I’m reasonably superstitious when it comes to talking about stuff I’m working on. New songs or ideas or other things. I like keeping things close to my chest until such a time that they crystallise in the real world and my hand is forced.

This is such a time. I’ve been awarded a micro commission from Magnetic North Theatre Company to develop a folk opera I’ve been working at for the past few years, tentatively titled: “Centralia.” I am really thrilled. Here’s a little bit about it.

What’s a folk opera?

Great question yes. I first heard the term used to describe Hadestown, which I’m sure you all know and love because it’s great. Now, while Hadestown is an award-winning Broadway musical now, the first time I saw it was, effectively, as a gig. A big band at London’s Union Chapel with different people singing all the parts, and the late, great Jackie Leven speaking the libretto. It worked so well, and seeing its journey from there (and from having heard some of the songs before then) to where it is now is pretty inspiring.

Since then I’ve seen loads of great plays that use music and listened to a lot of soundtracks to musical and other “gig-theatre” productions. Karine Polwart’s Wind Resistance, Ben Caplan’s Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story, Finn Anderson’s Islander, Little King’s Greater Belfast. It opened my eyes a bit to the potential for constructing a longer, character driven narrative using the kind of folk songs I like to write. So that’s what I’m aiming to do with this funding — effectively produce a demo of the show, with different people singing the parts.

Ok but what’s it about?

Another great question. Centralia is a real town in Pennsylvania that now no longer exists. It no longer exists because in 1962 a dump fire ignited an abandoned mine shaft underneath the town, and nobody did anything about it. That fire destroyed the town, and is still burning to this day. Nobody did anything about it for a few reasons. They didn’t take it seriously. It got tangled up in bureaucracy. Centralia’s a small, working class town that not enough people in power cared about. There was confusion and rumour and speculation as to where the fire was, how dangerous it would become.

All of this is brilliantly explained in the book The Day The Earth Caved In by Joan Quigley, which has been my Bible for this project, and is well worth a read.

Why this story?

There’s actually been a fair few reflections of Centralia in popular culture, but mostly as a kind of horror story. I think it’s popped up in Silent Hill, for instance. When I read the book, the parallels between the story of Centralia and what’s going on in Flint, or what happened in South Wales with the flooding, or even in New Orleans after Katrina, or the aftermath of Grenfell, or what happens when any community is under threat from forces beyond their control, were stark. Read the book. It’s a proper tragedy that nobody dealt with because it happened to ordinary, working class people, and one that lessons haven’t been learnt from, seemingly. That’s the story I want to try and get at.

Can I listen to any of it?

If you have got this far and are still interested then it’d be rude not to play you something. Here’s a song called 7000 Days, told from the point of view of Tom Larkin, who organised the Concerned Citizens of Centralia pressure group and was at the forefront of the protests that kicked off around Centralia in the 1980s, a full twenty years after the fire began.

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It was a gamble, he knew that. Stood in front of the fruit and vegetables, his eyes darting between the netted bag of limes and the recipe on his phone. Finish by squeezing over the lime juice, it said. There was a part of him that thought ‘well, it’s a seasoning, it’s not a main component of the dish, if I don’t buy it and it turns out we don’t have any in the fridge, what’s the harm?’ Then his first days of catering college kicked in: seasoning is the dish. Without the lime, he’s fucked it.

He counted out the change in his wallet: barely a fiver. He looked through what was in his basket already: tofu, soy sauce, peanuts, coriander, ginger, celery. The limes would push him over the edge. He thought about using his card, but knew it’d take him into his overdraft. Was lime more essential than coriander? They’re pals, really, he thought. Thick as thieves. They’d be the backbone, the sharpness of the citrus against the clean freshness of the herb. He was imagining the smell. Christ, you need the lime. You need the lime. But you need all this other stuff too. Tofu is the bulk, soy sauce is the umami, peanuts and celery make the crunch, ginger is the heat. That’s why it was such a good dish: everything was bringing so much to the party.

Someone leant in front of him and grabbed the bag he had his eye on, jolting him briefly out of his stupor. It was fine, there were plenty of limes left, the supermarket was getting busy, but they’d never sell them all. Not in the time it’d take him to make this decision. He thought back to his flat, tried to construct a hasty memory of what his fridge looked like this morning: the dregs of some mayonnaise, leftovers, some soft herbs, a jar of pickles, coronas. Coronas! He definitely had coronas, or corona, singular. Who drinks coronas without lime? He didn’t want to think about it. If he bought coronas recently enough to have one, maybe two, in his fridge, then surely he’d have bought limes. Coronas come in boxes of four, limes in bags of five. You get, what, four big wedges out of one lime, one wedge per bottle? There should be four limes left over in that case, but he’d remember four limes, surely? One lime was a question, but four limes, he’d have definitely clocked that.

Then he remembered why he bought the coronas. It was last weekend, they’d been pre-drinking. Him and Caroline and Elliot, and Elliot’s new girlfriend whose name he had also momentarily forgotten but who he remembered looked a bit like The Pioneer Woman. It’d gotten out of hand. They hadn’t ended up going out til late. They drank tequila shots. Fuck. How many limes had that got them through? Not worth thinking about. That really threw a spanner in the works. It’d be fine if he stuck to bar rules. At the bar limes got cut into eight segments, sometimes more. Half, then quarters, then those quarters in half, and then those halves into two, sometimes three bits. Pointless. Lip service to the idea of having that acidic bite. Not enough to wash away the acrid taste of table salt or the burn of cheap spirit. No, he was no way that austere at home, economy drive or not. That would have put pay to the rest of the limes. That would have depleted them enough to get rid of the net, for sure.

So it was, absolutely, a gamble, but he had no choice. He checked his watch, just past half six, and called it. Scanned his items through the self-service, poured his coins into the machine’s mouth, and stuffed the ingredients into the lining of his coat, not wanting to spring for a bag for life when he knew he had dozens stuffed under his sink. Headphones back in, podcast back on, and out onto Deptford High Street and down the short streets towards his flat. He’d resigned himself to the worst outcome, no limes in his fridge, but a part of him held out hope. Maybe there’d be one left, a wedge sliced out, the flesh gnarled, the polyps dry, but just enough life left in it to round out his dinner. That’s all he really wanted. A nice dinner, after a shitty day. Something he could concentrate on for half an hour that wasn’t a stock take or having to clean out some manky pipes. Something methodical he could move through, step by step, and then consume. Something sharp and spicy and rich and delicious that he could sit in his lap while he watched episodes of Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares. Happy thoughts.

He pulled his keys from his inside pocket and pushed them into the lock, shouting as he entered the house to check who else was in, met with beautiful silence. Nothing better than living in a house-share and having the place to yourself, even if briefly. He imagined a life where the whole place was his, where the sink wasn’t full of miscellaneous dishes, where the pictures on the walls were immaculately framed, where the lounge didn’t have a mattress leant up against the wall for occasional visitors. He imagined his neighbours knocking on his door not to ask them to be quiet, but for a chat, just a friendly chat! Is that your car, parked over there? Not mine! Wow, it’s been there all day? I mean, it’s not my space but — No but it’s someones, never seen it before. Airbnb? It’s ruining London. It’s ruining London! Stuff like that y’know? Just patter. He liked to let himself drift off into these fantasies.

Not that things were in too bad a shape when he entered the kitchen. Dishes were drying, for one, and there was counter space, and no passive aggressive notes left anywhere.He took his headphones out and unpicked everything from his pockets, ordering them on the side, and pulling out the rest of what he needed from the cupboard. He turned to the fridge, the tequila bottle empty in the recycling beside it. Fuck, he thought. Not a good sign. The whole thing? Fuck. Shit. No. He took a breath. He knew that if he checked the fridge, and there was no lime, then he’d just be gutted. It’d spoil the whole cooking process, like he’d be starting a jigsaw knowing there was a piece missing. Something would be off. No, he’d proceed as normal, as if the lime was a lock. Then his disappointment — should it come — could be immediately countered by the results of his toil.

He took the tofu out, drained it, cracked a window to compensate for the broken extractor fan. He’d recently taken to weighing down his tofu to get some of the extra water out. Previously he’d skipped that step but tried it the last time he made the dish — with lime — and it did mean the tofu pieces took on more colour. Even just ten minutes, and in that time he could pick through the mushrooms, peel the ginger with a teaspoon, chop the celery, get the pan heating up. This was the bit he liked. The prep. Sometimes at the pub he’d get a kitchen shift on a Sunday, coming in early to peel potatoes and scrub carrots and whisk Yorkshire Pudding batter. It was a tiny kitchen, just him and the Head Chef jostling for space, but it made the hours go faster. If he could just do that, and never have to pull another pint again, he’d be happy.

The oil was glistening in the pan now, wisps of smoke coming off it. It slid around the bottom when he raised the handle, covering everything. The drained tofu, chopped into perfect cubes, went in, sizzling in the heat. Yes, he thought, bang on. Nailed it. When he started cooking he used to shake the pan like he was sieving flour, constantly moving and stirring stuff around. Bad habits. Now he used his tools less, his eyes more. He grabbed some tongs from the draw and opened them, but kept them above the pan, watching the bottom half of the tofu colour and crisp up, leaving well alone. A minute passed, then two, maybe more. He flipped. Golden, crisp. Same on the other side, then onto some kitchen paper to dry, the rest of the ingredients into the same pan. The mushrooms wilting down, the celery crisping at the edges, the smell of the chilli hitting the back of his throat. God, if he didn’t have the lime he’d be absolutely livid. It wouldn’t be sadness, it’d be fury. The evening unsalvageable. He threw the tofu back in, and poured in the soy sauce and some sesame oil, glazing everything until it took on a tarry black gleam, flecked with green and yellow. Heat off, there’d be enough in the pan to finish off the dish. He threw in the coriander and let it sit and shrink in the steam, then turned around to the fridge.

London had a way of knocking you back just when you thought you were on top of it all. A good day ruined by some agg on the commute. A decent shift for tips coinciding with an unexpected bill. He had come to think of the city as this giant, sprawling casino, where everyone in it was rolling dice and playing slots and sidling up to tables they had no business being at. It lets you win enough to think you’re a pro, to think you can make it. Maybe some people can. The high rollers. The ones who can afford to lose. Not him though, not yet, anyway. He wasn’t there. He was still learning the ropes, finding his nerve, staring at the fridge, the smell of the food and the smoke from the pan filling the room. It was a gamble, he knew that, but in this city that’s all you can do. He opened the door, and there it was. Jackpot.

It has been a while since I made an album, but I’m making one this year. It’s my best one yet. I think it’s going to be really really good, actually. I’m excited. I’m putting it out in May, and then in June I’m going on tour. Here’s where I am going (so far, you’ll note there’s a dearth of Scottish dates on this, because I haven’t booked them yet and this is all a one-man operation at the minute and hoo boy is booking a tour a lot of work!):

31/5 — Watermill Sessions, Great Ayton
1/6 — Sticklebarn Tavern, Great Langdale
2/6 — Prohibition Bar, Newcastle
3/6 — Oporto, Leeds
4/6 — Castle Hotel, Manchester
5/6 — Green Note, London
6/6 — Village, Brighton
7/6 — Big Comfy Bookshop, Coventry
8/6 — The Plough, Shepreth
9/6 — Home Farm Festival, nr. Yeovil
10/6 — Bristol Fringe, Bristol
11/6 — Upstairs @ The Western, Leicester
12/6 — Gwdihw, Cardiff (assuming this venue does not get knocked down)
13/6 — Cafe #9, Sheffield
28/6 — St John’s Church, Glasgow

One of the reasons behind moving to Edinburgh was to spend a bit more time on music, figuring out what kind of songwriter I wanted to be, what I wanted to put into the world.

So in 2017 I made an EP called Andre the Giant with my friends Chemikal Recipe, with samples and synths and electronic instruments, and pressed up 100 mini graphic novels beautifully designed by my friend Gavin Day. People liked it, I love it. Then in 2018 I made another EP with my beloved Greyhounds Greyhounds Greyhounds, which is a bit scrappy and DIY and recorded either in my bedroom or in a rehearsal studio underneath a railway arch in Deptford. It bangs.

So this new album is something of a mix of the two, and also a brand new collection of songs that, unless you’ve been to a gig in the past year, you won’t have heard. Most of my previous releases have been story songs, told from other character’s points of view. These songs are different. I’ve been writing from my own point of view, and trying to worry less about what might be expected of me based on my previous stuff, and more about what I like, what I feel confident in, the music I listen to, the music that makes me want to write songs.

I’ve saved a bit of money, am waiting on some funding applications, am selling some gear, maxing out a credit card, but am also here saying: if you would like to pre-order it, you can paypal me a tenner and that will all go towards it, and then I’ll give you an album when it comes out / if you’d rather, you can come to a gig for free. You can also buy my existing stuff too.

Pay Harry Harris using PayPal.Me

That’s it, thanks for reading. More stuff about the album and at least one cool announcement coming soon, hopefully more cool announcements, and more gigs too.

H x

November 1

Getting this down on paper to keep a track of my word count, but a promising start made, one glass of Buffalo Trace and 1,500 words knocked out in a couple of hours. Keeping the story simple, classic bildungsroman about a frustrated chef who finds his passion again outside of the world of fine dining and michelin stars, and in the scrappy, punk world of food trucks. Will see how the edit goes tomorrow but I’m feeling positive.

November 2

Ok a couple of issues with editing last night’s work — who spells restaurant right the first time anyway? — and I keep shifting tenses, but other than that, fine. Had enough Buffalo Trace for one big glass or two small glasses, so figured I’d finish it off and start something new tomorrow. Another 1,500 words, with a couple hundred edited from last night, means we’re pretty much on target. I’ve made him a chef with classic French training but I think the food truck is gonna be Cuban Sandwiches or something. He’s passionate about New Orleans.

November 3

Head’s a little sore and my skin’s getting pasty, but it’s all grist to the mill. Tricky edit again, realised I had him talking to his wife for the whole of the last chapter without introducing who his wife is / what she does. I don’t feel like the story needs a female character per se but there needs to be some romantic tension. Just wrote a bit where he makes her a simple spaghetti dish and she basically eye-fucks him the whole time he’s making it. Semi autobiographical. Bit below the word count. Might take a few day off this diary to focus.

November 7

I’ve used the term al-dente as a double-entendre way too much, the clear eyes of sobriety show me this on a daily basis, and while it is frustrating, it does speak to the ways in which alcohol is guiding me to write in a more automatic, free-form way. Story chugging along nicely, he’s left his job as the head chef of some stuffed shirt dining room and has just mortgaged his apartment to buy an old ice-cream truck. I’ve given him a son too, the son wants him to just make ice cream but the son will eventually come to love the Cuban sandwiches — it’s like a way of reconnecting with his Dad through food. Over the word count but there was one day when I wrote a detailed description of him kneading bread that I really dig, kinda like Moby Dick but with yeast.

November 10

I’m out of alcohol now. I thought I stocked up enough but turns out, no. Edits are becoming more difficult — I haven’t given him a name yet and I can’t keep calling him “Chef Boyardee”, principally because the erotic tension isn’t flying without it. Tempted to give him my name but it’s quite vain. Introduced his ex-wife as another potential love interest, more interesting to keep her as just ‘ex-wife’ throughout. He’s named the Ice Cream Truck “Second Line”, very passionate about New Orleans.

November 14

Really not feeling good today. Chef Boyardee and his Ex-Wife had an argument last night about seasoning and I drank eight beers. Wrote a nice montage about him and son fixing up the truck, imagine when this gets optioned they’ll get some nice jazz to accompany that scene. Have included as a footnote. Still can’t spell restaurant right consistently so decided he used to work in a bistro. Can’t have any more mis-steps. Half way through the month, edits are getting longer, but I’m definitely onto something.

November 20

Absolute fucking disaster today. Showed half the work to a friend (NB. never show a work in progress to anyone) and he realised that I’ve basically just written the plot of the Jon Favreau film Chef. Almost word for word. Drank a bottle of tequila and realised that I did once refer to the Chef as “kind of a Jon Favreau type” so I must have subconsciously known, I guess. Very disappointing. Much work ahead.

November 21

Becoming worryingly dependent on caffeine pills, pretty sure I don’t have a job anymore either. Realised in the edit that I could change Chef Boyardee’s quest narrative (it’s a quest narrative now) from “chef rekindling love of food” to “florist rekindling love of flowers” without having to delete too much, though I am very far away from my word count. Ex-Wife and Son keep arguing when I write, not sure what to do about that, more I write it more I think it’s a story about male bonding and the disruptive nature of femininity. Floristry as occupation might be an interesting metaphor. Looking forward to seeing how this develops.

November 25

Edit becoming strenuous as windows of sobriety become shorter. Floristry might be a non starter as the only flowers I know are roses, so he keeps just arranging roses, and pricking his fingers on thorns, which I feel is a little on the nose. Ex Wife keeps being a bitch. Quite a way behind schedule.

November 26

He’s still called Chef Boyardee.

November 27

Went to hospital today and they suspect I have alcohol poisoning, but they hooked me up to a drip so I had more time to edit. Much easier now I’ve formatted everything to the same font / size / colour. Don’t know what I was thinking. His flower shop is called Second Line — very passionate about New Orleans. He’s going on a pilgrimage to Mardi Gras in the next chapter with his adult son. Does Louisiana have flowers? Research this. Word count coming back up. Doctor’s said I shouldn’t drink but fuck them.

November 29

Had to scrap all the New Orleans chapters because it was just A Confederacy Of Dunces. People might not notice but I would. Can’t remember the last time I ate something that wasn’t saltines. Flat doesn’t smell good. Word count fine. He’s still called Chef Boyardee.

December 1

The last thing I wrote was the title: Chef Boyardee’s Raging Road Trip To New Orleans, The Famous Home Of Roses. Needs cutting down. Will try again next year.

Could you make some kind of cauliflower cheese lasagne? Like...aubergine parmigiana but not? Layers of roasted cauliflower, lasagne sheets, super cheesy bechamel.

Cauliflower is my favourite vegetable. I suspected this might be the case prior to trying to make this, and now, having eaten one slice, with another very likely, I am certain of it. Thank you Twitter pals for ideas — make this now. You will need:

1 Cauliflower
1 Small bag o’ hazelnuts — the kind that’s in the home baking section, I guess 100g?
4 Garlic Cloves
6–8 Savoy Cabbage Leaves
4 Slices of Stale Bread
1 Chilli
500ml Milk
50g Butter
English Mustard
Rosemary
5 Lasagne sheets
Salt, Cheese, to taste.

Get a cauliflower and take off all the green bits and slice it into what I think people call ‘cauliflower steaks’. They’re not steaks, they’re slices of cauliflower, brilliant in their own right. You should get 2 or 3 big slices, and the rest will buckle off into florets. Put in a roasting tray with salt, pepper, the garlic cloves (skins still on) and oil, and put in an oven at 200. Set a timer for 40 minutes.

Take your stale bread and get those crusts off and blitz into breadcrumbs. Decent amount of oil in a pan, heat up, throw in the breadcrumbs, plus the chilli, and some rosemary leaves — 2 stalks worth. Fry until the breadcrumbs are golden, keep an eye on them, then drain on kitchen paper.

Cut the savoy leaves into ribbons. Jamie Oliver always, always, describes doing this like rolling up a cigar. He has done this in every series he has ever made. Roll up the cabbage leaves into a cigar and cut from the end. Put into the pan you’ve just taken the breadcrumbs from and fry until it begins to soften. When you see charred bits, throw in a mug o’ water and put the lid on for a bit. Get a saucepan out, throw half the hazelnuts in and put it on a low heat, keep an eye on it. Lid off the cabbage, boil the water away, throw the breadcrumby mixture back in and stir it all together. Take it off the heat. Are the hazelnuts toasty? Yes? Put them in a pestle and mortar and bash them up a bit. Check on your cauliflower, it’ll be fine. This sounds like there’s a lot going on but honestly it’s ok.

Now, bechamel. Make a roux. There is nothing better than making a roux, it is brilliant. Throw the butter into the pan the hazelnuts were just in and melt, let it go dark brown (thank you Ella) and smell all toasty, then throw in 3 dessert spoons of flour, and stir it until it forms a paste. Cook it for a couple minutes, then add the milk a bit at a time, whisking all the way. When all the milk is in it looks like it’ll never thicken up, but there’s a roux doing it’s rouxy job in it, so it’ll be fine. Put a spoon in, take it out, run your finger along the sauce — does it hold a line? It is thick enough. Teaspoon of mustard, stir stir stir. Now, the cheese. I used parmesan and cheddar, I don’t know how much, to taste. How cheesy do you want this lasagne? You decide. Melt it all in. There’s your bechamel, it’s great.

Use fresh lasagne sheets for this. The packet says to soak them in water for a couple minutes first, so do that now. You can do it in the lasagne dish for ease. Take out the cauliflower — the little bits will be dark, dark brown, and the big bits will be tender and charred at the edges. Take out the garlic cloves and pop them out of their skin and stir into the bechamel, along with the hazelnuts. Check for seasoning.

Right — lasagne layering up goes like: bechamel, cabbagey-breadcrumbs, lasagne sheet; bechamel, cabbagey breadcrumbs, cauliflower steak, lasagne sheet. Repeat until you’ve used all the cauliflower. Lasagne sheet on top, the rest of the bech, the rest of the cabbgey breadcrumbs, more cheese, the rest of the hazelnuts bashed up. Put in an oven at 200 and bake for 30–40 minutes depending on how golden you want the top. It comes out like this, it’s really good. Cauliflower 4 lyfe.

Harry Harris on Twitter

Ten stars. Thumbs up. Yes.

To the uninitiated, fan fiction can seem a little bit like Pandora’s Box — open it at your own risk. However, as the popularity of fan fiction as a form grows, so its influence begins to leach out into the world, with shows like The Crown, Riverdale and American Gods all taking on the world-expanding characteristics that make fanfic so appealing. When it comes to who qualifies for the fanfic treatment, the net grows ever wider. That means characters from books and TV are joined by pop stars, Hollywood heartthrobs — and, more improbably, politicians.

This maybe isn’t as surprising as it first seems. Over the past couple of years, there’s been a strange eroticization of politicians from both supporters and detractors, on both the left and right. In the U.K. you’ve got Conservative activists and MPs referring to Theresa May as “Mummy”; Milo Yiannopoulous and other alt-right bros calling Trump “Daddy”; the ongoing suggestion that Trump has a “bromance” with Vladimir Putin; and the mass fawning over Justin Trudeau when he’s pictured canoeing down a creek or wrestling bears or whatever. You don’t have to extrapolate these scenarios terribly far before you get the kind of kink you might expect in fan fiction.

But fanfic writers will always surprise you. Before poring through the reams of political fan fiction on sites like Archive of Our Own, I had assumed that stories would be erotic renderings of real-life meetings, cack-handed dialogue and pregnant pauses at G8 meetings and the like. What I wasn’t banking on were stories that were earnest, tender, romantic — and had absolutely nothing to do with politics.

Many of Theresa May’s portrayals in fan fiction are of an overworked woman-having-it-all type character. In this flash-fiction piece, “An Unexpected Cup Of Tea,” a stressed May is comforted by her doting husband with a hot mug of milky Earl Grey and a neck massage before bedtime (fair warning: it’s mildly erotic).

In this 17-chapter opus, May and her husband Philip adopt a child after Jeremy Corbyn brings up the alarming lack of access to abortion in Northern Ireland. And here, we are transported back to 1981 with Theresa May grieving the loss of her parents but taking solace in the love of her husband. She is caricatured, sure, but in an almost universally positive, apolitical light:

“If we trust the polls.” Did anyone who had lived through 2016? She took a long drink. “And either way, we don’t need this conversation right now. It weakens our negotiating position. The EU knows we’re not united.”

“What the EU knows is that you’re a bloody difficult woman. Juncker and Tusk don’t care about the Scottish midget.”

This exchange from “An Unexpected Cup of Tea” refers to May’s own self-given “bloody difficult woman” moniker to bolster her negotiating power. Her bullishness is portrayed as strength.

Conversely, this short conversation between Theresa and Philip — which touches not only on their lack of children, but also her inability to conceive at all — uses a stick that’s been occasionally used to beat May to make her vulnerable and sympathetic.

It’s also interesting to consider May’s portrayal in stories involving Donald Trump. In reality, May and the rest of the Tories have been far more supportive of Trump than other world leaders. IN fan fic, they are rarely cast as allies. A story entitled “Fuck Donald Trump”, which actually centers on Melania wanting to get revenge on Trump for his philandering, ends with Trump sexually humiliated by Theresa May, her husband and the Royal Family.

Another one, “Make America Great Britain Again,” begins in the Emergency Room, where Donald Trump lies with Nigel Farage, both of whom Theresa May has been beaten up. Yas queen. Slay. Etc.

“You are paying for your own medical fees as well. Besides, you and Donald are wealthy enough to pay for your treatments anyway.”

And just like that, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom walked out of the emergency room — like a boss as her young supporters, her Mayllenials, would put it.

Alice Tarbuck, a writer and defender of fanfic, believes “you’ve got to ask fanfic all the questions you’d ask any other literature. Who are you helping? Is there any morality? Is there any integrity?”

It’s worth remembering that fan fiction’s origins are quite subversive. Fic as we know it began in the 1970s, when many Star Trek fans wrote stories about Captain Kirk and Spock being in a romantic relationship. However, one of the consequences of the increased popularity of fan fiction is a dilution of this original countercultural spirit.

It’s not as if these politicians are trying to push through their retrograde beliefs behind closed doors — you don’t have to look very far to see what their agendas are. Since the U.K. general election ended with a minority Conservative government, thanks in large part to a large number of young people engaged and galvanized by Jeremy Corbyn and his unashamedly socialist politics, Theresa May has propped herself up thanks to a confidence and supply deal with the Irish DUP — a party with even more archaic, nasty policies than the Tories (creationism, homophobia, opposition to public breastfeeding, you get the picture). She also initially refused to meet any survivors of the horrific Grenfell Tower tragedy in West London. Fan fiction that ignores these political failings in favor of painting a more neutral, apolitical picture betrays the roots of the genre.

There is a great irony here too. The universes that seems ripest for fan fiction — Harry Potter, Divergent, Star Trek, etc. — are often seen as left-leaning political allegories. It’s only when actual politicians enter the world of fan fiction that end products begin to sit on the fence; that disclaimers stating “no political bias” have to be included.

So why do it at all? If fan fiction is all about expanding worlds beyond the text, then it makes sense that in the case of political fanfic we are shown more domestic, intimate, humanizing scenes, rather than State of the Unions addresses or rounds of Prime Minister’s Questions. In the case of Theresa May, there may also be a desire to address some of the ways criticism of her has been unnecessarily gendered—and it’s much easier to present Theresa May as a feminist hero in these stories in comparison to Trump’s villainous sexism.

But a woman who is in power does not a feminist make. The danger in writing these politicians in an apolitical way is that doing so effectively removes their political agency, and makes the policies they implement tangential to their character, rather than the foundation of it.

Harry Harris is a songwriter, journalist and headless Thompson gunner. He tweets @CmonHarris, sings @WildSoundRecs and laughs @ own jokes.

• The Reddit Support Group for People Trapped in Sexless Relationships
• The Man Who Owns 9 Fleshlights
• Stop Hating on Comic Sans

The Peculiar Appeal of Right-Wing Political Fan Fiction was originally published in MEL Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The first thing to remember is this: Some relationships will die in their sleep. When you’re in the throes of a lust-filled, wide-eyed romance, you feel like the only way it could end is if it gets cut down prematurely: a strike of lightning in the middle of a clear day. In reality, the likelihood is that the end will be far more prosaic: a small sickness that creeps and grows, until it’s eventually too much.

In terms of a litmus test for how well things are going, it’s very easy to just tally up the frequency with which you have sex and compare it to what it was like in the early days. According to a study published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behaviour, Americans are having less sex than ever — particularly married Americans — and yet arguably society is more sexualised than it has ever been. How do you coalesce the two in your own head? You make excuses, you rationalize, and if that fails, you look for support. Luckily, it’s 2017, and no matter what problem you’re going through, the internet is on hand to remind you that people are going through similar. In this case, specifically, Reddit is on hand.

Welcome to Dead Bedrooms, a 45,000-member subreddit for people in failing relationships; a de facto support group for those whose sex lives have plummeted, but who haven’t yet turned off the relationship’s life support. From newlyweds to long-term couples, all genders, all ages, all grappling with insecurity, depression and fear — all directly attributed to how much action they’re getting.

It’s hard reading. In one recent post, a regular member pleads that she just wants her SO (that’s “significant other” — Reddit is pretty hot on ’90s MSN-style nomenclature) to pay her any sexual attention whatsoever: “It seems like the kind of thing other people in other relationships just get to have. For me, it’s just a wild fantasy.” In another, a woman complains that her husband will only have sex with her if she agrees to film or photograph it — and this is after he’s already been unfaithful. Scroll through the pages and you’ll see titles like “Desperate for *some* sexual intimacy,” “I’m at the absolute end of my rope,” and one that’s just: “How fucked am I?”

It’s weird to consider that the overriding feeling of the group is one of grief, but really, that’s exactly what it is. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. It’s all here as people grieve for the death — or impending death — of their relationships. And according to ToughKitten, a female DeadBedroomer who credits the group with helping her leave her marriage and now acts as one of the moderators, “those who remain in sexless marriages rarely come round to acceptance.”

Another moderator, SimianSupervisor, who has also found solace in the group, told me that most of the moderation is focused around the anger that people feel toward their “denying partners,” and trying to limit that: “At the end of the day, though, we need their input and perspective from the other side in order to ever have a chance of understanding what’s going on.”

This separates Dead Bedrooms from, say, the “incel” (involuntarily celibate) movement, which, though it began in a similar fashion, descended into violent misogyny and men’s rights activism thanks to the echo chamber of certain internet forums, and was a key motive for Elliot Rodgers’ killing spree in Isla Vista, California, in 2014. “The redpill community does make evangelical attempts here; we make it front and center of our moderation to protect our subreddit from that,” ToughKitten said.

Which is not to say that Dead Bedrooms is totally free from misogyny. In one post entitled “Learn from my mistake. Please,” a man talks about how his sex life ended as soon as he put a ring on it. Immediately the replies become very accusatory. Words like “ambush,” “trap” and “bait and switch” are used to refer to the wife in this scenario. This kind of post is far from an outlier; similarly many men post when their sex lives take a backseat after the birth of a child. In situations like this, mods will often kick in to explain how healing from childbirth and then breastfeeding can mean that yeah, they won’t have sex for a while, and they’ll just have to be patient.

Across the board there’s a kind of cognitive dissonance at play — people unable to see the reasons for the breakdown of their relationships while simultaneously being faced with pages and pages of similar experiences. Unsurprisingly, on Dead Bedrooms, many responses bear the same message: “get out.”

But it’s rarely that simple. People’s reasons for staying range from not wanting to break up a family, to hoping things will change, to not having a large-enough support network to feel comfortable making the transition. There are also those who find a way to make the relationship work without the need for an active sex life, as in the cases of more and more Americans showing a willingness to experiment with non-monogamy.

In a way, Dead Bedrooms is as much a halfway house as a support group — a place where people can figure out what’s going wrong with their relationships and make a decision as to what to do next. That decision could be to stay and work on it, or find the determination to make a clean break.

The choice is never as easy as it seems. Breaking up with someone, even if the relationship is in tatters, is rarely a defiant, thrilling “fuck you” to a bad partner. It’s hard. It’s having to look at something you used to love, that used to be vibrant and alive, now a shadow of its former self, and choosing to pull the plug.

Harry Harris is a songwriter, journalist and headless Thompson gunner. He tweets @CmonHarris, sings @WildSoundRecs and laughs @ own jokes.

More from Harry:

• Stop Hating on Comic Sans
• How the Ellipsis Became the Ultimate Power Move
• ‘Fairytale of New York’ Is the Best Christmas Song Ever

The Reddit Support Group for People Trapped in Sexless Relationships was originally published in MEL Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

And other dudes who swear by their sex toys

Squeamishness about sex seems so old-fashioned. We’re living in a post-porn, post 50 Shades, post-kink world. Dick pics fly through cyberspace at a rate of knots. Sexts are now the primary mode of communication for horny adolescents the world over. Tinder, Bumble, Happn, Grindr, 3ndr and OkCupid are all routinely downloaded, deleted, and re-downloaded, as people of all generations attempt to navigate their way through this new kind of sexual revolution. On the surface, it looks like sexual taboos are a thing of the past. One major exception? Sex toys for men.

It’s becoming more and more common for women to discuss, debate, borrow and gift each other sex toys like it ain’t no thing. If you look at the research, this is unsurprising. The Kinsey Institute reported in 2010 that women are much more likely to be “nearly always orgasmic,” or “always orgasmic” alone than with a partner.

Clearly, women have decided enough is enough and are getting theirs. It’s the addressing of a problem that, for men, isn’t there. Men can orgasm at the drop of a hat, generally speaking (at least if it’s a particularly sexy hat — I’m thinking a Carmen Miranda fruit hat, that big wide-brimmed one Beyonce wears in the Formation video, one of those ones that has a beer can on either side). Men don’t need toys to help them get off, so why would men want toys to help them get off?

However, a deep dive into the data of the U.K.’s largest sex-toy website, Lovehoney, shows that, whether or not they’re opening up about it, men are experimenting. Lovehoney’s user base is split between men and women, with 1 in 5 buying a male sex toy, and while only 5 percent of Lovehoney’s sales are Fleshlights or Fleshjacks (the dude version of a Fleshlight, if you will), this still means more people are buying them than are buying some more commonly known sex toys, including dildos and restraints.

Fortunately there’s a community for everything on the internet, where people can chat about their sexual proclivities at length and in detail. I spoke to a few Fleshlight evangelists about why they got involved, and whether the taboo will ever dissipate. (Some names have been changed.)

Eduardo, 20, Southern California

I own four Fleshlights, and two Quickshots — they’re smaller versions, I use them for trips and vacations and stuff. My ex bought me my first one for my 18th birthday, and like, I’m pretty open about it, but male sex toys are more talked about in the gay community, since we’re just more open to using them.

For straight people, I think they’re maybe a bit more insecure about talking about them. It’s okay for women to have sex toys, but if a straight man has one, I don’t know, he’s treated like he can’t get a real woman to sleep with him or something. In gay culture we understand why they’re useful and how much it can help. This is more true with regard to anal sex toys, as that’s seen as a “gay” thing to a lot of straight guys. Which is ridiculous, by the way. If straight men tried it out, either with a toy or with their finger, they’d probably like it. The prostate is like the male G-spot, they don’t know what they’re missing.

Jack, 19, South Carolina

I used to think it was pointless to spend money on something like a Fleshlight when I had a perfectly good hand. Also I just thought I’d feel like a creep if I owned one. Then a buddy of mine in the Air Force, who hadn’t seen his girlfriend in over a year, told us that he had one, and that it was nothing to be ashamed about. I got my first one over Christmas, and ordered another around Valentines, which will be my ninth sleeve.

When I made my first purchase I only wanted one, but I ended up getting a warmer sleeve for added realism, and one extra sleeve after seeing how many different options there were. I then found out if I bought another sleeve, I’d get one for free (that’s four sleeves total). That’s also how my second order ended up being—wanted just one more sleeve, ended up buying three and getting a fourth for free. Then I also got one sent by mistake. I’m still not too open about the fact that I own a collection of fleshlights, and if I had a girlfriend I think I’d probably use them a lot less anyway. My friends don’t know about it yet, but if I do eventually tell them, I’m more than likely going to leave out the fact that I own as many as I do. Everything is fine in moderation, but I feel like I’ve gone overboard here.

Gordon, 40, United Kingdom

I grew up in a very religious household where everything was very “porn is wrong,” “masturbation is wrong.” But then, I found a lot of adult magazines hidden in the attic that I assume were my dad’s — so I’m a little conflicted about my sex toy usage, to say the least.

A few years ago me and my wife moved house, 400 miles away, and I had to stay behind for a while to sell the old one. I ordered my first Fleshlight the day after she left. I didn’t consider it cheating on her, but it’s something she finds morally unpalatable, so I kept it secret from her. She only found out I had one because I left the lube out, but even since, she’s never seen it. She just accepts I have one now.

She’s very morally aligned, and distances herself from sexual talk or activities unless we’re actually having sex — even then, she’s very passive in bed. Sex is like a Sunday night activity for her, I sometimes feel like she just uses me. Sometimes we don’t have sex for up to three weeks, so I need to use the fleshlight to plug the gap. I’ve been trying to get her into Karezza Sex recently, where you just lie together for like an hour, with the penis inside her, to allow the energy of the act to pass between you. I don’t know much about it but I feel like it might satisfy the need for intimacy without the pressure of intercourse, and be a more acceptable alternative to the fleshlight.

Jason, 29, California

When I was first dating my current wife I bought my first Fleshlight, partly for my own pleasure, partly to improve my performance — the model I bought was called the Stamina Training Unit. We haven’t done it yet, but she’d be totally up for using it in the bedroom. When’s she not in the mood, she just prefers I use it in my office, to let her sleep.

Here’s the thing though: most women understand that men masturbate a lot, so why should it be frowned upon if we want to enhance it with a toy? Remember internet dating? You used to be ridiculed if you used the internet to find a date, now almost everyone uses it. Society shifts and changes all the time. It’s generally the norm for women to buy and enjoy sex toys — dildos and vibrators are out in the open at any Good Vibes and nobody complains — Fleshlights and other male toys are just too new. When virtual reality sex advances further, you’ll see a big increase in the acceptance of male sex toys. Right now though, there’s definitely a stigma.

Dan, 46, Las Vegas

In the ‘90s I used to go through pocket pussies regularly. I can’t remember if that’s what they were actually called, we used to call them “meat puppets” too, but essentially they’re the same thing as a Japanese Onahole — a kind of proto-Fleshlight. They were good, but they wore out pretty easily. The toy would just split down the seam. I must have put my last one in the dumpster in the mid-‘90s.

A couple of weeks ago I took the plunge and bought my first Fleshlight — I actually ordered a few on sale — and it’s a much improved product. My wife and I live apart because of my work at the moment, so y’know, lots of time spent alone. I refuse to be unfaithful to her, but traditional masturbation wasn’t working for me — I was DYING for the sensation and satisfaction that accompanies actual intercourse. I probably use it on average once a day, sometimes up to three times a day, but I know that my wife would probably be open to incorporating it into foreplay.

I’m not sure there’s a stigma attached to it, but if there is, it can’t be any worse than the stigma attached to pornography. I’ve experience that first hand on countless occasions. Frankly though, I don’t think most guys care. We are going to do what we need to do to get off, as long as it doesn’t have a negative impact on anyone else.

Harry Harris is a songwriter, journalist and headless Thompson gunner. He tweets @CmonHarris, sings @WildSoundRecs and laughs @ own jokes.

More from Harry:

• Stop Hating on Comic Sans
• How the Ellipsis Became the Ultimate Power Move
• ‘Fairytale of New York’ Is the Best Christmas Song Ever

The Man Who Owns 9 Fleshlights was originally published in MEL Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

There’s no need to mock a perfectly adequate font to demonstrate that you know stuff about graphic design

It’s funny to think of armchair typographers being a thing, but the visceral reactions people have to Comic Sans suggest that indeed they are. Mention the font’s name, and all of a sudden you have people sounding off about kerning and baselines, talking about intended use and readability — people who’d never previously displayed any interest in design whatsoever.

These days we’re all feeling the pressure to display a level of expertise on every subject. The quickest way to do so is to join a crowd and set yourself poles that can guide your opinions. With typography, which has developed a kind of hipster cool over the past few years, you have something like a love of Helvetica at the top end of the pole — clean, useful, the subject of a beloved documentary that also happens to be on Netflix — and at the other end, you’ve got poor, reviled Comic Sans.

It is the Coldplay of fonts. It’s everywhere, but nobody will admit to liking it. Attempts have been made to ban it. Objections range from specific typographical problems embedded in the font’s make-up to woolly, vague, intangible sentences that don’t really hold a lot of water, as in this short documentary from director Anita Brown, when a student claims that “the Swedish would never accept that kind of print.”

But, like musicians who claim Coldplay “have a few decent tunes” (“The Scientist” is good, actually), graphic designers are drawing a line when it comes to Comic Sans hate. Gavin Day, a graphic designer and photographer at digital agency Things Unlimited, says that “when people slag it off, what exactly are they slagging off? Apple ripped off their own version [Chalkboard], so there must be something about it.” Imitation, after all, is the highest form of flattery.

Sean Jones, a freelance graphic designer based in Edinburgh, is also a fan of Comic Sans, if largely for nostalgic reasons: memories of schooldays and the first times he ever used a computer. These days, he says the font fits in with “the new ugly,” a design concept pioneered by Berlin magazine 032c: “They take the stuff people find ugly in graphic design and deliberately use it. They use Comic Sans-like fonts, and stretch and distort them — it’s very edgy.”

Overuse, or misuse, is the crux of many complaints, but if that is the case, what was the font’s intended use? Vincent Connare, the designer of Comic Sans, created the font for the Windows program Microsoft Bob in a bit of a rush — three days to be exact — after seeing the font they were going to use for cartoon speech bubbles was Times New Roman, which he felt was too austere.

Connare looked to old comic books as inspiration for something new,that would better fit the cartoon-like purpose. This is perhaps why it’s often used in primary schools and other child-friendly places — its genesis is rooted in media traditionally aimed at the young. And as it became so widely used with children, some anecdotal evidence sprung up to suggest that it was easier to read for people with dyslexia.

I don’t want to get all “death of the author” on you, but any creative output can take on a life of its own immediately after being put out into the world. Comic Sans may have been designed with cartoon speech in mind, but that doesn’t really signify once it’s out in the public domain, being used for everything from gravestones to business cards. It became a meme in the original sense of the word — a unit of cultural transmission.

But it’s not surprising that as Comic Sans has been shared, used and shorn of context for years, it has found a natural home in memes as we think of them today. In Doge, Comic Sans has found a scenario worthy of its design. Go on, imagine reading “So font. Wow. Much kerning” in Century Gothic — the latest font to feel the collective ire of the internet, according to Jezebel. It’d look awful.

This postmodern approach to the font was also taken by the Parisian creative agency Les Jeunes Loupes, who set up The Comic Sans Project at the tail end of 2011 (in fact, they contrast the font with Helvetica in their mission statement). The project reappropriated the font on a number of well-known logos, and a lot of them work really well.

Going back to Anita Brown’s Comic Sans documentary briefly, the late associate professor of advertising Tom Fauls of Boston University describes good typography as like a “clear goblet that holds wine” — the idea being that the material’s main purpose is to properly showcase that which is within it. It’s a nice analogy, and it holds water (or, I guess, wine) here. Despite the ubiquity and recognizability of Comic Sans, it appears perfectly appropriate and, in a sense, invisible, in many of the examples — the M&Ms Logo, the H&M Logo, the Walt Disney logo; even this sliced-up Android logo is pretty neat.

There is a moment in an episode of VH1’s Storytellers with Bruce Springsteen, where after playing “Devils & Dust,” he picks the song apart line by line. He details every word, every metaphor, every political allusion in the song. It’s remarkable. At the end he says something to the effect of: “How much of that was I thinking when I wrote the song? None of it. How much was I feeling? All of it.”

That’s the order our emotional reactions work in — we feel first, think later — but the gap between the two is getting shorter. It’s no longer good enough to justify an opinion with “I just like it” or “I just hate it”; you have to show your work. Sometimes this is necessary; other times, it just ends up in a lot of people getting tangled up in knots.

Because we’re not all experts in everything, nor should we be expected to be. I wouldn’t go to a chef for an opinion on how to properly structure this article, and I wouldn’t go to my editor for a foolproof method for how to poach eggs — if such a thing even exists, which in this writer’s opinion, it does not. Don’t ask me why. I couldn’t tell you.

Harry Harris is a songwriter, journalist and headless Thompson gunner. He tweets @CmonHarris, sings @WildSoundRecs and laughs @ own jokes.

More from Harry:

• How the Ellipsis Became the Ultimate Power Move
• ‘Fairytale of New York’ Is the Best Christmas Song Ever
• From Britain to America, With Empathy

Stop Hating on Comic Sans was originally published in MEL Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

That said, I’m trying to learn, and also I’m trying to limit the amount of meat I eat. I’m gonna try and go all of January without eating any, and then after that who knows. To be honest, I’m not missing it nearly as much as I thought I would, and it’s forcing me to try and make new things, like these sweetcorn, spinach, and egg steamed dim sum buns, which were sofuckinggoodyouguysyouhavenoidea.

So you will need:
Coconut Milk (1 can)
Wholemeal Flour
Regular Flour
Baking Powder
1 x red onion
3 x corns on the cobs / corn on the cobs?
1 x green chilli
2/3 bag of spinach (that’s meant to be a fraction, not 2 or 3 bags, btw)
2 x eggs
1 x bunch of coriander
1 x bit of ginger (thumb size is usually the go-to measurement isn’t it?)
soy sauce
mirin
five-spice
baking cases, like for muffins
a steamer (this bit is i *think* essential)

Makes 12 buns

So, to start, credit where credit’s due, I took the dough recipe from this Jamie Oliver video. It is alarmingly simple and yet, also, the most difficult bit of this recipe. Get yourself a bowl, and tip in the coconut milk. If it’s done that thing where the top is hard, and the bottom is clear, then stir it around a bit, but don’t be too concerned. Then fill the tin up once with wholemeal flour, and once with plain flour, and mix with the coconut milk. I didn’t have self-raising flour, so threw in some baking powder here with the seasoning, but you could just as easily by self-raising versions of the flours. Anyway, mix together and it’ll form a dough. That’s it. Dough done. Brilliant.

For the filling, take your three corn-cobs and place them into boiling water, they’ll take about 7 minutes. In another pan, fry the onion, chilli and ginger until it’s softened — you wanna finely dice the three of these. I’d usually grate ginger but it’s better to dice it here, because you get a bit more texture in the finished thing.

Luckily, it takes about 10 minutes for all this to soften, which is about the length of time it takes to cook your corn, cool it with some cold water, and slice the kernels off. Throw those into the pan along with some seasoning, and a generous amount of five-spice. Take the stalks off your bunch of coriander and chop them finely, throw them in here too. I put some butter in at this point but you could just as easily leave that out.

So right now, you’re basically trying to get vegetables frying with the five-spice to create some kind of fragrant, sweet, spicy thing. It feels a bit like a slaw, in that everything is kinda crunchy and zingy, but slaws are usually long strips aren’t they, and this is all small dice. Anyway, give it a few minutes and then throw in your spinach, a bit at a time, along with a good shake of light soy sauce and a glug of mirin — the spinach will wilt in the steam created by the liquid. Taste it now, it tastes really good now. To be honest, you could stop right here. If you were vegan you could stop right here, no trouble. However, I love eggs, and figured that 2 eggs beat through this mix would kinda dry it out enough to work as a filling for the buns.

So, now you have your delicious filling, and you have your dough. Roll the dough out into a long sausage, cut into 12 — so halve it, halve each half, and then each half into three. Take one of your buns and press it out flat, so that it’s about the size of the palm of my hand (if you don’t have my hand nearby, if I’m not around or whatever, then use whatever hand you can find. Maybe your hand, unless you have tiny hands. Have people commented on how small your hands are? Is that a thing for you? Go a bit bigger than your palm if so). Fill the centre of the dough with two teaspoons of filling and fold the dough over, twisting the top, so it’s entirely encased. Some hazards at this stage: if the filling is too wet, or maybe too hot, or if you’ve pulled the dough too big, then the dough might split. Don’t worry about it, just squish it back together and try again. Stick your buns into muffin cases, put the muffin cases into a steamer, and steam for 12 minutes.

I wonder if there’s a way you could do this without a steamer. Maybe if you have a sieve, and you place that over a pan of boiling water, and cover it in foil? That could work? To be honest though these are really good so it’s worth getting a steamer. You could go steam crazy. Steam everything.

Lift the lid after 12 minutes and observe your beautiful bun children. They are grown now, and ready to be eaten. Hoisin, sriracha, sweet chilli, a quick chutney made by chopping the coriander leaves from before and mixing with white wine vinegar, some sesame seeds. Go nuts, they’re your buns.

Hastily thought out fillings:

Mushrooms: this is the one Jamie does in the video I linked to above, a bunch of chestnut and dried mushrooms fried up with ginger and sesame oil and tossed with spring onions and chilli. This’d be delicious. Would do.
Pork and prawn: you could do this using sausage meat from a good pork sausage, rather than a flavoured one, and chopped up prawns, plus ginger, fennel seeds, soy, fish sauce, more coriander.
Kimchi: I do naawt know how to make kimchi but I’m bang into kimchi, so maybe find a kimchi recipe and shove it in these buns.