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...

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...

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...

You know how sometimes you find yourself searching for a word and you just can't remember it. You know it's in there somewhere, if only you could reach in and fish it out. "It's on the tip of my tongue" you'd say, when in reality that's the last place you can bring the stubborn little term to. Well I guess it must have been because I was sick of feeling so frustrated at that feeling of having something deep inside my head--some brilliant idea or some eternal truth that refused to come out--t...