Schadenfreude Is So Nutritious.

With Spectacular Events Taking Up So Much Of The Available Anxiety Quotient, We Need To Be Constantly Reminded Of The More Workaday Threats To Our Mortality - Threats That, While They May Also Be Functions Of Human Error, Have Become So Ubiquitous That We've Begun To Apprehend Them As Natural Phenomena.

I Enjoy Doing Very High Mileages, Partly Out Of Masochism And Also Because I Like To Feel The Shape Of The Landscape.

For Myself, I Haven't Been Content To Carry On Producing Books That Merely Strain Against The Conventions - As I've Grown Older, And Realised That There Aren't That Many Books Left For Me To Write, So I've Become Determined That They Should Be The Fictive Equivalent Of Ripping The Damn Corset Off Altogether And Chucking It On The Fire.

The Future Continues To Preoccupy Me As A Reliable Source Of Hopes, Fears And Anxieties, But Increasingly The Present Seems To Have No Outstanding Qualities Of Its Own, Being Merely A Way-station Through Which Events Travel To The Vast Shadow Lands Of The Past.

I Think The Fundamental Apprehension Is That The City's An Organism Of Some Form, Rather Than Being Governed From Above.