Housekeeping, Spring’26
Home - York
It has been just about two months since I moved to York. I’m enjoying the intermittent scent of chocolate cooking in spots of the city. Being able to walk from one end to the other with relative ease. Dodging the view-point of a mass of tourist camera-phones.
A little illumination into human dissonance: I tut at tourists who take lots of photographs. Those who, rather than ‘be in the moment’, ‘drink in the historic ambience’ and commit their adventure to memory - a more romantic medium than photography - instead snap every little architectural groove and quaint corner. It is as though they are panicked that should they not, the time and expense they invest into trudging off to some far or near flung beauty spot will have come to nothing. It’s the sister-art to quantification culture; tracking steps, sleep, calories. Life only exists in the record.
Yet I take tourist pictures. And count steps. It’s probably something to do with capitalism.
In any case, I prefer living in tourist traps than local communities. Partially for practical reasons that might well be obvious. Partly because the visor-hat and camping-backpack brigade serve as a daily reminder that I am very lucky to live in such a beautiful place. Its easy for the gothic buildings and Roman walls and quirky Tudor houses to start to become background after a time; and the usual seedy insignia of urban living to creep to the inevitable fore: the pigeons+ and the dropped trash and the irascible bus drivers and the groups of oik teens patrolling like Monty Python Grannies. Tourists remind me why I’m here.
Away - London/Edinburgh
It’s a good thing that York is just so terribly likeable, because I have less time to travel elsewhere at present. I manage to get to London once or twice per month, but only on the back of pre-organised appointments. And usually just for a night or so. I mentioned this because I receive emails asking when I next plan to tour London, but I only come into the city now for longer bookings (two hours plus for outcalls, three hours plus for incalls), though if you message me declaring an interest in a shorter booking (one hour incall say) I can contact you when I next have some free time for escort bookings in London. Or, feel free to joining my mailing list (front page); I sometimes give updates there.
I have been hoping to get back up to Edinburgh, after a really fun trip last year, when time allows, hopefully in the autumn. Feel free to email to declare prior interest.
Tryst - Hooker with a Heart
I’ve recently penned another mini-essay for the sex industry blog Tryst, exploring the problems with the cultural archetype the Hooker with a Heart, which will be published soon. If you fancy breezing your eyes over my writing handiwork, keep an eye here at this link.
Crap Pointless Tourist Pictures
+I quite like pigeons, really. And most animals we think of as vermin. Foxes, rats, seagulls, squirrels. These are the beasts that survive major conurbations in a way more admired animals cannot. With resilience and/or intelligence. And we loathe them for it, worshipping at the hem of more prissy creatures. Like koalas. I like koalas. Very much so. And support the need to take action to protect the destruction of their environment. But I just can’t envisage a koala living of the fat of the city, skidding into a newsagents and craftily making off with a bag of Quavers, as might a seagull. Chutzpah like that is to be applauded, not denigrated.
