Matt Haig

Some Marrakech snaps. (20 years ago when I couldn’t leave the house I saw a travel show about Marrakech and saw the souks and the snake charmers and the chaos and thought it looked like the busiest nightmare on earth so it was great to walk through the sensory overload of the old Medina and Jemaa el-Fnaa today and it was great. I love the way you just walk across the street and somehow the traffic weaves around you as natural as flowing water.)

A terrier walks 12,000 steps for every 2,000 human steps so Betsy did about 120,000 steps yesterday. And Bruce had a run on top so he probably did the same.

I don’t know what English for the English means.

I remember this day. 24 years ago. I remember it for two reasons. I was still agoraphobic and in the midst of panic disorder and depression so I was - literally in this picture - having a panic attack. But I was at the point where I was so used to panic attacks I could literally just sit there with them. I remember it also because we were outside at a restaurant in my hometown of Newark-on-Trent and after this meal I went - with my feverish, hallucinating mind and pounding heart - to WH Smith. I bought a pack of biros and an A4 refill pad. I knew I would never be able to hold down a proper job and had an urge to write down some of my mad imaginings and put them into a story. I had no idea if I would ever make any money from it. But my girlfriend thought it would be good for me. She was right. It helped. And two years and 50 rejections later, I got published. I don’t know why I am thinking this today. Perhaps it is because I found out last week at the Frankfurt Book Fair that The Midnight Library now has FOURTEEN million readers. But it took a while to get there. So what I suppose I am saying is you don’t always have to wait to get better. Don’t wait for the perfect time. Start ill. Start weird. Start a mess. Start without contacts. Start without all the skills. Start in the fading tail of a panic attack in your parents’ house. Just start.

Get a routine baggy enough to live in.

Absolutely love the way Zack Polanski has been changing the established narrative. Love the way some journalists are so unprepared to deal with honest answers, rather than answers designed to appease everyone and satisfy no one. Love that he is not only saying good stuff but in a way that - if this was an interview- most people would give him the job. Someone who understands that - as 70 percent of millionaires WANT to pay more tax - they won’t all flee the country and that the ones that do won’t be the ones who are giving much back for society or their employees. Some people - myself included - are happy to pay more tax if it leads to a better society. And it is so good to see someone who doesn’t accept the assumption that immigration is bad and that minorities are a problem. A breath of fresh green air and the fact the established media class seem more scared of them than Reform speaks VOLUMES. Someone who is patriotic enough to want to make the country better rather than simply use a flag and the immigration issue to con the masses into giving tax breaks for themselves and gutting public services to make up the deficit in cash. Yes. Nice to feel it. It could all go to shit. But right now it’s a good feeling.