Winterlight

Hello from out there on the Thames Delta. I’m out breaking in a new pair of blade sneakers. I like winter morning walking.

As winter has arrived, I have decided to stop cutting my beard. By Christmas I will look like Santa’s demented older brother. By February I will be deep into the look of the ghost of a sinister trawler captain. Lordess calls it the “the sea cries out for mystic revenge” look.

And a few days later I went down to Old Leigh and saw this:

This is not a cry for help. I will haunt the Leigh cockle sheds in a submariner roll-neck sweater, leather gloves, watchcap and heavy duty jeans, eat lobsters and drink espresso in the chill salt air. Every season is just a new way to live well.

This is your reminder that making things for a living, as I know many of you do and many of you aspire to, is not about being hunched over your desk like a mollusc all damn day every day. This is the work that gives you the space to think for yourself, be yourself, and sit by the shore - or the field, or the desert, or the mountain - and live well. 

(marks on hand left by over-affectionate mancub earlier that week)

In this letter:

OPERATIONS

WINTER LIGHT

It’s busy. I have four projects in train for this newsletter alone. I have two graphic novellas in the lettering phase right now, I’m writing the solicitation for a new-edition reprint book, two artists have asked me to create new projects with them, I have contracts for a long short story (DEAD PIG COLLECTOR length) and a sequence of short fictions for an unusual outlet, an artist just about to crack into issue 4 of a series we’re doing together, a 20pp commission I really need to finish, as much consulting work as I can handle, a couple of film/tv things in the usual ghostly Schrodinger’s Cat zone in which those things always live… and I’m starting to feel like I don’t have enough time.

It therefore makes sense that I pissed off to Old Leigh for an afternoon.

I always get paper train tickets and I always keep them in this. I love using this little ticket wallet.

I had one of those experiences you sometimes read in newspaper opinion columns. I was sitting on a train, I’d taken my wired earbuds out and was just enjoying the sounds and the coastal view. It was a gorgeous day. The sun was blazing on the water. I stood up ahead of my stop, walked to the doors, and looked around - and literally everyone else on the train had their head in their phones. 

Now, when I went out that day, I made some deliberate choices. I put my phone in the inside pocket of my coat, and put my Apple Watch on so the important notifications - family and friends, basically - went to my wrist. And then I put on my heavy leather winter gloves, which do not have touch points on, so I wouldn’t be able to operate my phone. And I put on my mp3 player with wired earbuds, because I’ve been walking with music since I was a young teenager and I was bought my first knock-off Walkman tape player. No screen time. Sub-connection. 

If I got “bored,” my options were to either listen properly to the music, look around at the world, or have some thoughts.

So I went down to Old Leigh.

I bought seafood and samphire out of one of the converted old cockle sheds, took a few photos just because it was so lovely and then just sat by the sea wall for a while, got the train back to town, and wandered down to my favourite deli for a glass of red wine and some cheese and coppa. Wandered over to Marks and Sparks and compared photos of Old Leigh with the cashier while I bought prosciutto to pair with the fresh scallops I picked up. And I had some thoughts on sub-connection.

For the last year or two, I’ve been working on making my days longer. A big part of that, for me, is keeping my head out of screens. That’s half the reason why I bought the stupid cheapo mp3 player. No phone, no connectivity. 

(Some of you will remember that I even print off photos to keep in my notebooks)

I was remembering about how, well into my twenties, I’d walk ten or twelve miles a day and not even think about it. And I would listen to music, or listen to where I was, and often read, and get a lot of thinking done. 

That feels almost prehistoric now. The days of loose change and telephone boxes.

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