Blog - February 2026

February did what February does. It arrived short, cold, and busy, then vanished before I could properly get my feet under it.

Books, and the problem of discipline

The Presumption of Silence released on 21 February, on Kindle and paperback. That one felt good to put out. It was edited, tightened, and finished to a standard I can stand behind.

Knox Investigations is the opposite. I am still not happy with it, and I do not think the problem is small.

The manuscript has structural and tonal faults that need proper surgery. Chapters one to ten are controlled. The pacing is steady and the investigation has discipline. From chapter eleven onwards, Knox stops investigating and starts escalating, and the book never recovers its shape. Every chapter becomes a new violent incident and the cumulative effect is exhaustion rather than tension.

So I stopped trying to force it.

Instead, I started a short story called Make Safe. It is a courtroom drama for Knox. The core is simple. Forgotten evidence comes back to life under oath. The pressure is not fists and blades, it is words, credibility, and the slow exposure of things people thought were buried.

I have also pretty much parked Corporal Henry Knox for now too. That project is not in a good place and I would rather wait for inspiration than write through fog and pretend it is clear.

Valentine’s and the fence that needed to die

Valentine’s night was exactly what my wife actually likes. Not grand gestures, just effort and usefulness.

I made a good Valentine's meal. Fillet steak and dauphinoise potatoes. But before that we did DIY.

We tore down a fence in the garden that had been slowly disintegrating. A few slats had blown off in the wind and hit the car, which is usually the moment where a job stops being theoretical and becomes immediate. A day of hard graft, dismantling, clearing, and dragging rotten timber out of the way.

After that I made tea and we sat down for a murder mystery night, one of those digital crime to solve sets. We got through the introduction and fell asleep.

The garden looks better with the fence gone. Behind it there is a beautiful old wall, and we have effectively gained about fifteen square metres of space back. We have cut it back and we are now looking at digging up the ivy and levelling it properly.

It has also exposed the neighbour’s garden and they do not seem pleased. We will have to sort that. Practicalities. It only looks into our drive, so it is not as if we have opened a viewing platform into their lives, but people react the way people react.

A printer, a statue, and a long-term obsession

We bought a 3D printer, an Elegoo Neptune 4 Max, and immediately started thinking about what it could do with it.

The main purpose is for the Turf Moor Memorial Garden. I want to build an eight foot statue of Burnley’s favourite player, Jimmy McIlroy. It is something I have been trying to do since the garden was first conceived, but cost has always made it prohibitive. This is me trying a different route.

So February has been learning. Plastics. Heated beds. Nozzles. Failures you do not see coming until you watch a print fail seven hours in (or in the morning after a night of printing).

I did manage to print a bust, a fraction of the intended size, as a previs test sculpt. Seeing a head exist in the real world, even small, made the whole idea feel possible rather than wishful.

Boiler, bucket, and a small victory

The boiler broke, so we are in the middle of sorting a replacement. In the meantime there is a pan under the leak and a constant low level awareness that something is dripping somewhere it should not.

One satisfying moment was ripping out the cabinet that was supposed to hide the boiler. It was badly built and did the opposite of its job. It made everything look worse. Removing it felt like clearing an obstruction.

Now, of course, it means plastering and painting and making the space decent again. Work work work, as usual.

London, faces, and the real world

I travelled down to London for work and stayed in a hotel near Euston. I had to get over to Vauxhall and managed to get lost on the Underground, which is not impressive especially as I have lived in both Colchester and Aldershot, with regular trips to the capital. But I wasnt paying attention and allowed someone else to lead the way.

It was worth it, though. It was good to meet people I usually only know through a screen. Good to talk properly, about things that matter, not just what is in the sprint or what is broken. You forget how much context lives in the same room as someone until you have it back.

It is still a long journey. There is no way around that.

Closing

So February was release and reset.

One book out in the world. One book pulled back to the operating table. One new short story started because I needed discipline again. The garden stripped back. A fence removed. A printer humming in the corner with a small head on the desk that looks like the start of something bigger. A boiler leaking into a pan. London and faces and the reminder that work is still made of people.

Packed for a short month.