Author Archives: Matt Hill
Balls to Kindle: I have a bookshelf
Torn from its spine and squashed flat for scrollbars to browse, a book in an e-reader is the same as another, clinging to its title on a unit that’s basically a homologous hive-pile of words. And I don't want one.
Selfish reasons for not reading Eoin Colfer’s ‘And Another Thing’
Unlike the time I used a deckchair as a toilet, fully clothed, in front of my then-girlfriend’s parents, I don’t remember where I was when somebody gave me a copy of the Hitchhiker’s Guide trilogy. But I remember reading it.
The thing with Douglas Adams’ writing is that you laugh the first time round, and spend [...]
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Blogging’s always dead
A wise man said ‘never let a crap blog bleed out’, but after four years-plus on Blogger, I did, and there was that.
So now, I’ve moved, full-term and fully-dilated, to a self-hosted, baffling internet called Wordpress.
I brought some old posts with me. Just a few. The rest’s been archived and deleted, so it can’t trouble [...]
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Double-plus unbook
For those still wondering about my book, which was due to be published next month: there is no book. It’s available to pre-order on quite a few websites now — but please, please, don’t pre-order it. I pulled it in May, and it remains pulled. You’d only be ordering a bad rumour.
Owing to circumstances, I’m [...]
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Prague
They say break a mirror and you’re looking at bad luck for seven years – but drink a hot chocolate in Prague and you’re looking at bad spots for twelve.
That’s about the best way to sum up Prague. It’s all hyper-tourism meets snogging couples via beautiful, astonishing architecture. It’s the dregs of Communist fashion saying [...]
Stockport
I don’t really know if Stockport’s trying to be a city or a big town, and you get the idea that it doesn’t have a clue either.
See, Stockport’s the bit that missed the toilet — bounced off the rim, the M60, the Manchester ringroad that is — and settled into the carpet halfway between the [...]
Waking up gives you cancer
If you believe the paper you’re reading, waking up gives you cancer.
Barbequed food gives you cancer, or God does. Cancer’s in the air, in your mobile phone, in the stuff you clean your oven with. If it’s not mutating those cells then it’s mutating those other ones. It’s patronising you from your box of cigarettes; [...]
The mannequin
My mother’s road is a leafy provincial strip in a dying town.
People have two cars, drink wine with their prozac, subscribe to Sky Sports and still think the internet’s biblical.
It’s slippy when it’s cold and the train station wasn’t earmarked for improvements anyway, so nobody cares that Manchester voted against the conjection charge.
It’s good if [...]
Ode to brollies
However expensive they are when it’s raining pots and pans and you’re in a queue for ten minutes because your boots leak and your hat’s not that powerful; however much they ruin your spatial awareness and make you clang into things you’d otherwise miss by three feet; however much they turn inside out, poke you [...]
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