My wordpress is filled with drafts. Which sometimes can feel more overwhelming than the fully blank page.

Most of them are half completed travel blogs. But some of them are random thoughts, titled as animals.

The owl, the mouse, the wren, the moths. (attraction, invasion, delusion, destruction)?

And this one, which I titled The Bumblebee, but only has the words:

‘Heidelberg- man steps on a bee.’

Last edited 7 months ago (24 Jun 2025 @ 11:22).

By the 24th of June last year, I was back in London. But I’d just been on a glorious rampage through Europe, combining a work meeting with friends meetup in Berlin and Halle (!!), and then tracking my way south first with a friend to Heidelberg, then by myself to Konstanz and Zurich. And finally meeting up with my ex (not at that time) to walk across Liechtenstein.

By Jan 2026, I can’t remember that the bumblebee was in Heidelberg, specifically. But I remember walking through the city with a friend, and catching a slightly asynchronous movement out of the corner of my eye. A man had slowed, and stopped, and backed up a bit, and was now looking down at the ground. My eyes followed his and there was the bumblebee.

He’d stood on it. Squashed it a bit, but not fatally. And it was incredibly clear that he was now frozen inside the question of what to do with the creature.

That’s it. That’s the story.

My friend kept moving through the city, and I left the man in his moment.

The point of this blog is that it doesn’t really have to make sense to everyone, and it’s also ok if I look back on it and feel embarrassed by how pretentious it all is. It’s nice to write, and it’s nice to look back on the writings. So here we go….

31/01/2026