F № 01
Food
The flagship. Cooked in stages, photographed mid-smoke, eaten with people.
rich-hill.com · a personal site, filed under F
A life in Fs.
Food. Football. Fiction. Fun. Also Friends & Family, French — and one more that never gets explained.
Start with the F that isn't a section: Friends & Family. It's the reason the rest exist. I cook because food is how you get the people you love around one table. I play football twice a week because my mates keep turning up, and so do I. I wrote a novel so I could read my daughter a chapter of it every week. Everything on this site is a thing I do with or for somebody.
FOUNDING PRINCIPLE: “MORE ABOUT WHAT I LIKE TO DO THAN HOW I LOOK.”
The Fs — a collection
F № 02
Football
Five-a-side twice a week. Nickname: the Rhino. Liverpool, always.
F № 03
Fiction
Three generations of writers in one family. I'm the third.
F № 04
Fun
Games, travelling Lego ninjas, and one shark cake.
F № 05
Friends & Family
Not a section. The reason for the sections.
F № 06
French
Five months in Lille, thirty years ago. Essay coming, when I write it.
Essay coming, when I write it.
F № 07
artiFicial
—
F № 08
Fake news
Stories I commit to harder than strictly necessary.
F № 09
Reserved for the next one.
Schools used to run on the three Rs — Reading, wRiting, aRithmetic. Same joke family. The letter counts even when it’s hiding.
Section 01 · The flagship
Food
A photo-journal, not a recipe site. Everything gets shot in stages — raw on the Big Green Egg, smoke everywhere, then the platter — because the middle of the story is the good bit.
BBQ (low & slow · kebabs · burgers) — Indian — Asian — roasts (seasonal) — baking — foraging & preserves
Enter the photo-journal →
Section 02 · Home & away
Football
Twice a week, five-a-side, come rain or excuses.
They call me the Rhino. I’m six foot four and broad with it, and people tend to bounce off — but I’d like the record to show: surprisingly skilful for a man of my height.
Liverpool fan. I watch every game I can. There’s an FPL squad too, managed with rather more care than it repays.
- 5-a-side × 2 a week
- LFC
- FPL
- 6′4″ · deceptively skilful
Away days (and home ones)
Section 03 · Three generations
Fiction
Writing runs in the family. My gran was Pamela Bennetts, who published around fifty historical romances under three different names. My grandfather was George Bennetts.
So when I wrote Mars Rovers — 71,500 words, three books, self-published — the hero had to be called George Bennetts. One of the other characters is suspiciously like my daughter, which is fitting, because the whole thing was written for her. The best part was never the writing. It was reading her a chapter a week.
There’s also Mission: Murder, Part 1, written as my mum’s 80th birthday present. missionmurder.com is real, because of course it is.
The books are full of friendly AIs. I wrote them just before the world met one.
Section 04 · The catch-all drawer
Fun
Every house has a drawer like this. Games, ninjas, one shark cake.
Ninjas abroad
The best branding I ever had made was for a long-gone product called FlexiDB: 8-bit ninjas. I liked them so much I had real Lego ninjas made — and then they travelled. Niagara Falls. Buckingham Palace. Red Square, on Russian Orthodox Christmas. Boston.
Then I commissioned an artist to sneak ninjas into famous paintings. Thirteen pieces exist. None of the galleries have been in touch.
Games
Revibed Games is my hobby games label — it lives at revibedgames.com and it exists because making games turns out to be as much fun as playing them.
The expeditions — real Lego, real places
The commissions — the gallery wing
4 OF 13 COMMISSIONED PIECES. THE OTHER NINE ARE JUST AS DISRESPECTFUL.
Section 05 · Committed bits
Fake news
Stories I commit to harder than strictly necessary.
A couple of years ago my friend complained that his son kept running around barefoot, tracking mud and grass into the house. On instinct, I told him he shouldn’t do that. “Why, Uncle Rich?” For no good reason I joked, “Because the Toe Monsters would eat your feet.”
He didn’t believe me. Why would he? Any reasonably mature and mentally stable adult — which I am, most of the time — would have let it go. But no. Not on this occasion. A quick search revealed that toemonsters.com was available.
The rest is history.
Meet the full roster at toemonsters.com →
SEE ALSO: ME AND STEVIE G, UP IN FOOTBALL. THIS IS A PATTERN.
Section 06 · The AI corner
artiFicial
I have a lot of ideas. Too many to execute — until now. AI has changed this. At work I can do more than ever before. Backburner projects now exist. Even if I had a robot, I'd still cook. I'm not a MasterChef, but I know how to create meals I enjoy. I dabble with writing, and that's all me — and always will be. Creating images is fun: my concepts, AI's brush. This website, Revibed Games, Toe Monsters, and the odd song — all great fun that didn't justify the budget or time. Until now.
Exhibit: the backburner, shipped — three games at revibedgames.com
THE LONGER ESSAY — coming when I write it. Honestly labelled, like the French one.
The day job · kept small on purpose
By day I run SDUK Studio, a software studio. That is all this site will say about work.