Personal
Swimming at the Elephant
I hadn’t swum for 20 years before joining the club a few months back. Now, I leave a brightly-lit council-run pool in Elephant and Castle each Wednesday night with a definite spring in my step.
Read132 Days of Duolingo
I spend around 10 minutes a day on Duolingo and I’m not convinced it’s worth it. And the fact these doubts only started occurring to me after I completed a 100 day streak on this maddeningly well-designed and moreish app is… annoying.
ReadWhy I’m getting Artangled
I went to a lot of art shows in 2017. I don’t really know why this obsession took hold.
ReadMiss Naysmith and her city
As London’s super-rich make the city their playground, pushing the rest of us further and further to its social – and physical – margins, I think it’s becoming more and more important to remember stories like Miss Naysmith’s. She’s an example of somebody who refused to be pushed out. She lived on nobody else’s terms but her own.
ReadWalking somewhere
I’d arrived in Trieste on a Friday evening, and, having dropped my backpack off, I needed to walk. So I set off, towards the sea.
ReadPeggy and Mihaela
Our evening flight had been delayed, and they’d finally given up for the night. We’d be on the first flight to Heathrow the next morning. An air traffic control failure in Brussels caused the original problem. Appropriately timed: it was June 24th, the night following the Brexit vote.
ReadWar on two wheels
The cyclist was an easy urban type to spot: middle aged, black lycra, racing bike, pedal clips, a backpack with a fluorescent rain cover. Serious kit, maybe a lawyer on his way west from the Strand. The driver was clearly a type too: white BMW with a superfluous spoiler.
ReadTapping the Kangaroo
Every day in London, thousands of fingers tap a cute Kangaroo logo on their smartphone screens. As a result, every lunchtime and supper time, thousands of young men have a job to do.
ReadThe Chinese plate
My mum’s finally finished clearing out my grandparents’ house, and she’s brought back a few boxes of things: books, pieces of jewellery, notes. Nothing valuable, just mementoes.
ReadBooks I read last year
I read less than I used to, and I forget most of what I read. A fact brought home to me last year when, bored at Christmas time, back at my parents’ house, I rifled through some shelves in my childhood bedroom, and pulled out a plain blue hardcover notebook.
ReadThink again about online friendships
I go to a lot of marketing conferences. Which means I sit through an awful lot of marketing pitches and presentations. But, until last month, I hadn’t sat through a single one that made me reassess how I lived my life.
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