and around friends. 

But I like writing more. I love it. It's what I want my work to be. I like having my cup of tea next to my keyboard, my notebook open while I try to decipher my scribbled missives and improve on the words as I transcribe them. I like wearing my big headphones and listening to Miles Davis or Beethoven. I still find it hard to write to music with lyrics. The only words I want to hear are my own. I like the give of the keys beneath my fingers, the abstract rhythm they reveal when the letters turn to words turn to sentences turn to paragraphs turn to chapters turn to a book.

I lose myself in it, and that's a good thing. 

Time to decline invites. Switch my phone to airplane mode and make sure my polite 'no's' will not be easily converted into 'just the one'. It's time to go back to the writing hermit that I was 6 years ago, to place the book in front of everything else save maybe remembering to breathe and wash. 

Time to remember what I love doing, and do that. 

away from it all

I woke up with a bit of a start this morning. The cat was delighted, thinking my purpose was to fawn over and feed him. Instead I rolled out of bed and checked my phone to see the results. Getting info like that from Twitter is hilarious, because often the 'news' tweet is lost in the endless stream of reaction tweets. You don't find out what's happening, just what people think of what's happening. 

I voted over a month ago. Scoured the web regarding all the little, poorly written amendments to work out what they actually meant. Checked the record on the judges up for reelection and whatnot. Tried to be thorough and make an informed enough decision. Some of them required more research than others. 

My home nation seems a very different place these days. Some different for the better, some different for the worse. It's never not strange to be so detached from it and yet still be able to look in. To watch The Daily Show, read the NYT, Boston Globe or Washington Post. To see the news as it happens, to watch the thoughts of millions pouring out into the internet and yet not be in it, not really.

To feel a sense of pride, but from a distance.

 

Buy My Book. Please.

 

forward momentum

Writing is more important than packing, I'm sure of it.

We sat on the balcony last night and drank Ardbeg. The sky began crystal, and Orion's Belt twinkled above the sea to the east. Jupiter shone just above it. The moon loomed high in the south. The night was bright, lit by the moon and the stars. It was cold, too, but the whisky warming. We spoke more about the future than the past, which is for the best. It clouded over, seemingly from nowhere, and we finished our drams and threw the glasses into the sea. The last Braydram at Shorehead.

I'm so ready for this chapter to finish. I'm moving on. But my finger's still saving the page.

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life keeps happening

My diligence slipped again, and this blog has gone unloved and unattended for over a month. 

Between getting my book funded and written, understanding my new job and moving to London, there never seems the appropriate moment to sit back and pour it out here. Throw the words of my life into the world and see what makes sense. Pausing for reflection these days only leads to yet another mental to-do list. It's not so much reflecting as trying to figure out what comes next. 

It's different. I'm beginning to enjoy this life-in-progress thing. I do miss whimsically staring out to the North Sea and wondering idly if that was it. I was doomed to sit on the edge of Scotland, jobless and watching the waves. I miss the sound of the sea, but not so much the sense of doom. 

Next weekend I must rent a van and move out of the flat in St Andrews. That's probably the largest and most angst-laden item on the to-do list. No idea where I'm going to put all my shit once it's down here, but there you go. My flatmate's been diligent in steadily reducing his possessions over the last few months and I have not. I have a library of books, a library of DVDs and god knows what else. Boxes of outdated computer kit and a shoebox of birthday cards going back to the last century - just the essentials, really. At least I'm not buried under broken old laptops anymore. I did manage to get rid of a few items along the way. 

Well, as far as angst-laden goes, there's that and writing the book. It's coming along, peaks and troughs and whatnot. The lovely folks at my publisher, Unbound, are incredibly helpful. There has been a remarkable number of people offering to help and very kindly buying the book. Friends going back to my youth and complete strangers have all become patrons. It's humbling in a sense. But I'm greedy. I want it fully funded so that it's one less thing on the to-do list. 

I'll be around here more. I feel there's a lot of writing to be done, in all directions.

 

Buy My Book. Please.

some spare vintage thoughts

I'm sat in the Café Sola in Collioure at the moment, sipping coffee and a mineral water. The mineral water is there to wash to the taste of the coffee out of my mouth. French coffee is awful. I complain about it where ever I write: this blog, twitter; my disdain for it even gets a mention in my new book. I've not written a letter to The Times yet, but I might.

Outside the café, car horns sound in celebration of a wedding. It's a local thing, apparently, to drive around after a wedding service, blaring horns with gleeful disregard for those who may not give a shit about their nuptials. It seems to only end when a mother with young children at naptime threatens the lead driver with an ancient rifle usually reserved for hunting wild boar.

Today's a rare day off. Can't believe how fast it's gone. I'm back to London on Wednesday, and I don't think we'll have done any red at Mas Cristine by then. It's been a funny harvest thus far. Some spectacular fruit, some not so much, and not a lot of juice per ton. Sad to miss the reds. I've not even been to Banyuls and Coume del Mas yet.

I should be working on the book during these rare times I get a chance to write, but like running I feel I need a little warm up first. It amazes me how the world goes on while the harvest goes on. I've missed the RNC and the DNC, the continued Red Sox collapse, the Paralympics, cabinet reshuffles, sunny weather in London, dreadful weather in Scotland, the end of the Fringe, Freshers Week in St Andrews and goodness knows what else. It's not terribly concerning, just curious how much happens regardless of whether I have the time to pay attention.

I'll rejoin the world shortly. Too soon, as usual.

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south and then further south

The train's sat in Kirkaldy for longer that it should be. Bright August sun pours through the window and the surface of the Forth dances and glimmers in the morning light. A few cargo ships sit scattered on the water.

It's been a long week. Good food and old friends, fine wine and gallons of beer, all shared and some spilled. Laughter so strong and hard that you clutch your chest and fight to get air into your lungs.

I see across to the Lothians now and to Arthur's Seat, sat to the left of Edinburgh, dwarfing the city.

There were birthdays and singing and dancing. I woke to the sun and the cat asleep at the foot of my bed. I suffered only one or two hangovers, but maybe deserved a few more.

One story ended the only way it could, no matter how much I wanted to rewrite it. It's not a tale to tell, but I'll turn it over in my head for a time to come.

Loads of people board the train at Inverkeithing. I don't blame them. I'd get out of Inverkeithing too.

London this evening and then France tomorrow. I fly to Toulouse and then head down to Collioure to make wine for my fifth vintage. I bought new boots and took my wine-stained shirts out of the closet. I'm bringing good whisky with me, and a thirst for good wine.

We're now sat for too long at Haymarket. Still miss the Caley Ale House. The gap where it stood looks simply as though it's been erased, and never was.

I've been moving a lot recently. South and north like a yo-yo, and soon even further afield. I'm bored of packing and fretting about what I've forgotten. But I like the sense of motion, the sense of movement and progression. Another mile travelled, another blank page filled. New stories to start, perhaps without the sad ache of inevitability.

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should be

I should be editing right now. The document's opened on not one, but two screens. The task itself is not a major overhaul, but a minor tweak. Well, two minor tweaks, really. Merely a matter of a sentence or two. Outside, the sea is silver and calm, its waves minuscule and constant. Inside, the cat refuses to eat spiders but will devour mosquitos, moths and daddy longlegs (the British ones, with wings; American daddy longlegs are themselves arachnids and thus would not appeal to the cat). 

I like the edits. I feel no sense of injured pride that my publisher read my work and said 'that's great, but…'. Well, none right now. I'm sure that with the passage of time disagreements and bruised egos will run rampant. But for now it's a nice feeling to have someone read my stuff and make the odd suggestion. It helps that they're additions, rather than subtractions. 

I should be editing right now, but I keep looking out the window at the calm of the sea and feeling the light sting of jealousy.

maintenance and giant magnets

Today I posted my watch to the manufacturer for a service. It's a nice watch, a present from my folks for my 30th birthday, and it bothers me when it's not working. I like the weight of it on my wrist, but not enough to wear it when it can't tell me the time. And so I dispatched it in the hopes it will be back soon, good as new.

Soon my camera will need the same. The pre-sets have gone funny and as such I can only shoot in manual mode. I should have sent it off ages ago, but I hate not having it around, especially if I'm going somewhere. It's like leaving the house without a pen or a notebook. Should something happen, I would only have my memory to record it.

As I type this on my iPad, my laptop scans a hard drive for erased and damaged photos, about 500 gigs worth. It's a slow process, the scan, that leads to another slow process, the recovery. Once they're both complete comes the re-organising, which is also slow but more rewarding than the first two as it's something I actually do myself. I don't send anything away and I need not cross my fingers and hope that the software doesn't crash 48 hours and halfway through the scan (which has happened three times now). That level of control and self-determination is somewhat comforting.

Tomorrow I drive up north to a small hospital for an MRI. Just before New Years, I sensed a small itch on my back, just below my right shoulder. As of now, about 40-50% of the right side of my body is either numb or has that odd tingly-ness that comes just before pins and needles. The progression has been slow and consistent whilst my dry neurologist's theories have ranged from benign to rather scary. My blood tests came back negative for viruses and vitamin deficiencies, so I'm hoping the MRI reveals something, just not something rather scary.

I'm also hoping there are no shards of ferrous metal embedded in my body that I am unaware of, nor that I have a hitherto unrealised problem with claustrophobia; lying in a giant magnet for an hour can aggravate both those things.

And so, like my tools and toys, I need some manner of maintenance. I just wish that going in for a service was as easy for me as it is for them.

central heating and nostalgia

Last night the St Louis Cardinals won the World Series and today my flatmate turned the heating on. The leaves and lack of frost suggest that autumn has itself a few more weeks, but I'm suspicious. Already my thoughts have turned to winter, with all of November still to come. I crave stews and chilli and roasts and deep red wines that stick to the ribs and crunch like kindling mixed with dry leaves.

At last count, I have about six unwritten projects and one large item to edit. There's a script, a novel, a novella and scattered blog posts that may not seem like priority, but still serve the important role of keeping words flowing. I'm out shape, you see. The words are not flowing. They are a tumult in my head, of course, but I'm not getting them out to where they belong. All my blogs have suffered, my writing has suffered and with them both perhaps a bit of my sanity as well.

Such frustration requires escape and often I find myself lost in old photos or old scribblings. Sometimes both. Nostalgia strikes hard when the future is obscured. It clarifies the past and polishes it as well, giving every little nugget of memory - every warm moment - an added sheen. Because it seems so clear, so close, so grows the illusion that things were clear at the time. So follows a belief in the past's inherent innocence, as clarity quickly becomes purity in the mind's eye and soon you look out and see behind you a perfect narrative. And as soon as you see it as such you begin to wonder where it changed, how did such a perfect past lead to an imperfect and mostly uncertain future?

The radiator's kicking off a nice heat and the cat sleeps atop a pile of my jumpers at the bottom of my bed. The wind isn't howling, yet. The clocks go back in an hour or so. Tomorrow I'll run and bake bread and try, with some effort, to write.

remembrance

Santa brought my family its first computer on Christmas Day 1984. I was 8, though for some reason it feels like I should have been 7. It was a Macintosh 512, affectionately referred to as the 'Fat Mac'. We got a subscription to Macworld and a bunch of programs as well. My mom spearheaded the integration of this strange new machine into the household while my dad stood back and embraced the ways of the luddite, as he still does to this day. I looked on in wonder and excitement, using the new machine at every opportunity, curious as to why my MacPaint creations never looked as awesome as the sample art. Swapping floppies became habit. Boston Mac User Group (BMUG) discs littered the desk. I begged for a LaserWriter but instead we got an ImageWriter II.

At school I used Apple II's and Basic to make shapes with a turtle.

At home I designed posters and wrote screenplays based on me being Indiana Jones. And I played Lode Runner. A huge amount of Lode Runner.

After an upgrade to 1Mb of RAM could only take us so far and so we used my cousin's educational discount and bought a Macintosh SE. That had an internal hard drive, which blew my mind. Swapping floppies was relegated to installs only. My mother wrote a cookbook on that machine. It was that machine that came with us to London when we moved in 1989.

My first Mac was a Classic II. I got it my junior year of High School. By then Tetris had replaced Lode Runner as my gaming addiction. That was followed by an LCIII, a Centris 610 (hand-me-down), a PowerMac 7100/66 (also hand-me-down), a PowerBook G3 250, a PowerBook G3 Pismo, a PowerBook G4, an iBook G4, a black MacBook and now the 15" MacBook Pro that I'm writing this on. I had the first iPod and quite a few subsequent iPods - Shuffles, Nanos and a Classic, but never a Mini. I'm on my third iPhone and I use an iPad regularly. I've never owned a PC.

In the summer of 1997, my mother and I drove from Key West to Washington DC. We listened to a lot of NPR and tried to identify road kill along the way. I remember saying that she and dad should, if they had the money, invest in Apple. The stock was trading at about $12 a share at the time. This was before the iMac. Steve Jobs had only just returned to the company and the future was uncertain to say the least. My mom asked why and I said, 'They make the best computers. Someone's going to have to notice that eventually. And it looks like Steve Jobs is going to help people notice that.'

Every step of my education and subsequent professional life has been processed on Macs. Writing, web design, general design, photography, project management and wine merchanting have all been made a little more comprehensible, a little more pleasurable, a little more manageable because I have faith and confidence in the tools I use.

Last night I was drinking whisky with friends when one stopped mid sentence and handed me his iPad with the news splash of Steve Jobs' death. I took to Twitter and saw a steady stream of reactions to the news. We poured another dram and spoke in saddened awe. I couldn't sleep when I got home and so wandered online, reading testimonial after testimonial.

Steve Jobs built the company that makes the tools I use and trust. He did it remarkably. He built another company that makes movies I love. The tools that forged the World Wide Web were built by yet another company of his. The sheer scale of his accomplishments is daunting. He changed the world in not one but several fields. For the better, and without question better than the alternatives. A future without him driving forward innovation, shaping the advancements of technology so that it actually matters to people, seems a sad prospect.

It seems selfish, really, to mourn the loss of someone who has done so much because, in part, I wanted there to be more.

Rest in peace, Steve. And thank you.

something written

I'm a little on edge. Two cups of jasmine tea have done nothing to calm me. I finished editing the submission chapters for my book about an hour ago. It's been a long time coming. There are still things to do (the rest of the manuscript needs work) and there are cover letters still to write, and then they have to be posted and stuff. Oh, and then there's the onslaught of inevitable rejection letters. But this is a start. A good start to the year. It's not quite the end-of-January deadline I set for myself initially, but it isn't the vague sometime-in-the-future-before-summer-maybe deadline that replaced it either. I'll take it. And I'll write the letters tomorrow.

I think I might need a whisky.