Archive • The Anchorite • Buttondown

multiple stabbings

No, I’m not talking about my Discworldsona, Multiple Stabbings (they/them, probably a student member of the Assassin’s Guild???). I got a tattoo yesterday!...

emerge transformed in a million years

This email comes with the following: A warning: This piece is about suicidality, trauma, and immediate political horrors including deportation. Tread...

things you choose

To move to a new country, you have to choose it. This is a matter of survival. It’s the only way to get through a process that is exhausting, undignified,...

I don't know how to write anymore

February 18, 2025

But I’m also not sure what else is left. So here I am. I really did mean to write sooner. I meant to write when my top surgery was scheduled back in March...

three months later

December 20, 2023

I’m profoundly sorry for going quiet on you. I meant to write before the wedding, and then I meant to write after the wedding, and ultimately what happened...

befriending the sea in BC

September 19, 2023

This month, I said my last airport goodbye to Isaac. It’s the last one because I have decided it will be the last one. I’m serious; I’m putting it in my...

getting ready to go

Yesterday I booked my flight back to England for 25th September. That will put me at roughly one year and five months spent living in Halifax, give or take a...

good news, everyone!

I wrote a post that I meant to send from San Francisco, which I have had to scrap because it became redundant almost at once. The good news in question is...

a compendium of airport friends

someone crumpled up the dang planet The toddler travelling with her mother, who entered the long line for security shushing her mother vigorously; when she...

we'll make it, I swear

One of the only Cambridge University traditions I think on fondly is not really a “tradition” so much as a “thing people at my college did once at a...

I have had nothing of interest to write about all month. Sorry! I literally spent the past two weeks working relentlessly so I could use the coming week to...

writing is hard

It turns out that writing (essentially) promotional content on a freelance basis for other people’s blogs every day is not conducive to working on original...

new ways to be unwell

February 11, 2023

The thing about immigration is that you kind of have to become an expert. fiancés with some fun novelty plates (for levity) Who else is going to do it for...

inventing ted lasso: a coronavirus story

January 28, 2023

With hindsight, I put a curse on myself on New Year’s Eve when I said “I hope it’s a good year.” this wasn’t the big snow day; I was too sick to take photos...

I think I'll wait another year

January 1, 2023

“I’ve started to think of your place as home,” I told Isaac, on the brink of falling asleep one night. “Then what’s your place?” “My place,” I answered, “is...

après moi le deluge

December 12, 2022

This past month, I’ve had staggeringly bad luck with my apartment. One morning in November, I woke up to the sound of running water in my bathroom. A quick...

a story about furniture

November 11, 2022

Halifax from across the water My first week in my apartment, I didn’t have any pillows. Pillowcases, sure; bedding more generally, yes; but my bed, which I...

leaving on a jet plane

October 24, 2022

a cool skeleton I saw, and also an image of me right now The first airport goodbye I remember is the one I said to my parents, right before I flew to America...

September 26, 2022

local man avoids mosquito bites, celebrates with can of Long Drink YHZ - YYZ I associate flying into Toronto with fear. The first time I ever did it, in...

these are the things that kill me

September 13, 2022

I am going to take it as read that you have missed the news. Not the news about the Queen, of course. Nobody has missed the news about the Queen. I am...

marriage simulator 2022

August 20, 2022

California as a biome is unrecognisable to me. Even that feels like a grotesque generalisation; there’s so much California, a parenthesis encircling half of...

crying! at the pride parade

Halifax holds its Pride festival in July, rather than June. For those of you not in the know (shout out to all my cisgender heterosexuals! I know you’re out...

true patriot love, or something

It’s baby’s first Canada Day. Did you know when Canada Day was? Prior to arrival, I absolutely did not; I had to look it up when I saw it mentioned in the...

putting my queer shoulder to the wheel

Today, Isaac filed the first tranche of documentation required for my visa application. this has nothing to do with visa paperwork; this is just the view...

someone to crowd you with love

You’re waiting by the baggage carousel, a day late. Your hands are shaking when you try to hold your phone, so you don’t; you shove that fucker deep into...

extremely barenaked ladies voice

Congratulations to me: I have been in Canada for one whole week, and I have managed to get sunburned. I was promised rain, goddamn it I think it’s going...

the world and not the world

It’s official, gang: they let me in to Canada. The immigration guy looked through my tragic litany of entry permit extension letters and said ‘boy, the...

if it could only be like this always

I left Oxford today. the view from my first room here. I don’t want to write as frequently as this. It’s been less than a week since I last wrote one of...

the shipping box, by annie proulx

I wonder if mild embarrassment with the language of identity is a common sign of ageing. This is me signalling to you that I hate that I’m about to open a...

haligoing, haligone

In three weeks’ time I will no longer live in England. This was an abstract concept until about a day ago, at which point I booked my move-out clean and put...

September 3, 2020

Please be aware that this essay contains discussion of death, homophobia, and suicidal ideation. Take what steps you need to protect yourself. I was not sure...

(write it!) like disaster

The first thing I missed was the hand towel in the office bathroom.I have never liked disposable paper towels. It’s a sensory thing, I think. In the bathroom...

On Monday evening last week, I went to get my hair cut. I had a phone call from the hairdresser at the weekend, promising me that every precaution was being...

Restrictions started to lift, and I got a little crazy. That’s the short version of the story. Here’s the longer version, with my heartfelt apologies for...

going (back) to california

I’ve been out of commission for a while. Soon I hope to try to write about why. In the meantime, here is a piece I wrote about a year ago, when I was making...

I haven’t felt able to write for a while.There comes a point when the only thing I want is to be alone. I’ve been an awful correspondent, in the middle of...

trundling along

I am writing to you from the safe side of baby’s first couch to 5k running session. What it has taught me is that I am feeble. I am frail as shit, lads; you...

I took the long weekend off from writing to you, because I’m tired. It is insane that I should be tired right now. I’ve done almost nothing for the duration...

(image courtesy twitter user rainerschund)in the Berlin sky there are dolphins and the Alpsreach for god on the horizon orangutans watchand learn as tigers...

(Today’s image brought to you by Hiller Goodspeed, who gets it.)I am writing this newsletter from my bed, in a dress that is at least two sizes too big for...

going outside (again)

Late last week, I took a taxi into town and went into the office to pick up some essentials. It wasn’t a decision I made lightly. I’ve been asymptomatic and...

all that is made

I called this newsletter ‘the anchorite’ because I have always liked the idea. I joked with a friend, a long time ago, that it must be nice to live a...

I went out to pick up groceries first thing yesterday morning, and the world smelled like rain. I didn’t hear it raining the night before, which I thought...

I started to work on the next round of manuscript revisions today. This is major, because I have been functionally unable to engage with manuscript revisions...

My mother has been using her lockdown time to sort through old family photos. I’m the child who moved out — my sister’s still living at home — so I am not...

the city will always pursue you

About half a year ago now, I went to Los Angeles for a queer writers’ retreat. It was effortlessly the weirdest trip I’ve ever taken, as well as one of the...

love! valour! compassion!

Playwright Terrence McNally died of complications from Covid-19 on Tuesday 24 March. He was 81, a cancer survivor, immunocompromised. He wrote a play that...

I said to my therapist today that it’s my time to shine.I wasn’t really joking, and she didn’t really laugh. Mandate aside, I’ve been living like this where...