June 2010

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I was thinking about the Beach Boys, and about the movement of regret that arcs across the five years between Surfin USA and Do It Again, and about the melancholy resonances of that second song, with its sun-tanned girls and its beautiful coastline; because, of course, you can’t do it again. There is only ever a first time. I suppose …

London, February

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  The city is returned to me, the freedom of its leaping bridges, the keys to silver skies. And the river, bottled between glass blocks, embanked and turbulent; the towers on the other side unreachable.

The world in December

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    In the rush of traffic round Etoile, the radiating spokes of the grand avenues revolved slowly around him, the sense of Paris like a great wheel, poised, rotating on the spindle of the Tower. Never mind London’s postal districts – packed like squares of wheat – a librarian’s vision: a grid, a timetable, a schedule of deliveries. Paris …