This is going to be a strange post. But then it's a strange time, and my head is full of conflicting ideas and emotions and memories. So expect a jumble of words that may not entirely make sense and may not be in exactly the right order....

I can't blog right now, which is ironic considering that's exactly what I'm doing.

I think I have the cursed writer's block, brought on by a general malaise about blogging in general, the quality of news reporting and the full-on futility of blogging for money.

I drew a sketch of an enraged robot this morning. Since I liked the look of it, I decided to work with it a little more using a Photoshop technique I'd read about. Here's the finished product:

Well, not Dudley exactly, but the lesser known nearby town of Kingswinford. I'm sitting at the top of a squat, five storey building, looking out over the houses and surrounding countryside. It's as flat a landscape as you could imagine outside the Netherlands...

Every now and then I get bits of information from home. Usually it's my mother giving me an update on a long-forgotten neighbour or acquaintance. Tonight it was the death of someone I went to school with.

Michael Duffin was one of those guys who was in and out of my social circle throughout school. The kid I remember is probably a very different character to the man who was murdered in the early hours of Saturday morning. Nevertheless, the brutality of people and the fragility of life make you stop and think.