Hello from The Pixel
A small corner of the internet, kept by hand.
Essays, recipes and photographs from a small harbour town, posted whenever something is worth keeping.
About meWhat I write about
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The Slowest Express I Have Never Caught
There is a train in Switzerland that calls itself an express and takes all day about it. I have wanted to ride it for years.
Read moreSix Frames From the Sea Wall
One short walk, one roll of film, and six pictures I would keep.
Read moreWhat I am doing now
What I am doing with my days at the moment, updated whenever it stops being true.
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What the Fog Took Off My To-Do List
By noon the ridge was gone and so was every reason to hurry.
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Ways to be alone without being lonely
The first winter here I ate dinner standing up. It took me two years to set the table for one, and another to light the candle.
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A Balcony, Six Pots and One Stubborn Geranium
The geranium has outlived two landlords and one marriage.
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The Lentils That Got Me Through November
Every year there is a week in November when I stop being interested in food, and this is what I cook then.
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I Tried to Become a Morning Person Again
This is the fourth attempt, and the first with equipment.
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In Praise of the Stopping Train
Every country has a train that exists for the people who live along it, and those are the only trains I really want to know about.
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Twelve Books I Bought for the Person I Hoped to Be
She reads Russian novels and gets up early. I have yet to meet her.
Read moreOne, Two, Three: The Only Bread I Can Remember
I can hold exactly one baking ratio in my head, and I learned it from a stranger on the internet while covered in flour.
Read moreNotes From a Very Blue Afternoon
Thirty-six frames of the same lighthouse, and one of my thumb.
Read moreA Saturday at the Market
Six pictures from the one hour of the week when I am a person who plans meals.
Read moreThe Case for Owning Four Mugs
Four is the number of people who will ever fit in this kitchen, and the number of days a mug survives before I wash it.
Read moreOn Walking Slowly Behind Your Parents
At some point you stop leading the way and start carrying the bags.
Read moreWhy I Watch Other People’s Photo Walks
There is a whole corner of the internet where people walk around a city with an old camera and very little happens. I find it deeply...
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How to Drink Coffee Outside in November
Wear the wrong coat, walk to the bench anyway, and hold the cup with both hands.
Read moreBooks in the Wrong Light
I keep trying to photograph the books I love, and they keep looking like furniture.
Read moreA Day of Bookshops, Seen From My Sofa
I have a weakness for videos of people walking slowly around bookshops, which is a sentence I never expected to write in public.
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A Year at the Kitchen Window
Twelve months of the same view, seen while waiting for water to boil.
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Everything I Have Killed on This Roof
A complete and honest list, in the order of their passing, beginning with the basil.
Read moreHandwriting Is the Last Slow Thing I Do
Late at night I sometimes watch a stranger’s hand move across a page, and I have stopped being embarrassed about it.
Read moreWalking Out of a Bad Decade
I did not plan to leave. I planned a long walk, and then I kept going.
Read moreWhat a Stranger Taught My Balcony
After four years of killing things on the roof, I finally did what I should have done at the start and watched somebody who knows what...
Read moreEverything I Kept From My Father’s Workshop
One tin of screws sorted by a logic only he understood, and the pencil behind his ear.
Read moreSecond Class to the End of the Line
Pick a line on the map, ride it until it stops, and see what is there. That is the entire method.
Read moreA Field Guide With Someone Else’s Notes
I bought a book about clouds for three pounds, and what I actually got was a stranger’s whole summer.
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The Road I Took Instead of Therapy
Eleven hundred kilometres, one bad saddle and no conclusions worth repeating.
Read moreEverything I Know About Light I Learned at the Sink
I did not study photography. I just spent years washing up at a window that faces east.
Read moreA List of Things That Can Wait
I keep this on the inside of the cupboard door, and I add to it whenever I catch myself rushing.
Read moreThe Case Against the Good Scissors
Every house has a drawer of things too good to use, and I have started to think of it as a small museum of fear.
Read moreThe Summer I Stopped Taking a Phone on Walks
It started as an accident, when I left it on the kitchen table, and it turned into the best habit I have.
Read moreFerries I Have Loved
I have never met anyone who was in a bad mood at the rail of a small ferry.
Read moreSpring in a City I Have Never Seen
In April, when the harbour is still grey, I like to watch someone else’s spring arrive on film.
Read moreSunday Evening, Before It Starts
There is an hour at the end of Sunday that has a particular weather of its own, and I have spent years trying to do something about it.
Read moreA Bookshop Bucket List I Will Never Finish
I keep a list of bookshops I want to visit before I die, and it grows faster than I can travel.
Read moreA Bad Cook’s Guide to Salt
For the first thirty years of my cooking life I thought I was bad at food. It turned out I was bad at salt.
Read moreThree Soups for a Cold House
The heating here is more of a suggestion, so from November to March I rely on the stove.
Read moreThe Book I Have Lent Out Four Times
I own one book that I have bought four times, because I keep giving it to people who need it more than I do.
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Thirteen Pictures of the Same Bench
Last year I took one photograph of the same bench on the first of every month, and I recommend it to anyone who thinks that nothing ever...
Read moreUpdated November 2026
What I am doing now
Reading
A secondhand field guide to clouds
Margins full of a stranger’s pencil notes.Cooking
The same lentil soup, week six
It is nearly right. I will report back.Making
A paper index of every walk I remember
Forty cards so far, most of them rain.
