The Star Cellar, also known as Kenya, is a long and aging greenhouse erected on the roof of my apartment block by former residents. It once grew communal produce, and it still stores stacks of trays and towers of old pots at the back. Stickers on the windows oppose light…

At ten minutes to seven I was staring at my log-in. My first evening facing live crisis clients. I decided to turn off my desk lamp and sit in the dark, which only got as dark as a green neon apothecary sign beside my window. In the glass, the slim…

On the morning tram with a bag of monkey nuts for the birds. I was peckish and it felt good to run my fingers inside the pack, revolving a sensual double bulb, one reflecting the other like playing card queens. Rippled, crackable and delicate. Each crunch inside my fist made…

I received a signal from Spirit telling me that signals, by their nature, serve the material. After a period of silence over my day-to-day concerns, Spirit seemed to be suggesting that silence was going to be the way to address them going forward. Immediately I wanted to counter this. If…

In 1992 I telephoned Channel 4 to offer them my proposal. “It’ll need a helicopter. A Steadicam guy. Back-up in a Jeep.” It was late at night after a trying evening, so I left the pitch on their answering machine. I slept until noon the following day. When I surfaced…

“Albert Eugene Babendreier. Maryland. Can’t be many of those.” “What a name. Why? D’you know him?” My partner didn’t bother to look at the international news story which had caused me to stop scrolling. I read further in silence. …

God in the bin, of broken things. Leftover clay. Fossil paper towels crushed into grey flowers, grey failure. Cuts and remnants. For you I have loose pigment in a dustpan, which I knock into your belly with the small side of a brush. Watch it settle for a second, blowing…

My father once met a man whom he used to help with homework. Who had inherited a paper mill. And my father asked him, in the course of their conversation, near a shopping centre car park — why? Why he not only employed east Europeans but actively flew to these…

“The boy brings me oxygen. He’s the oxygen boy. Unskilled, not caring. Not a medical professional, so he needn’t even pretend that he cares. He’s exonerated, just a driver in modern overalls, who whistles as he scoops up the latest pale grey tank from the rear of his van, and…