Rebuilding Haiti

Did a piece on rebuilding Haiti for the last ever cover of the Indy's features supplement. It took a couple of re-writes, mostly because I felt like comparing Haiti's reconstruction to historical examples was kind of invalid, given the uniqueness of its situation. When we eventually published it, I could see where they were coming from, even if I didn't entirely agree with it.

Ellie Goulding

Hung around with her for a bit in Glasgow for the cover of our Saturday magazine. She was really down to earth. On Saturday night she invited me backstage but I was kind of worn out.

NYPC

Interviewed the band in their North London studio. I was a bit nervous (since I fell in love with their first album) but they were very brilliant and massively accommodating. 

Hot Chip

Reviewed Hot Chip playing in Brixton. Wouldn't normally post a review but it blew me away. Went around to my good friend Dan's afterwards who I later heard had a rather bizarre night which I was glad I'd bowed out of early.

Losing on all fronts

Here's something I wrote for my work blog (which I don't normally link to, for some reason) about a paper published last year. It delves into the psychological effects of political attacks and I thought it was really interesting.

Delphic

Reviewed them at The Garage then interviewed them in Brighton. I didn't have long, but they were gracious, and funny.

Short stories

I took a week off work to write and have uploaded three short stories on to a separate blog which I'm hoping to update as regularly as I can. They kind of operate as writing exercises as well. The first is called "The Bridge"; it's about two kids who walk down to the marsh with their granddad. The other two I've since deleted, I don't think they're strong enough. (Kate le Vann kindly read all three for me). I'm also uploading them to Edit Red which seems like a valuable resource. "Patient" was kindly published by the guys at Short Story Library.

3/4/10 update: Inexplicably, Patient at Shortbread seems to be high up the Google rankings with almost 100 hits, which I suppose is marginally less painful than a kick in the balls.