A circular patch of trees at the very top of the highest hill for miles around.

› see all photos

The fingers of my daughter’s left hand shift between positions on her violin’s fingerboard, moving with miraculous precision, stopping strings against the fretless board, fast and slow, and rocking them for vibrato. Trained over countless hours of practice and guided by her innate ability, they seem to have an unconscious life of their own.

And I watch, not quite grasping the relationship between her actions and the sound she’s making, and awed by her mastery of something far beyond anything I’ve taught her or know. 14 years from baby to near-adult; eight years from first picking up a violin. I know my daughter profoundly well in almost every other way, but she becomes someone new to me when she plays. I hardly recognise her, and it’s wondrous.

› read more

Stockholm looked beautiful under frost, brief sun, and long darkness.

› see all photos

A beautiful day. Falling leaves, slanted sunshine. Yellow, red, auburn.

› see all photos

A very long time ago, while I was at sixth form college, I took a GCSE in photography. I loved it. I learned how to develop film, taking out a roll from my camera in the pitch dark, all by feel, and winding the film onto a reel. I learned about aperture and shutter speeds, using an old Nikon SLR that my dad gave me. I learned how to expose photo paper and burn in and dodge areas to make them darker and lighter.

I took a few rolls of film on a First World War battlefields trip and created a highly original piece of coursework featuring a lot of graves. Then I went to a local cemetery and took some more pictures of graves and made a piece of coursework which included the lyrics of the Smiths song, Cemetery Gates. I doubt I was aware of its pointed message about making original art.

› see all photos

A moment’s sadness at a passing of an object that’s accompanied so much of my life. Actually, I don’t know how long I had my old wallet. I don’t know where I got it, or where, so constant that for the past decade - two decades? - it’s seemed always near.

Almost always. I know I lost it twice, first on a train. I helplessly remembered just as it left the platform. But I reclaimed it at the lost property office at Bristol Temple Meads with the heady sense that calamity had been averted.

The second time I lost it for good.

› read more

The leader of the Roaches’ preeminent labour union lies gutted in an alley, trying to work out where it all went wrong.

› read more

Two children encounter an unsettling visitor to the alleys by their home.

› read more

A lowly arbitrator travels to the darkest part of the hive and unwittingly serves an evil that lurks in its shadows.

› read more

I’ve written a new book. It’s called Making Videogames and it’s about the art and the tech behind 12 of the best-looking games of today. From Half-Life: Alyx to Return of the Obra Dinn; Control to Thumper, I talked with their lead developers to tell the stories behind their visual design.

› read more