Tom Wiggins, Letter Carver & Writer

(Published in The Guardian on 26.12.14) This year was a strange year.  The weeks seem blurred and indistinct to me now, though I remember the glimmers of it: Brazil, Bridgwater, Santa Fe; mimosa blossom, Heart of Gold, the sound of choughs on a warm Welsh morning.   I have not often chosen to write about my personal life in my journalistic career; rarely do I imagine readers' lives enriched by such detail and mundanity.  But sometimes it seems impossible to write of anything else, and the loss of a child is a deep and particular grief; a root that spreads beneath all of the days of a year and leaves them unearthed.   For a long time I do not look at it.  I cannot speak of it.  It sits in the dark place beneath deadlines and social events, gigs, emails, interviews, telephone calls, airports.  It lies under all happinesses and the bright days of summer.   But I am driving along the coast of California when my iPod suddenly plays a song that ...

The Tallest Man on Earth - 1904 Phox - 1936 MewithoutYou - January 1979

Two great songs with the same song title.

I've tried really hard to get into Arctic Monkeys since your recommendation.  I like the lyrics (I think) but I've never really liked Alex Turner's voice.  It's a shame because alongside the likes of fellow Mercury Prize winners Alt-J, they're one of the UK's most popular indie bands. But while i think Arctic Monkeys are deserving of the hype (at their best, they're brilliant storytellers:   this performance   of Fluorescent Adolescent is one of my all-time favourites), I don't think Alt-J are.  Their lyrics are, quite frankly, stupid and the band have been deeply overhyped.    I've been listening to a lot of songs by The National recently.  They've always been on my radar but it was only recently that I discovered songs like Don't Swallow the Cap and Bloodbuzz Ohio.  I don't highly rate them as songwriters; their songs lack coherence, but if you like taking lines on an individual basis, as I sometimes do, then they're definitely ...

"I still owe money to the money to the money I owe, I never thought about love when I thought about home."

"When they ask what do I see,  I see a bright white beautiful heaven hanging over me."

1.  Laura Marling - Crawled Out of the Sea (1:17) 2.  Neutral Milk Hotel - The Communist's Daughter (1:58) 3.  Joanna Newsom - On a Good Day (1:48) 4.  Iron & Wine - Die (1:08) 5.  Michael Johnston - Love Will Find You in the End (1:52)

The offside rule, Fireworks observed from above,  The personality shift in Phineas Gage,  El Nino,  Life after death,  Her internal dialogue.

Whoever first referred to them as the fairer sex was wrong -  this summer is going to be very very very very long.  

1.  Make a Plan to Love Me by Bright Eyes I've obsessed over Lua by Bright Eyes for years, and admit that I'd listened to that song (particularly the version he does with Gillian Welch that appears on the wonderful compilation 'Dark Was The Night') more than all of his other songs put together.  But when I stumbled upon Cassadaga at a charity shop, I thought I'd try and branch out.  I doubt Make a Plan to Love Me will be placed alongside the likes of Lua and Bright Eyes' other great songs, but it does have charm and I lose myself in it every time.  I played it while my dad was in the room last week.  He thought I was playing it just to annoy him.  I guess I'm just hooked on the sentiment.   2.  How It Felt To Kiss You by Mara Carlyle I bought Mara Carlyle's album from a car boot sale only last week.  I haven't had much time to digest it fully, but this instrumental track has quickly asserted itself as an early favourite. ...

I drop you off on the college road with traffic queuing the other way and the drivers sit in rank of thankfulness  with their windows down and lets say it was my prayer among a million others that caused the weather to develop a consciousness among other things and stay  hot  for your birthday  and before you make your way through the park to meet the girls for evening coffee you thank me for this and this and this and with both palms upturned a pause and a catch in the throat I say that I am doing nothing more than what a good woman deserves and it is only after we part and you disappear through the fold of green that I notice the two hyphens  in  matter-of-fact had served as footholds as I said it and it is is only when  I negotiate my way back down  to car level that I can use my feet to pull away.

I never heard  a welder laugh before noon  until   I dropped an apple at 0700  and it rolled  towards  him. Ha       ha            ha, You dropped               your apple.  I can show you  so much life,  I told her Life more honest  than the blush of a laugh from a rolling apple.

In the 6am warm up,  shrug off the injustice of failing to recall the first of the dreams you'll have about her,  and meet the road. Make it want to feel the tapestry that exists in the kingdom within your chest, and run it in,  until the earth itself amends the terms of its inheritance.