In the end, there is only one place for me to finish – and that’s now. It has taken me just over a year to get here. A year of writing. A year of writing about me. I think I’ve said all I need to say. And I’m ready to move on. So this is […]

Dear Mum and Dad, Being a good parent is hard. Of course, you know that, but I’m still learning. As a young teenager, I mostly only saw you, my parents, as being the fun police. You were just old people that didn’t understand me. You were the undemocratically elected rulers of my life, and the […]

There was a lot going on in the world in 1990. The Berlin Wall had fallen, the first Gulf War was kicking off, and Maggie Thatcher was on the way out as Prime Minister. But as a 15-year-old adolescent boy, I was mostly focused on getting my first snog. The rest of the time I […]

In early 2008, I was miserable with my job as a personal injury attorney in New York City. I was working long hours, and I was winning cases, but it never seemed to be enough to satisfy my boss at the time. I was 100% committed to the job, but every day my boss made sure to remind me how replaceable I […]

There are only two entries in my journal from the last four months of 1996. One was written in September, and the other I wrote while sitting on a train 3 months later. The reason for the gap is partly explained by a sober decision I made in September to not be sober for a […]

I had just turned 18 when I started out as a first year student at Edinburgh University in 1993. Reading my diaries at the time, I thought I had it all figured out. It’s apparent now, that I really didn’t. And it was that potent cocktail of overconfidence and cluelessness that fueled most of the […]

I don’t know how much of a surprise this is, but for as long as I can remember I have battled with depression. It still happens occasionally, but I’m significantly better at coping with it now than I used to be. For many years I assumed that my extreme feelings were just normal, or a product […]

The events of this chapter all happened over a few weeks in October 1995. At the time I was a couple of months into my year abroad studying at the University of Texas in Austin. I had just turned 20, and my brother Andy was 18. What follows are some of my memories about his […]

Our wedding day. The best day of my life. Like that stag week in Austin in October 2000, the occasion was always going to be special, simply because all of my best friends and my family were gathered together in one place. But then to be married to the amazing Farah, outdoors, on a sunny October afternoon, […]