Apple, you truly deserve that epithet. You’re the new Microsoft, deploying buggy software you haven’t bothered to test on anything but your latest hardware. How can it be that your latest OS “update” crashes constantly because WindowServer can’t cope with me having two external monitors plugged into my laptop, something I have been able to …
These days my inner grumblings have me contemplating why I was always not just passive in the face of harassment, but apologetic too. Last night, my memories had me back in the flat I rented from a church housing association in King’s Cross in the late ’90s — for years the backdrop to my restless …
I’m not a fan of morality police, who set themselves up as upholders of societal decency. Maybe my distaste has its origins in my own experience with those presumed to be gatekeepers of ethical standards. Long ago, in the dim and distant past, some such folk thought that for the crime of thinking a girl …
Of course, now we are missing our lands and neighbourhood. Still dreaming of those days. It’s ever so on dreary, dark, cold and wet days here. But when we are there we miss our home here too. This is life, near and far.
Unfortunately, there’s nothing new about landlords not taking the problem of damp and mould seriously. In fact, the problem is widespread. In the early 2000s, we rented a flat from a housing association in west London. It was a tiny one-bedroom flat — one of several located in the roof of a converted old Victorian …
As a nation, we have two problems: that ideologues in centuries past invented notions of racial superiority, and that we believed in those ideas. Despite having been thoroughly discredited by advances in the study of human genetics, these outdated beliefs continue to be promulgated all around us, forever informing our discussions about the outside other. …
Meanwhile, Canada is having a grownup discussion about immigration, seeking to attract 1.5 million people over the next three years to overcome labour shortages. Will we be amongst them? “Not likely,” says my beloved, already shivering, “Canada is much too cold!”
This is the question I increasingly ask myself, cognizant of negative reactions towards me. Not a reaction to how I look, but rather some kind of behaviour I exhibit, which I’m just not conscious of. Those negative reactions didn’t cease with maturity. I just learnt to largely avoid them by withdrawing from social settings wherever …
I think my wife is better at keeping her feet on the ground than I am. I tend to spend a lot of time thinking, “What if?” or “If only.” But she would just say, “Khayr!“ If I’m feeling grumpy, discontented with my job, she will be there doing mental arithmetic, calculating how much money …
They were sponsored to fast for twenty-four hours. I was sponsored to walk back and forth across the Humber Bridge. I don’t recall what their cause was, but I sponsored them anyway. Mine was for Christian Aid Week. When they came to collect their sponsorship money from me, they refused to say thank you. I …
The head of the Confederation of British Industry calls on the government to be honest with the public about the vast labour shortages the country faces, noting that immigration would help solve the problem. Good luck with that one. Today, the Facebook algorithm thought I might be interested in a group which was basically the …
A jolly jaunt, before the rain came.
The outdoors are calling, begging us to venture out. A good day for a wander. Time to bribe the kids with the promise of lunch midway. Up, up and away.
