Listen To Your Footsteps, Four Years Later

Jul 22, 2025 | ,

Listen To Your Footsteps, my collection of essays, reflections and (some) poetry was published four years ago during the COVID-19 pandemic. I wrote most of it during the hard lockdowns, dedicating an hour every morning to working on it. As a result, the launch happened online hosted by Exclusive Books and, even though I had an in-person signing, there were a few people there because it was a couple of days after the 'third wave' of COVID-19 was announced. In the introduction, I wrote: "This may be the first book I have written, but it is the fifth book I have started to write." And now here...

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For the love of music

Sep 16, 2022 | ,

This is the first draft of an essay published in Listen To Your Footsteps. I did make some edits for the final version. I have loved music for as long as I can remember. My father had a record (vinyl) collection that he regularly added to on his travels around the world. I now own that collection and there are few things that give me as much joy as listening to the soundtrack of my childhood. It was a rule that every Sunday morning, I wash the cars. As revenge, I would pull the speakers from the hifi as close to the door as I could and blast my selected artist or genre so I could hear it...

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Why I watch the Tour de France every year

Jul 18, 2022 | ,

Recently I tweeted something about the Tour de France, having just finished watching highlights of the day’s stage and a friend responded, with “Still with the #TourdeFrance. Requesting the original thread about how you fell in love with it.” In my early days on Twitter, I did a series of tweets – before threads were threads – on why I watch the Tour de France every year. It is the only cycling race I follow religiously. When I was writing my book Listen To Your Footsteps, I wrote a short essay on the same topic, but it didn’t make the final edit; it didn’t feel like it fit. But, in response...

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How To Work Better

Mar 9, 2022 | ,

In my post Owning Your Platform, I wrote about how, having written and worked for a number of media outlets and brands, a lot of my writing has disappeared into the ether. Fortunately, I have multiple folders with versions of some of the things that I have written. In the interests of ensuring that they aren’t totally lost, I have started sharing some of them here. This is something I wrote in 2020, having spent most of 2019 exploring the idea of productivity and using the time I work efficiently to create more time for other aspects of life. I probably went through at least 8 books and...

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There are benefits to taking up hobbies

Jan 10, 2022 | ,

Some time, in the last 20 years, we became busy. It was around the time mobile phones started to fill the gaps in between everything else. Prior to this, we were simply connected to those around us physically and time seemed to move at a different pace.   When you were in the office, or at home, you were only available via landline phone – if you had one – or if someone actually visited you. In the car, you had the radio or your thoughts. In a queue, you had something to read, if you remembered to bring something, your...

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Making money off newsletters and other content

Feb 23, 2021 | ,

While I am still trying to make sense of Clubhouse, I did end up in a room the other day where the topic of discussion was on how to monetise newsletters. What drew me to the room was Dan Runcie, whose work with his platform Trapital I have been following for a couple of years – including interviewing him when I had a radio show in 2018/19. Having worked across the media and in content for the last fifteen or so years, I try to stay relatively up to date with the evolution of the sector overall. I no longer separate so-called traditional from digital media. The ecosystem consists of all...

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