I’m John Mercer. I write here about slow living, long walks, and the books that survive a second reading.
The short version
I trained as an archivist and spent eight years cataloguing county records — tithe maps, parish registers, a great deal of water-damaged paper. It was quiet, methodical work and I was good at it. In 2019 I took three months off to travel overland across Europe and did not really go back.
These days I keep a small flat in Porto, take freelance indexing work for academic publishers, and walk a great deal. This site is where the leftover thinking goes.
What I write about
- Lifestyle — the unglamorous mechanics of a slower day. Mornings, money, kitchens, the cost of owning things.
- Travel — mostly overland, mostly slow, mostly the parts between the destinations.
- Reading — what I finished, what I abandoned, and the occasional argument with a book.
What this site is not
It is not a productivity blog. I am not optimising anything. There is no course, no affiliate link, no framework with a name. If a post recommends a thing, it is because I bought it with my own money and still have it.
Elsewhere
I keep no other accounts worth following. The contact page is the reliable way to reach me, and the now page is the most current thing here.