I live in the North Pennines, where I write, think, and walk — usually with a notebook in my rucksack and a head full of thoughts. I’m a poet and philosopher who prefers walking boots, kitchen-table conversations, and the company of grouse and heather to the polished certainty of ivory towers.
This Substack is the natural next step after my poetry collection The Nitty Gritty God — a book that tries, in its own small way, to speak about the sacred tangled up in the ordinary: the strange miracle of being alive, the grit under our fingernails, and the mystery that hides in the mundane.
What you’ll find here is a continuation of that spirit. A wandering ramble down a muddy path that might not lead anywhere sensible. I want this to be a place where life, humour, absurdity, and beauty can sit together at the same table, sharing tea and camembert.
Why does this place exist? Because I think it matters to talk about the depth of things — mystery, meaning, and the feeling that reality is always more than we can explain. In a world where it’s easy to slip into the pit of nihilism, I want to offer another possibility: that even the strangest, most ordinary days might be full of something worth experiencing.
If you join me here, you’ll find poems, thoughts, questions, and bits of whimsy — and hopefully a renewed sense that life is worth living with eyes and heart wide open, even when it all makes absolutely no sense at all.
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