At long last, I have some news. After six years, I’m leaving Bauer and moving got to pastures new – or at least to allow myself some time to do some more creative work.

I haven’t really talked much about work here as I prefer to compartmentalise it, and because the actual amount that I can talk about is usually quite limited. But I have been director of content and audience development there, and although I’ve loved the work and the people, the amount of opportunity that I have had to be creative has been limited. I have mostly been managing people, and although I’m good at that and find it rewarding, it has left an itch which I have needed to scratch.

I have written before about how I’ve been scratching that itch with creative writing, but combining that with a day job which really does take a lot of energy has been difficult. So when a chance came to move on and do something new as my responsibilities at work were changing, it felt like the right time to take it.

The plan is to take a couple of months and push my writing harder. I don’t know how far I can get with this – and I definitely don’t know if there’s any kind of “career” there – but having the space and time to try seems like an opportunity which doesn’t come along often. I don’t think I’m quite in the same position as Lee Child, who famously got made redundant and gave himself six months to write a bestseller, but I would like to explore if this is something I want to do more of. And if you have the chance, it would be crazy to let that chance slip past you.

My last day at work was Friday, so now I am officially unemployed. Or perhaps I’m actually a writer. Who knows yet? Perhaps Monday is the first day as something different.

Leaving a job is a strange experience, and one I have only had three times. Leaving MacUser was mostly about feeling burned out and wanting an easier life. I was living in Brighton and the commute up to London – which I was doing every day – was taxing. I knew I could make a decent living freelancing, and I did. Leaving Redwood was easy, as after eight years in the world of contract publishing, the chance to move back to Dennis felt like a good one. And leaving Dennis was also an obvious move, as I was going to a bigger company and a bigger role, working with some of the best brands in the world across publishing and radio.

This feels a bit more like that first time because I genuinely don’t know exactly what the future holds yet. But I know that, really, it has to be now. I’m 56, which means another fifteen years or so before I can retire. If I stayed much longer at Bauer, it would be the last place I ever worked. And I don’t feel like I want to work anywhere for what would have ended up as 23 years if I had stayed. While my dad was content to work for British Rail for 44 years (literally man and boy, as he started there when he was 14) that’s just not for me.

So here I am. Let’s see where things take me.

Things I have been writing

Not much – as you can imagine, my last week at work was filled with paperwork and no spare time. It wasn’t stressful, but there is a lot to do when you leave a job, not the least leaving things in a relatively orderly state. Even the 4,000 word handover document I wrote doesn’t quite seem to encapsulated everything… but it will have to do.

Things I have been reading

Not a huge amount of time for reading, but I have been cracking on with M John Harrison’s The Centauri Device, and I can completely understand how that warped my mind when I read it at the age of 10. We were on the one Spanish holiday we did as a family. It was the only science fiction paperback in the English newsagent, and I devoured it. Related: I now remember where Iain M Banks pinched his idea for slightly odd ship names.

The three things which most caught my attention

1. The Observer on Hollywood strikes and AI. I cannot agree with this more: corporations can’t be trusted with AI.
2. Tim Bray’s note on why he left Twitter. The time for being on Twitter is long past, and Tim was an early(ish) proponent of leaving it.
3. How Stanley Kubrick upset Arthur C Clarke. Written by Michael Moorcock, who knew Clarke well from his early SF writing career. Includes the interesting snippet that at one point Kubrick tried to dump Clarke from 2001: A Space Odyssey and get it written by either Moorcock or JG Ballard. Certainly, a Ballardian spin on HAL might have been interesting…

It's been a couple of weeks since I last wrote and a few things have happened:

• I spent a week up in Arvon's Lumb Bank writing house doing a wonderful week of creativity, being tutored by Leone Ross and Julia Armfield. I'm going to write more about this in another post
• Lots of things have occurred that I can't talk about yet, but will be able to next week
• I've been really tired quite a bit

I have also been looking closely at my technology needs and am thinking about the best ways to streamline it (and to move it closer to my values). This is partly an outgrowth of looking at my values as a whole. something I'm doing with a coach -- and I'll come back to that next week…

The three things which most caught my attention

1. "Here's why Threads is delayed in Europe" is the definitive article on why Meta's Threads social network has been launched in the UK but not on the mainland. No, Threads isn't "banned in the EU" (which I have seen a dozen times written as if it was fact).
2. "How to write a book in three days" looks at Michael Moorcock's writing practice back when he was churning them out. One of the points should probably be "be Michael Moorcock".
3. "How Samuel R. Delany Reimagined Sci-Fi, Sex, and the City" is that rarest of things, an interview with the great Delany. If you haven't read "The Motion of Light in Water" then you really should.

Things I have been writing

I wrote a short post on how Apple and Disney are more than happy to hand Twitter cash which it then hands on to neo-Nazis, homophobes, transphobes and accused rapists. Basically companies that are still advertising with Twitter fall into three camps: active supports of reactionary causes; tiny companies who aren't really keeping up; and corporates who like to pretend they're for equality but won't actively do things to support it.

Things I have been reading

Reading has been a bit fragmented this week. I decided to re-read M John Harrison's "The Centauri Device" which I am churning through, but I'm also continuing with Tim Lott's "Yes! No! But Wait!" -- and when I move between books I tend to read less as a result.

Having teased you all with some big news that I thought I was going to be able to talk about this week… I can’t… so you will have to wait. Maybe next week.

This week I am off up to Hebden Bridge to do another residential Arvon course. I did one last December down at Totleigh Barton (with the lovely Sharlene Teo and Michael Donkor). This time round the tutors are Julia Armfield and Leone Ross, and I’m really looking forward to working with them. I haven’t read any of Leone’s work (yet), but I have read both Salt Slow and Our Wives Under The Sea by Julia and absolutely loved them.

We went to see Wes Anderson’s latest, Asteroid City and I don’t quite know what to make of it. It’s probably not in my top three Wes Anderson movies, which is slightly odd as my top three Wes Anderson movies are mostly the ones that people don’t rate highly (Grand Budapest Hotel, The French Dispatch, and The Life Aquatic for the record – although I also love Isle of Dogs). Asteroid City comes closest to “Wes Anderson movie that I wouldn’t bother watching again”, although I suspect that it would benefit from a second viewing. The layers of play within movie made me think of what a Christopher Nolan script directed by Wes Anderson would be like. Not totally sold.

Things I have been reading

Mostly I have been working my way through Tim Lott’s Yes! No! But wait! which is a pretty neat book on exactly the part of writing that I most struggle with: plotting, and how it relates to character. I am mostly what Matt Gemmell calls a pantser – I start writing and see where it goes – which means I get to a point in a piece of work and have no idea where to go with it next. It’s probably why I prefer writing short-form fiction to long-form: the plot is easy and very self-contained when you’re writing something short. Tim’s book is definitely helping cure me of that. A bit. Maybe. Perhaps that’s something I’ll be working on next week.

Things I have been writing

Does my latenote from last Monday count? Other than that, I haven’t written much – which is mostly down to the secret thing that I can’t talk about (and you are going to be really disappointed with when I tell you about it, because it’s really not as exciting as it sounds).

Oh gosh I've missed two weeknotes in a row. In fairness to me, there has been a lot going on -- much of which I can't talk about yet (but should be able to next week), and we have also been away for two weekends in a row, in London and Manchester.

Last weekend's trip to Manchester was a lot of fun and reminds me two things: I miss living in the north; and I love hanging out with gay men. We went up to see Brenda, who was Kim's mum's best friend and who we have stayed in touch with. Brenda was at the coronation of the late queen, and is a treasure house of memories as well as being a lovely, delightful person to be around.

After leaving Brenda's house on Saturday we decided to stop off in Manchester's gay village to have a look (I haven't been there for a couple of decades, and Kim never has) and a quick pint. We ended up of course chatting to a lovely bunch of young boys (they were all in their early 20s so very much boys to me), and a very very drunk and emotional girl, plus a couple of older men in television. Five pints and a jelly shot (bought by one of the boys) later we broke my "no Uber" rule because we were too drunk to work out how to get back to our hotel on the tram.

Related: I fucking love trams.

I also just love Manchester, a city on the scale of London but without the feeling which I get from the capital of things having been closed down, unavailable unless you have vast amounts of money or are a property developer. It feels good. I get the same feeling from Bristol too.

Meanwhile next week I'm off to Arvon up near Hebdon Bridge for a week's writing, which I'm looking forward to immensely. I've been an absolute slacker with my my writing lately, so this is an opportunity to pick up the practice again. And this time, I'm pretty sure I'll maintain it.

Things I have been writing

I wrote a post responding to a few articles on the pre-emptive work underway to block Meta's purported new ActivityPub-based platform which may or may not be called Threads. Threads, of course, was also the name of the Instagram messaging service which it shut down a couple of years ago, proving that big companies really have no imagination.

The post blew up a bit thanks to being linked to on Daring Fireball -- it's almost like old-school blogging where someone would write something and you would create a long, considered response never went away.

I'm also going to write something responding to Bloon's post on how the "Twitter migration" to Mastodon failed. I don't think it did, and I think that Bloon is looking at it from a very particular perspective which isn't representative of the kinds of users for whom moving away from Twitter was a matter of safety rather than entertainment.

Things I have been reading

Since I last wrote I have finished off two books: Fumio Sasaki's "Goodbye Things" and China Mieville's first novel "King Rat" (not to be confused with the James Clavell novel of the same name).

Sasaki's book is good but really if you're interested in minimalism as a practice I wouldn't start here -- there are better books out there. I enjoyed reading it, especially for the rationale he provides for his choices and as a piece of highly-Japanese writing.

Mieville's book is an interesting one, both because it shows his style coming into existence and as a slice of writing which is very much of its time. It's set against a background of the drum and bass/jungle community in the late 1990s and it very much reminds me of my dear, lost friend Cherie who was very much part of that scene. I never quite got it but my orbit back then occasionally took me into the world of jungle. I never really got it, but I liked the people I met.

I’ve been feeling somewhat melancholy this week. I suspect the cause of that is mostly physical: I have also been feeling quite run down, not to the point of exhaustion but definitely lacking in energy. The two things usually go hand in hand: Kim has occasionally described how my emotions emerge from me like a cloud, surrounding me, and it works both ways. When my body is struggling, my emotions cluster around me, and when I’m feeling strong emotions, I wear it across my body like a gaudy sash.

We spent part of the last long weekend before August dog sitting two Bedlington terriers who manage to combine whip-smarts with the utter irrationality of all dog kind when it comes to the three things most important to them: snacks, shitting and chasing rabbits. I miss having a dog although I would probably want one that wasn’t quite so excitable. An elderly dog who likes a little amble and wistful glance towards the rabbits in the field is probably about my speed.

On Wednesday we went up to that there London to see Jeremy Deller in conversation with Emma Warren talking about Art is Magic. I love his work – honestly if you don’t like We’re here because we’re here you have no heart – but I also love that he’s not a trained artist, didn’t go to art school, and is what the art establishment likes to call and “outsider artist”. That’s a phrase which, of course, reeks of the privilege they have and how they like to project it. We are insiders – you are an outsider. And we all know that outsiders aren’t to be trusted.

It’s possibly one of the reasons why it’s taken me fifty years to admit to myself that some of what I do might actually be art, rather than craft or a trade. We shall see. It still feels more than a little uncomfortable.

Kim has been off in France – first Paris, then Montpellier – doing fun art things since Thursday. That meant she didn’t have to suffer the FA Cup Final with me (our friend Edward came round for shit talking and snack eating) and I’m taking the opportunity to do a bunch of chores that have been on my list of things to do for far too long. Related: my back now hurts. One more thing to talk to the doctor about at some point.

Things I have been writing

I wrote something on my experience of covid. This isn’t the first thing I have written about the pandemic, but I think it’s the most complete account of how it’s made me feel, and think, and act differently.

Things I have been reading

I finished off M John Harrison’s “anti-memoir” Wish I was here in just a couple of days. It’s very Harrison: don’t expect a linear narrative about the events in his life, or a how-to manual on writing weird fiction. It’s as much a piece of art writing as the rest of his recent work, and has the opacity and determination not to explain things which he’s really been playing around with for a long time.

Of course I loved it, but I’ve always loved his work, ever since as a nine or 10 year old I picked up a copy of The Centauri Device while on holiday in Spain. I was obsessed with science fiction and this was the only book I would find amongst the tiny selection of English-language paperbacks in the Spanish newsagent which catered to Brits on their cheap package holiday. Harold Robbins, James Clavell, Dennis Wheatley and M John Harrison. I have sometimes wondered quite how they ended up stocking it, but whoever decided that a Spanish newsagent was the right place for a story of spacefaring anarchists deserves my thanks.

I’m not sure what to read next. This is always an interesting moment: a few days of paralysis while I work out what my brain wants to absorb. I’m tempted to jump into Goodbye, Things by Fumio Sasaki as a bit of a break from fiction. It’s been in the book pile for a couple of weeks, which is usually the optimum time for reading: any longer, and it tends to get buried by other options. Any shorter, and it interrupts what I’m already reading. And I hate to stop reading a book before the end: abandoning something always feels like a moral failure, even though intellectually I know it’s the right thing to do.