When I’m considering this I find it helpful to quote the wisdom of my father, who once told me, Who knows why the fuck anything happens?
Whatever you see, he’d said, take as long a look as you need to get used to it, to accept it, and then move on as if nothing has changed.
We seem to be sitting around waiting for the next fucking disaster. he said, which went into the official log as - DCI Seawoll felt that our operational posture was too reactive.
To them, fae basically meant anyone who was vaguely magical who hadn’t gone to the right school, with the High Fae being the creatures referenced in medieval literature who dwelled in their own castle...
The voice belonged to a plump, round-faced woman of the sort that develops a good personality because the alternative is suicide.
The railway hit Harrow on the Hill in 1880 and it’s been downhill ever since, culminating in one of those formless red brick shopping centres which artfully combines a complete lack of aesthetic quali...
The principal advantages of living in your station’s section house is that it is cheap, close to work and it’s not your parents’ flat. The disadvantages are that you’re sharing your accommodation with...
The media response to unusual weather is as ritualized and predictable as the stages of grief. First comes denial: I can't believe there's so much snow. Then anger: Why can't I drive my car, why are t...
The house had probably cost a couple of million quid, with its two stories plus loft conversion, red brick, and detailing on the porch roof that hinted at Arts and Crafts without actually making it ov...
The Folly had last been refurbished in the 1930s when the British establishment firmly believed that central heating was the work, if not of the devil per se, then definitely evil foreigners bent on w...
The Fire Brigade recognise only two kinds of people at a fire, victims and obstacles, and if you don’t want to be either it’s best to stay back.
One Hyde Park squatted next to the Mandarin Oriental Hotel like a stack of office furniture, and with all the elegance and charm of the inside of a photocopier. Albeit a brand new photocopier that dou...
Normally the police like to turn up nice and early, preferably around 6 a.m., because not only are people liable to be actually at home but that early in the morning they’re rarely playing with a full...
Most archaeology in London these days is rescue archaeology – projects designed to preserve as much as possible from the relentless cash-driven redevelopment. It’s not a new problem. Ask a medievalist...
M-am holbat la el. Nu credeam în fantome sau zâne sau zei, iar în ultimele câteva zile eram ca un om care privea la un spectacol de magie – mă așteptam ca un magician să pășească din spatele unei cort...
It’s like hypnotism,’ I told Warwick, after the two had been dispatched off to drink more coffee. But Warwick wasn’t buying.‘Hypnotism doesn’t work like that,’ she said.‘And that’s the way it’s not li...
In home furnishing terms, past a certain point, more money doesn’t get you anything except an increase in insurance premiums. An
I wasn't sure I found that particularly reassuring, but in the event of an attack I wasn't going to be as much use as Thomas 'Oh sorry, was that your Tiger Tank?' Nightingale.
I don’t know why Nightingale was so surprised—I barely knew four and a half spells and you couldn’t have got me to give it up, and that’s despite close brushes with death by vampire, hanging, malignan...
I did feel a 'something', like a catch in the silence at the moment of creation.