MH #8

Where the hell have I been? A question with a number of layered meanings. Anyone who reads this site (there are at least two of you, not including me) might have been wondering when I was going to write again. Fair question. But I have also been absent from my usual engagements to a large …

MH #7

More than 6 months have passed since I found anything to say on here, and I hadn't even noticed until the last week. Whenever I write a mental health blog, I always feel as though it should be a profound "full stop" of sorts and that the next chapter that comes after it should be …

MH #6

During my sudden hospital stay for a minor stroke in January 2020, I was warned that my recovery would not be linear, that there would be profound peaks and troughs and (crucially) plateaus, and that there would be times when I’d feel absolutely hopeless. I thought I knew what my caregivers meant, but now I …

Pairing #56 | King Buffalo x Pentrich

When I think about my own guitar playing and band activities at the current time, there are maybe five bands that form cornerstone influences on my sound and the way I like to do things. There are obviously others, but these are the headliners that I work outwards from. They are: Elder; Weedpecker; Causa Sui; …

Pairing #55 | Henry Parker x Tynt Meadow

I'm very aware that I've been absent on here for some time and particularly lax with any music or beer content. This is purely a headspace thing: this has been an eventful year and my personal ecosystem has suffered at times because of it. But one of the reasons this website exists is for me …

MH #5

So it’s now a little over 18 months since I was hospitalised with a stroke. There were a few points at which I was convinced I’d never be able to write that sentence. So I’m grateful to be here. My brain often feels like it’s still in shock. I know “trauma” is a word with …

Music #12 | Exotic Monsters

This was going to be another of those posts where I spectacularly (and embarrassingly) fail to find a good way to describe what I’ve listened to, in much the same way that my beer tasting notes are lame. But I realised that I wasn’t really going to get anywhere on that path this time round. …

Pairing #54 | Nick Jonah Davis x Duration

Nick Jonah Davis was, I think, another random Bandcamp-by-way-of-Twitter discovery, and another of those “why haven’t I done a solo guitar record yet?” awakenings. Seriously, I’ve been playing for 25 years and I need to get moving. NJD conjures up his own bucolic fantasy universe via a beautifully-recorded LP featuring my two weakest points: fingerstyle …

ASD #1

Anyone who spent any of their boredom-riddled lunch breaks reading my old blog (there were at least two of you, I checked the analytics) may recall that, back in 2016, I spent some time undergoing assessment for Asperger syndrome. I wrote a post about it. As described in the original post, the outcome was negative, …

Pairing #53 | All Them Witches x BrewDog

I've had a bit of a break on here, as I've been suffering with a complete lack of capacity and had so many things to worry about that something had to give way. Unfortunately that something was this blog, and I realised I get an awful lot of satisfaction from writing the indulgent musings on …