Owlet started learning about Beethoven in music class at school just before March break. She ran to meet me at the school gate and this is the conversation we had: OWLET: Mummy, do you know Beethoven? ME: Not personally, but I know his music. OWLET: Why not? ME: Well, honey, he’s dead. OWLET: WHAT. He […]

While Ginny was introduced on other social media, I should really include it here. Hey world, meet Ginny… who weasled her way into our hearts and became a major foster fail. She’s about a year old and terribly sweet. I’ll be volunteering with the rescue organization in other ways, mostly chauffeuring and transporting stuff when […]

Owlet has decided that violin lessons are interesting, and so she’s doing a couple of private ones with her violin teacher from camp in the afternoons. From what I saw yesterday, she works better one on one than in a group setting, which doesn’t surprise me at all, really. The fingerboard popped off her violin […]

In short… I overdid it last year. I wrote two new books for publication in the first six months. Also during that time I expanded a previously written book by at least 25%, a lot of reference material for which didn’t really exist yet. Over the rest of the year, I wrote the second half […]

My therapist wants me to start blogging again. Which, okay. I’m a writer, and the way I used to work things out was to write about what was going on. But something happened to me a few years ago that made that outlet impossible to use properly for a few years; it basically broke my […]

I live in Stockport, just outside Manchester. It's 10 minutes by train away, but I’m not sure if the trains are running – and in any case I’ve not actually been in my office in Central Manchester since February 20.
That got complex. I was in Iraq for work and came home in early March with a virus. Just not that virus but they wouldn’t test me because Iraq (you know, right next door to Iran) wasn’t on the WHO list.
So. Context. We live in a suburban semi-detatched house with a garden (big for Edgeley). There’s me. Matt the husband.…

The beauty of slow TV, says Spencer Stoner, is that it’s different things to different people – a travelogue, an immersive experience, an awesome screensaver. After the success of last year’s Go South, Stoner has spent a month at sea filming Go Further South, a 12-hour journey from Bluff to Antarctica.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but Go Further South is perfect for self-isolation.
It’s kind-of an unhappy accident. I’ve been in the final stage of editing and every day I feel like I’m sailing through the Ross Sea in Antarctica and it’s cool to think that…

There are a few days left to put in a submission on the Electoral (Registration of Sentences Prisoners) Amendment Bill.
The bill would allow prisoners serving sentence of imprisonment under three years to vote, essentially restoring the status quo ante that existed before the members bill advanced by then National MP Paul Quinn was passed by a slim majority
For anyone interested in my views, they're published below. I've been sufficiently organised this time to publish them here a few days before submissions close, so if there are any errors, please let me know. 
The Justice Committee
Electoral (Registration of…

When you spend a lot of time on your own, as I do, you tend to notice things more, perhaps earlier. 
I think it was maybe early February when I started to feel quite concerned about a new virus from the same family as common colds but worse than influenza. I watched a documentary in February on the “Spanish Flu” and I learnt that we don’t know for sure where it originated. The reason it was coined Spanish Flu is because Spain was neutral in WWI and so they weren’t trying to hide the truth of their experience with this…