About

This is what people undergoing a mid-life crisis do when they can’t afford a motorbike. And would be too scared to ride it anyway.

I’m Ben, a forty-something man living in Cardiff with my wife and two kids. I work from home all day as a freelance web developer – building WordPress websites for charities.

What on earth is the point of this site?

It’s a chance to do something creative and learn a few new skills (like animation and CSS layout) along the way. I’ve always been better with words than with code or design – which is less of a humble brag than it sounds now that you’ve seen how bad I am at coding and design.

My wife is very much a starter-finisher personality type. Me, I’m a starter-procrastinator-quitter. So this site is an exercise in actually putting something out there in the world. It’s inspired by Jack McDade’s brilliant site in the sense that it doesn’t really have a point or purpose other than wanting to do something a bit different for the sake of it.

You’re not an actual poet, are you?

My sister wanted to be an actress. She never made it, but she does live in a trailer – so she got halfway.

She's an actress, she just never gets called to the set.

– Mitch Hedberg

(If you hang around this site long enough you'll see how much I love Mitch Hedberg.)

Being a poet/artist/musician/actor is like being a homeopathist – you don’t need to have any qualifications or anyone’s permission to be one, you can simply declare to the world that you are one.

But no, I have neither the aspiration nor the skill to be a proper poet.

What’s your favourite Argos catalogue number?

Easy. Mine was always 850/2988 because of the way you could whizz it down the conveyor belt. (They have now changed it to 850/0485)

How do I get in touch with you?

Probably via my spectacularly dull and thankfully neglected Twitter profile.