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Gerald Durrell’s “my family and other animals” was one of my favourite childhood books (which might explain why visiting Corfu was something of a disappointment when I visited in 1988), and Lawrence&...

Don’t worry (yeah, right) – not forever, just for a few weeks while I dive deep, deep into the murky, bracing waters - of “emptiness”. Spent the last few days tying up the loose ends – sorting out tax returns, resigning from Portsmouth, drinking, swimming, writing a strange short story about the night-time Finnish forests.

Now all is quiet, all is still ...

We set out early on the 29th: north, to Rovaniemi, home of the "real" Santa Claus. It was dark until around 11 but the No. 4 motorway was relatively clear of snow until Kemi, a few miles short of the Swedish border at the northern end of the Gulf of Bothnia, where we turned inland. Here, in the swirling snow amid the endless birch forests, we ate burgers and nuggets in a vast supermarket, kids playing on a indoor climbing frame, old folk waiting for...

Not being what you'd call a happy driver, it is with some trepidation that today I take up the gauntlet and drive us all into town. First, I clear last night's snow from the drive: three or four inches and still falling, animal tracks scattered all round the side of the house - reindeer, elk? Emma and Sean take up snow-boarding like natives and we go down the hill on groovy sleighs with a seat in front and runners in back; you scoot with one leg the...

Sensible place, this: the cars are parked in docks and you plug them into a heater for an hour or two before setting off; instead of vacuum cleaners there are these pipes which take all the dust god knows where; in the supermarket, the massive Prisma we visited today, the conveyor belt diverts into two so there is no hold-up. The roads are sensible too, no-one drives too fast or too rude, and pedestrians zing about on skis and sledges...

An early cab from the house to Heathrow, a longish wait, then a 2 hour flight to Copenhagen. The plane has a camera in its nose so you can see what it looks like to take off and land from the pilot's perspective, coming down into Copenhagen you feel like you're landing on the water, then at the last minute you see the runway - the wind shakes the plane and you feel like adventurers, but when you land the airport is just another mall of the usual nam...

As a huge comedy fan, there's nothing I love better than watching my favourite stand-ups stand up and make observations about everyday life. How do these guys think up this stuff? Geniuses! (Or should that be genii?) Anyway, I'm definitely gonna buy this new DVD for Christmas - for all my friends, and probably for myself as well.

Saddened to read of the death of one of my (few) heroes, Christopher Hitchens yesterday. I only recently read his brilliant memoir, Catch-22; he was one of the bravest (physically and professionally) writers around. Not enough like him – and more specifically, not enough editors out there with the guts to publish (for want of a better word) the truth.

Also just finished Lee Stringer̵...

Why do the review sections devote 2-3 months a year to “best of year” fillers? Are they really so short of new books that try to say something about the world we live in that yet again they feel this overwhelming urge to remind us about Julian Barnes, Amis and the latest undiscovered Mitford Sister?

Every year about now I turn to the weekend review supplements hoping to read about ...

Recently I was asked to contribute a short story to an interesting project called "Still", by artist and photographer Roelof Bakker. Roelof has taken a series of haunting photographs in a disused town hall and wanted some stories to accompany his images; my fellow Legend Presser Andrew Blackman kindly put my name forward along with several ...

Yesterday I went with Legend big cheese(y) Tom Chalmers to Manchester, where we took a workshop on the subject of "getting published". We were joined on the panel by authors Max Malik, whose "The Butterfly Hunter" is out now, and Georgin...

A few months ago I was lucky enough to see my novelette, "ten thousand hours", published in the excellent new literary magazine "Prole Books". Now they've published another of my stories, "never trust a man with egg on his face", in issue 6. A strange, dreamy story about hot air balloons, carnivals and Paris, with a title borrowed from Adam and the Ants, this is one of the strangest st...