I remember when I went to get my wisdom teeth taken out, back in 2003. It was somewhere over there in the Medical Center. I filled out a few forms in the reception and a hygienist dressed in those loose-fitting floral surgical scrubs came through to lead me to the dentist's room. She led me out of the shiny reception with its gleaming tables and plastic pot plants, across a dull corridor carpeted with a reassuring bounce, and guided me to a door. On the other side of that door I sat alone, in...

It was a winter night in Glasgow, some time in the mid-Nineties, and my friend Tim and I stopped off at the Irish pub for a couple of pints. I liked the Irish pub. In spite of the fact that it was shockingly artificial, there was still much to like about it. It was always busy, and as soon as you opened the door you were greeted with a gust of warm air and the din of people—people everywhere—laughing and shouting. They poured good Guinness. I liked the way my boots sounded, thudding around on...

Nobody trusts a politician, but people trust their governments.

Freedom is never having to lie. Though all governments will lie to their people, it is when the people have to lie to their governments that they know they are no longer free.

Regardless of what pharmaceutical companies might have you think, there is no pill to cure the fact that the world has problems.

I once was a bright young spirit, Happy and hopeful, eager for this journey. I thought myself the kind of man Who'd win by habit, The golden boy Upon whom the sun always smiles, Bringing me good fortune. I have traveled far from those days. Somehow my path is lost, I find myself alone, Wandering in search of an oasis. The desert shows me promises it snatches clean away. I am lured, I am lured. And it's all I can do To find the strength to push on through and keep moving. How many times must I...

Father, my father: the angels made me for the devils' sport. A caged man I am, suspended in the aching skies of a terrible god. And what fool of a man would dare challenge god? Man uses his conscience to divide and destroy, and this god of ours has many mistakes. It is a poor man that wouldn't dare to challenge a god like this, and scream against the sky. And scream against fate until he makes fate his own servant. A poor man indeed, that would be less than a god. I fell into a sweet death of...

The cold stone floor. The fluorescent strip lighting. The stench of formaldehyde and the sickly yellow glow of embalmed skin. The long, iron-framed windows that were too high to see inside. The triple sink. The gleam of a scalpel, and the blank indifference of all those dead faces. Those are the things I think of when I remember the oldest room in the Department of Anatomy. I remember being a naive 18-year-old sitting in the dining room of the halls of residence. I had been in Glasgow only a ...

Today I fell asleep at work. I was growing tired, sitting staring into my monitor, and I could feel sleep creeping up through me and accumulating behind my eyes. A million gentle voices, working like ants, gathering their weight and telling me to close the eyes; to succumb. I gladly gave in to them. It was no different to giving in to a drunken dream; a druggist's heaven; giving in to the soft entreatings of a whore. I was giving in momentarily to a sweet death. I realize by now that my boss ...

Rudyard Kipling once claimed that to be born an Englishman is to have a winning ticket in life's lottery. Or if he didn't, it's the sort of thing he would have said. I'm still waiting for the cash. When I was born, my parents determined that I would not be corrupted by the cynicism of modern society: to ensure that I remained in touch with my natural instincts I was to be raised in the wild. So I was brought up in Bradford. The day I was born, disco was invented in a backroom bar in Kansas C...