Tom Cox's Blog, page 4

NINE OF THE THINGS THAT ARE INSIDE MY HOUSE

SHIRT





A lot of my wardrobe is what you might call double-old: it was purchased in the mid-to-late 1990s, when you could still inexpensively purchase used clothes from the 1960s and 70s that were made to fit people of a relatively common body shape. This shirt is not the double-old item of clothing that I have owned for the longest time - that honour falls to a ‘Nashville: Music City

Re-evaluating Oliver Stone's The Doors film, 25 Years On

If you overlook the fact that I was not off my face on drugs at the time, I embarked on my first viewing of The Doors film, a year after its original cinema release, in the ideal circumstances to wring the maximum enjoyment out of it: I was seventeen, yet to have sex with anyone who was not myself, had lately become enamoured with the idea of growing my untameable hair, and, after seven years

Nearly Northern

I come from North Nottinghamshire. It's not a widely known fact but people do, every so often. One way that you could probably tell that I’m from North Nottinghamshire pretty quickly if you met me is that my accent sounds like unfiled nails scratching on the walls of Yorkshire asking to be let in. Like its taller and more attractive nextdoor neighbour, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire is one of

Hand Sown... Home Grown (1969), Silk Purse (1970) and Linda Ronstadt (1972): Three Great Slightly Lost Albums By A Superstar

Nobody understands heartbreak like Linda Ronstadt did between 1969 and 1975. Nobody. Not even a novelist who has spent half a century exploring heartbreak through a series of epic, life-rupturing literary works, renowned for their dissection of the romantic condition. Ronstadt might have been singing lyrics written by other people but her understanding of heartbreak is in the rigorously

Walking For Idiots

My dad and I have slightly differing recollections of the time he caddied for me in an amateur golf tournament. His version of events is that I royally fucked up all on my own and, not having the maturity to take the blame, loaded it straight onto him, in eviscerating dollops. “HE STOOD THERE ON THE GREEN AND GAVE ME A RIGHT BOLLOCKING,” he will still tell friends and family now, a quarter

Boats Against The Current

The small lido where I swim during the summer months is unheated and, when I arrive, it is often empty. When I first used to get in I’d lower my torso into the water very gingerly and wince a bit, in a way that the Scouse side of my family would call “nesh”, but these days being semi-naked and immersed in cool water has become such a normal state for me I throw fuck to the wind and hurl

World Turned Upside Down

I sat on one of my wooden garden chairs a few weeks ago and it gave way beneath me, sending me crashing to the ground. I was somewhat rattled, but unhurt, and less rattled when I realised that the only major witnesses to my indignity were two seagulls and the most empathetic of my four cats. I doubt my weight was much of a factor in the breakage since I am, in the words of a man I once paid

Beaver Patrol

 Photo of River Otter beaver by Ben Lee for Devon Wildlife Trust

There was an escaped lynx on Dartmoor so I went up to Dartmoor, alone and unarmed, to try to find the escaped lynx. I took with me a map, an old book about ghosts, a bottle of water, and some well-used walking boots. In packing for the trip, I had given arguably less thought than I should to the lynx’s needs, but I was carrying

Between A Rock And A Hard Face

I always enjoy going to car boot sales with my mum but, because I don’t have her amazing vision, my experience at them often ends up tarred by the brush of anticlimax. When I arrive at a boot sale, full of foolish hope, what I inevitably see is an impenetrable wall of 1990s computer parts and grubby children’s toys. When my mum looks at the same scene, she is able to instantly zone in on the

Some Stuff I've Been Enjoying Recently (June, 2016)

BRUCE CHATWIN - ON THE BLACK HILL

Telling the story of identical, psychically entwined twin brothers living on a hillside on the Wales-Herefordshire border - and, simultaneously, the story of farming life in the 20th Century - On The Black Hill feels like a book specifically written for me: it has so-real-you-can-almost-smell-them descriptions of threadbare agricultural lives in hilly