Hello and welcome!

I’m glad you could stop by to have a look at what I’m writing. And what am I writing? Well, I wish I could offer some niche explanation like “Great Train Journeys of the World” or some such. That would be much easier to explain. But the world is messy right now and I’m concerned with the world, so what I write will be somewhat messy in scope. If you’d like you can find examples of my essays in The Spinoff here

Most likely this will be an eclectic mix of notes and essays on science, politics, history, the environment, and also the general messiness of modern life, all as seen through the lens of great poetry and writing I’ve found along the way. I’ll even put some photographs in there too. Probably no train journeys though.

And who am I? Well my subtitle says doctor and writer which I think is fuzzily true. I’ve spent the last couple of years variously working in clinical medicine, studying public health, writing off and on, and being confused by the world in general, and parenthood in particular.

Mostly I’d like to illuminate the darkness with some wonder and tangentially offer hope, because I think we could all do with at least a little of both those right now.

If you like what you read please feel free to browse or subscribe. I’ll probably be posting in an irregularly regular way.

Also there’s a great opportunity here for people to form communities of common interest as well as hearing different voices and different stories. So please look around on the rest of Substack.com. I’ll post recommendations and links as I go along.

The Substack iOS app is a great way to keep track of posts from the newsletters you follow without having to keep track of emails as it lists new posts chronologically from all your subscribed newsletters.

Meantime keep yourselves safe and I hope to see you again here.