Iâve got my own reasons for carrying this line of poetry around in my head like a lucky pebble. Now Iâve shared it: what does it mean to you?
For those of you new around these parts, welcome ð Numbers are only a number, but there are now 702 people reading this email. Thatâs so many people! If you want to make this club more exclusive, then you could unsubscribe. But if you want to fling open the doors, please share with people you think will vibe.
Todayâs story is a three-fold magazine pullout section. Nothing long form, nothing taxing. Weâve all had a hard week. So slide down into your chair, pull your jumper up over your chin and scroll.
Diagnosis Day (and why itâs worth celebrating)
On 1 May sixteen years ago, I was diagnosed with Hashimotoâs hypothyroidism. That day, my GP told me that sheâd never seen test results like mine. I was, she said, about three months out from going into a coma. Mayday, mayday, indeed.
During a life, even if you think you lead a life pretty ordinary, there are going to be at least a couple of days in your long span when something happens. Something actually pretty significant. A moment like the moments you see in films all the time: a moment with a clear before and after.
Diagnosis Day was one of those days for me.
Before: David sleeps fifteen hours a day and canât brush his teeth without pulling a muscle.
After: David has a diagnosis, a prognosis â and a treatment, pills that will be rebranded as his âcharisma pillsâ.
Days like this remind us that things could be different. Maybe that things will be different. Perhaps even that things are always differenting themselves.
Because, one day, there will come a day that is the end of days.
So, I say, peg at least one such day in your calendar every year to remember that you are still alive, still here, despite everything changing, all the time.
Photo: Jean Perrone (because I kept on forgetting. Thanks, Jean!)
Those pretty blue flowers youâve been seeing on the edges of everywhere? Itâs green! Green alkanet to be precise.
Itâs a fuzzy, furry plant so might cause a skin reaction if you rub up against it too much. But the flowers, thrillingly, are edible. No particular reason why you would, but you can â and isnât that half the fun?
In May 2022, the Royal Swedish Academy of Science released a paper that measured fourteen European countries on three factors: biodiversity, wellbeing, and nature connectedness. Britain came last in every single category.
I have no idea why the Wild Service editors tout the Royal Swedish Academy of Science when the authors of this famous study, Miles Richardson, Iain Hamlin, Lewis R. Elliott and Mathew P. White, hail from the universities of Derby, Exeter and Vienna respectively.
Nevertheless, the studyâs analysis of almost 15,000 respondants found that ânature connectednessâ â how close we feel to our ecology â is a critical indicator of the wellbeing of both human and nature.
Increase our connection to nature, the theory goes, and we would increase the health and happiness of, yes, us humans, but alsothe health and happiness of the bazillions of other species with whom we live in hidden community.
Wild Service proudly proclaims itself as âA Right to Roam Call to Actionâ and argues that our level of nature connectedness is inextricably tied to our ability (or more likely our inability) to access nature.
Convincing.
The editors donât stop there, though. This book is no mere protest pamphlet; itâs a forceful, forensic reclamation of our reciprocal and reciprocated position in our ecology.
Itâs taken enormous and sustained acts of violence in the West to separate common humans from their natural place in this ecosystem we call Earth.
Wild Service is a timely reminder that abhorrent laws and offensive fences cannot be upheld forever against natureâs gravity and our pull to the earth.
Iâm excited to get back out there.
~
*For reasons I wonât explain, this is actually an extremely clever pun.
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Normally, in this newsletter, I write stories that help you and me understand the world (and ourselves) a little better.
But today I am putting on one of the above hats and inviting you (yes, YOU!) to join me on Night Shift.
Night Shift: A Therapeutic Journey Through Darkness For Men
Today I am launching A Thing.
A Thing called Night Shift.
Night Shift is a therapeutic journey through darkness, in one of our most beautiful National Parks. It is designed for men to help them redefine their place in the universe, with a little help from midnight: stars, moon, owls.
I would LOVE your support getting this Thing off the ground. Please share abundantly — or apply to join us!
This could be you: New Forest, at night, with horse and moon.
The mission of Night Shift is to reveal the awesome mystery of nighttime, and support men to:
Redefine your place in the universe.
Commit to your deep purpose.
Restore your resilience.
The programme consists of three stages:
Four evening preparation sessions at our woodland base camp.
One 15-25km therapeutic night hike from dusk until dawn. (Yep: an all nighter.)
One evening integration session back at our base camp.
This first trial will be held in the New Forest National Park — but keep reading if you are interested (or know someone who will be).
There is a waiting list for future editions, held literally anywhere there are enough people who need the journey.
More moody photography: the right place for a Night Shift.
Stage 1: Preparation
These 3-hour preparation sessions will take place on four consecutive Thursday evenings in July at our woodland base camp in the village of Burley in the New Forest, Hampshire.
The activities will be tailored to the therapeutic needs of the participants and will cover a range of ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ skills, which we will use during our night journey.
Soft skills may include:
Self-reflection: who am I?
Intention-setting: who do I want to become?
Mapping our past, present and future and our spheres of influence.
Working with our archetypes.
Looking into the Wilderness Mirror.
Hard skills may include:
Foraging and plant identification.
Fire-lighting and management.
Wood craft, including knife work if appropriate.
Astronomy and natural navigation.
The final session will end with the Fear Council: what are you afraid of?
Stage 2: The Night Shift Journey
Starting at dusk on Saturday, we will hike 15-25km overnight across the New Forest, arriving at a sacred space at dawn.
Along the way, we will use all the skills and awareness that we developed together during our preparatory sessions.
There are no guarantees with this work, but expect to be tested, not only physically, but psychologically and emotionally, as darkness and wilderness work their magic.
These conditions are perfect for finding those ‘thin places’ where we might catch a glimpse of something far greater than ourselves — and return home changed.
Stage 3: Integration
A few days after our night journey, we will gather for one final evening back at our woodland base camp.
Through a series of collaborative and individual meaning-making exercises, we will integrate our nighttime experiences into our everyday lives.
What lessons will I take home with me?
What wisdom did I glimpse in the darkness?
How have I changed?
If you choose, things will never be the same again. This is your opportunity to decide for yourself: where will you go now?
There are still a couple of places available on this first trial Night Shift. The participation fee is £75, which just about covers my costs.
I will never have the opportunity to run this course so cheaply again (unless I get a big fat grant to do so 😂).
Why not take a step into the unknown? (Or share with someone who might need that kinda thing 🙏)
Thank You
Huge thanks to all the paying subscribers who helped make this story possible. You know who you are. Thank you. 💚
If you enjoyed this one, then go ahead and tell me. It’s the only way I’ll know. You can tap the heart button, write a comment, share the newsletter with friends, or simply reply to this email.
If you’re not into the whole Substack subscription thing, then you can also make a one-off, choose-your-own-contribution via PayPal. That’d make my day.
Last night, I dreamt that a friend was leading a snazzy bikepacking tour to the Arctic Circle.
I saw her face in a high-end outdoor magazine, looking all adventurous, surrounded by trendy black and white photos of expensive kit and moody Arctic landscapes.
I won’t lie: I was jealous.
I messaged her the next day and this is what I got back:
In this newsletter, I write stories that help you and me understand the world (and ourselves) a little better.
Sometimes, like you, I see the future in my dreams.
A Tale of Two Entertainments
I’m too hard on myself. That much is clear.
Entertainment 1: Reading on the Beach
A novel I was given by Jessie, a woman we met at the Gaza Sunbirds fundraiser a couple of weeks ago. Improbably, her partner is called Jay. Jessie J. Jessie had bought the book earlier that day, quite forgetting that she’d read it before. The book, she said, was forgettable. I’m enjoying it. It’s by the same author who wrote Orbital, with the same driftingly pretty language. This book, unlike Orbital, does have flow as well as meander: a plot is in sight, just around the bend.
I actually didn’t read this book on the beach yesterday, but it looked better in the photo than the other book that I was reading on the beach.
And, in fact, I probably read no more than four pages before C called. We chatted for about fifteen minutes, then I stood up and left the beach with a dizzifying headrush-headthrob — not caused by our conversation, I hasted to add, but because of the cold still clinging to my throat.
I was on the beach for about twenty minutes in total and I read four pages. It was the highlight of my day.
Entertainment 2: A Football Game in Front of a Football Game
In the evening, while watching a football game on TV, I downloaded a football game called Retro Football Manager 24 and played that on my phone for about an hour.
Awful, addictive.
I was on a six-game winning streak with 1995-era Liverpool, lifting the boys from the relegation places after a disastrous start to the season, when I finally deleted the app.
It was 9.40pm. I felt like crap: tired, but wired.
After a day of working on screens, a nourishing evening snatched away from me by myself.
I’m too hard on myself — that much is clear — but that’s how I felt.
Lock Me Out
In immediate response to my phone-tethered self-disgust, I downloaded another app: Lock Me Out (Android only), and set up my phone to lock me out of itself when I have unlocked the demonic device fifty times in a day.
Regular readers will know that this is not my first attempt to limit my screen time.
I’m too hard on myself, etc., etc., but, my sweet lord, what a list:
And every new strategy I’m convinced is going to be The One.
Here’s how that all panned out:
I am at least very good at keeping records of how much I use my phone. 😂 You can see from this that my phone use has stayed pretty stable since I started a full time job in August last year, reliably varying from 4-12 hours per week every week. You can also see the one successful experiment I had, back in January, when I managed to slash my phone time to 2 hours for, er, 1 week. It took 8 weeks for that habit to wear off and for me to return to baseline.
But I tell you, reader: Lock Me Out is The One.
My intention is to gradually reduce the number of unlocks I allow myself per day, hoping to not be too hard on myself again, but rather become more comfortable in discomfort, in silence, in boredom.
Let Me In
Helping me on that path is yet another app (oh, the irony): The Way by Henry Shukman, travel writer, novelist, poet and Zen master in the Sanbo Zen lineage.
(Hat-tip to Tim Ferriss — his referral link will get you 30 free meditations instead of the usual 12.)
I’ve never managed to stick to meditation, despite trying off and on for what must be decades. (But let’s not beat me up about that, eh.)
I feel today, however, that I am reaching a point of, if not emergency, then perhaps urgency: my immune system is struggling, I feel overloaded and time-crushed. I know life isn’t going to get any simpler — that’s not how life works (thank goodness).
But life isn’t my experience of life. My experience of life is my experience of life. And that can be changed, or at least nudged one way or another. (Hat-tip to the Stoics there.)
And so: The Way arrives at the right time.
Superficial, Revolutionary
There are two things I particularly like about The Way, quite apart from the high production values. The first is superficial, but important. The second is revolutionary, insofar as a phone app can be (which isn’t very far).
Firstly, and superficially: Henry Shukman has an English accent — Oxford, to be precise. This shouldn’t be important, but it is. Familiarity, to humans, is familiar. And what is familiar is reassuring and what is reassuring is authoritative.
This is as much a warning as it is a recommendation.
Firstly, the teaching still has to be good. A teacher who gains authority through familiarity is a dangerous entity unless they back their authority with wisdom.
(I’m looking at you, certain politicians right now 👀.)
But secondly, if you’ve been raised — by Hollywood or, I don’t know, colonialism — to find English accents sinister, then maybe you won’t get on with Shukman.
Your ‘meditation’ will begin shortly. Excellent.
But unless you have a full-on panic attack when your ears ingest The Queen’s English, I’d still recommend you give The Way a chance, for my second, moderately revolutionary reason.
One Choice, Endless Variety
The conceit behind The Way is that the acolyte (app-olyte?) is on a journey of a thousand steps. Each step on The Way is a meditation, and one step follows another in sequence.
When you are on a mountain hike, you can’t take one step forward and then magically skip to another step six miles away on a different mountain. You must take the next step on this mountain: you have one choice alone.
Similarly, The Way is presented as an inexorable sequence of meditations: one session per day, with each day intentionally designed to follow the last, as you gradually build the foundations of a sustainable meditation practice.
(Foundations only, yes. As all outdoor guides know, reaching the mountain summit is never guaranteed: beware those who promise thus.)
Having said that, the content on The Way isn’t locked. You can repeat old meditations or even (I haven’t actually tested this, why would I?) skip ahead, out of sequence, to any of the other 600-odd meditations further along the path.
This makes The Way exactly the same as all the other apps: a huge steaming pile of content stored on your phone. But its presentation, its default mode, its user experience is unique: this is today’s meditation — no other.
There is no choice — unless you choose choice. But why would you take away that magic?
It feels as close to having a teacher in the room as a stupid phone app could: Shukman himself has decreed what meditation you will do today. The only thing you know for certain is that it will be different from yesterday and different again tomorrow.
Like life: one choice, endless variety.
Even after a whole seven days of using The Way, I’m still too hard on myself — that much is clear.
Nevertheless, with time, I will become more comfortable: with one choice for life, and the endless variety, each step as it comes.
Three Tiny Big Things
1. Credit: Obsidian
Today’s newsletter (and my experience of life in general) has been supercharged this week by using Daily Notes on Obsidian, a free notetaking app that syncs between my phone and my computer.
Double hat-tip to Jenny and the Facilitation Pharmacy for making me actually sit down and do it! 🙏
Thank You
Huge thanks to all the paying subscribers who helped make this story possible. You know who you are. Thank you. 💚
If you enjoyed this one, then go ahead and tell me. It’s the only way I’ll know. You can tap the heart button, write a comment, share the newsletter with friends, or simply reply to this email.
If you’re not into the whole Substack subscription thing, then you can also make a one-off, choose-your-own-contribution via PayPal. That’d make my day.
Two things that I don’t hold against people using AI:
Single-handedly destroying the planet — AI chatbots aren’t too bad ‘compared to most of the other stuff you do’. That friend having a go at you for using ChatGPT? Send them this chart and a year’s supply of tofu:
People using AI to replace people. People need people more than people need AI. If you’ve got a question, AI might give you the answer. But if you’re questioning everything, people won’t give you the answer — people are the answer.
People not using AI.*
*Actually, I don’t really care if you use AI or not. But I do think that most people should probably give it a whirl, if only so that they can develop a more robust critical theory around its potential outputs. Otherwise bad things can happen.
In this newsletter, I write stories that help you and me understand the world (and ourselves) a little better.
Sometimes I marvel at humanity in a world of imitation.
Not The Right Books
If you’ve not got time to read, you’re not reading the right book.
No, not the words of Marcel Proust or Maggie Smith — the words of me, the other day, in my head.
(Yes, this really is how newsletters are born.)
The words-in-my-head (thought?) came to me as I skipped up the stairs at Battersea Park station1 and, to my delight, saw that I had a TEN minute wait for my train.
Normally, in London, a TEN minute wait is the precursor to apoplectic breakdown — I’ve seen otherwise straight-laced, shoulder-padded clerks-of-the-court reduced to hands-and-knees licking the live rail to alleviate the boredom when the board flickers inexplicably from —
Mill Hill East 2mins
to —
Edgware 9mins
But, to me, this TEN minute wait meant TEN more glorious minutes reading my book.
The book title is less important than the feeling that this book was, right now, the most gripping way I could spend my life.
So, as the words-in-my-head suggest, if you feel like you’ve not got time to read, then find another book.
Find another book: one that screams READ ME READ ME READ ME at you until you find yourself thrilled at inconvenient commuter delays because it means ten more pages of commune between you and your puppetmaster.
Oh — and, while we’re here, you have my permission to draw a big thick indelible marker line through every title on your ‘I really should’ reading list.
Books are damn hard to write — years of grind with no pay and no praise until, maybe, if the author is lucky, right at the very end, perhaps years more after they themselves gave the book and all its ideas up for dead and dull.
That means books only ever exist because an author was eaten up — for years — with something improbably important to say. If that book ain’t speaking to you right now, that book ain’t for you right now.
Move on.
There are millions out there. Find one that grips you by the heart and doesn’t let go.
On Tuesday, I went to a fundraising dinner hosted by Gaza Sunbirds paracycling team, the centrepiece a lip-smacking maqluba prepared by Chef Nour.
Before I’d digested the last of my rose pistachio rice pudding, the money was already in action:
Yesterday, we celebrated Maqluba and our rich culinary heritage, and today we are distributing food to underprivileged children in the most marginalized camps in Gaza.
If you’ve never had Palestinian speciality maqluba — literally ‘upside down’ — you’ve not lived. It’s not only delicious, but a piece of culinary theatre that, on Tuesday, was accompanied by jubilant hand-claps, darbuka and mizmar.
Stuffing my belly in a hipster-friendly Hackney eatery might be a jarring way to financially support a starving population in an open-air prison, but as Gaza Sunbirds co-founder Karim Ali pointed out, ‘Our food is our culture and, when we share our culture, we bring all people together.’
If you fancy getting in on the act, then you can donate a fiver to fund a Gaza Sunbirds Pizza Party — because ‘there is no reason Aid shouldn’t be fun!’
Headlines warn of a world in collapse, but solutions journalist Angus Hervey finds the overlooked triumphs that never make the news — from the rollout of malaria vaccines to the recovery of sea turtles. With hard data and stories from the frontlines, he reveals the hidden progress that perseveres even as it feels like the world is falling apart, and challenges us to decide which future we’ll help write.
Yep — it’s a TED video, but it’s a TED video that’s not full of crap. 10 minutes worth your time today.
Thank You
Huge thanks to all the paying subscribers who helped make this story possible. You know who you are. Thank you. 💚
If you enjoyed this one, then go ahead and tell me. It’s the only way I’ll know. You can tap the heart button, write a comment, share the newsletter with friends, or simply reply to this email.
If you’re not into the whole Substack subscription thing, then you can also make a one-off, choose-your-own-contribution via PayPal. That’d make my day.
And a warm welcome from the Palace gardens, where the parakeets cry and the coots pick plastic from the pond.
Shamefully, it’s two full months since I last unfurled a story at your feet — forgive me — but since then much has occurred.
I went to see the world’s longest running play, written by the world’s most successful author, a woman dead and buried in my home village graveyard for almost fifty years. Contrary to rumour, no, the butler didn’t do it. He’s not even in the cast.
Talking of graves, I stood at the foot of Marcel Proust’s and failed to summarise for my companions the plot of the world’s longest and most unsummarisable novel. Unsummarisable not due to the complexity of its plot, but due to its soporific effect on the reader — I always fall asleep somewhere between goodnight kiss and the madeleine.
I didn’t quite throw up on the teacups at Dreamland in Margate.
I completed an overdue Outdoor First Aid course, meaning that I am now officially signed off as a Hill & Moorland Leader and have the framed certificate to prove it.
I spent a sunny afternoon watching Liverpool win the Premier League title (although Brentford are romping away with the wages-per-point crown) and another sunny afternoon watching Crystal Palace win the FA Cup. I’m on call for work this weekend so can’t make it up to Liverpool on Monday for the celebrations — my consolation is that the Eagles’ victory parade is a short ride away. A year for the birds indeed.
I attended the second Nature Therapy Conference, got inspired, and, on the four-hour drive home, listening to Cosmo Sheldrake on repeat, designed my pilot wilderness therapeutic programme from ground to sky — watch this space for launch day soon. I’ll be looking for men looking for change in their lives. Message if you’re interested.
One morning, I left home without my phone or house keys. I learned that receptionists will do anything for a slice of banoffee pie.
All this happened, and so much more, but for this week, I’d like to tell you a little story about Albania, home of hands down the best flag on planet earth 🇦🇱. In April, I visited for the fifth time, but how could it possibly live up to my hyperbole — favourite country in the world, really?
In this newsletter, I write stories that help you and me understand the world (and ourselves) a little better.
Sometimes I neglect you, dear reader.
Fluent in Welcome
The first time I went to Albania, I was met on the train platform by armed police, who marched me directly to the home of a little girl, no more than eight years old.
In 2007 Gjirokastër, now a notable tourist town, this eight-year old was the number one local English interpreter.
Perched awkwardly on the edge of a corduroy sofa, I cleared my throat and enquired whether this primary school pupil knew of any hotel or similar where I might be able to rest my head. The television showed adverts for missing people.
Without ceremony, my diminutive interpreter put aside her toys and led me through the streets, up the hill and into the old town, where, with gesticulations and smiles, I was passed into the care of a family — mother, father and an older daughter, probably seventeen, none of whom spoke English beyond, ‘Yes, welcome.’
Albania 2007. I actually don’t know what town this is. Maybe Gjirokaster?
Their home was built of stone-on-stone and could have been there since the days of Skanderbeg, resistance hero of Albanian medieval folklore, and contemporary of Romanian counterpart Vlad the Impaler.
Dark timber beams held the low ceiling on whitewashed walls. Thin carpets covered the flagstones, everything cold to the touch and the faint scent of mildew in the air.
Evening was falling and the daughter escorted me to a nearby restaurant. I was the only patron, shown to a six-person table in the square middle of a large dining room.
In short order, I was presented with nameless soup, followed by nameless stew, both courses served with a sort of dense white bread with thick crusts, like a baguette that’s let itself go.
There was no ambient music. The seconds ticked by to the rhythm of metal spoon on bowl, slurping, the occasional caesura as I struggled to tear off another hunk of loaf.
The daughter sat with me, ate nothing, drank nothing, but watched on, politely unresponsive to my repeated attempts to express satisfaction with her choice of hostelry.
That was my first encounter with Albania and I loved every awkward moment.
~
I have now visited Albania, Shqipëria to locals, five times.
In 2019, 2022 and 2023, Albania was the hospitable high point of Thighs of Steel’s rides from the UK to Greece — and the only time I’ve been chased by an ostrich.
Three times I’ve cycled the length and breadth of this, the thirty-fifth largest country in Europe — a country barely larger than the Turkish patch of Thrace that holds hands with the continent.
But as much as I loved those rides, they were manic, journeys without pause (except once, for a bout of food poisoning), and Albania, however generous, however beautiful, was a mere staging post on the road to Athens.
Albania is, I frequently announce, my favourite country in the world. But this year’s holiday was my first time back as a proper tourist since that first encounter in 2007.
I was nervous that I might have oversold it to my girlfriend. Favourite country? Really? Better than literally all the other countries? Better than croissants, better than sand dunes, better than elephants?
I needn’t have worried. Albania delivered to the mark — and more.
For those of you right now hoping for an armchair tour, I’m sorry. I want you to discover Albania on your terms, with whatever magical fairy dust the country sprinkles your way (and it will).
What I will say is that, in 2025, we were helped, housed and hosted everywhere we went in English — all those interpreting eight-year olds now fully grown, ready to invite you into their world.
Shqip: A Short Primer
I am full of admiration for the youth of Albania, fluent in a language as alien as English. I wish my mastery of shqip would grow beyond ‘faleminderit, thank you’, but even ‘hello — përshëndetje!’ hasn’t stuck.
If you’re looking for help from the kind of lexical and grammatical interbreeding that makes French, Spanish, German and even Flemish so familiar, then you’re out of luck with Albanian.
Shqip split from the Hellenic branch of the language family tree about 4,500 years ago and has zero surviving siblings — Messapic having gone extinct in southern Italy after Romans overran the area in the second century BCE.
That makes shqip quite hard to learn, but really fucking cool.
If standing alone in its family tree isn’t enough cool for you, then how about:
There are 36 letters in the alphabet, including ë, nj and xh.
These six sentences all mean the same thing: Word order is fluid. Word order fluid is. Fluid is word order. Fluid word order is. Is fluid word order. Is word order fluid. Yoda your heart out eat.
Verbs change if the speaker is expressing shock, surprise, irony or doubt. It’s like shqip has a whole other tense that adds ‘wtf’ to any sentence.
If you missed them: accounts of my cycles across Albania in 2019, 2022 and 2023.
Free by Lea Ypi. The personal story of a childhood in Albania as it clattered from socialism into capitalism, written by a woman who was there, a woman who is now a professor in political theory at London School of Economics. A healthy tonic for your arguments with neoliberals.
Anything by Gjirokastër native Ismail Kadare, Albania’s most famous novelist. I loved The File On H, a political satire about two Irish-American Homeric scholars mistaken for spies.
I left my heart here, but it’s in good paws.
Three Tiny Big Things
1. Multimillionaire hedge fund manager loses case to stop public enjoying a night under the stars
The judgment is worth hearing in full — Lord Stephens looks pissed that his time was wasted on this rich boy’s appeal and that the High Court ever passed a verdict that curtailed the rights of the public without consulting the public.
2. Is there such a thing as ‘responsible trespassing’? This man walked 500 miles—and says yes
During the British summer of 2024, I walked 505 miles—1,040,360 steps—from Hastings on the south coast of England to Gretna just over the Scottish border. Along the way, I responsibly trespassed and illegally wild-camped to raise awareness—and a few quid—for the Right to Roam, a campaign that advocates for greater access to nature in England and Wales.
3. Stoop Coffee: How a Simple Idea Transformed My Neighborhood
This is magical.
Hanging out on a stoop is not a novel concept. Unfortunately, an increasing trend of isolation has resulted in fewer and fewer neighbors gathering to connect with one another. Stooping has provided benefits to so many communities. Why not bring this concept to my own neighborhood?
Tyler and I were already having leisurely weekend morning coffees in our house, so it was an easy pivot to sit outside with our coffees and enjoy the sunshine. And thus our tradition began.
Every weekend, we would bring our folding chairs out onto the street — we had to make do since our house doesn’t have a stoop — and enjoy our caffeine.
As we saw people entering or exiting their homes, we’d enthusiastically wave them down, introduce ourselves, and write down their names in our shared spreadsheet.
18 months later…
Our neighborhood community is now a group of people that we rely on and who rely on us for emotional support, last-minute childcare, home-cooked meals, general comradery, and much more.
The best part is that I can tell we are still early in our growth, there are still many people to meet, and I feel a palpable sense of awe when I learn about a new skill or talent that exists right next door.
Huge thanks to all the paying subscribers who helped make this story possible. You know who you are. Thank you. 💚
If you enjoyed this one, then go ahead and tell me. It’s the only way I’ll know. You can tap the heart button, write a comment, share the newsletter with friends, or simply reply to this email.
If you’re not into the whole Substack subscription thing, then you can also make a one-off, choose-your-own-contribution via PayPal. That’d make my day.
British Summer Time begins in TWELVE days. We’ve made it!
Last weekend, driving home from the Lake District, I was introduced to a 2021 episode of This American Life: a whole hour devoted to embarrassing stories.
They’re not always just little moments – funny, daily stuff that we laugh about later. Some can change you for the rest of your life.
In this newsletter, I write stories that help you and me understand the world (and ourselves) a little better.
Sometimes, like all humans, I find myself hilariously covered in my own excrement.
The Scent of a Thousand Miles
Someone cried out — ‘Brimstone!’ — and in a moment I know more than I ever knew. The logic of the universe was revealed.
What to me looked like a scrap of yellow plastic blowing in the wind was in fact a brimstone, named for sulphur, the first butterfly of spring. The original ‘butter-coloured fly’.
My first sighting of brimstone.
The same brimstone, captured by one of our fellow wild wanderers. I guess this is a female: more greenish white than sulphurous yellow.
I was on a Wild New Forest guided walk with my dad and we had barely left the car park, seeing with new and noticing eyes, relishing two hours wandering barely two miles.
Here is a short list of some of the wildlife we encountered:
Buzzard, stonechat, chiffchaff and siskin.
Skylark and meadow pipit, side by side, singing and parachuting a-merrily.
Lesser spotted woodpecker (scarcer with softer, longer drumming) and great spotted woodpecker (common with louder, shorter drumming).
Teeny tiny eyelash fungi (on horse poo), yellow brain jelly fungus (on gorse) and gorse mites (on gorse).
Butchers broom (antibacterial, good for cleaning butchers’ blocks).
Comma (not a , a butterfly).
Goshawk, rockstar of the forest, flying low over the canopy, hunting for prey, or perhaps adolescent play.
Butchers broom. I didn’t even know flowers could grow in the middle of a leaf. What the actual fuck?
Most of the fourteen names on that list stretch me far beyond the limits of my awareness.
I know that there exists a bird species they call ‘siskin’, and they told me once or twice that we were in the presence, in the soundscape, of one siskin in particular — but I couldn’t pick out a siskin from a lineup, nor from a ten second intro in the music round of a natural history quiz.
I am at my limit today, merely proud to have recognised the goshawk on its third pass over the trees, when others missed him (I think it was a him — smaller and more timid than the dominant female).
One thing I did not notice: crows. In the forest, crows and rooks and pigeons and other wildlife of the city were prominent by their absence.
The moment my dad and I took to the motorway: there they were again, dive-bombing empty chip wrappers, scrapping on the gutters.
Where did that burst of forest diversity go?
Not for the likes of us.
I returned to London disheartened, feeling a long way from the sunny-sandy heathlands, where the adders would be sloughing off their winter-hardened skin.
Walking to work, Monday morning, running on time to late. I passed two French women huddled over a nondescript bush in a corner of Hyde Park.
Curious at what they’d found, I made sure to eavesdrop.
‘Ahhhh!’ one of them gasped, ‘Ça sent très bon!’
Her friend inhaled the proffered flower scent, practically transported with pleasure: ‘Les fleurs! Jolies, eh?’
Being thoroughly British (and late for work), I left les dames gathered at their altar — but I made sure to note the location of this wondrously scented bush and returned the next day with camera and plant identification app in hand, nostrils a-quiver.
Reader: I was not disappointed. Behold the winter daphne!
Daphne odora: the Latin epithet means ‘fragrant’. Better still, in Korean, the epithet is ‘thousand-mile scent’. Ahhh…. Merci!
As I continued my pavement walk, I noticed that a light dusting of the sparkle from Sunday’s forest walk lingered with me, even amid the grime of the City.
A woodpecker hammered unseen from the top of the London plane in a pocket park hemmed by parked cars. Blossom dripped from street cherries and crocuses exploded up from any scrap of grassy soil.
The list of New Forest wildlife that I wrote earlier had fourteen species on it. London is home to at least ONE THOUSAND times more.
I still have so much to discover here — yes, even here, even here, and why not here?
Especially here, on my doorstep, with the magnolia.
Doorstep magnolia.
Three Tiny Big Things
1. The Sound of Freedom – The Role of Music in Political Change
Part of intangible history, music has long played an important role in historical events. Long a tool of protest, thousands of songs across the globe take aim at repression and authoritarianism and have done so for centuries.
On one hand, it feels a little crazy to be out here, tippity-tapping away on my laptop, sipping tea, sticking my hands in my pockets, listening, watching the morning shadows shorten. But on the other hand, nothing feels more natural than being under the actual sky, not a ceiling, and feeling actual fresh air, not the stuffy indoor canned variety.
3. One of a small handful of rainforest nations on Earth
The Woodland Trust are using 110kg drones to dump 75,000 seeds onto Bodmin Moor in an attempt to re-establish temperate rainforest.
Rainforest once covered 75 percent of Devon and Cornwall but we have lost 90 percent of it. These are among the most threatened ecosystems on Earth. They are biodiversity hotspot, home to over 2000 species of lichen. Sadly, rainforests cover just one percent of the Earth’s land surface, and we are one of only a small handful of rainforest nations left on Earth.
Thank You
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I’ve been fortunate to have worked with and for many, many brilliant leaders in the course of my life.
To name — and so embarrass — a few: Harri and the core team at Thighs of Steel, Nic, Grace and the leaders of New Forest Off Road Club, Beth Granville, my co-writer and co-producer of Foiled, Sarah at Young Roots youth club, many of the outdoor adventure leaders I’ve worked with, especially those at Off Grid Adventures, and of course many other family, friends, teachers and mentors, including (not least for inspiring this Substack).
These are people who, most often, lead from the middle. They listen carefully, they communicate clearly, and they laugh easily.
These are the people who I remembered as I picked a path through my Hill and Moorland Leader assessment last week, in thick rain, wind and fog.
And these are the people I credit most for the positive feedback I got from my assessors: that I was the only person on assessment who showed strong group management skills.
Conditions were horrible; it was easy for us all to turn inwards, to focus on ourselves and worry more about ‘getting there’ than about group spirit and togetherness on our journey.
Remembering all the brilliant leaders I have known — what would they have done? — I did my best to bring the whole team together: listening, communicating, and leading from the middle, rather than marching off into the misty moor.
In this newsletter, I write stories that help you and me understand the world (and ourselves) a little better.
Sometimes I stand on the shoulders of giants.
Young People Need A New Kind Of Adventure
Earlier this week I wrote a short piece for Alastair Humphreys about what the charity I work for, British Exploring Society, is doing to address the current crisis in young people’s mental health. Here it is: short, sharp and bittersweet.
The Mental Health Crisis Among Young People
The rise of social media, exacerbated by pandemic isolation, has created what social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has coined ‘The Anxious Generation’.
Building Resilience: The Proven Power of Adventure
Despite these challenges, young people who participate in British Exploring Society expeditions report significant improvements in confidence, resilience, and overall wellbeing.
Using the Short Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (SWEMWBS), we have seen post-programme wellbeing scores increase each year since 2021.
A New Kind of Adventure: Evolving to Meet the Need
But as young people increasingly absent themselves from school, socialising and the workplace, so they are also dropping out of our expeditions before they can experience the full benefit of life in the wilderness.
We cannot help young people who aren’t with us. So British Exploring Society is evolving once again to meet young people where they are today.
In addition to our famous multi-week expeditions, we are now introducing two new UK-based programmes that offer young people a chance to find their feet and hit their stride without compromising our unique person-centred approach, based around Adventure, Knowledge and Personal Development.
Adventure Weekends (for ages 14+) provide an adventurous entry point, with two nights under canvas at a residential outdoor centre.
Adventure Weeks (for ages 16+) offer a wilder challenge, with five or seven days of immersive adventure in England and Scotland’s most dramatic and remote environments.
These UK Adventures will allow young people to build confidence gradually, at a pace they choose.
Our ambition is that our Young Adventurers of 2025 will become our Young Explorers of 2026 — ready to explore the wildernesses of places like Arctic Iceland, mountainous Georgia and Kyrgyzstan, and the deserts of Oman.
Books for Reflection
The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt – exploring how social media and screentime has impacted young people’s mental health.
All British Exploring Society programmes are free-to-access for young people resident in the UK and aged 14-25.
One thing you can do today is share our Expeditions page and help your favourite young people apply to join our Adventure Weekend or Adventure Weeks. They have nothing to lose and a whole world of adventure to gain.
Our expeditions and adventures are led by an incredible community of professional volunteer leaders, including social workers, scientists, bushcraft instructors, school teachers, psychotherapists, engineers and mountain guides. If you are interested in leading with us and helping young people unlock their self-belief, please get in touch.
Grab your Sunday lunch with friends and family and get to know some key facts about heart disease and men’s cardiovascular health — free blood pressure testing throughout the day!
What’s killing 12 men a day in the UK? Join us for a powerful documentary about male mental health and suicide prevention.
Is there such a thing as the male menopause? A thought-provoking evening exploring how declining testosterone levels in middle-aged men can impact everything from libido and mental health to relationships and physical wellbeing.
Join the brothers at Westow House, SE19 1TX. 19 February to 7 March.
A funny thing happens when a Snickers bar goes from whole to eaten — the wrapper transmorgifies from useful to toxic. Suddenly, this thing that was keeping germs and dirt off your chocolate sugar log is now “useless” and with this comes the heaviest burden a modern person unencumbered by genocide or famine can hold: garbage responsibility.
Leaders aren’t just generals, presidents and CEOs. You’re probably a leader too! Someone in your home, school or workplace might look to you for guidance – and that’s leading. So how do you inspire the people around you and make yourself the best leader you can be?
Thank You
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Tomorrow, at dawn, I drive west to Dartmoor. The weather forecast for my long-awaited, much-postponed three day Hill and Moorland Leader assessment is suboptimal.
Heavy rain and a moderate breeze. Heavy rain and a fresh breeze. Strong winds and heavy rain.
Ravens collaborate with wolves to take down prey. They sometimes babysit the wolf cubs. One theory behind why wolves hunt in packs is so that the ravens don’t eat more than their share of the kill.
The ravens, in other words, are in charge.
Despite the fact that there are 139 different species of corvid, for all intents and purposes, they look and sound EXACTLY THE SAME.
Unless, that is, you make your own quick and dirty cheat sheet like mine:
Ravens are chunky — as big as red kites, although with a shorter wingspan — with a diamond-shaped tail and a range of Barry White pitched calls.
Crows are solitary (except when they’re not), noisy — repetitive caa-caa — with a fan-shaped tail and moustaches on their beaks.
Rooks are sociable, dishevelled, with a purple sheen and fluffy trousers. Softer voices.
Jackdaws are small with beady little eyes, a grey hood and a black cap. They call their name — ‘chack-tyaw’.
Magpies are black and white with a purply-blue sheen in sunlight. Their call is a death rattle. …Eleven for health, Twelve for wealth, Thirteen — beware! — it’s the devil himself.
Choughs have red legs and beaks. Only found in the far west.
Jays dress to impress, the dandies of the corvid parade. Still smart as anything — and aggressive too.
‘Tell me about corvids’ is the sort of question I’ll be asked over the next three days as I undertake my Hill and Moorland Leader assessment on Dartmoor.
Other questions include: ‘What do you do if a rucksack strap breaks mid-walk?’, ‘Can you use the aspect of slope and a bearing to aim off the attack point to the trig?’ and ‘Sorry to interrupt your fascinating disquisition on crows, but why are you leading us over that precipice?’
Wish me luck.
Three Tiny Big Things
1. Why we can’t stand feeling bored
Nearly half of participants sitting alone in a room for 15 minutes, with no stimulation other than a button that would administer a mild electric shock, pressed the button.
Huge thanks to all the paying subscribers who helped make this story possible. You know who you are. Thank you. 💚
If you enjoyed this one, then go ahead and tell me. It’s the only way I’ll know. You can tap the heart button, write a comment, share the newsletter with friends, or simply reply to this email.
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Before I get into it, I just want to say that the Seven Archetypes is not a hierarchy. They all have their place.
You might find yourself drawn to one or other Archetype, perhaps modulating between them all at different stages of your life, depending on what you’re searching for in that moment.
Perhaps the perfect adventure contains elements of them all, I don’t know.
I hope that the Seven Archetypes help you figure out what you need from an adventure, or help you have a cooperative conversation with someone else to make sure you both get what you need.
Holidaymaker 🏖
Success is… escape from the daily grind.
Favourite mode of travel… limo.
The journey is… an opportunity to hit the duty free.
My motivation is… pure pleasure.
My light side is… joy.
My dark side is… oblivion.
Tourist 📷
Success is… enjoying a well-planned itinerary of sights and experiences.
I think I’m currently feeling about 60 percent Traveller, 40 percent Wanderer.
I’d love to hear which Archetype appeals to you most right now. Has your default Archetype changed over time? Does it vary from adventure to adventure? Do you too love a pie chart?
There is so much good stuff in Anne Helen Petersen’s round-up of critical writing on smartphone usage. The headline is from a piece by Kate Lindsay and I can’t resist another quote, this time from Sam Kriss:
A phone is a device for muting the anxieties proper to being alive.
Wikenigma is ‘dedicated to documenting fundamental gaps in human knowledge’. That link will take you to a random example of something NOBODY understands.
A 2020 study from Stanford University has found that human body temperature — previously standardised at 37°C — has been steadily declining over the last 200 years or so. Using historical records, the research team found that the current average body temperature is probably now around half a degree lower.
AND NOBODY KNOWS WHY.
3. What the heck is this?
The end of cars, that’s what. Or the beginning of cars? I don’t know.
If you like this sort of thing, then make sure you drop by and say hello to your reviewer extraordinaire, .
Thank You
Huge thanks to all the paying subscribers who helped make this story possible. You know who you are. Thank you. 💚
If you enjoyed this one, then go ahead and tell me. It’s the only way I’ll know. You can tap the heart button, write a comment, share the newsletter with friends, or simply reply to this email.
If you’re not into the whole Substack subscription thing, then you can also make a one-off, choose-your-own-contribution via PayPal. That’d make my day.
In this newsletter, I write stories that help you and me understand the world (and ourselves) a little better.
Sometimes I am awed by wild in the city.
Stop Judging You: A New Forest Story
On New Year’s Eve Eve, I walked clean across the New Forest, from Sway in the south to Ashurst in the east.
It was my first long hike in months, testing an ankle that had been swollen and sore, inflamed from August to December. God bless the osteopath!
You’d think that, being my first long hike in months, I would take it easy. For some explicable reason, I didn’t.
18km in five hours.
This story is about the all-too-explicable reason I turned this adventure into a forced march — and what I did next, twenty-four hours later.
A Bad Idea
After what felt like a bald few months of hopping and hobbling, I was determined to Do Something over the Christmas holiday.
This is called goal-setting and — spoiler alert — it is only ambiguously a good thing.
Nevertheless, my goal was to do what I call a Defined Adventure. I wanted to plan to hike from A to B and then I wanted to do the hike from A to B.
Plan: A to B.
Or at least I thought that was what I wanted.
As I said: goal-setting is only ambiguously a good thing.
Goal-setting is part of the doing mindset, a productive space where humans fix problems and stress out. Not necessarily what I needed at a reflective time of year such as New Year’s Eve Eve.
So sometimes goals are bad ideas to have, especially when, compounding the calamity, we stick to the damn things.
So What Went Wrong?
On the surface: nothing. I hiked for 18km without incident, without getting lost, without ankle pain, without even a proper lunch.
And that, pretty much, sums up what went wrong.
I called this hike a Defined Adventure — but what kind of an adventure is it when you don’t even have lunch?
Etymologically buried at the heart of the word ‘adventure’ is the idea of chancing your luck and taking a risk.
There was no risk on my Trans-Forest Trail, only — for that explicable reason — a deep anxiety of leaving A behind and whithering my ass to B.
And so we reach our explicable reason. Or perhaps I should say reasons plural.
Doing When I Need Being 🤔
Picture the scene. It’s New Year’s Eve Eve and you’re on your first hike in months, somewhere you love — like the New Forest.
It’s one of those tail-end days where the ground is soft, the air is sharp and the herons are doing good business.
It looks a bit like this:
A tree stand in a Scots Pine on Ober Heath
I climbed to the top of the tree stand you can see in the picture, a slippery climb into the Scots Pine, for an owl’s eye across the land.
These tree stands are used by gamekeepers for good shot at deer. There’s a sign telling me not to climb, but it’s New Year’s Eve Eve so I don’t care.
It’s still enough that I can hear the rustle of waterproof trousers a kilometer away.
I take stock. I look out over Fletchers Thorns to the dark silhouettes of Queen Bower.
I check my watch.
I check my phone.
I check my fucking Oura ring.
Even though I’m only halfway through my first hike in months, I can feel there’s something not right here.
I’m doing when I need being.
How the hell has it come to pass that I am measuring this hike on three different devices?
I’m doing when I need being.
My watch says I’ve done 8km. My phone says I’ve done 8km. My fucking Oura ring says I’ve done 8km — and is giving me top marks for activity today. Congratulations, you have met your activity goal!
I’m getting praise from a band of metal round my finger. I don’t feel good.
I’m doing when I need being.
All these devices — they only measure doing.
My fucking Oura ring grades me on 54 metrics, from Average Resting Heart Rate to Temperature Trend Deviation. But it doesn’t matter how many sensors they add, there’s no device on Earth that measures being.
It’s New Year’s Eve Eve. I’m doing when I need being.
And it’s giving me a headache.
Muscle-Through Adventures
An adventure isn’t an adventure if you know the outcome in advance. Today, in the Forest, I knew the outcome in advance.
I had 18km of Forest to wade through; my job was to follow my phone and beat out the steps, each one logged in triplicate on my doing devices — three!
It meant I could ‘muscle through’ the so-called adventure: suck up the foot-pounding, suck up the headaches, keep my eyes on the horizon and shift it.
Today’s hike was more like the successful completion of a half marathon, only without the cheering supporters, samba band and tinpot medal.
I could’ve had a bigger adventure in Asda.
Not an Asda in sight. But, if you peer closely, you might see a heron.
A Fallacy
One of the classic markers of being is losing track of time and, on a very simple level, it’s hard to lose track of time when I’m wearing a watch. Especially one — three! — that are specifically and perniciously measuring my every step.
With these devices it’s like I’m constantly looking over my own shoulder. Constantly monitoring myself. Not trusting myself to be alive. Judging my sleep, judging my steps. Judging my beingness through my doingness. A fallacy.
When I hike to the drumbeat of doing devices — three! — I can’t help but shift into doing mode.
And doing is trying, in both senses of the word.
Stop trying.
Stop trying so hard.
Stop trying to relax.
Stop trying!
Apologies To The Forest
Okay, so I got New Year’s Eve Eve wrong in a few ways.
I thought I wanted Defined Adventure; I didn’t. Nothing wrong with Defined Adventures. Nothing wrong with doing mode. But I needed being, not doing.
18km is too far for me to do much more than muscle through. (Especially after I realised I could get home before dark to see friends. Tick off those miles!)
Measuring a hike on three devices is a bit much. (In my defence, before you think I’m a complete monster, I was testing one of the devices. Even so: measuring a pleasure hike on even one device might be a bit much.)
I didn’t bring lunch. What WAS I thinking?!
But perhaps worst of all is that I hired the Forest to collude in my doing, sold out nature for productivity and bribed ecology to dress the scene of my accomplishments.
And that kinda goes against everything I learned in 2024 .
So, the next day, New Year’s Eve, I went back to the Forest to apologise.
The Wind Gave Me A Playful Shove
I didn’t really have time to be going into the Forest. It was New Year’s Eve and I’d spent most of the day writing to you.
There were a few other cars still parked in the darkness at Cadnam’s Pool. A family picked their way along the sandy shore, dogs weaving between skinny legs in welly boots.
I switched off my headlights and let my eyes grow into the early starlight. I enjoyed the power of the wind, pushing and shoving at the car bonnet, riffling waves over the water.
I watched the family round up their dogs and clank their wellies free of mud. I waited for their taillights to disappear down the track. I got out of my car. The wind gave me a playful shove.
I turned away from the pool and walked into Anses Wood, scuffing up leaves and storm-shaken debris with my boots, stumbling in the gloom.
Hoooo — a tawny owl called around me in stereo — huhuhuhooo. It felt like an ambivalent welcome: ‘So you’re back,’ the owl observed. Their unseen glare was suspicious: ‘Are you ready to be here now?’
My heart leapt up like the family dog and I grabbed a branch from the Forest floor, feeling the scratch-caress of its rough-smooth bark.
Enjoying its reassuring heft in my hand, I hurled the dead branch into the air and caught it, neatly.
Pleased with my body’s no-brain instinctive deftness, I threw the branch over and over, spinning cartwheels in the night, and catching over and over like a sylvan circus performer.
Then I began to run, I don’t know where. I ran out of the woods and onto a smooth grassy trail, lit by the moon. The grass knew me and I fell down to meet it, rolling in my waterproofs, rolling like a log, like a scratching dog, embodying the animal play-feel of the ground all over.
Playtime over, I marched down Freeworms Hill, heading towards Queen North Wood, feet sinking into boggy ground. I didn’t know where I was going, but I knew this was where I must go.
I came to a fallen birch, a mighty tree laid low, and knew I must rest here.
The silvery light of the silvery moon met the silvery bark of the silvery birch.
I clambered onto the fallen birch from the rootstock end and then, monkey-style, tail up, all-foured along the mossy trunk to where a branch curled into the sky.
Here I rested, my back against the vertical branch, my legs stretched out along the trunk, my body sinking into the inch-thick moss. My head angled to the stars and I closed my eyes as a light rain began to fall.
Afterword: Farewell Oura
I lived for five and a half months with my fucking Oura ring.
In short, my conclusions chime with my experience of the Zoe Personalised Nutrition programme: an interesting short-term experiment, if you can afford it. I emphasise the word short-term. No technology will ever surpass our own sense of interoception.
That’s not to say that the £300 I dunked on the Oura told me nothing. I came back with two firm conclusions:
I sleep well. Even when I sleep badly, it doesn’t mean I have a bad day and I easily make up the rest I need. I’m lucky.
I feel good when I get outside and move at least three times a day.
The next day, the first of the new year, I removed my Oura ring and went for a run. An unmeasured, ungraded, unsanctioned run. For the sheer hell of it.
I haven’t missed the ring.
~
Apologies for the long break between newsletters: I needed this story to be the next one I published and, as you have seen, it morphed into a long one.
For those of you eager for a more regular publication schedule — bless your woolly socks — rest assured that I have a couple drafted and ready to launch, firework style, into your inboxes soon.
While there is no OECD-wide average against which to compare Finland’s homeless rate of 0.08%, other countries with similarly broad definitions of homelessness provide points of reference, such as neighbouring Sweden (0.33%) or the Netherlands (0.23%).
Huge thanks to all the paying subscribers who helped make this story possible. You know who you are. Thank you. 💚
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Thanks to for sharing this training in his excellent newsletter.
2. 2025: Your Journey in Nature
Go out into nature — whatever that means for you. It could be your back garden. It could be a local park, riverside or beach. It could be the woods. It could be the wasteland round the back of the multi-storey. It doesn’t matter. It’s yours.
Ideally, this natural place will be somewhere you can go back to throughout the year, but please don’t let that stop you doing it wherever you are now.
Identify two landmarks in your natural place. Ideally, they should be about twelve paces apart from each other.
Trees are good landmarks for this exercise because they are beautiful and these landmarks may well take on a special significance for you over the course of the year.
But your landmarks could be almost anything — the only definite requirements are that they are fixed in place and that you can move comfortably between the two.
The first landmark represents you today, at the beginning of 2025. The second landmark represents you in twelve months’ time, at the beginning of 2026.
I invite you to look closely at your first landmark.
Where are you now? How do you feel about your life today? What is going well? What would you love to see going better? This landmark is you, today.
Now look closely at your second landmark.
I invite you to pour all of your hopes, aspiration, dreams and ambitions into this second landmark. This second landmark is you, in twelve months’ time.
Please don’t feel obliged to write down or record the hopes and dreams that you have projected into your second landmark. This is not corporate goal-setting. Trust that what is important will stick, and allow yourself to adapt and evolve in a very natural way as the seasons rise and fall.
Every month, I invite you to return to this natural place. Welcome yourself back. Re-introduce yourself to your surroundings.
How has the space changed in the last month?
In particular, acknowledge your two landmarks, old friends: your past self and your future self, with you somewhere in between. How are they doing?
Every month, start at your first landmark and walk the number of paces that represents how far along in the year you’ve gone. Maybe bring a votive offering of tea and pour it on the ground or scatter some sage leaves along the path as you walk.
If the two landmarks are twelve paces apart, then at the end of January take one pace towards your second landmark. In June, you would take six paces from the first landmark towards the second, representing each of the six months that have elapsed since you first came to your nature place.
As you move slowly forward each month, think about how you are moving slowly forward towards your future self. Keep that in mind.
How are you doing today? What’s changed in you over the past month?
As you travel over ground that represents times past, remember the person you’ve been at those times. When you’ve counted out the requisite number of paces, look back at how far you’ve come.
How have you evolved and grown since the beginning of the year?
Honour all the things you’ve learned so far and all the experiences and relationships that are contributing to your becomingness.
Now look ahead to your second landmark.
In what ways are you slowly becoming that future person? Do you remember any of the hopes and dreams that you poured into your landmark? Do you want to change or add to any of those ideas?
Remember that nature is always changing, always in compromise and combination with the zillions of other organisms that make up its environment. Sometimes this means change in totally unexpected ways. That’s okay. No one here is judging you.
When you’ve thought a little bit about your future self, come back to now.
How does your year’s journey feel to you so far?
How does it feel to be alive?
Don’t be hard on yourself. Whatever happens this year, give yourself credit for moving forward.
3. Join a Men’s Circle
In 2025, men need to rediscover the art of gathering in circle. It doesn’t have to be around a campfire (although that does seem to help). It does have to be all men, in a circle of brothers, showing who they are — who they really are.
Message me if you would like to join an online circle run by an experienced and trusted brother. I’ll send you the link.
If you’re not a man: encourage your menfolk to find their own circle.
Thank You
Huge thanks to all the paying subscribers who helped make this story possible. You know who you are. Thank you. 💚
If you enjoyed this one, then go ahead and tell me. It’s the only way I’ll know. You can tap the heart button, write a comment, share the newsletter with friends, or simply reply to this email.
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‘For the first time, the elimination of a cancer is within our reach.’ 😮
and…
The pace of [solar energy] deployment has become almost unfathomable — in 2010, it took a month to install a gigawatt, by 2016, a week, and in 2024, just 12 hours. […] The International Energy Agency said that the pace of deployment is now ahead of the trajectory required for net zero by 2050. 😎
and…
The Mersey River, dubbed the ‘greatest river recovery in Europe,’ continued to thrive with 45 different kinds of fish recorded, triple the amount from 2002. 🧜♀️
Oh shucks. I can’t resist adding a fourth:
Australia became the first country this year to ban social media for children under the age of 16, and next year France will become the first country to ban phones at school for children under the age of 15 nationwide. 📵
If your eyeballs can’t handle so much progress all at once, then you can passively absorb the good good through your two earholes on The Good News You Missed In 2024 podcast.
2. Osteopaths are great.
I spent about two months of 2024 convinced that I had arthritis. I couldn’t walk on my left ankle, which was a bit of a shame for a qualified walk leader.
Despite its origins in pseudoscience, one osteopathy appointment at the Rebalance Clinic changed everything.
After asking about a million diagnostic questions, James got stuck in (literally) with needles, ultrasound, lasers, massage gun, fists and elbows. It sounds violent, but I spent the whole hour in fits of giggles.
Most importantly, I was back walking within days and the inflammation had all but disappeared by the time of my follow-up appointment two weeks later.
Not a cure for impotency.
Bonus: if you have a proper injury, then ice packs are worth the investment. A simple velcro strap made all the difference to me. Frozen peas are for amateurs.
3. I’m addicted to courses (and external validation).
There is no doubt that learning energises me, but I’m concerned about my need for external validation. I am vulnerable to mistake grades, approval and qualifications for learning or accomplishment.
For example: my brain is secretly hoping that next year’s Foundational Ethnobotany course will be as simple as a data download on my phone.
Like in the Matrix, I’ll upgrade my operating system with a new app that will be able to identify and prepare foraged food and medicines. I only need to pay for the training and get plugged in.
My rational self knows that won’t happen. Brains learn things through sustained focus and repetition. I could learn ethnobotany the way most people do: practice.
Still: I’m REALLY excited to learn from one of the UK’s most knowledgable foragers next year!
I love reading books. I love the ‘forced meditation’. I love the sustained connection with another human mind. I love the softness of the page, respite from the harsh eyepound of my screens. I love new angles on things I’d never noticed. I love the places I’ve never been and the characters I’ve never met.
I love the beginning and — days, weeks or months later — I love The End.
So here’s the first of seven books on this list, the winnner of my Paradigm Shift Book of the Year —
Humankind by Rutger Bregman (2020)
tl;dr: Humans are good people: the case for the defence.
5. ChatGPT diagnosed my rye bread failures.
This year, I had really inconsistent results with my sourdough rye until I worked with ChatGPT to diagnose, fix and understand the recipe.
A lot is said about A.I., but it has proved an effective replacement for a master-apprentice relationship in this one, admittedly quite niche, case.
For those interested, the solutions were:
Buy a bread thermometer probe and bake the loaf until the centre hits 100C.
Carve slashes into the surface of the loaf before baking.
6. Note to self: dancing to live music is great.
I can count the number of gigs I went to in 2024 on the fingers of one hand that has been involved in a nasty carpentry accident.
Next year, I would like to barely count them on the fingers of both, ideally fully digitised, hands.
7. My ‘Fix Your Brain’ Book of The Year
Unwinding Anxiety by Judson Brewer (2020)
tl;dr: Anxiety is a habit; break the loop with mindfulness.
Key ingredients: lashings of olive oil and oregano and a whole slab of Greek feta.
9. I sleep much bettter than I thought I did.
In July, I bought an Oura ring — a screenless wearable device that gives me a stupid amount of biometric data on my physical activity and sleep.
Thrillingly for someone addicted to grades, the Oura scores my sleep out of 100 every night. And I can print out a GRAPH, look —
As you can see, my average is 88, which Oura classifies as ‘Optimal’. I’m SO PROUD.
When people ask me whether the Oura was worth buying, this is the first thing I say: ‘It’s showed me that I sleep much better than I thought I did.’
As you can see, despite having a couple of bad nights every month or so, my sleep is rock solid.
A lot of people think they’re bad sleepers when in fact they sleep really well. I am not in that group any more. I sleep darned well, all things considered.
The Oura was worth the money on that score alone. But does that mean I’ll keep wearing it into 2025? Maybe not.
Sometimes collecting biometric data leads to good outcomes: having a benchmark of my physical activity means that I can work to increase it and then see the results on a pretty graph. Yay me!
(I’m aware now that I’ve been sitting here in this chair writing for a couple of hours — the Oura won’t be happy. I should move.)
Do I sleep better for wearing an Oura ring? No — but I have learned that I sleep well.
Do I walk more? Perhaps. It certainly encourages me to move, to make the Oura’s activity goals and boost my activity grade.
But there are better questions:
Do I enjoy my walks more for having the Oura and its activity grades? No.
Has the Oura made me joyless?
How long will it take my brain to recover once I stop wearing it?
10. Mortality is a good thing?
How would you like to feel, in your mind, in your body, at the moment of death?
As advised by Geshe Tenzin Namdak, I’ve been using the dark minutes before sleep as a rehearsal.
Sleep as death; dream state as transcendence; waking as rebirth. I’ve found it puts any pettyfogging worries to rest and quiets the mind. Sleep comes more easily to those who surrender.
Having said that, aging is a bitch, isn’t it? What if I never cycle across a continent again? What if I never live beside the sea again? What if I never write that novel?
I get the whole Buddhist death thing, but I’m still not sure what I’d say if you offered me eternal youth.
Just like everyone, I am of the nature to age. I have not gone beyond ageing.
On a day with a gentle wind, go to the woods. If you don’t have any convenient woods near you, find a tree in a quiet corner of a garden or public park.
Lie down on the ground (don’t worry, it’s only for a couple of minutes). If you can’t lie down, then please sit down or lean up against a tree.
Look up at the tree tops. Notice what you notice. Notice how the wind sways the treetops. Listen to the wind as it moves through the branches and leaves.
Take a deep breath in. As you slowly exhale, mimic with your breath the sound of the wind. Do this for a few rounds of breath: inhale, slow exhale like the wind.
Ponder for a moment: the wind that blows through the treetops is the same air that you are breathing. You are part of nature.
13. My ‘Fix Your Relationships’ Book of the Year
High Conflict by Amanda Ripley (2021)
tl;dr: High conflict hijacks our brains; how to escape the trap.
But it does add a disruptive layer of mindfulness. Highly recommended. Read more here — or just go right ahead and Delete The Internet. (👈 Second most popular newsletter from 2024.)
Nothing bad will happen.
15. My ‘Jeez This’ll Really Stay With You’ Novel of the Year
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (2022)
tl;dr: Chemical romance epic; Dickens for the OxyContin generation.
16. Hot tubs are amazing.
Completely against the run of play, 2024 was the year of the hot tub. They are amazing. New life goal: an outdoor bath tub.
Stay connected to yourself, other people, your surroundings, or whatever you’re doing
Stay curious: ignorance is a helpful signpost
Say something out loud to someone (then listen)
Take your ‘little voice’ by the hand and explore together
Take the first step, then take it piece by piece
18. My ‘Atmospheric’ Novel of the Year
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett (2001)
tl;dr: Tender and taut.
19. Crypto is going crazy and I’ve made some money.
And I can’t decide whether it’s good that at least some normal people are profiting from the kakistocracy, or if I’m part of the problem. Please don’t tell me.
20. Adventure isn’t adventure if you already know the outcome.
This is an echo of previous entries:
Smartphone mapping makes it too easy to know the outcome of an adventure.
The Oura ring urges me to race through a hike, to not get lost, to get through my steps as efficiently as possible.
But that’s not adventure. Once this newsletter is done, I’m going to spend the last of the daylight lying in a treetop. That’s adventure.
The commute is a grind — or it would be if I didn’t cycle.
One of my promises to myself when I started was that I would never use the underground for work. I’ve kept that promise.
Since August, I reckon I’ve cycled about 810km to and from work, saving over £260 in the process.
That’s the same distance as riding from London to Edinburgh — and enough dosh to pay myself back for buying that Oura ring 😂
22. My ‘Glorious Nature’ Book of the Year
Goshawk Summer by James Aldred (2021)
tl;dr: A cameraman sits in a tree during a pandemic.
As good with words as he is with film, James Aldred artfully captures the vulnerability of goshawks chicks as they hatch and fledge — but it’s the territorial vigilance of their fearsome mother that comes through most powerfully.
As a reader, I feel like I’m being watched: one false move and she would show no mercy tearing me to shreds, talons ripping viciously through the pages.
Over the course of about six hours, I seem to have jumped the scales from a lean 66kg to a vaguely bloated 71kg. And I’ve stayed there all year. Weird.
I have no explanation except my body suddenly realising that it’s middle aged, or perhaps the couple of months I spent weightlifting.
Who knows? Who, really, cares?
24. My ‘Understanding Israel’ Book of the Year
A Day In The Life of Abed Salama by Nathan Thrall (2024)
tl;dr: The humanity and tragedy of daily life in an open prison.
It’s been one hell of a year. There are so many stories we could tell. This list has hinted at one human’s story of the year, but it doesn’t tell the quadzillionth of it.
Whereever you look, humanity and tragedy abound. Through one angle you see this; tilt the mirror and you see the other.
Perhaps we’re all playing our part in the Poincaré Recurrence Theorem. Perhaps it’s time to go back to the 86 Stories of Progress from 2024. 😜
Right — we’re done here. I’m off to the Forest treetops. Have a wonderful evening and I wish you wild blessings for the year ahead.
FINALLY: Thank You 💚
Huge thanks to all the paying subscribers who helped make this year possible. You know who you are. Thank you. 💚
If you enjoyed this story, then go ahead and tell me. It’s the only way I’ll know. You can tap the heart button, write a comment, share the newsletter with friends, or simply reply to this email.
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And a warm welcome from the inside of a named weather system that I didn’t know was coming when I left my house yesterday afternoon.
Despite absorbing an entire storm cloud’s worth of rain with my inappropriate evening wear, I only got physically spun round once on my cycle home.
But cycling home from where, I hear you ask?
Only from the best night of adventure storytelling on the whole PLANET.
The P.A.S.T adventure series spotlights the amateur. The person who already won by getting to the starting line. The person who got out of the rut and went on an adventure. The person who had 9 hours without the kids so went to the forest for a camp out before being back for the school run in the morning.
We’re not doing anything the best, or for the first time. We’re not the fastest and we’re not being sponsored. There’s no medal at the end. We’re powered by optimism a curious spirit and we’re just f*****g doing it.
In this newsletter, I write stories that help you and me understand the world (and ourselves) a little better.
Sometimes I get a bit damp, but it’s always worth it.
🐈 Phone
In my continuing pursuit of digital nirvana, I bought a CAT phone. The 🐈 phone is a fully featured Android smartphone squashed into an almost unusable little flip box.
Technically, it can do all of the things that modern social gravity demands — I can even scan my girlfriend’s Nectar card on the tiny 2.8” screen — but bloody hell I don’t want to have to use the damn thing unless I really have to.
And that is exactly why I bought it: to make the designed for addiction smartphone as unappealing as possible, and so shift my brain away from shiny distraction and toward earthy connection.
Yes, that is a touch screen. No, my fingers are not that small. Yes, it is a massive pain in the bum to type messages.
Reader: the 🐈 is an absolute joy. But has it made any impression on my screen time?
More importantly, why should anyone care anyway?
In short: society is a bit fucked and anything we can do to get off our screens and into the sunshine (if applicable) can only be a good thing.
And, for that, I desperately need your help.
But more on that later.
A Whole Lot of Nothing?
I’ve only been using the 🐈 as my main phone for the past 11 days and, as you’ll see, my definition of ‘main phone’ is debatable, but without any more ratting about, a graph:
Time spent on various devices per day. The blue is my average smartphone use in the six weeks prior to getting the 🐈 The green is my total average phone use in the last 11 days (i.e. both smartphone and 🐈)
As you can see, the data is mixed.
(FYI 1: The total time on this chart excludes use of Google Maps, which I only use as a GPS for driving and thus distorts phone usage significantly.)
(FYI 2: My recent smartphone use is broadly in line with historical data collected since 2021, which varies between 1.5 and 2 hours per day. However, this includes use of Google Maps.)
On the one hand, time spent on my ‘main’ 🐈 phone has crashed through the floor, to barely 20 minutes per day. Not only that, but time spent on my smartphone has also dropped significantly.
However, the total time spent on both devices combined is pretty much the same as before. As the kids say: LOL.
But wait — there’s devil in the detail and goblins in the graph.
Three Whole Days?!
The decrease from 23 minutes per day on Whatsapp to 19 minutes per day is statistically significant. As is the reduction from 15 minutes per day on my Firefox Focus browser to only 8 minutes per day across both devices.
That 12 minute difference might not sound like much, but it’s something — nearly an hour and a half per week. Sustained over a year, that’s three whole days of non-stop, no-sleep phone use that I’m getting back.
But is there any evidence at all that I can sustain (or even increase) this time saving over the course of a year? That’s the question and we can find clues in the data.
Unlocking Behaviour Change?
When it comes to how often I unlock and then how I use my phones, the data is even more topsy-turvy.
On the one hand, since getting the 🐈, I’ve unlocked my smartphone more than I usually would. Huh?!
But, significantly, I’ve opened my most time-sucky distractor apps, Whatsapp and Firefox, less often. From 46 launches per day to only 33. Big wow and, again, as the kids say: LOL.
Nevertheless, the reductions are significant and allow me to hypothesise what’s going on and where I might end up with this experiment.
What’s Going On?
Despite all the murkiness, I think the data is promising. How dare I draw that conclusion? Well, I hypothesise two future directions:
1. I’m still in transition and my future phone use will trend 📉
This transitional phase may partly explain why I unlocked my smartphone more often in the past 11 days: I was figuring out which apps I need on which device.
My intention is to steadily reduce the number of apps that I use on my smartphone and increase the number that I only use on the 🐈 and on my computer.
As my confidence in and reliance on the 🐈 grows, I anticipate using my smartphone less and less. We’ll see.
2. Some apps I’ll use MORE on the 🐈 — and that’s a GOOD thing
The most used app on my 🐈 over the past 11 days is, believe it or not, the Phone app. You know, the one that makes phone calls to other humans?
In the two weeks before this experiment began, the Phone app was my fourteenth most used app.
If using the 🐈 means I make more phone calls and connect more deeply and more frequently with other humans, then that’s a GOOD thing in my book. If that’s part of my future direction of travel, then I’m in.
Data is all well and good, but you could say pretty narcissistic, so…
The bad news is that, science being science, it’s almost impossible to boil down to a palatably simple message. To summarise the evidence in a reasonably scientific manner on only one research question, you need a 397-page collaborative Google Doc.
Who the heck is reading that?
This is how Big Tech can get away with the kind of disingenuous fudging so familiar from Big Oil’s response to climate change or Big Tobacco’s response to cancer research.
Because the message from Big Tech is simple. To paraphrase:
Gosh, well. All we can say is that the evidence isn’t clear one way or another. Maybe bad things can happen, but that’s down to how you use your smartphone. It’s not really our fault. We’re doing what we can. In the meantime, isn’t this new feature cool?! 🙃
Reading a blog post or listening to a podcast will probably not convince you to ditch your phone when there is so much social gravity going the other way. I already know this newsletter story won’t work.
Which is why I can only rely on…
2. Vibes
I’d really like everyone to notice how they feel, body and mind, when they do different things.
How does it feel when you scroll the internet on your phone?
How does it feel when you go for a walk on the beach?
How does it feel when you text a friend for half an hour?
How does it feel when you see a friend in person for half an hour?
How does it feel when you talk to a stranger on the bus?
Humans are really bad at ‘affective forecasting’, estimating how we will feel about doing different activities in the future. But, if we take a second to notice, we are accurate at judging how we do feel during (or just after) the activity.
This backfires horribly. We think we will feel good about scrolling the internet — It’ll be relaxing! It’ll be educational! It’ll be entertaining!
We think we willnot feel good about talking to a stranger on the bus — It’ll be scary! They’ll think I’m crazy! It’ll annoy them!
And we’re usually wrong on all counts. But we’ll never know, we’ll never change, unless we notice. Unless we actually pick up on our vibe.
I Need You Right Now
There’s not much point in me getting my 🐈 if no one else is going the same way.
Yes, I’ll reclaim parts of my brain that I didn’t have before and, yes, I’ll have a bit more time to connect with the real world.
But that could actually be quite a lonely place if everyone else is sucked in their phones.
⚠Confession⚠
I’m actually pretty boring compared to the whole of the internet and your entire Whatsapp contacts list. I don’t blame you for scrolling Instagram instead of striking up a conversation with a random bald man.
It’s intimidating. How can I compete? So maybe I stay closed off and shut down too.
That’s why this email is a very personal ask. I need you to take action as much as you might need me to. We both need each other to put down our phones and open up.
Thank you for reading. 💚
We need each other. More than ever. As new technologies crush and replace everything that’s real and intimate, we should protect our relationships as much as possible.
We estimate the returns to IRS audits of taxpayers across the income distribution. We find an additional 1 spent auditing taxpayers above the 90th income percentile yields more than 12 in revenue.
This isn’t eat the rich; this isn’t even tax the rich. A simple audit will do.
Thanks DRL (👋) for sharing.
2. Keep an Idiot Diary
Every organisation should have an ‘Our Mistakes’ page on their website. Credit to Give Well for actually doing it.
Carnegie’s “D.F.T” folder contained records of the times he stuck his foot in his mouth, committed a faux pas, made someone feel awkward, gave into laziness, arrived somewhere late, bungled a conversation, procrastinated, lost his temper or patience, and so on.
One of its entries said: “Wasted ten minutes in an unnecessary harangue with the phone company about their shortcomings.”
And credit to Dan Schreiber, comedian and host of podcast No Such Thing As A Fish, who keeps what he calls — poetically — his ‘Idiot Diary’.
Aside: It took me over half an hour to research and reference this tiny big thing. I’m not sure whether that should be the first entry in my idiot diary.
3. Bumblebee population increases 116 times over in ‘remarkable’ Scotland rewilding project
Huge thanks to all the paying subscribers who helped make this story possible. You know who you are. Thank you. 💚
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Frankly, I’d be amazed if you do, but, last weekend, standing on the storm-whipped asphalt of Warwick Services, my membership of TSSoLH paid off, big time:
Urged on by discerning shed-punk technologist , I’ve been lusting after a Tilley hat for half a decade, yet always shied away from the premium price tag (£60 in the current sales).
But here I am at Warwick Services in a rainstorm, an abandoned Tilley hat fallen at my feet.
Stooped drivers scurry across the service station forecourt and rain rattles the tinny roof of my car. I scan the horizon for anyone who looks like they might have recently lost a hat.
Pretty much all of us, then. Forty mile an hour winds will do that to headgear.
The Tilley was squashed down with storm water and smelt of boiled mushrooms. It was so hydrated that I figured the owner had been and gone and lost the hat an hour ago or more.
They were probably six junctions away by now, their takeaway coffee long since finished or gone cold. So I chucked my new acquisition on the backseat and drove off as fast as I could.
Not only that, but it’s guaranteed for life and boasts a SECRET POCKET.
Knowing how beloved these hats are to their owners, I guiltily asked Documentally whether the law of finders keepers even applies to Tilley hats.
Documentally wrote back immediately: ‘When my Land Rover was stolen with my Tilley inside, I only wanted the hat back.’
So consider this newsletter an appeal for any information that may lead to the safe reunion of a June 2018 edition Tilley T3 with its erstwhile owner (noggin size 7 1/2), who passed through Warwick Services on the penultimate Saturday of October 2024.
Your reward will be your conscience. Until such time as justice is served, I promise to wear with care and maybe write a few more stories in this prodigal hat’s history.
In this newsletter, I write stories that help you and me understand the world (and ourselves) a little better.
Sometimes I find dirty old hats.
Bump into ideas that’ll change your life
The view from, er, the M6 Services at Killington
Last week, I spent two days in conclave with the most adventurous minds in the country, at the annual conference they most suitably call Adventure Mind.
We gathered at Bendrigg Trust on the edge of Lakeland to share everything we could about ‘Accessible Adventures’ — the importance of adventure in supporting the mental health of those who face the most significant barriers to accessing challenges in the outdoors.
I can’t overstate the importance of conferences like Adventure Mind: the opportunity to be in the same room as a hundred other professionals for two whole days, massively increasing the chances of bumping into an idea or a human that will change your life.
Last year at Adventure Mind I met the Head of Programmes for British Exploring Society and chatted to a few people who were raving about the EQE Outdoors course in Wilderness Therapeutic Approaches.
Fast forward to this year and I’m at Adventure Mind representing British Exploring Society, having completed my second week of training as a wilderness therapeutic practitioner…
If you get the chance, go.
I won’t bore you with a full list of all the wonderful humans I met this year, but here’s a selection of titbits that’ll hopefully be interesting to most:
1. Opening up the National Trust
The National Trust are Britain’s third largest landowner.
I was heartened to hear that, in January, the National Trust are publishing a new strategy: End Unequal Access.
As part of this new strategy, there will in future be greater openness to working with other organisations to provide activities and access to adventure in the outdoors.
Get in touch with your local National Trust and let’s get collaborating.
Examining multi-day adventures, Mutz & Müller (2016) focused on adolescent wellbeing and mental health. In one example, 12 x 14-year olds participated in a 9-day hike across the alps. Four days after completing the hike, child-reported worry and their sense of demands on them had decreased. There was also a large increase in mindfulness as well as wellbeing (underpinned by both happiness and life satisfaction).
3. Free adventure kit for people with low income
Kitsquad are ‘the only UK-based scheme that provides donated adventure gear to low-income individuals’. Respect.
CAT Phone 🐈
In my continuing pursuit of digital nirvana, I bought a CAT phone. It’s an absolute joy. But has it made any impression on my screen time? Full review to come…
Three Tiny Big Things
1. Broken zip? 13-second fix
After spending a couple of days exchanging dead-end emails with a premium outdoor brand known for its sustainability, I watched the first 13 seconds of this video and fixed the broken zip on my down jacket myself.
2. Do you ever get the feeling you’re being watched?
Bristling with spikes to deter pigeons, seven cameras surveil platforms 9-12 at Victoria Station.
Huge thanks to all the paying subscribers who helped make this story possible. You know who you are. Thank you. 💚
If you enjoyed this one, then go ahead and tell me. It’s the only way I’ll know. You can tap the heart button, write a comment, share the newsletter with friends, or simply reply to this email.
If you’re not into the whole Substack subscription thing, then you can also make a one-off, choose-your-own-contribution via PayPal. That’d make my day.
I know that we’ve only had the concept of the ‘weekend’ for less than two centuries and I know that Han Dynasty China had one day off every five days for ‘washing one’s hair’ and I know that Romans only had one day off every nine days and I know that the French Revolutionary Calendar only allowed one day off every ten days, so I know that two-day weekends are great, but I can’t help wondering whether three-day weekends would be even better. (And could cut carbon emissions by 30 percent.)
In this newsletter, I write stories that help you and me understand the world (and ourselves) a little better.
Sometimes I love weekends too much.
Do It While You Can
How would you like to feel, in your mind, in your body, at the moment of death?
This week, as advised by Geshe Tenzin Namdak, I’ve been using the dark minutes before sleep as a rehearsal.
Sleep as death; dream state as transcendence; waking as rebirth. I’ve found it puts any pettyfogging worries to rest and quiets the mind. Sleep comes more easily to those who surrender.
It’s also brought me closer to memories of my nan: the only person whose deathbed I’ve sat beside. Memories of life and how to live.
This week’s story is an extract from Life to the Lees, a book I wrote about cycling around Britain in the weeks following my nan’s death. Enjoy.
~
It’s St George’s Day.
Tomorrow is nan’s ninety-sixth birthday, so I buy her a present: a small potted plant with little yellow flowers. She likes plants and their flowers; her Epping rose bushes came a close second in her affections to her children and her grandchildren.
The nursing home is the kind of red brick country house that wouldn’t look out of place on the set of an ITV murder mystery, with a long gravel drive that crunches under your wheels.
I ring the doorbell, which is opened by a nurse in a blue smock. I sign the visitor’s book and breathe in the smell of carpets and disinfectant, optimistically masked by a bouquet of synthetic sprayed aromas. I walk straight down the hallway, through the sitting room, past the fish tank and the kitchen, to nan’s room. The door’s wide open.
‘Hello nan!’
She looks up, eyes searching for something she might recognise. ‘Who’s this?’ Her lips chew over each other, suspiciously.
I take a couple of steps into the room. ‘It’s David, your grandson.’
Then her eyes catch up and her face lights up. She takes my hand in hers, as I sit down on the stool by her side. Her palms are soft, with waves of wrinkles rolling over the gentle knuckles. So soft, worn down, eroded by the years, by countless caresses and gentle gestures.
‘I brought you a present,’ I say and give her the plant. She takes it onto her woollen skirt and inspects it closely. She’s been wearing those skirts for as long as I’ve known her and that’s almost thirty years. She probably made them herself.
‘That’s lovely. Thank you.’ She looks confused still, as if wondering why anyone would be bringing her a present, but is too polite to ask.
‘It’s your birthday tomorrow, isn’t it?’ I say.
She looks up at me, mildly shocked. ‘Is it?’
‘Yep. Today’s St George’s Day.’
‘Is it now.’ Her eyes wander off into the middle distance. Surely she remembers who St George is?
‘Yep. I couldn’t find a dragon, though.’
The eyes snap back and she smiles. ‘Well, I never did,’ she says. ‘Doesn’t time fly?’ She struggles forward to tickle the ears of an enormous soft toy sheepdog that lies at her feet. ‘Good boy! Who’s a good boy?’
‘Memory’s a strange thing, isn’t it?’
She leans back up from the dog. ‘I have so many that it’s hard to know what is real and what is memory sometimes.’
‘What’s the earliest thing you remember?’ Whenever I go to see nan, I always want to hear something new from the vaults of her memory, from the silo of almost a hundred years.
When you’re young, you believe that every day will bring new life and new memories, but I don’t think nan’s made a single new memory for months, if not years. She’s full up.
‘Gosh. The first thing I remember is my father… I think it was my father, he was… He was…’ She frowns. ‘I can’t remember now. Maybe he was getting ready for the next day?’ She turns to me, as if I’ve got the answers. ‘I think it was a Sunday and he was getting ready for work on Monday.’ She smiles, momentarily defeated. ‘He was doing something, anyway.’
‘Anything else you remember?’
She’s looking straight ahead now. She points a weak finger at a print on the wall opposite. ‘You see that picture?’
It’s a scene of a road curling through a wood. It used to hang on the wall of her living room in Epping and sparks strange familiar memories of childhood in me; the strange memories that accompany otherwise meaningless objects.
‘I remember the day I bought that.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘We’d been to that exact spot, to have a picnic. I must have been in my early twenties, I should have thought. It was before the war, anyway. With my girlfriends, we cycled there together.’
‘Nice.’
‘It was a lovely day. A very happy day. We had a lot of fun in those days.’ She checks with me; I smile. ‘Then, on our way home, in the town, I saw that picture in the window of a shop and I had to buy it.’
‘Of course!’
‘It’s been with me ever since.’
She’s told me this story five or six times in the last few weeks. It’s totally improbable, of course, totally fabricated from the torn shreds of her memory, but it’s a beautiful fabric. One of the blue-smock nurses bustles into the room.
‘Morning Win,’ she says, in her loud-and-clear voice for elderly people. ‘Have you drunk your tea?’ She doesn’t wait for an answer and peers into the cup. It’s full. And cold. ‘Oh Win.’ The nurse smiles at me. ‘She’s always asking for tea and then you forget about it, don’t you, Win?’
Nan’s eyebrows wrinkle together. ‘What’s that?’
‘You’ve forgotten your tea, haven’t you, Win?’
‘Have I?’ She reaches a hand for the cup, but the nurse whisks it away onto her tray.
‘I’ll get you a fresh cup, shall I?’ The nurse smiles vigorously again. ‘I’ll leave you in peace with your grandson now, Win.’ And she whirls out of the room.
Nan leans over to me. ‘I don’t know what that was about,’ she says, conspiratorially.
I’m not expecting what happens next. I thought I was just making small talk, but nan has other ideas.
She squeezes my hands between hers and makes sure that her eyes are looking directly into mine and then she says, ‘Do it while you can. You’re still young; do it while you can.’
I walk out of the nursing home into the dazing sunshine. My eyes hear the words again: Do it while you can.
Nan sits alone in her armchair all day, getting tea, forgetting tea, unable to remember her own birthday. But still she says: Do it while you can. Make the memories, she says, even if in time they are lost.
It’s a potent message of optimism and it’s the last time I speak to the human being she was.
~
p.s.: ‘Life to the lees’ is a quotation from Ulysses by Alfred Tennyson:
… I cannot rest from travel: I will drink Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy’d Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those That loved me, and alone, on shore…
p.p.s.: If you’d like to read more about my nan (and/or cycling around Britain), you can buy Life to the Lees for less than a tenner.
Following my missive on death meditations, thanks to Dan at for sharing this sung prayer. Beautiful.
2. Have You Heard Of COF-999?
A typical large tree can suck as much as 40 kilograms of carbon dioxide out of the air over the course of a year. Now scientists at UC Berkeley say they can do the same job with less than half a pound of a fluffy yellow powder.
Incidentally, the study’s senior author, Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, is a man called Omar Yaghi, who arrived in the US aged 15 with little English, the son of Palestinian refugees.
As the good people at Fix The News like to say, ‘The real immigration crisis? Not enough immigrants.’
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Footage was shot by Young Explorers on location in Georgia, Iceland and the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. The voice over narration is made up of (unscripted) voice notes left by Young Explorers after they got home.
In this newsletter, I write stories that help you and me understand the world (and ourselves) a little better.
Autumn is a time of dying. Or so it seems. Halloween and all that.
A vivacious tree, losing verdancy with the breakdown of chlorophyll, preparing for the suspension of life, hibernation, winter.
But the reds, oranges and yellows of autumn are not dying colours; they’re not the last sparks of a fire that burns green; these carotenoids are the true colours, heart colours, which lie beneath the summer camouflage of chlorophyll.
In autumn, the Golden Ash removes its mask and returns to the blazing yellow of its youngest shoots, its youth.
Similarly, the inexorable change of season might help us remove our masks.
In our summer days, we might feel compelled to don masks, make ourselves most productive, converting energy into energy, put down roots, hold tight, compete.
But seasons turn and, as they do, perhaps we realise that we can’t take our worldly masks where we are going, nor our signs and symbols of success.
For those who follow the Golden Ash, this is a time to return to the blazing glory of our youth; return to who we were, in our budding potential.
As Wind Swirls Through Fallen Leaves, think not of tragedy, but of unmasking and rebirth.
During the course of the day, I learned three meditations on death. Each meditation had three phases, only varying in the third:
Sit with your spine straight, your head slightly lowered and with your eyes closed softly. Pay attention to your breath for a minute or so.
Practice concentration by counting breaths. Count ‘one’ on your first in-breath, ‘two’ on your first out-breath, ‘three’ on your second in-breath, ‘four’ on your second out-breath, and so on up to ‘ten’. When you reach ‘ten’, return to ‘one’ and repeat for a few minutes.
Practice analytical meditation for five to ten minutes:
In the first meditation, analyse the proposition that your death is certain and inevitable. Death is a condition of birth. The purpose of this first meditation is to accept that you shall die, and to give you motivation to use this life well.
In the second meditation, analyse the proposition that your time of death is uncertain. The purpose of this second meditation is to accept that you (and any being) may die at any moment, and to give you the strength to start now.
In the third meditation, analyse the proposition that no possessions, no prestige and no persons have any relevance to you at the moment of death. The only thing that is truly beneficial at the time of death is your state of mind. The purpose of this third meditation is to loosen your bonds of attachment to corporeal things, and to inspire you to cultivate your state of mind.
Death is coming. At any moment.
Unmask.
__
*I guess ‘thoughtshop’ is the thinking counterpart to ‘workshop’.
Three Tiny Big Things
1. 40th Percentile Narcissist 👋
I cordially invite you to take the Short Dark Triad (SD-3), which measures the three ‘socially aversive’ traits of machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy.
Machiavellianism is the personality trait of being unprincipled and manipulative, cynical and an acceptance of ‘by whatever means necessary’.
Narcissism is the personality trait of vanity, self-superiority, entitlement, dominance, and a craving admiration and submission.
Psychopathy is the personality trait of being low-empathy and high impulsivity. It is a persistent pattern of deviant behavior and a disregard for others.
As doubtful as I am about the test’s validity in a self-administered online quiz format, I’m totally onboard with the results — I am definitely more narcissist than Machiavellian or psychopath!
2. 7% of All Humans Ever Are Still Alive Today 🙋♂️
If you want to go really deep on what happens on a British Exploring Society expedition, then here is a video made by one of the Young Explorers on the Pinnacle Wild Leadership programme in Svaneti, Georgia.
Thank You
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In this newsletter, I write stories that help you and me understand the world (and ourselves) a little better.
Sometimes I get stuff for free.
Everything Is Free*
Or: Money Is Only One Way Of Doing Things
Capitalism creates abundance.
On shelves, forecourts and websites around the world there is an overwhelming excess of all kinds of goods — whether you’re after bananas, baskets, bricks or Beanie Babies, we could (if you’re that way inclined) bury you mile-deep in product.
All of these products are created for sale and you can buy them with money.
But, because of the abundant — nay, excessive production, you can also acquire anything and everything for free. 🤑
There are two ways of getting everything you want for zero money:
After the original buyer has finished with the thing (ask nicely, don’t snatch!)
Before the thing ever gets sold. (And a certain amount of everything, except rare art and limited edition vinyl, never gets sold. It’s just out there, waiting for you.)
If you think about it, money is one way of solving two problems:
Labour.
Distribution.
1. Labour
It was pointed out to me the other day that I could easily and significantly more cheaply make my own Mexican lentil lunches at home and bring them into work with me.
But instead I pay money to a company called Merchant for them to make my lunch in a factory for me and shovel it into a microwaveable packet. I pay money for Merchant to do the labour.
I think we’re all used to this idea — after all, that’s why most of us dedicate so many hours a day to somebody else’s work goals.
It’s simple: that somebody else pays us money. And then we use that money to pay somebody else to solve our labour issues.
But I find fewer people see that we often use money to solve a distribution problem.
2. Distribution
I know that, somewhere, someone is getting all the Merchant microwaveable lunches they could ever imagine FOR FREE — while muggins over here is paying £1.50 for the privilege. (Never ever pay full price for Merchants; just wait.)
Admittedly, that someone is probably an employee of Merchants. But the principle remains: more Merchants are produced than are sold and eaten. The remainder is either destroyed (😱) or given away for free.
I’m currently midway through building a shoe rack for the hallway. We couldn’t find anything to matched up to our specifications, so I thought — ‘I’ll make one!’
I bought a lovely slab of oak from a sawmill and was on the cusp of a day trip to B&Q for the legs and other shelves when I found myself in Fulham, by the river.
Washed up on the shoreline was lorry-sized pile of flotsam and jetsam — hundreds of pieces of timber that would be perfect for legs and other shelves and much more besides — if I could only squeeze them all into my hatchback Corolla.
Some of the lovely wood I’m looking forward to butchering
I crossed B&Q off my to do list. I had found one of the many places on this great green Earth where timber is free: in this case, the waste of an overproductive economic system.
Money is only one way of doing things.
And it’s not even our most common way of doing things.
Money Is A Wedge (or can be)
For Mark Boyle, who lived without money for four years, money is a wedge that separates us from the consequences of our actions.
On his four years living without money, Mark said:
I experienced how connected and interdependent I was on the people and natural world around me. More than anything else, I discovered that my security no longer lay in my bank account, but in the strength of my relationships with the people, plants and animals around me.
There’s one area where we all live without asking for or expecting the bill: with those we love.
Indeed, we’d be utterly outraged if anyone tried to give us cash in exchange for the dozens of acts of loving kindness that we perform for our friends and family every day.
But any parental attempt to recoup the bill from their children would be monstrous.
The fact is that most of life is made up of spider’s web networks of cashless exchange, favours and gifts.
Yes, I spend money pretty much every day, but I am reliant on friends, family and neighbours for almost every single moment — certainly all the most precious.
Debt ≠ Obligation
In his critically acclaimed book,Debt: The First 5,000 Years, anthropologist David Graeber explains the difference between a debt and an obligation.
Obligation is what I feel towards another human being after they:
invite me to dinner
lend me a cup of sugar
look after my (hypothetical) dog for the weekend.
Debt is what I feel towards:
the bank for my loan-funded education
work after getting my payslip (but before doing the work)
Shylock after losing his money in an ill-fated mercantile venture.
In short: obligations bond human beings; debts divide us.
As Graeber writes:
The difference between a debt and an obligation is that a debt can be precisely quantified. This requires money.
It follows that, if we remove money from a transaction, it becomes not a debt to be paid, but rather an obligation:
an unspecific generosity,
of similar but crucially not identical value,
to be performed not immediately, but at some appropriate moment in the future, according to the unique needs of the recipient and resources of the obliged.
In this way, exchange by exchange, we could move from a waste economy of division to a gift economy of connection.
We could move to a society where we treat each other more like family by exchanging gifts, sharing food and doing favours for the love, not the lucre.
Gifts In An Open Ecosystem
Or perhaps we can think wider, deeper — the way we exchange gifts within an open ecosystem.
There is no price paid by the birds for the berries. Instead there are mutualisms: through sharing, both grow stronger.
My rosehip syrup stands brewing on the living room table, vitamin medicine for the winter. Free. (Except, admittedly, the sugar.)
Yes, I could have gone to Boots and bought Beechams — but then I wouldn’t have learned anything about the finding, gathering, preparing and processing of rosehips.
My hour of foraging in Crystal Palace Park brings me closer to where I live, in a way that seems unlikely had I picked up a cold and flu remedy from the supermarket shelves.
Money really is only one way of doing things.
(And not a very satisfactory one, all in all.)
—
I’ve written about this sort of thing before and this article steals huge swathes develops the ideas of two articles in particular: Money Is Not Generosity and We All Live Moneyless.
Each revolution designed to make travel more accessible and convenient seems, in time, to exact lamentable collateral costs.
[…]
Travel is an expression of democratic freedom and the economic lifeblood for millions; tourism is an instrument of capitalist expropriation, an engine of inequality.
[…]
For somewhere to matter, it had to be beheld, Yeoman insisted. “If you want people to genuinely care about a place, they need to make the physical effort to go there,” he said. Would anyone bother to repaint the Eiffel Tower, or would it be left to rust?
2. ‘Mother Earth is not asking us to save her. She is demanding that we respect her.’
A stark warning from Nemonte Nenquimo, the co-founder of Amazon Frontlines. Pairs optimistically with Jane Goodall:
We have this expression ‘think globally, act locally’, but it’s the wrong way around.
If you think locally, you see that you can make a difference and you want to do more.
And then you realise that around the globe there are other people acting, who are doing their little bit — and millions of little bits add up to big change.
In working with students at Colorado Outward Bound on land sections of outward bound courses, I noticed that hikers with smaller frames were often able to carry as much weight as hikers with larger frames who were otherwise of similar fitness.
The heavier you are, the less you can carry because strength does not increase in line with weight and heavier people have to carry, er, themselves too. Image
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Whatever the mundane backdrop to these thoughts — bath, bed or bicycle — they are always profound:
If your shirt isn’t tucked into your trousers, then are your trousers tucked into your shirt?
An hourglass has more moving parts than the International Space Station.1
A vampire walrus would look a lot like a normal walrus.
(I didn’t say they were significant.)
Anyway. Back to my bike thought, which actually started as:
I want to be cool.
Immediately a second voice (still in my head) piped up:
It’s not okay to want to be cool. That implies extrinsic motivation — desperately striving to seem ‘cool’ in the eyes of others.
Instead of shutting up and concentrating on the road ahead, the first voice (unusually for me) fought back:
What’s wrong with wanting to be cool in the eyes of others — if it’s what I also think is cool? There’s nothing wrong with enjoying social approval, so long as it’s in good faith.
The second voice was so surprised that it fell silent. So the first voice carried on:
It’s okay to want to be cool, if you know what cool is — for you.
And that highly profound cycle thought led directly to this morning: wandering around Crystal Palace Park with a custom map I’d made, showing the location and species of every single one of the park’s 2,798 mature trees.
Mapmaking credits: Tom Chance, Bromley Borough Council and ChatGPT
Because my definition of ‘cool’ includes both:
Using spreadsheet data to make useful maps;
AND
Going out on a wet Sunday to forage for wild edibles and fatwood.
On my wanderings, I found no fewer than four dog roses, dotted around the margins of the park, and each weighed down with rosehips.
I collected no more than a handful from each tree, stuffed my pockets, and brought them home to process into raw rosehip syrup.
After pricking them with a fork, I stuffed the rosehips into an air-tight jar filled with sugar.
Over the course of the next few weeks (or months), sunlight and sugar will draw the liquid from the rosehips and (hopefully) give me a gloopy syrup.
BUT WHY, DAVE? WHY?
Because raw rosehips are ridiculously high in vitamin C: more than five times the puny orange, but also multiples more than lemons, limes, grapefruit, guava, potatoes, papaya, kiwi and kale.
In fact, rosehips contain more vitamin C than any other fruit or vegetable except acerola cherries and kakadu plums — and (let’s be honest) what the fuck are those?
Rosehips are nature’s own remedy for winter colds. They grow all around us: in our parks, in our gardens, in our hedgerows, ripe for the picking, completely free of charge.
So, yeah, I think that’s pretty cool.
Brewing nature’s cold remedy 🤞
Three Tiny Big Things
1. ‘Tax the rich’ doesn’t mean what you think
By 2023, the richest 50 families in the UK held more wealth than half of the UK population.
A 2021 study … found each one-point increase in the Gini income inequality measure increased support for far-right parties by one percentage point, with people more likely to support the far right if they have “economic insecurities, distrust elites, are socially disintegrated, and hold national identities.”
Wealth inequality 👉 Rise of far right 👉 More inequality
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There are approximately 3.7 million grains of sand in a bog standard hourglass. Beat that, ISS! (I originally used the Large Hadron Collider as my comparison, until ChatGPT gently pointed out that the LHC involves the movement of trillions of protons.)
As this was an assessment under pressure, I was given a strict time limit: twenty minutes.
It took me less than five.
Kinda.
I actually got that fire going during my second shot at assessment that afternoon.
I spent the whole of my first twenty minutes going around in circles: a spark to catch tinder, tinder to catch kindling, kindling to catch — nada.
One moment I had flames licking a foot high and was all ready to celebrate; seconds later there was nothing but cold ash on my stump hearth.
Try as a I might, five times round, I could never make the next step. My fuel simply wouldn’t light. My fire wouldn’t burn bright.
Twenty minutes up.
Despite an arm around the shoulder — ‘It happens. All of us struggle sometimes’ — I felt downcast by my failure. Especially when everyone else’s fires seemed to ignite in effortless and spontaneous combustion.
I trudged back to my friends (A Tribe Called West) and they brightened me up: ‘Have another go, we can film you.’
So another go I had.
The lesson from round one was simple: preparation.
Second time around, I used a fist-sized ball of resinous fatwood as tinder. I prepared a whole bowlful of hazel shavings and a thick bundle of cinder-dry bracken stems for kindling. Lolly-pop splinters of hazel were my starter fuel.
Second time around, with the right preparation, my spark caught, fire flames high, a steady burn I could leave untended. All in less than five minutes.
As you might have noticed, this is more than a fire. This is a metaphor.
Free Money Day is a social experiment that is meant to explore people’s attachment to money and remind people that it must freely circulate in a successful economy.
I can’t believe you actually get white hot firework sparks off the innards of a dead branch.
2. One Thing I Knew, One Thing I Didn’t: Both Blow My Mind
Horse’s Hoof fungus, often found on Birch, takes an ember real nice.
Tbf, I only learned this on Thursday. Still: proud.
Fire pistons are an ancient Malay device that suddenly compress air to generate temperatures of 260 degrees and they are freaking awesome.
See them both in action here:
3. And This Is Just Silly
A man making fire from a few reedy twigs of Dogbane and a couple of flat rocks. In the comments, he says that Stinging Nettle works even better.
Shocking audio — mute if you’re sensitive.
Thank You
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Sometimes I feed the birds.
The Fall of the House Sparrow
Last Saturday, we bought a bird feeder.
I am now obsessed.
They’ve got through about three whole feeders’ worth in five days, with the rate of dispatch accelerating as more of the neighbourhood catches wind of the new buffet in town.
So far, I’ve seen one Pigeon, one Robin and possibly a Blackcap — but I don’t really know what I’m talking about, since the bulk of my bird ID skills come directly from the images printed on Christmas cards.
The first to arrive at our hanging feast were House Sparrows, who had a short commute from their favourite Rowan (?) tree.
Apparently, Crystal Palace was once famous for its sparrows. There’s even a pub named after their most charismatic predator: The Sparrowhawk.
(Side note: New entries to the Red List in 2021 included Greenfinch, Swift and House Martin, but there was better news for rising populations of White-tailed Eagle, Song Thrush and Kingfisher.)
Nobody fully understands why Sparrow numbers have fallen so sharply — but it’s probably something to do with humans. (When is it not?)
House Sparrows have always had a close relationship to humans — indeed, bar isolated cases, they simply won’t breed away from us. They earn their bread and butter by pecking at the fringes of our carelessness, ill-hygeine and miscellaneous littering.
For example, Sparrow numbers took a tumble in the early twentieth century with the disappearance of horse-drawn carts and the general cleaning up of our streets. Nothing screams biodiversity like a big horse poo in the middle of the road.
But the reasons behind the vertiginous House Sparrow decline since the 1970s are more fiddly to pin down.
Perhaps it’s the intensification of agriculture and ‘tidying up’ of farms. Perhaps it’s breeding performance (come on, guys!) Perhaps it’s improved sanitation and rubbish collection. Perhaps it’s the electromagnetic pollution of our mobile phone networks (finally — a 5G conspiracy supported by actual science).
I suspect Our Clever Little House Sparrows (as they’re now known) have figured out a way of dumping a whole batch of seed from the feeder onto the neighbour’s roof below.
Often, there is more seed outside the feeder than inside.
That way, rather than sharing the feeder, two at a time, the whole flock (and one pigeon) can have breakfast together. And swap parasites.
Feeding birds are more likely to survive winter, they’re more likely to be healthy and they’re more likely to have loads of chicks when spring comes around.
But still: parasites.
The solution, as we all know by rote, is STOP THE SPREAD. Unfortunately, Sparrows have a reading age of nil, so I don’t hold out much hope for my new HANDS, FACE, SPACE posters, but I can start following the Garden Wildlife Health trichomonosis prevention guidelines.
In short:
Clean feeders regularly
Don’t let food, food waste or bird droppings accumulate (i.e. below the feeder)
Only fill feeders with enough food for 24-48 hours (and chuck stale leftovers away before refilling)
Don’t use table or ground feeders
Offer different food types so birds with different diets don’t feed together
Moderate food provision if you’re getting high density of congregation, especially of finches
Three Tiny Big Things
1. Scott Galloway: How the US is Destroying Young People’s Future
This video is what the word ‘coruscating’ was invented for:
Animated and brilliantly clever or witty
Marked by harshly abusive criticism
Having brief brilliant points or flashes of light
If anyone knows of any such polemic regarding the UK equivalent, I’d be interested.
2. Create a Sparrow Street
The RSPB wants you to give House Sparrows somewhere to raise their chicks.
3. What Our Obsession with Washing-up Bowls Says About the UK
Many facets of British life raise eyebrows abroad … but few provoke the same panic and despair as the discovery that the nation washes its dishes in a plastic tub.
😂😘
Thank You
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In this newsletter, I write stories that help you and me understand the world (and ourselves) a little better.
Today’s story has a soundtrack. When you’re ready, hit play and scroll:
Sometimes I get stung.
A Flaming Match Head
Globally, there are over 20,000 different species of bee and more than 250 of those are found in the UK.
But, after half an hour of clumsy research, I think this a European Honey Bee, Apis mellifera, the domesticated species that produces Pooh Bear’s favourite comestible:
European (?) Honey (?) Bee (Deceased)
And, yesterday, apropos of nothing, this particular specimen, a worker bee, landed on the fleshy nubbin twixt my thumb and forefinger, and lanced me with its venomous stinger.
The worker fell to the ground, her barbed needle lodged in my skin, injecting apitoxins from its venom sac into my blood until I plucked it out.
Distracting myself from the caustic burn, we watched as the honey bee crawled away.
Tragically, we saw her slip in a tiny puddle, fall onto her back and struggle to right herself.
She finally managed to flip herself over and crawl a short distance to the lip of mortar between paving slabs.
She crawled no more.
It’s a myth that bees always die once they’ve spent their sting.
Bees sting to protect their hive. Their most common enemies are other insects, small critters with thin skins, against whom bees can use their stinger without fear of death.
As I witnessed first hand, the stinger pierces the skin of the victim, where it’s held fast by barbs, before detaching from the bee’s abdomen when it makes its escape.
But if the victim’s skin is excessively thick — such as in humans or other large mammals — the stinger is barbed too tightly in the thick skin.
Instead of detaching, the stinger is torn away, causing fatal damage to the bee’s belly, killing her in minutes.
It was a sorry sight, even if she started the fight.
There is another misconception (I won’t say myth) surrounding bees: their decline.
Of course, this graph condenses all nuance: yes, wild bees are found across more of the UK than in 1980 — but there are 158 species in the survey and 26 percent of them have become less widespread, with 7 percent showing a strong decline.
If we open up our graph to include hoverflies, another important pollinator, we see very different results:
Looking at the positive: yesterday’s close encounter with a grumpy pollinator at least brought me into nature.
For most humans today, myself included, nature is an environment that I choose to enter on my own terms, when I’m ready for a short break from my timetabled, double-glazed workerdome.
There is little day-to-day awareness that I am a living part of an ecosystem, existing in relationship with other organisms. The plants that oxygenate the air I breathe; the fungi that vitalise the ground I walk on; the bees that pollinate the crops I eat.
Nature rarely troubles us. Nature rarely enters the adult human bubble on her terms. And when she does, it’s an inconvenience: rain at a picnic, leaves on the line, a bee sting.
I’d like to change that. I’d like to get to know her better.
Start With Ten
I firmly believe that, if you know ten of anything, then you’re comparably well-versed. Not an expert, but certainly more than a layman.
A busker who knows ten songs is no jukebox, but they can keep a crowd entertained for an hour.
If you can rustle up ten recipes by heart, then you’re not going to win Masterchef, but you will keep your family happily fed.
A person with ten good friends is hardly a social butterlfy, but they’ll never be short of confidantes or Saturday plans.
So let’s go through our ecosystem and chart the extent of my ignorance:
Can you identify and describe the habits and habitats of ten species of insect or other invertebrate? Despite today’s little foray into the world of bees and wasps, no, I can’t ❌ As far as I’m concerned, there are only three species of spider: money spiders, bath spiders and scary spiders.
Can you identify ten species of plant and describe their medicinal, nutritional, practical or cultural uses? Yes, I think I can! ✔ I’d be struggling if we separated trees from other plants, however.
How about ten species of fungi, moss, mould or lichen? Maybe two or three? ❌
Can you identify and describe the habits and habitats of ten species of mammal? If you include farmyard animals, I guess ✔ But if you mean our wild species, then probably not ❌
How about birds and their song? I’ve got pigeons down, and maybe a handful of others, so no ❌
Or fresh and saltwater fish and amphibians? Nope ❌ But I did learn today that Old English had a cute habit of giving animals nicknames that end in -g: dog, pig, hog, mog, stag, slug, earwig and, of course, frog.
Can you identify ten rocks and minerals? Chalk, sandstone, erm, gravel… ❌
Can you identify and describe ten weather systems, clouds or tides? Does ‘drizzle’ count? ❌
Or ten constellations, and describe their astronomical and cultural significance? Orion, the Bears, Cassiopeia ❌
Applications are now open for all kinds of leadership roles for people with all kinds of different skills and backgrounds:
Social Leader 🧸
Knowledge Leader 🔬
Adventure Leader 🥾 (This is the only one that requires Mountain Leader training)
Basecamp Manager 👩🍳
Medical Leader 🩺
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Have you read The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart (né George Cockcroft)? It’s a novel about a psychiatrist who one day decides to let the roll of a die dictate his decisions.
In the beginning was Chance, and Chance was with God and Chance was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Chance and without him was not anything made that was made. In Chance was life and the life was the light of men.
The story of The Dice Man, being a work of fiction, rapidly descends into cult, murder, rape and generalised mayhem, but the premise — using chance to reduce decision fatigue and maybe jazz up your life a little — I’ve found compelling since I read the book back in April 2017.
The Dice Man’s playful premise is easily applied to our lives in two, non-murderous, ways:
1. Eliminate to do list decisions (and maybe procrastination)
Write down six things you really need to get done today. Don’t worry about what order to do them in: they will all get done.
Roll the die.
Do the corresponding job.
Repeat, either adding a new task to your options list or re-rolling if you get that number again. (If you roll seven sixes in a row, maybe check your die rolls true…)
Yesterday, I used the die to run through a bunch of stuff I’d been putting off for ages. It made productivity playful.
Intermediate: you can easily weight your tasks by assigning two or more faces of the die to a particularly important job. You can also roll two dice for a longer to do list or to take advantage of the different outcome probabilities.
Advanced: throw in an option that’s a bit rogue. Something you’ve been putting off for years; a dream or long-held fantasy. Or maybe the total opposite of what you ‘should’ be doing; something silly or way out of character.
Sometimes we have no idea what the best thing to do is. Maybe it doesn’t matter what we do. Maybe we’ll never know what’s best until we start.
BUT WE JUST CAN’T BRING OURSELVES TO START 😵.
We’re crying out for someone to tell us what to do. Understandably, friends and family are reluctant to take this job: no one is responsible for your life choices except you yourself. But if you’re really stuck, why not ask the die?
Make a list of all your options. These are all things that you want to do, but you can’t do them all at once. Committing to one of them probably feels like you’re giving up on the rest. There is probably a lot of uncertainty around whether one or any of them could be a success. This might be why you haven’t made a start or seen any of them through to the end. You’re stuck.
Let go of the idea that it matters at all which one you move forward with. Remember: these are all good options.
Roll the die.
Do that one thing and scrap the rest.
Seriously: scrap them. They are gone. At least for now. For now, you are all-in on whatever the die told you.
Okay, okay. There’s an exception to that rule: if the die’s choice has made you realise in the core of your being that you really need to do this other thing, then that’s fine. Do that other thing, but do it with total commitment, no half measures: you still scrap the rest. Sometimes we get clarity from facing the shocking reality of what we don’t want.
Yesterday, the last day of January, I rolled the die on my six good options.
Alea iacta est; the die is cast
For the past month (or possibly the past ten years), I’ve been feeling a strong obligation to dedicate a furious amount of energy into writing. This is my constant; this is my work; this is my being.
That’s all well and good, but there are a lot of ‘shoulds’ lurking in the shadows:
I should be writing a book
I should be promoting my work
I should be writing journalism
I should be earning more money
I should be working harder
Since the beginning of the year, I’ve felt such shoulds heavy on my shoulders and the weight pinned me to the floor, paralysed by choice and uncertainty. Should energy doesn’t get things done, not unless there’s someone cracking the whip.
On the last day of January, after a month of doing things the same half-assed way as the past ten years, I decided in desperation to turn to the die.
‘Tell me, o die,’ I cried, ‘which writing project to throw my everything energy into?’
The die — strangely, as I knew it would — came up on that single spotted one.
And so, for the first time since 2010, I hereby shed any sense that I should be writing.
For many years, I have clung to the seductive mirage, the broken crutch that writing will bring me fame, fortune and happiness. It may yet bring those things, but not in the way that I have been approaching it. So, for now, I need a break. A total sabbatical.
Let’s not get dramatic: it’s only a month. Four newsletters’ worth. But I’m excited about the open water ahead of me. By letting go of my self-imposed obligation to publish, I create space for new lifeforms to emerge.
I already feel lighter.
~
I want to finish by saying a big thank you to you. It’s amazing that I get to write to you folks every week. An honour.
For those of you who have a paying subscription: a triple thank you. I don’t offer much to paying subscribers except my gratitude and an archive of hundreds of stories. But if you would like a physical book edition of all my stories from 2020 (😂), then hit reply and send me your address.
If you miss me and you believe in the God of Chance, then use my brand new Random Story page, which will surface one of the 920+ stories that are lurking in my back catalogue. Good luck!
I know you will understand my need for a creative pause — in fact, some of you have previously suggested I do this exact thing. Sorry for ignoring you.
The truth is that I don’t think I could have taken a decision like this, to step away from something I’ve been doing most of my adult life, without the crazy courage of the die.
I couldn’t have done it alone and I probably would’ve dug my heels in if anyone else had dared tell me to stop writing. But as soon as I saw that fateful digit I knew that it was exactly the right thing to do.
So let’s roll.
Full Terms of Disengagement
❎ I won’t work on this newsletter in February (I wrote most of today’s in January). That means skipping 9, 16, 23 February and 1 March.
❎ I won’t work on any of my own public writing projects or feel any obligation that I should.
☑ I can write my private diary (but I don’t have to). Journaling is an important processing tool and can be independent of the urge to publish and publicise.
☑ I can interview brilliant people, learn from them and elevate their ideas and achievements (but I won’t share anything publicly until March).
☑ I can take notes on books I’m reading and on sessions with my counsellor.
☑ I can take jobs that pay me to write because, frankly, that’s life.
The space station looks like an airplane or a very bright star moving across the sky, except it doesn’t have flashing lights or change direction. It will also be moving considerably faster than a typical airplane (airplanes generally fly at about 600 miles per hour; the space station flies at 17,500 miles per hour).
Thanks dad for showing us last weekend 🌌
2. Random Good News
The EU’s energy-related CO2 emissions fell 8% last year and are now 14% below their pre-pandemic levels. […] The amount of electricity generated from fossil fuels in the United Kingdom has declined to its lowest level since 1957. […] Wind turbines are friendlier to birds than oil-and-gas drilling.
Using airborne laser-scanning technology (Lidar), [Stéphen] Rostain and his colleagues discovered a long-lost network of cities extending across 300sq km in the Ecuadorean Amazon, complete with plazas, ceremonial sites, drainage canals and roads that were built 2,500 years ago and had remained hidden for thousands of years.
Last night I walked to Markway Hill in the New Forest to watch the sunset, part of my Winter Forest Sunsets challenge to visit all twenty-two high points in the national park, witnessing and celebrating as the envelope of our days is gently eased apart.
I chose Markway Hill because I left home a little later than I should’ve done to catch sunset. Markway Hill is right next to a main road: easy to access in a hurry.
Or so I thought.
The car park was separated from the trig point by two kilometres of bog.
Sunset at Clayhill Bottom
After going in ankle deep, I chose not to pursue the waterlogged path across Clayhill Bottom. I struck out for higher ground of (no joke) Scrape Bottom and immediately went in up to my knee.
I had no option but to persevere, climbing as best I could as the ground — if you can call it that — shook beneath me. I’ll admit: it was hard to admire the shivvering miracle of mossy abundance that turned water into soil while I myself was sinking to my doom.
With sodden boots squelching at every step, I traversed the hills through heather, bracken and gorse so deep and so thick that it unravelled the laces on my right boot. This was proper Lewis Carroll snicker-snack Jabberwock territory.
It took me forty five minutes to cover those two kilometres and it was long dark by the time I got to Markway Hill, whatever sunset there might have been totally obscurred by clouds of mist settling over the mire.
It’s fair to say that the New Forest schooled me last night: not as mild mannered as all those picture perfect ponies would have you think.
On top of all that, Markway Hill is, of course, right by the main road. The trudge back to my car not total fun either, blinded by the booming rush of electricity and gasoline.
And do you know what I thought as I stumbled eyeless along the roadside verge, unsure whether my next invisible step would pierce me on the needle pins of a gorse bush or right into the path of an oncoming Volvo?
Give me thigh-deep blanket bog over this!
It’s funny. I’ve watched three sunsets from three different high points in the New Forest this week and none of them have been much of anything: a gradual dimming of the lights.
But every morning’s sunrise, watched, like now, from a window overlooking the ocean, has been determined to dazzle and delight, the sun splitting the sky into colour strips of orange and blue, white and fire.
Sunrise over the ocean
Maybe I should flip my Winter Forest Sunset quest to the morning.
But I wonder: can you think of one positive thing that came out of those months of loneliness? I can, just about.
Lockdown, by taking away almost everything I’d ever taken for granted, gave me the time (so much time) and introspection (so much introspection) to notice what really matters to me in this world.
I mean, of course, this world. More specifically: getting out in it.
At the end of 2020, after our first ‘bubble’ Christmas, I decided that the next year I would try to have 100 Days of Adventure; days where I would spend a significant chunk of time outside on an adventure.
I left my definitions deliberately wide open. ‘Outside’ was vague because I’m a firm believer that adventure can be found anywhere: yes to the mountain tracks of Macedonia, but also yes to a walk through Peterborough. Both outside.
‘Significant chunk’ and ‘an adventure’ were as broad as possible because those terms will mean very different things to different people — including myself, depending on what hat I’m wearing that day.
I don’t think I’ve counted many outings less than a couple of hours, but that’s me. For someone with kids and a full-time office job, getting outside for twenty minutes could be properly significant.
Back in 2021, I had serious doubts that I could do 100 Days of Adventure in a year.
It might not seem like a lot, getting outside in a significant way twice a week; but the challenge was to keep the momentum going for the whole year, rain or shine, sickness or health, lockdown or freedom.
Spoiler: I did it. So I did it again in 2022. And again in 2023. Over the past three years, without really paying attention, I’ve racked up 340 Days of Adventure. That, all of a sudden, is a body of work.
I thought it was high time that I look back and distil everything I’ve learned about myself and this world into an internet-friendly listicle.
I have, of course, totally failed in that task. Not really my thing.
But here, nonetheless, are five things that I’ve learned from three years of 100 Days of Adventure (AND NUMBER FIVE WILL BLOW YOUR MIND! 🤯).
Enjoy.
1. Even when adventure is a central part of my job, I still have to make time for adventure.
I’m so lucky that my work over the past three years has included 29 days’ supporting schoolkids on their own outdoor expeditions as well as 123 days’ cycling and supporting other cyclists on three mega adventures with Thighs of Steel — but that’s still less than half of all my Days of Adventure.
Even with my vocational head start, 100 Days of Adventure is still a challenge and that challenge has motivated me to do the things that I know make me feel good, but that are not quite as easy as much less adventurous things.
It’s easy to go for a walk along the beach because the beach is right outside my window here in Bournemouth — but that’s not an adventure (unless I get lost and accidentally explore The Millionaire’s Ravine).
It is not so easy to get on my bike, onto a train or into my car and go for a walk somewhere I’ve never been before. That takes a little extra push.
Sometimes that push comes from work: I’m hired to walk with a bunch of kids around the Chiltern Hills. Sometimes that push comes from friends inviting me to stay with them at an off-grid cabin in the Lake District. Sometimes that push comes from a stupid and arbitrary target to go on 100 Days of Adventure.
Whatever the push, the outcome is I feel good. Oh, and also…
2. Adventure is precursor to genius (ahem).
In chemistry, Wikipedia tells me, a precursor is ‘a compound that participates in a chemical reaction that produces another compound’.
Adventure — doing new stuff outside — smashes together not one but two precursors in an alchemical reaction that produces a third really cool thing: genius.
Their coolest results came when they tested human guinea pigs on a test of creativity called Barron’s Symbolic Equivalence Task.
The BSE gives people five minutes to come up with analogies for three prompts. For example, you might be given the prompt ‘a candle burning low’ and you might (if you’re feeling really creative) come up with an analogy like ‘the last hand of a gambler’s last game’.
Importantly, the BSE has what psychologists call good ‘external validation’: it really does measure creativity in the real world. Someone clever went out and gave the BSE to loads of people with all different jobs: famous writers came out top.
Anyway. Oppezzo and Schwartz administered the BSE to forty people randomly assigned to four different conditions: sitting down indoors, walking on a readmill indoors, sitting down in a wheelchair outdoors and walking on legs outdoors.
In five minutes, the sitting indoors group came up with an average of 0.6 high quality novel analogies (fair play: not sure I’d get that many).
But here are the cool bits:
Just sitting outdoors more than doubled the number of high quality novel analogies the guinea pigs came up with.
Walking indoors on a treadmill more than trebled the number of brilliant analogies.
And the combination, walking outdoors, quadrupled the number of analogies. These geniuses were churning out an average of 2.4 high quality novel analogies in their five minutes.
Remember: all these people were randomly assigned to the different conditions. There was no underlying difference in their ‘natural’ creativity. Genius was the result of the alchemical reaction catalysed by the combination of activity and the outdoors.
I’ll say again: creativity quadrupled! It really is that simple. Go. Out. Side.
Without claiming to be a total genius, I’ve certainly reaped the benefits of adventure myself, both in ways that are hard to pin down, such as keeping my day-to-day sanity, and in my working output, most obviously the 67 stories I’ve written based on various Days of Adventure, but also pretty much everything else I’ve done in the past three years.
If you want to become a more productive worker bee in 2024, then you could do a lot worse than committing to a habit that regularly gets you outside doing stuff.
3. I’m so lucky that where I live is so rich in adventure…
As this clutch of photographs will attest, I’m incredibly lucky to live so close to New Forest National Park, the Isle of Purbeck and Brownsea Island: three vast adventure playgrounds between twenty and forty minutes from my door.
Moonrise in the Forest
Poole Harbour
4. … But I feel like I haven’t even scratched the surface of all the adventures this place has to offer!
I have only recently begun to explore the 71,000 acres of the New Forest, while I scarcely know my way around the Purbecks at all. Brownsea Island, meanwhile, is a hotpot of biodiversity that keeps a team of full-time ecologists entertained for their entire careers.
There is more here to see, feel and learn than is possible in a thousand lifetimes.
Even along the same route, the forest today is not the forest I walked through yesterday. There is always something new to discover. (And hopefully it won’t be so boggy.)
As Heraclitus might have said:
‘You can’t go on the same adventure twice: it’s not the same forest, mountain or ocean as it was yesterday, and, besides, you’re not the same person.’
5a. Do something every few days for a few years and — abracadababoom — you’ve got yourself an awesome life…
This is a lesson that every creative person learns at some point: producing good work consistently is not about intensive sprints or pulling all-nighters; it’s about putting in a decent shift and sticking to a regular routine over the course of years.
The same applies to living a life of adventure, or any other existence you want to cultivate on this sweet Earth. Routine is paramount.
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. […] A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order — willed, faked, and so brought into being.
I also love the poetic words of William Osler, founding professor of Johns Hopkins Hospital, lauding the generative and enduring power of routine to Yale University students in 1913:
One day must tell another, one week certify another, one month bear witness to the same story.
100 Days of Adventure is a schedule, a mock-up of reason and order, that wills into being a particular kind of life, each month of progress bearing witness to the same story: that I am now the kind of person who routinely goes on adventures. Awesome.
5b. … and an awesome body of work.
Over the course of three years, I’ve racked up 340 Days of Adventure and, in partnership with the regular routine of this newsletter, I’ve written a story for 67 of them.
All of a sudden, without really paying any attention, not only have I learned a lot about myself and the world, but I’ve also accidentally built up enough material for a whole book. That’s a body of work.
I didn’t intend this, but here we are.
Now then. I’m aware that I can’t just print out 67 blog posts and call it a book, so I’m curious: what do you think? What would get YOU excited about reading a book about living with many more Days of Adventure in your life?
2024 will be my first year without a major Thighs of Steel cycle-raising adventure since 2017.
2023 & 2022: Glasgow to Athens co-organiser
2021: Spell It Out record-breaking co-organiser
2020: Around The World lockdown cyclist
2019: London to Athens core team facilitator
2018: Ljubljana to Sofia cyclist
2017: Bugger all
2017, it’s fair to say, was not a great year. To be honest, I felt like shit most of the time — it was (famously) the year of raging Man Sloth Mode.
For about a year, I did nothing…
Thighs of Steel, it’s fair to say, saved my life. At least, it saved the purposeful part of me that needed something to do, rather than simply something to write (although it also helped with a heck of a lot of that).
The last three years in particular have been dominated, all year round, by organising and then riding Europe’s longest charity bike ride. Ergo: 2024 has a whole lot of gaping hole where Thighs of Steel once was.
As well as crapping my pants about not having anything to do, I’m also choosing to see this hole as a gaping abundance of opportunity.
Quite apart from all those Thighs of Steel bullet points, my life has changed a lot since 2017. I think this is best illustrated with a couple of photos, taken six years and about six miles apart:
2017 Dave learning how to walk in the Lake District
2024 Dave on top of the world, also in the Lake District
In other words: six years is a lot of lifetime and there is no reason to suspect that the next six years will be anything other than, well, full. Almost certainly fuller of life than any previous six year segment in the soap opera Dave (now in its forty-second season) because (and here’s the kicker) that’s how life works, kiddo.
If you thought childhood was wasted on the young, just wait until you try adulthood. It’s amazing. All the dreams of youth, but with the utterly misplaced power to make those dreams a reality (or at least some updated adult version).
This time we have on earth is damnful of promise. If an hour when you were a kid was worth tuppence (who gets bored on their summer holidays? Kids, that’s who), then an hour today is worth The Bank of England.
That’s why it seems like our six year segments only get richer and richer as we age: we make our time count double and double again.
Time might seem to pass more quickly now we’re older and, sure, part of that is because our brains are slowly calcifying, but it’s also because we compress more meaning into our hours.
Now I’m an adult, I’ll be devilled black and blue if I’m going to spend a second longer than I have to on anything that I don’t see as majorly meaningful, even if (especially if) that means making my own meaning.
Everything I’ve done and almost every word I’ve written since 2017 has edged me closer to an expansively dense existence that prioritises the healing power of jolly well getting outside, and sharing those connective encounters and experiences with other people, both in the flesh and on the page (hello you 👋).
Thighs of Steel has been a huge chunk of that story so far, but it’s by no means the end. More like the prologue.
This year, I have signed up to study for something called The Certificate in Advanced Wilderness Therapeutic Approaches.
Big scary title.
But, if my experience is anything to go by (not to mention the experience of the hundreds of people I’ve guided in the outdoors in the past six years), then the blockbuster slamdunk approach of all our therapeutic encounters with wild nature is this: healing by being.
Unlike the pell-mell of what seems like everything else, nature is there.
Nature is there. Always there*. Simply there. Abundantly there. Quietly there. Raucously there. So go: go! See for yourself, feel for yourself. Slow down to tree time. Stretch yourself over aeons. Be outside forever. Lean your forehead against a tree and breathe in the oxygen that this living tree breathes out. Heal by being.
Two humans healing by being on Great Rigg above Grasmere, looking south into the wintery sun.
* Not necessarily always there if we fuck it up too much. Still: by and large, on our puny human timescales, it seems to be always there. Even if ‘it’ is a weed and ‘there’ are the cracks in the crumbling concrete of a carbon junky civilisation. 😘
2023 will forever be remembered (by no one at all) as The Year I Read Oliver Burkeman.
Below are three links to three short-ish articles by the aforementioned Olly B, all warning us against the ironclad belief that we are immortal, a common belief that lures us into dangerous waters of endless distraction.
I am aware of the contradiction: more content to remind us to reserve our time for what’s important.
So while you could open all these links in new tabs to join the serried ranks of recipes for Mexican fire ant soufflé, podcasts on crypto meta AI parody gameshows and videos about the perils of PVC double glazing that, gasping for attention, will all simultaneously autoplay on double speed in a dystopic Honey Smacks symphony of post-capitalist shock and awe, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend that approach.
Instead, gently ponder my compression of the articles into sentence-length maxims that might transform your life for the wondrous better. (And the links are there for those who love to flirt with deep water.)
And a warm welcome from yet another train, this one speeding its way to the snow-capped mountains of the Lake District National Park.
You might have noticed that I like to call our National Parks by their full name. Adding the words ‘National Park’ is not only helpful context for people who might not have any clue what I mean by ‘The Lake District’ or ‘Dartmoor’, but also serves as a reminder that people like you and me fought tooth and claw for these wild places to be opened up for the awesome right to pleasure of people like you and me.
Thank you for doing that, people of the past. In 2024, I want to challenge myself to fight for the rights of people of the future.
Anyway. Today’s story is Part Two of my round up of 52 things I learned in 2023. You can read Part One here or just crack on.
27: I’d never seen a clutch of baby birds in their nest before. Now I know why these mouths-with-wings are called ‘swallows’. Les Sauges, France.
5 MORE THINGS THAT I LEARNED FROM ADVENTURES IN 2023
28. Dartmoor is always sunny (except at night when it’s starry)
That’s just a fact I’ve observed from the 25 nights I’ve spent on Dartmoor since 2020.
29. Bladder wrack is a kind of seaweed and it’s both delicious and abundant in coastal waters
Just a little something I learned in May, kayak foraging at Old Harry Rocks with Dani from Fore Adventures.
Starting with the delicious serrated wrack, we gobbled our way over ocean and shoreline: popping bladder wrack, garlicky pepper dulse, slithery sea spaghetti, slimey sea lettuce, spinachy-sweet sea beet, sagey-toothpaste rock samphire, and the invasive, but eminently munchable wireweed.
30. ‘You can’t stop bad things from happening, but you can stop good things from happening through fear and hopelessness’
What I need to learn and relearn is much slower and more delicate: I need to learn to stare at the ground and notice the eyebright, knapweed and oxeye daisy; to stare at the sky and read the changing cloudscape; to close my eyes and listen for skylark, snipe and cuckoo.
There is a medicine that you can only absorb through eyes, ears, nose, feet, breath: wind, air, sunshine, rain. Nature, the moor, the relentless acceptance and infinity of it all. Welcome, it says, welcome all. You are whole, it says. We are together, it says, together at last.
Good news though: I now have all forty days in the logbook and can take my assessment to become a Hill and Moorland Leader in 2024.
33: Yew trees are AMAZING. Not only can they live for thousands of years, but they are also entirely poisonous (lethal dose: 50g of needles) EXCEPT for their bright red berries, which aren’t berries at all, but arils. Box Hill, Surrey.
5 MORE THINGS THAT I LEARNED FROM MY HABITS IN 2023
34. 2023 was a 3.48 feel good year (according to one of my three different daily diaries)
I wrote about 196,000 words across 290 entries in my daily diary in 2023. I don’t know what to say about the incalculable value of diary writing that hasn’t been said by people vastly more eloquent than meI me.
I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.
I also filled two thick notebooks with my nightly ‘Five Great Things’ journal. Great Things only takes a couple of minutes and is a gentle way to tilt the mind towards quiet calm and restfulness, as well as capturing some of the day’s small wins (albeit illegibly).
Credit: I was inspired to start listing my Great Things after reading this article on For The Interested in February 2019 and it’s one of those tiny habits that make every day feel truly meaningful. Thank you, Josh Spector.
Finally, I also made 156 micro diary entries in a computer program that my dad made for me during the pandemic. (Thanks dad! 👋)
The program was initially designed to track mysterious symptoms of lethargy; in retrospect, I think I was mega stressed out by lockdown loneliness. It launches at a random time each day, asks me how I’m feeling on a scale of one to five and invites an optional written comment.
The results present fragments of my days — although they are all, by necessity, days where I happen to be near my computer.
From the good:
07/03/23 20:50. 4. Good day. Work. Sorting things out. Beach walk. Sauna. Long sleep this morning with plenty of dozing, dreamy, until 8.45amish.
To the less good:
11/05/23 14:43. 2. Headache. Tired. Just classic brain foggy symptoms like last year. Stress? So what’s the solution, if any? I’m struggling to write the newsletter, struggling to see the positive. Meditate? Belly full of gas from beany lunch.
My average recorded score in 2023 was 3.48, up from 3.23 in 2022, 3.24 in 2021 and 3.08 in 2020.
35. I still haven’t solved an imbalance in my relationship with screens, but a new laptop wasn’t the answer (phew!)
In 2023, I bought a new phone and, infamously, failed to buy a new laptop. Instead, I upgraded the battery on my old faithful 2017 Acer. Atta girl!
I spent about 550-600 hours staring at my computer screen in 2023. That can’t be healthy, but perhaps, gven the nature of my work and passion, it can’t be helped.
My phone use, on the other hand, can be helped. As my entry on podcasts suggests, I am keen to make my phone less useful in 2024.
Early in the year I successfully experimented with taking my SIM card out every evening until whenever I really needed it the next day, usually about 10am. That gave me about 10-14 hours of blissful phonelessness every day.
This experiment came to a crashing end sometime in March when I started to get really important messages from someone really important all the time. 😂
36: This is what I call a healthy relationship with screens. You’ll notice a sticker just below the screen that says: ‘Go away and read a book’. It’s my favourite quote ever and I was sent the sticker when I bought a book from Dog Section Press.
37. Friends = Wealth = Health
I hung out with friends or called them a total of 827 times in 2023. That’s two and a quarter friends a day on average.
This is an exceptionally silly metric and doesn’t really say anything to anyone, but it’s still meaningful for me. If nothing else, the data shows me two useful things: (1) the important people I might be forgetting in the busyness of life; (2) the surprise people I should maybe appreciate more for how often they show up for me.
38. I’m NOT completely broken as a human being (at least in terms of my gut health…)
These test results were from the Zoe personalised nutrition program that I went on at the start of the year. I guess it means that my plant-based diet has been absolutely fine for my health.
The main change I made as a result of the program is the massive and joyful consumption of grapefruit.
40. Am I runner again? Do I still sauna? And where do I even live?!
I went on eighteen runs across 65.6km in 2023; a looooooooong way off my peak as a runner four years ago when I did a hundred runs for 758km. But eight of 2023’s runs have come in the past two months, including three Parkruns (which I love). Am I back?
Going in the other direction, I did the same number of saunas as I did in 2022, but none since leaving to cycle to Athens in July. Am I no longer a sauna-er? Is visiting the sauna, a habit I once described as the keystone of my good health, important to return to my life in 2024?
Even more confused was the question of where I live. I spent only 156 nights at home in Bournemouth in 2023, a drop of nineteen sleeps from 2022 and a shade under three nights a week at home on average. The other four average nights were split evenly between two nights a-travelling and two nights with friends and family — 🙏 thank you to all my gentle generous hosts!
5 MORE THINGS I LEARNED FROM THE 10 MOST READ STORIES THAT I PUBLISHED IN 2023
41. A day’s work as a vehicle delivery driver might get you £230 (and picking up hitchhikers is an assertion of our glorious humanity)
The more I see, the more I realise that it’s just fantastic, an interview with epic cyclist Alice Baddeley, was also my most liked and commented story of the year — and for good reason. It’s not every day that you learn there’s someone out there who has cycled through every village, town and city in Sussex without once going back on herself.
44: ‘Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! / Nothing beside remains. Round the decay / Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare / The lone and level sands stretch far away.’ There’s something arresting about seeing our civilisation submerged in the sands of time. Okay, so a cycle path in Crosby is probably not what Percy Shelley was writing about in Ozymandias, but we would still do well to remember the transience of our arrogance.
45. Most people avoid talking to strangers, ‘despite the fact that they are happier when they do so’
I learned so much from Lis across our two long phone calls. Not least this absolute zinger:
It’s tricky when you have a lot of people die and you think you’re going to die yourself. You do go inwards, no matter how hard you try, but don’t put your life on hold — ever.
50. In July, The Dartmoor National Park Authority won a unanimous verdict in the Court of Appeal that reinstituted the right for all people to wild camp on Dartmoor
… is how you end a story in Tamil. And if you do better than random chance on this global idioms quiz, then fair play 👏 I got five out of twenty.
AND, FINALLY, 1 MORE BIG SHOUT OUT
52. Shout out to YOU!
Finally, as ever, huge thanks to you — yes, you! — for offering me your eyeballs and perhaps a little corner of your mind.
At the start of 2023, 493 beautiful humans subscribed to this newsletter; today there are 666 (😈), including (pleasingly) 52 who regularly read every. single. one. Wow.
I’d like to pause here for a short round of applause for the wonderful people who pay a subscription to keep me in green teabags —
Thank you Mike, James, Joe, Geoff, Georgie, Libby, Maryla, Claire, Harri, Cass, Illia, John, Jo, Tudor and JMJ. And shout out to those of you who have paid subs in the past — I shall never forget you (GDPR permitting) 💚
If YOU would also love to support this newsletter in 2024, then knock me down with a blowtorch because — you can! Prices have been slashed and it’s now only £3.50 per month or £30 per year.
Just click this lovely link 👉 Subscribe now 👈 and a choir of angels shall descend upon thee at the most unexpected and inconvenient moment. 👼
For one-off contributions (or if you would rather not send £$£$ via Substack) you can zap cash straight to my Paypal and I’ll spend it all on books. No, really, I will. 📚
I’m excited to see what stories evolve through the coming seasons and I promise to distil as many as possible into these pages.
And a warm welcome from various trains running north and south along the east coast of Britain.
Today’s gargantuan story is Part One of a selection of titbits from the fullness of the year just gone.
For easy digestion, I’ve divided the fifty-two into sections, with half of each section coming today and the other half coming in Part Two:
10 Things I Learned From Adventures
10 Things I Learned About My Habits
10 Things I Learned From The 10 Most Read Stories I Published In 2023
10 Small Big Things I Learned From Others
2 Big Shout Outs
But wait, Dave — that’s only forty-two things! Have you taken leave of your mathematical senses?
Aha, well spotted, Marvin. No, I haven’t. You shall also find, interleaved among these sections, ten of the 3761 photographs that I took in 2023, each of which tells a story from the year. Like this one:
1: Snow is beautiful and a lot of fun to share with friends and strangers. Peak District, March.
So, behold! Browse, scroll, submerge as the mood takes you. Enjoy — and keep your inbox peeled for Part 2.
5 THINGS I LEARNED FROM ADVENTURES IN 2023
2. Riding the highest vertical ascent cable car in the world is actually a little terrifying
3,842m above sea level is extremely high for a human to be. I spent a lot of time examining the rivets that held the cable car roof on. And screaming my head off every time the tin can ‘car’ bumped over the pylons that carried the cable, swinging vertiginously down, up, down, up, down, up, like one of those pirate ship ‘rides’ you see at inadequately insured theme parks.
In retrospect, one of the most fun things I’ve ever done.
3. I took two planes in 2023 — but haven’t paid for a flight in 14 years
In fact, after getting £300 compensation from Easyjet in August, I’ve actually made a profit — woohoo!
All jokes aside, the flights we take (or don’t) say a lot about us and the pushes and pulls that we feel.
Maybe you have chosen to build your life a long way from family and you travel back by air every Christmas. That tells you something about yourself.
Maybe you love travelling to parts of the world that feel very different to where you live, but you like to come back home too. That tells you something significant about yourself.
Maybe you’re like I used to be and you connect air travel with ‘getting away’. Maybe now, like me, you’re asking how far we actually have to travel in order to get away? — and what are we really trying to get away from or looking to find?
Since 2010, terrestrial travel has become me. It’s grounded me and grown me up. A divining part of everything. Aeroplanes can’t do that for me. (Doesn’t mean they won’t sometimes pop up on a graph😝)
4. New Forest National Park has twenty-two trig pillars
Instead of trying to brute force my way through life on brain alone, I should remember instead to feel my way through the world with all-body senses. A long bike tour works, but so too does a regular morning run or evening stretch time.
The older I get, the more I learn and the more responsibility I take, the more important it becomes, not simply to get out of my head, but to get into my body.
6: Reflexes are AMAZING. I fell off my bike on Bloody Bush Road, 20km of gravel with little water and less food. ‘As the heavy bike slid out from underneath me — threatening to crush my leg under the weight of all my camping gear — my instincts took over. Without knowing how, my left foot hopped onto the falling cross bar and I leapt over the moving handlebars, miraculously landing in a running stumble, on both feet.’
7. A fly swarm sandwich is no hardship compared to flooding across 730 km² of your home
It was hard cycling 1,330km and up two Everests in thirteen days, but not as hard as the devastation faced by locals in central Greece after Storm Daniel:
Barely a week before we cycled through, Thessaly was hit by more than a year’s worth of rainfall in just 24 hours. At least 17 dead. Homes, farms and villages wrecked over an area of 730 square km.
5 THINGS I LEARNED ABOUT MY HABITS IN 2023
8. Podcasts are so 2023
I listened to 379.4 hours of podcasts on my phone in 2023. That’s more than an hour every single day on average, and an ear-watering 62 percent increase on 2022. This is not how I want to spend my life. Many of those hours were sound filling space; a fear of emptiness and of what thoughts might enter the void.
I have now deleted both podcasting app AntennaPod and BBC Sounds, which I also occasionally used to listen to podcasts as well as the radio. This is one habit that I won’t be taking into 2024 with me.
Huge thanks to the smart, funny humans behind No Such Thing As A Fish (391.1 hours), Quickly Kevin; Will He Score? (79.9 hours), The Anfield Wrap (55.6 hours) and Where Should We Begin (37.7 hours). I’m sorry, but I won’t link to any of these, just in case you are also trying to kick an audio addiction. Suffice to say, they are all terrific. If you are curious, you’ll know where to find them.
Thanks also to the developers behind AntennaPod, both for keeping me at times hugely entertained over the past two years and for supplying the horrifying data that is inspiring me to leave. It’s been fun; I’m glad it’s over.
My podcast listening since downloading an app onto my phone in July 2021
9. My year’s driving cost us about fifty trees — sorry trees, I promise to pay you back!
In 2023, I drove approximately 6250 miles the Corollavirus; that’s about a thousand miles more than in 2022 and 2021. Those thousand extra miles came in one mega road trip from London to the Peak District, Northumberland, Glasgow, Largs, Edale, Winchester and home.
This big stick man route represents many hours’ driving, but also the Adventure Mind conference, several stunning country walks, many friends and five freakin’ DOLPHINS 🐬🐬🐬🐬🐬
All in all, my 2023 carbon debt (the difference between the driving I did do and the trains I could hypothetically have caught) is about a tonne, or 50 trees’ worth.
10: DOLPHINS ARE GUARANTEED. Largs, December.
11. All book reading is good and some of it is truly great
I started 47 books and finished 39 of them in 2023, about three books a month. That’s a completely average annual tally for me, but it’s the first year since records began (2013) that I read more fiction (24) than nonfiction (15).
I give a rating out of five to every book I read. Eleven books got my highest accolade, four of which I read in January and five of which were recommendations from friends. Two observations: (1) maybe I was feeling generous last January and (2) I should definitely borrow more books from friends.
Anyway, here they all are. I’ve bolded the ones that stayed in my mind all year.
Fiction:
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
Nip The Buds, Kill The Kids by Kenzaburo Oe
The Parade by Dave Eggers (🙏 thanks N!)
Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller
Nonfiction:
Islands of Abandonment by Cal Flyn (🙏 thanks G!)
Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman (🙏 thanks C!)
The State Of Affairs by Esther Perel (🙏 thanks C!)
Lights In The Distance by Daniel Trilling
Proust Was A Neuroscientist by Jonah Lehrer
The Book Of Trespass by Nick Hayes
92 Acharnon Street by John Lucas (🙏 thanks E!)
Side note: If any of you are wondering why I’m letting go of listening to podcasts, here is a list of all the podcast episodes that stayed in my mind all year:
…
…
🤷
12. My counsellor isn’t good at invoicing (but he’s worth every penny)
I went to seventeen counselling sessions in 2023. That’s an average of once a fortnight when I’m in the UK and a happy increase from ten in 2022.
Doing this little review has made me realise that my counsellor forgot to invoice for one of our sessions back in May. I’m sure there are situations where I’d write that off as ‘bank error in your favour’, but I value our time together so highly that I’ve just gone and paid him.
Related reading: The Body Keeps The Score by Bessel van der Kolk.
I studiously ignored this book when I was first recommended it about five years ago. Now I’m morbidly fascinated by the connection between autoimmune disease (which I have) and trauma (which, in van der Kolk’s analysis, everyone seems to bear to some degree or other).
In July, New York Magazine published what reads like an even-handed profile of van der Kolk, covering both the reasons I initially ignored his book and the reasons why I have now not only read it, but learnt so much. In fact, the only reason The Body Keeps The Score is not on my best books list for 2023 is because I finished reading it on New Year’s Day.
13. Thanks to a 1% time investment some evenings, I can now comfortably shit in the woods
I did 142 stretching sessions in 2023, at an average of a little under nine minutes each. That’s all it takes to be able to comfortably shit in the woods.
I’ve been doing these evening stretches for four years now and it took about two years to notice a significant, genuinely life changing, shift in my flexibility. I can do the Asian squat, no problem. I can sit cross-legged on the floor, no problem. I can even stand up from lying down without using my arms or a Wallace & Gromit pulley system.
My yoga mat is always rolled out on my living room floor so that I never forget to stretch, almost always the last thing I do before going to bed when I’m at home. My only guidance is follow what the body needs and remember that one minute is better than none.
I’m building on this excellent habit in 2024 by enrolling in the Liftoff: Couch to Barbell twelve-week beginners strength training program designed by Casey Johnston, the brains and brawn behind one of the few newsletters that I read every week. If you’re quick, the program is currently only $4.
5 THINGS I LEARNED FROM THE 10 MOST READ STORIES THAT I PUBLISHED IN 2023
14. Name-dropping a celebrity really does get people to read stories
What Would Salah Do? is my most-read newsletter story of all time and hopefully at least a few people stayed for the lesson that footballer Mohammed Salah has to teach us about staying present and enjoying our moments of ecstasy when they come.
If Shankly’s message is a warning about the spiritual danger of becoming over-invested in sport, then Salah’s is a gentle reminder of what we have to gain.
15. I should run polls asking y’all about my writing more often!
Coasting In Public was a humble newsletter in which I asked your opinion on two possible approaches to telling my story of cycling around the coast of Britain twice.
Frankly, I’m surprised that it sits so high up in the list, my second most read newsletter of all time.
Maybe you simply enjoyed my little intro about a conversation I had in the sauna with a man who thought the government should buy a load of decommissioned cruise liners to keep refugees in detention offshore. On the plus side, he also wanted to end homelessness. People are complicated.
16. Sometimes the best emails are the ones I don’t think much about
Eudaimonic Adventure was a little dollop of wisdom gleaned from the fantastic Adventure Mind conference:
Eudaimonic wellbeing … is all about the human search for The Good Life. Eudaimonic adventure is not about what you’ve done; it’s about why you (really) did it. Who are you? What are your values? What does adventure mean to you?
17: Sometimes the sun really does shine out of your arse saddle. Eudaimonic adventure at its finest. Brighton, February.
18. Maybe I should repost more great stories
Are You Experienced? was a repost of a story from 2016 about my life-bending experience with psychedelic truffles in the Netherlands. It’s a great story. Most of you weren’t here in 2016 and I’m glad that a lot of you enjoyed it second time around.
The first indication that anything might be amiss is when I see how the wind in the trees becomes a woodsman with a moustache talking to me through the window.
19. Chronic bad news (as opposed to acute bad news that we can react to and fix) makes us feel powerless, leading to dissociative feelings of paranoia and, at the other extreme, despair.
The End Of Doomspreading was my attempt to coin two new words to help us call out people who spread chronic bad news:
Doomspreading: to dominate a conversation with the perspective that everything is going to shit.
Doomsplaining: to explain how everything is going to shit, especially in response to the alternate perspective that things are kind of going okay.
25. Big shout out to the Thighs of Steel community
The majority of my working time over the last two years has been spent organising and crewing the two Thighs of Steel Glasgow to Athens rides.
At over 5,300km a pop, these were Europe’s longest supported fundraising bike rides and, as you can probably imagine if you’ve ever juggled fire while slacklining across the Grand Canyon in a sandstorm holding a newborn baby, they have both been, by turns, fucking amazing and a little bit fretful.
We won’t be doing Glasgow to Athens in 2024 and, to be honest, I’m grateful for a little break from the madness. 😅
More than that, I’m IMMENSELY grateful to the whole Thighs community for all the joy and wonder that you have brought to my life:
the 164 other cyclists who rode in 2022 and 2023 and who collectively raised £223,000 for grassroots refugee projects in Greece, Northern France and the UK;
the sixteen other core team who crewed these two rides, drove the support van, cooked a hundred delicious carb-loading dinners, and patched up a zillion emergencies;
the six other folks in our wonderful organising team;
the hundred or so gorgeous host families and communities that have put us up in their fields, forests, farms and museums;
all the volunteers at our partner charity MASS Action;
and, above all, the thirty (!) epic grassroots projects that cyclist fundraising has supported in 2022 and 2023. Covering everything from science to skateboarding, you can read much more about all those projects here.
It’s been a blast; now on to the next!
26: Even on my third time round, cycling to Athens with amazing, generous people continues to fill me with inspired grateful wonder.
Happy Solstice and a warm welcome from the first day of next summer.
We have eight hours thirty-two minutes of sunlight to gain before our zenith in June. Tomorrow we earn barely five seconds, but every day we claw back a little more, and each day until the equinox our gains compound.
Let’s ride that momentum.
The shortest day comes to an end, bleeding out over Andrew’s Mare lake in New Forest National Park
Another Walk In The Woods
A noise alerts me. I freeze, masking my predator outline with a bare tree trunk. I watch in silence as a herd of two dozen deer cut across the forest floor ahead of me.
I’ve been enjoying my winter side quest to watch sunsets from each of the twenty-two trig pillars in New Forest National Park.
Today I walked from Eyeworth Pond out to Bramshaw, which is not only the highest pillar in the Forest, but also perhaps the least impressive, squatting, as it does, on a slightly boggy triangle of flat ground squeezed between three roads.
You’d think there would at least be an expansive view from this lofty altitude of 125.1m above sea level, but the pillar is somewhat plonked in the middle of the kilometre square of Longcross Plain.
And plain it certainly is: the bog never quite rising to the challenge of becoming scrub.
Nevertheless, the slanting beam of sunlight catches the turf in a rather pleasant, hyperrealism sort of a way and, turning west, I already feel much better.
Howen Bottom, a short descent from Longcross Plain
I spent this morning doing infinite spirals of the aisles of Hobbycraft, battling with the paralysing inertia caused when the immovable object of Christmas meets the unstoppable force of inscrutable children.
After what could have been a week, I finally reach exit velocity, my trembling hands clutching a collection of I-don’t-know-whats, snatched from a shelf I might have passed on my way through the outer rings of Saturn.
Voyager 2 is no stranger to the Bournemouth Hobbycraft. Credit: NASA
It’s not that I don’t like Christmas. I do. It’s not even that I don’t like buying other people presents. I really do.
It’s just that the festive season always seems to land on the shortest days of the year, when all I really want to do is lie in the boughs of an old beech and doze until sundown.
Today, the forest is my reward for polishing off my shopping list. Stirred up, agitated, uncalm, I feel like I need it.
After Longcross Plain and Howen Bottom, I turn into the dark thickets of Eyeworth Wood, a tangle of storm-felled oak, navigating the lost old ways by eye and compass.
Eyeworth Wood
That’s when I see the deer. Probably fallow, by some margin the most numerous in the New Forest, but it’s hard to tell from this distance.
They walk sedately, heads up and proud. Hoofsteps crackle in the brushwood.
That prickly sensation you get when you sense you’re being watched is eerily subconscious: even totally blind people get it.
I haven’t moved, but these deer are tuned in. One turns and stares right at me. We stand and stare for a breath-holding minute. No danger. They walk on.
The closest I get are these deer tracks on the banks of Latchmore Brook
I cross into the Island Thorns Inclosure, over a humpback of earth that marks the line of an ancient fence, the park ‘pale’ that once kept deer in and commoners out, and I follow my compass north, uphill, to what my map calls Studley Castle.
Historic England has this to say about the fourteenth century Studley Castle:
The royal hunting lodge at Studley, in the New Forest, survives reasonably well … it appears to the Secretary of State to be of national importance.
Well, here’s what I say to the Secretary of State:
Sorry, what castle?
What we’re talking about here is the slightest indication of a ditch and the merest suggestion of a raised bank. It’s the one time on this walk that I have to use my phone’s GPS, just to double check that I haven’t missed something like this:
The other Studley Castle, in Studley, Warwickshire. Credit: Amanda Slater
I haven’t. All I’ve missed — I now realise — is the sunset, right now happening somewhere out there, beyond the pale, if I could only see through the flailing limbs of the winter oak.
The ‘castle’ is, however, adorned by the most remarkable tree: splintered into neat planks that I’m tempted to cart home for a bookshelf.
(Having written that sentence, I’m now very annoyed that I didn’t.)
A splintered oak on the site of Studley Castle. Look at all that shelf material!
Searching for ‘what causes a tree to shatter?’, I come across the phenomenon of exploding trees.
I couldn’t see any evidence of lightning on this poor specimen, so I’ve decided it was caused by frost. One winter, the tree sap froze and expanded, bursting its bark skin with an almighty gunshot crack.
It was either that or the vengeful ghost of King Edward III come back to ask what the bloody hell we’ve done to his favourite hunting lodge.
With darkness descending and no head torch, I leave the castle to its mysteries and make a beeline for the trailhead, back over the brooks and through the bracken, walking in the bootprints of history.
I have nothing to end this little story, except this trail thought, found yesterday, on the way over Lucas Castle (also not a castle):
There is an abundance of everything for everyone, especially if you focus on the most important things, which are not only super abundant but infinitely renewable. Love, friendship, fresh air, music, laughter, fresh food, water, stretching and sleep.
Happiness is complicated, but if you simplify it into things like a loving family, health, friendship, eight hours of sleep, well-balanced children, and being part of something bigger than yourself, you realize how limited money’s role can be. It’s not that it has no role; just smaller than you may have assumed.
I am lucky to live beside the sea for so many reasons. Here’s one: the infinite horizon of the ocean means that, even on the gloomiest of winter days, I still see sunshine, if only for a moment.
In the precious minutes after the sun has risen from the waves, before she disappears into the thickening clouds, the sunlight hits the beach through a band of clear sky, far, far away.
And I start the day secure in the knowledge that, no matter what shit goes down today, there is always somewhere the sun is ringing strong through cloudless skies.
I’m aware that this intro might be bloody annoying for anyone living between tower blocks, where the horizon is manmade and sunrise is artificially delayed, sometimes, in winter, for hours. Sorry!
London shade map at 9.30am: some shade in the narrow strips of green.Bournemouth shade map at 8.09am: full sunlight across the whole seafront over an hour earlier
Maybe climb that tower or find a river flowing east? Or use ShadeMap to find your own local bright spot.
Yesterday afternoon, I had an errand to run a half hour drive out of town. Looking at the map, I realised that I could leave early and catch sunset in the New Forest.
I parked in Frogham and walked out along Hampton Ridge to the trig point, where I watched the sun set over Blissford, Chilly Hill, Long Bottom and Burnt Balls.
My idea is simple: watch twenty-two sunsets in the Forest this winter, one from each of its pillars.
My winters are usually spent sheltering from the darkness, bathed in electric light. By celebrating sundown, I hope to keep up a strong connection to the outdoors, discover beautiful new places — and maybe even sleep better.
As I mentioned last week, I suspect I might be one of the ten percent of people who especially benefit from spending more time outdoors at dusk.
I’m generally an early-to-bed-early-to-rise kinda person, and I know it’s only a single data point, but after my hour in the Forest at sunset yesterday I slept until 8.30am.
I awoke astonished, but rested. Hallelujah to more of that feeling, please.
Public domain Agatha Christie ebooks. Technically not out of copyright in the UK, but I don’t have an ereader so I’m not about to test how far the strong arm reaches. Another idea: go to the library.
Walk and Talk by Derek Sivers. A week of walking with a group of friends. ‘It’s one of the best things I’ve ever done. Very healthy for your brain, body, and friendships.’
🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢⭕⭕⭕⭕⭕⭕ What is this?
We’re in the last month of 2023 — no, really, here we are. At times it’s all been a bit much, hasn’t it, this 2023 what we’ve done here?
But the times when it hasn’t felt all a bit much are represented by those 94 little green circle emojis; these are the days when I have put myself outside in nature for a neat slab of what I call adventure.
I’ve been counting my Days of Adventure every year since 2021 and this year I’ve been a little stricter on what counts, with a greater emphasis on time spent in nature, rather than simply adventuring.
I’m lucky that my whole summer was spent travelling, from Glasgow to Athens and back, but simply being elsewhere doesn’t necessarily give me what I’m looking for in an adventure.
What I’m looking for is restoration: a place of balance, connection and purpose.
At last week’s Adventure Mind conference, academic Susan Houge Mackenzie drew our attention to two species of ‘happiness’: hedonic and eudaimonic.
Hedonic wellbeing is characterised by the dopamine buzz of achievement. It’s all about what you’ve done: you climbed that mountain, cycled those miles, swam that ocean. And, once you’ve done that, it’s all about what’s next — higher, further, tougher.
The adventure industry, led by elite adventurers and their awe-inspiring stories and images, is OBSESSED with hedonic wellbeing. But, actually, chasing the dopamine dragon gets quite boring after a while. Boring or flat-out unsustainable physically, emotionally and existentially.
Eudaimonic wellbeing, on the other hand, is all about the human search for The Good Life. Eudaimonic adventure is not about what you’ve done; it’s about why you (really) did it. Who are you? What are your values? What does adventure mean to you?
Eudaimonic adventure is where we find restoration and the good news is that it works, and will continue to work, in small doses. Eudaimonic adventure can be found in the little wood round the corner from your house; a place where you could sit on a log for ten minutes during your lunch break.
That little wood (or riverbank, heathland or field hedgerow) isn’t striving with you for higher, further or tougher. The wood is not doing; the wood is being.
When we step away from the straight-edges of modernity and enter the magic circle of organic growth, our doing becomes being too and, here, under the leafy canopy with the beetles and the fungi, we can restore our sense of ourselves, our values and our intentions, in symbiotic relation to everything else.
As naturalist John Muir wrote, ‘Between every two pine trees there is a door leading to a new way of life.’
That might sound ambitious, but I don’t think he’d mind a wee edit: ‘Between every two pine trees there is a door leading to a new way of lunch.’
I know the world is in need of deep systemic change in so many ways, but small wins can help. Join the revolution and sign the petition that I personally have been waiting for since about 2007 — ‘Reduce the number of news bulletins on BBC 6 Music’. Thank you.
Exposure to natural light in the mornings is meant to be really great for, like, health and stuff. But, as someone who still hasn’t adjusted to the clocks going back, maybe I’m one of the 10 percent of people who get more out of exposure to natural light at dusk? I never knew that might be a thing until I heard this podcast with Achim Kramer, the head of chronobiology at Charité–Universitätsmedizin Berlin, and Russell Foster, a professor of sleep and circadian neuroscience at the University of Oxford. Related tip: don’t use your alarm clock to force yourself awake, but as a signal that you have had enough sleep. (Thanks C 👋)
I’m excited about this Nature Therapy Conference in April 2024. I would be much more excited if I could actually go… But you should!
Derwent Reservoir, Peak District National Park (Credit C)
On Monday and Tuesday, I was at a conference for mountain guides, bushcrafters, ocean riders, forest bathers, vagabonds, doctors, psychologists, neuroscientists and therapists of all stripes.
The theme of Adventure Mind 2023 was ‘small adventures, big impact’ and that tagline would also nicely sum up the two days I spent listening, learning and throwing myself off a small platform precariously balanced on top of a telegraph pole.
(That last one was a Leap of Faith workshop run by psychologist Dave Gallagher to demonstrate how we can use our breath to regulate wobbly emotions while climbing a wobbly pole.)
Adventure means something different to everyone, but there are a few design elements that are common to most:
Novelty: even if it’s simply the recognition that our physical and emotional experience is renewed in the flux of every moment.
Challenge: even if the challenge is simply getting out of the house, out of bed or out of our heads.
Nature: even if nature is simply the weeds that grow in the cracks between the concrete slabs of our local skate park.
Similarly, there are some emotions, brain states and psychological responses that are common to most adventures:
Competence when an adventure is successfully carried through.
Connection to the natural environment and to our adventure buddies.
Resilience developed by facing challenge and adversity.
Mental flexibility and problem solving under stress.
Flow, being in the zone.
Beneficence: helping others get through tough times.
These things are all really sodding important to human life, even — or especially — modern human life, so often mediated by screens and radiator thermostats.
Sure, there are other human activities that promote these things, but adventure gets there faster and in a way that we don’t usually forget. There are no better training courses for life than going on an adventure — whatever that means for you.
Perhaps the most powerful feeling that I took away from the conference was the feeling of strength from being with hundreds of others who also know that the role of adventure is overlooked and undervalued in our society.
In the words of Belinda Kirk, adventure is not frivolous but essential; adventure is not only for elites but for everyone; adventure is our human nature, our wellbeing.
We need to start valuing adventure, not as a ‘nice to have’, but as a life-support system for our bodies, brains and personal development, for our friendships, families and communities, for the global village, our lived environment and the whole planet.
Abbey Brook, Peak District National Park
I’ve been inordinately lucky to spend this past week in some beautiful places with some beautiful people. Much love to C (👋), P, C, B & A, G (👋), E (👋), H (👋), J (👋), S and the rest. Special thanks to the Peak District, Northumberland National Park and the Cumbraes.
We woke up to sunrise on the first day of advent, singing Mariah Carey and Shakin’ Stevens while surrounded by four dancing, racing dolphins.
Impossibly enormous thanks to Somerled and her skipper Scott from Yachting Scotland for making this happen.
The west coast is a playground/sea for hikers, climbers, beachcombers, bikers, spotters and sailors alike. Somerled (and Scott) are available for adventure sailing charters and expeditions all year round. And you don’t need to know your beam-reach from your close-haul, #dolphinsguaranteed.
And greetings from La Piazza cafe on Brightside Lane in Sheffield. This week, I’m sharing the story of Lis van Lynden.
In 2022, with her fiftieth birthday on the horizon, Lis set off to cycle around the whole coast of Britain and Ireland, raising funds and awareness for people — like her — who are living with multiple sclerosis.
This is her story, but it’s less a story of cycling around Britain and Ireland and more a story of the twists and turns that bring a person through the depths of tragedy to the threshold of a marvellous adventure.
So don’t expect lengthy discussions about bottom brackets and twist shifters (phew). Instead, this is a story for everyone who has ever sat on their dreams for too long.
As Lis says:
It’s tricky when you have a lot of people die and you think you’re going to die yourself. You do go inwards, no matter how hard you try, but don’t put your life on hold — ever.
‘What the hell have I been doing for the last twenty years?’
I’ve never seen rain like it. It had been rain, rain, rain, rain for the last six days — wet tent every night. I mean, it was depressing.
Lis van Lynden needed a break. She was as far from her Chiswick home as she could be while still on the island of Britain.
She couldn’t afford a hotel or a bed and breakfast, so Lis rolled into a waterlogged campsite on the northwest coast of Scotland, with stormy views of the isles of Raasay and Skye on the horizon and Britain’s greatest road climb, the infamous Bealach na Bà, at her back.
The Applecross peninsula might have been ‘one of the most beautiful areas of the entire trip’ — but gorgeous landscapes don’t keep down hypothermia.
Desperate for something more protective than her sodden canvas, Lis spotted an empty glamping pod and offered the campsite owners a tenner — all the cash she had. After a little humming and hawing, they accepted the offer and Lis moved into her humble abode.
Good thing too: there was a colossal rainstorm all night.
Miraculously, the next day was forecast clear and Lis was keen to get moving. She popped to the campsite reception to say a huge thank you — and noticed outside a fully-laden touring bike, fitted with a numberplate that read ‘Yello Velo’.
In disbelief, they leapt into a gigantic hug and gabbled fast-swapping stories of their adventures, riding that ‘pure joy’ rush of finding your exact kind of person.
Round Britain cyclists Alice Baddeley (left) and Lis van Lynden (right)
‘It’s extraordinary,’ Lis says. ‘Alice was going clockwise, I was going anti clockwise, and we were both leaving almost at the same time. We would have missed each other within moments.’
Two women out there doing what they love, meeting the world.
At the age of fifty, Lis has truly rediscovered her life’s purpose and her love of adventure, a love that was suppressed for twenty years by grief.
~
Lis grew up an adventurer, spending summers sailing in the Mediterranean, and, in the winter, skiing in the Alps with her parents and two brothers.
In 1993, when she was twenty-one, Lis trekked up Mount Kilimanjaro with Alan Hinkes, the first British mountaineer to climb all fourteen Himalayan mountains above 8,000m.
Totally inspired, the next year Lis signed up for a mountaineering expedition with the aim of reaching the summit of Mont Blanc, Europe’s highest peak.
It had been snowing heavily for the past couple of weeks and, with Mont Blanc itself shrouded in mist, the expedition team reluctantly shifted their goal to a slightly lower summit in the Mont Blanc Massif: Gran Paradiso.
But only halfway up the mountain, Lis was exhausted, utterly drained from the constant effort, sinking into the snow, one thigh-deep step after another. She didn’t realise at the time, but she was already suffering from the ‘unreal’ exhaustion caused by her undiagnosed multiple sclerosis.
That day ended with the expedition leader yelling at Lis and taking her back down the mountain, still hours from the summit, to the refuge hut where the team were staying.
Lis was emotional, angry and embarrassed, yet, at midnight, drawing on unimaginable reserves of determination, Lis found the strength to go again and convinced one of the guides to give her another chance.
This time, with the snow lit up by starlight and the sun rising over the summit, Lis made it to the top of Europe.
‘It blew my mind,’ she remembers, and, at twenty-two years old, Lis dedicated herself to a life of adventure.
Life had other plans.
~
In October 1991, two years before Lis’s summit of Gran Paradiso, her seventeen-year-old younger brother and his friend had died, presumed drowned, after their dinghy got into difficulties on Loch Fyne. Exactly one year later, in October 1992, her father died of stomach cancer aged just forty-six.
The van Lynden family was deep in grief. When Lis arrived back home from the Alps, she was surging with young lust for life, for exploration, discovery and adventure. It was too much for her twice-bereaved mother, who begged Lis: ‘Please, please don’t do any more mountaineering. I can’t lose anybody else. I just can’t cope with that.’
So Lis got a job as a primary school teacher and channelled her love for adventure into running an after school club for young explorers.
Over the next two decades, Lis worked at the school, fell in love, moved in with her partner, got married and, although she never had kids, the couple did buy a house together, which is almost the same thing.
After Gran Paradiso, Lis never went mountaineering again and, although she still went on the occasional more grounded expedition until her thirties, the unprocessed grief of losing her father and one of her brothers as a young woman meant her dream of living a life of adventure faded into the background.
Then, at two a.m. one cold night in March 2013, Lis was startled awake by a shooting pain down her right arm. Taking care not to wake her wife, she took a hot shower.
Then she realised: ‘Shit, I can’t feel the whole right side of my body.’
~
In January 2005, Lis’s fifty-eight-year-old mother had died of lung cancer. Now, only eight years later, Lis assumed the worst: a decade of smoking had caught up with her. Like mother, like daughter.
Lis went straight to her GP, who recommended an emergency MRI scan. They thought she’d had a stroke.
The MRI results came back showing a cerebrospinal fluid leak. In July 2013, a specialist confirmed her diagnosis: Lis had multiple sclerosis. She was forty-one.
Multiple sclerosis can be a frightening diagnosis: an overactive immune system mistakenly attacks the coating that protects the nerves, damaging the connection between brain and spinal cord, and causing a wide range of symptoms, including, in Lis’s case, tingling, pain and numbness down the right side of her body.
There is no cure, only pain management with medication, and quality of life interventions like meditation and, most importantly for Lis, movement.
MS is something you live with — or don’t. Lis’s wife chose the latter.
‘My marriage was not a great one,’ Lis says. ‘My wife wasn’t really supportive. She told me, “You’re gonna be in a wheelchair and I’m just not cut out to be your lifetime carer.”’
All Lis needed was for someone to put an arm around her and tell her that they’d work it out together, as a team. She never got that. The divorce came through in 2018.
You see: adventure runs deep in her family, deeper than any diagnosis. Lis could only resist the call for so long.
‘That experience in Svalbard opened everything up,’ Lis says. ‘It got me back to my adventuring days, back to when I was twenty. And I suddenly thought: What the hell have I been doing for the last twenty years?’
~
Until September 2019, Lis was not a cyclist. She knew how to ride a bike and she did technically speaking own one, rusting away in a corner of her garden. But Lis had lived in central London for three decades and, frankly, she thought cycling in the city was ‘so bloody dangerous’.
Everything changed one fateful day in September 2019: Lis was running late for a travel event at the Corinthian Hotel. Instead of messaging to say she’d be late, Lis wondered to herself: ‘If I cycle really fast, could I get there before the Tube? Let’s try it!’
There are over 130,000 people living with MS in the UK. You might be more likely to associate the disease with wheelchairs than with bicycles, but Lis is one of thousands whose lower body mobility is good enough that cycling gives her ‘absolutely no pain whatsoever’.
In fact, Lis was about to discover that cycling could change her life forever.
She arrived at the hotel drenched in sweat, five minutes early, having cycled faster than she ever thought she could. Someone pointed out: ‘Oh, you’re the only cyclist here!’ Instead of confessing that it was her first time cycling to work, Lis smartly replied: ‘Well, we need to change that — we should all be cycling!’
And, from that moment, she was.
In early 2020, Lis read One Man And His Bike, Mike Carter’s tale of cycling around Britain. Then she read it again, cover to cover, totally entranced.
‘At the end of that second reading, I suddenly thought that maybe this is my adventure,’ Lis remembers. ‘I never have one hundred percent conviction that I can do something, but I had it then. I knew that I could do it.’
With her brother egging her on, Lis planned her adventure: she would cycle around Britain that very summer. That very Covid summer of 2020. Just like Alice Baddeley, Lis found herself postponing the trip, but the delay only served to cement her determination.
That autumn, Lis started following the adventures of Vedangi Kulkani, the youngest woman to cycle around the world. As it happened, Vedangi was running a competition to win a bunch of cycle touring goodies, including a blueprint on how to plan an expedition and a year’s subscription to Komoot, a tour mapping app.
Much to her surprise, Lis won. Reading Mike Carter’s book, winning Vedangi Kulkani’s competition — these were all signs to Lis that she was on the right path.
The final push was attending the Covid-struck online edition of the Kendal Mountain Film Festival and watching a film called Gitonga, about a man pursuing his dream to become the first Kenyan to climb Mount Everest.
A conversation with Gitonga producer Joe Bunyan underlined the importance of listening to the nagging voice in her head: it would never shut up, not her whole life, not until she finally got on her bike.
‘I have to pursue this,’ Lis told herself. ‘I have to do this cycle adventure, even though I’m shitting myself with fear.’
Finally something like normality descended on the country: 2022 would be her year. All she had to do was rent out her Chiswick flat for a year — how hard could that be?
Extremely.
~
The first estate agent got cold feet (literally?) when a leak sprang up in the corner of the living room. Without the ready cash to fix the leak, Lis simply found a new estate agent, who soon phoned back with good news:
ESTATE AGENT: Lis, you’ve got a contract!
LIS: Fantastic!
EA: The thing is, it’s not for one year.
L: What do you mean it’s not for one year?
EA: Well, erm, it’s for three years.
L: Three years?! What am I going to do for three years?
EA: Well, you know how you’re cycling around the coast of Britain — couldn’t you just do another trip?
L: No, absolutely not. Sorry, I’m not being dictated to go and do it for three years. Absolutely not. That’s lovely for you because you’ve now got three years’ worth of monthly rental income. What about me? You know, where’s my home?
EA: …
L: Look, I tell you what, give me twenty-four hours and I’ll come back to you.
That night, Lis thought long and hard about the offer, turning over the different scenarios in her mind, balancing the allure of the adventure of a lifetime against the instability of three years of placelessness.
Should she stay or should she go?
The next morning Lis phoned her biggest supporter, her brother, to chat through her decision.
‘Sis,’ he said, ‘there’s no point us chatting about this: you’re going to say no anyway.’
‘Well, actually,’ Lis replied, ‘I knew you would tell me to say no, so I rang them up before speaking to you — and I said yes.’
Her brother couldn’t believe what she’d done. Halfway into her three year exile, I think Lis can’t quite believe it either. ‘I still think it was the best decision,’ she says, ‘but it’s quite a hard one, that.’
~
At the beginning of this email, I promised you a story that would bring you from the depths of tragedy to the threshold of a marvellous adventure. With her three-year flat contract signed, sealed, delivered, Lis had not so much stepped over the threshold, but flung herself down an entire flight of stairs.
Not that it means she felt well prepared. Her only training consisted of the odd lap of Richmond Park, without the inconvenient burden of any of the camping, cooking and living kit she’d need for the next unknown months in the saddle.
The night before she left, her brother rang to wish her good luck.
‘He said, “You must be excited; nervous, but really excited,”’ Lis remembers. ‘And I said, “Actually, I’m really pissed off. I cannot fit a single thing into my bags.” That’s how I started: with no knowledge whatsoever — or with just enough knowledge to go.’
And, on the morning of May 7 2022, go she very much did.
Spoiler alert: on Saturday 10 December, after six months of adventure, Lis completed a lap of Britain and arrived back in Chiswick.
Not that everything went to plan, mind.
~
Only an hour after being waved off by a party of friends and well-wishers from The Multiple Sclerosis Society, Lis’s Garmin GPS ran out of battery.
Scrabbling around in her bags for any kind of a charger, Lis realised that she’d left them all on her kitchen table. ‘I really didn’t know what I was doing,’ she says, ‘not at all.’
While she was wondering what to do without her route maps, Lis noticed a man standing by the side of the road, smiling at her. Lis struck up a conversation and found out that, by chance, he was there to pick up his daughter, who’d been at the farewell party for an amazing woman who — would you believe it — was going to cycle around the whole coast of Britain.
Slyly, Lis asked him, ‘And how amazing was this woman, exactly?’ The man looked confused and then laughed: ‘Wait, it’s you, isn’t it!’
After she’d explained her current predicament with the out-of-battery GPS, the man offered Lis his own charger, right there and then. Being a well-trained, self-sufficient Londoner, Lis couldn’t possibly accept, but the man insisted. Lis was bowled over.
One of the first things that struck me about Lis when I asked her about cycling around Britain was that she immediately said, ‘There are so many people I need to thank.’
Before she left, Lis knew that she was going to meet lots of generous and supportive people on her journey — ‘Mike Carter bangs on about it at length,’ she says — but she could never imagine exactly how (or even why) they would help her. And she certainly never dreamt she’d get such above-and-beyond support so soon into her journey.
Since time immemorial, the people of Greece have lived by a moral code of philoxenia: generosity towards strangers, guests, gods, gods in disguise, foreigners, travellers and friends of friends of cousins of friends.
I’ve written before about my own experiences of philoxenia while touring (here and here and here) and, as Lis quickly discovered, it’s while moving through this land that we so often encounter the best of the British people and our shared human capacity for the kindness of strangers towards strangers.
A ‘solo’ and ‘unsupported’ ride around Britain is anything but.
‘The whole trip was all about people,’ Lis says. ‘If there were no people, I would have struggled. It’s the people I met that made it so interesting.’
Like that time when a dog peed on Lis’s tent and the dog’s owner was so mortified that he not only cleaned up, but made Lis a bacon sandwich for breakfast.
Or that time when Lis was offered a cup of tea by a couple in Wick and, before she could say ‘two sugars’, found herself and her Multiple Sclerosis Society fundraiser splashed all over the local news.
The same couple stayed in touch with Lis and, a couple of months later, on her fiftieth birthday, she got a message from them: ‘We’ve paid for you to stay in a hotel for the night. Happy birthday!’
But that was thousands of miles into the ride, full of confidence, with the sun on her face and wind at her back. On her first day, leaving London, Lis did sixty-eight miles, along the same route that Mike Carter took.
Her summary? ‘It was hell — it nearly killed me.’
~
Day one was something of a wake-up call for Lis: sixty-eight miles fully loaded without much training is a huge distance. Especially crawling through the sprawl of East London.
Within a week of departure, Lis ripped up her carefully prepared blueprint of the ride and her plan to cycle at least fifty miles a day. In fairness, the blueprint had done its job: it’d got her out the door. But now she was on the bike, Lis re-committed herself to enjoying the adventure and that meant doing whatever she felt like.
‘I could take three years to get around the coast of Great Britain!’ she says. ‘So why am I counting the miles?’
The first few days and weeks of any long bike tour, especially your first one, represent a steep learning-about-yourself curve. Lis made three radical adjustments: she stopped counting miles (‘I totally relaxed; it was the most amazing feeling’); she started wild camping (‘that’s when I truly loved it’) and she threw away her multiple sclerosis medication.
~
In June 2022, a month or so into the ride, Lis chucked her boxes of medication into the bin. Nearly eighteen months later, she’s still off the meds.
I’m going to put the next paragraph in bold type to emphasise how important the following caveat is to Lis:
Although she says that coming off medication has ‘done me the world of good’, Lis is very clear that she is not a medical miracle and she would not recommend that anyone, particularly those recently diagnosed, stop taking their pills.
‘I’m not an advocate for getting off your medications,’ Lis says. ‘Medication made me feel so much better: they kept everything really stable. I’ve lived with MS for 10 years and I know what it feels like when I have a relapse. I absolutely wouldn’t hesitate to go back on them.’
So what happened in June 2022 to trigger such a radical change?
MS medication is powerful stuff and Lis had a pretty strict schedule, taking one pill in the morning and one pill in the evening. Missing doses could be hard on a body and mind accustomed to regular pharmaceutical support. The problem was that bike touring doesn’t play nicely with strict schedules.
After accidentally skipping five days, Lis decided she was better off either all-in or all-out. She took a risk and threw her meds away. She was ‘dumbfounded’ by what happened next.
‘I realised that the pills had been blunting a lot of sensation around my body,’ she says. ‘When I came off the pills, I was dumbfounded to feel sensation coming back in different parts of my body.’
Another bold paragraph:
This is not the story of an inspirational maverick thumbing her nose at conventional medicine. ‘I’m still being monitored,’ Lis says. ‘I have a yearly MRI scan, with online meetings with a neurologist, and I can always go back on medication if needed.’
It is a story of a woman getting into her body and looking after herself. ‘Before the bike ride, I didn’t listen to my body,’ Lis says. ‘Nobody knows what will happen, but I feel strongly that if I carry on with the cycling, I’ll be fine.’
Lis comes from a ‘very stiff upper lip’ family that didn’t talk openly about their grief. That silence and suppression might have cost Lis her health. She now draws a direct correlation between her family tragedies and, decades later, her burnout and subsequent illness.
Getting back into her body by cycling really bloody far has not only transformed Lis’s health and helped her rediscover her life’s purpose, but the ride has also helped her process her grief.
~
About twelve miles short of John O’Groats and the northernmost tip of Britain, Lis found herself getting ‘quite emotional’ about cycling almost the whole way up the east coast, a journey of a thousand miles or more.
Here she was: living the life of adventure of which she’d always dreamed. Finally.
‘I suddenly felt this big warm hand on my back,’ Lis says, ‘almost telling me, “It’s okay, you’re gonna be fine.” I actually turned around and looked back to see if there was anyone there.’
There wasn’t, of course. But her mind instantly went to her younger brother, father and mother.
‘They were all very young when they died and I suddenly thought, gosh, all three of them are with me — they have to be because that’s the strangest sensation I’ve ever had.’
Her whole family, this big warm hand, were reunited, cheering her on, celebrating her return: her return to adventure, her return to joy.
The final word is with Lis:
‘It’s tricky when you have a lot of people die and you think you’re going to die yourself,’ Lis says. ‘You do go inwards, no matter how hard you try, but find little things to keep you moving forward.’
‘If you get diagnosed with something like MS, grab anything you can to move yourself forward rather than standing still. Find out how you want to live and how you want to spend your days. Why not be happy?
‘If you’ve got a really big idea in your head, yes, it will scare you. It will scare the living daylights out of you and maybe you’ll not do it for some time because it scares you so much.
‘But if you’re still dreaming about it three months down the line, for God’s sake, get to the start line. Conquer your fear because, actually, you’re always going to have that fear.
‘Don’t put your life on hold — ever.’
~
Huge thanks to Lis for taking the time to tell me her story over two fascinating phone interviews. This is, of course, only a small part of the tale: Lis is writing a book and I can’t wait to read it.
And greetings from an armchair overlooking the ink black sea, where I’m listening (as I almost always do) to Le Pas du Chat Noir, an album of delicately thoughtful music written and performed by Tunisian ‘oud player Anouar Brahem, accompanied by piano and accordion.
According to my music player of choice, I’ve spent over 200 hours listening to this album since 2017, almost always while writing. Shout out to T (👋) for first sharing Le Pas du Chat Noir with me, way way back in 2007.
Isn’t music amazing, how it stays with us?
This post is a little different: a reprint (and minor update) of a story I wrote in 2016 about a guided psychedelic experience I took in Amsterdam that year.
I want to share this with you — for most of you I’m sure for the first time — because, like the music, this psychedelic experience has stayed with me through life. Earlier today, in fact, I brought one of my 2016 hallucinations as a starting point for a particularly insightful and moving session with my therapist.
I hope you enjoy the story. I’d love to hear from you: your experiences, your insights. It’s powerful stuff, this.
Are You Experienced?
Imagine the scene. You’re on holiday with a big group of people you don’t know too well. The twelve of you hired a huge house in the countryside, sharing rooms to split the cost. You’ve been sunbathing on cushions in the garden, enjoying the sights, sounds and smells of summer, drifting away in a meditation on beauty.
At some point, somebody brought you a glass of water and a hummus, avocado, spinach and tomato sandwich on continental dark bread. You weren’t too hungry at the time, so only ate half the sandwich, leaving the remainder on the plate to dry in the hot sun. You drained the glass of water, grateful because you’d left your water bottle upstairs.
An hour or so later, you decide to return to the attic bedroom you share, for a lie down in the shade. As you poke your head through the attic trapdoor, you see the following, in series: a collection of cushions arranged around the sun-trap window overlooking the garden you’ve just left; a plate bearing a half finished hummus, avocado, spinach and tomato sandwich on continental dark bread; and a half full bottle of water – your bottle of water.
You can’t help but be overtaken by the odd sensation that you’ve just entered a scene you only recently vacated: the same meditative garden view, the same sandwich, and your bottle of water.
Life is full of leaping gaps. In this case, the leap is across the gap between the evidence before your eyes and the indisputable knowledge that you did not in fact recently vacate this room. So you make a leap and reconstruct the most likely story.
The cushions were most probably arranged there by your room-mate who, just like you, wanted to look out over the beautiful summer garden. Just like you, he became thirsty in the hot sun and, not wanting to leave his meditative perch, cast around for water. Then he saw your water bottle. You imagine him in that moment, twisted in his sitting position, caught in a deliberation: would you mind his drinking from your bottle? No, he decides: you’d understand.
You’re surprised, as you stand there in the trapdoor taking in the scene, that you’re grateful to your room-mate. You’re grateful that your water bottle could be there for him in his moment of thirst and that you could share with him the fundamental gift of water. But most of all you’re grateful that, despite only meeting the evening before, he showed faith in your generosity of spirit.
You walk up the last remaining steps and lie down on the bed, still looking at the scene: the arrangement of cushions, the sandwich and the water. A peace descends and you find yourself switching easily between the two perspectives on the scene. There’s yourself, unwittingly generous giver of water, and your room-mate, grateful receiver of water. Then it strikes you that both of you have been generous, for there is no gift without gracious acceptance. That’s why we ‘give’ thanks, you think to yourself: gratitude is itself a gift.
But you realise that there is a third perspective. Just as they had with you in the garden, someone, presumably the same someone, had thoughtfully prepared and delivered to your meditative room-mate an identical hummus, avocado, spinach and tomato sandwich on continental dark bread.
As your heart begins to beat in a revelation of loving connectedness, you feel an urge to complete this circle of gratitude. Your clamorous stomach awakes and you get to your feet, walk to the cushions and fall upon the half-finished sandwich in glorious appreciation. The gift is completely consumed and the third perspective, the selfless sandwich maker, acknowledged in full.
The closing image of this scene is of you gratefully polishing off someone else’s sandwich. It’s an act infused with symbolism and indicates that, perhaps for the first time in your life, you fully comprehend exactly how much love goes into leaping the gaps that separate us as independent human beings. Next time, you promise the universe, you will be the one making the sandwich.
***
For me, the preceding scene sums up the enduring psychedelic experience, far more than tessellating visions of geometry, wise faces in wind-blown trees and melting roundabout rides. The psychedelic experience was one of connectedness, a dissolution of the narrative voice that we hear in our heads that seeks to separate our shared encounters with this world, to divide the I from the Us, the Mine from the Ours.
***
Psychedelics are illegal in the UK, and throughout most of the world.1 Psychedelic mushrooms are Class A drugs, a classification reserved for pharmaceuticals deemed to be of no known medical or therapeutic value and bearing a high risk of abuse. The crime of possession carries a maximum sentence of seven years in prison. The 2016 Psychoactive Substances Act extends that threat to cover the possession of anything that ‘affects the person’s mental functioning or emotional state’. In its current form, the Act could be used to outlaw incense, perfume and flowers. Alcohol, caffeine and tobacco are exempted, while our prisons prepare for a vast influx of florists.
What we need are not more fear-provoked and fear-provoking legal bans, but mature, informed encounters with drugs, therapies and medicines that have such potential to create profound, mystical-type experiences of the world. Encounters such as the one extended to me by The Psychedelic Society: one timeless weekend in a rented house in Amsterdam.
***
We stood in a circle in the garden, sun shining on our faces, feet bare in the grass. Nine of us were there for the ‘experience’ and for most it was to be our first psychedelic trip. Guiding us through the encounter were three experienced sitters from The Psychedelic Society. Their job was to stay sober and use their wisdom and love to support us through whatever might arise: hunger, thirst, trauma and ecstasy.
In turn around the circle, each of us shared our emotions, fears and intentions for the trip. Some expressed nervous anxiety, others were thrilling with anticipation. I felt ready to accept whatever was to come with an open mind. Not too open, though. I was keen to explore the sensations of ego-dissolution that I had read about, but I was not prepared to go deep into trauma therapy and I wanted to trip alone, feeling my own way through the experience.
Besides the dose, there are two important factors in determining your variety of psychedelic trip: set and setting. Set is what we shared in that circle: our internal psychological environment prior to the trip. Setting is the external physical environment you will be tripping in.
The house where we stayed felt like a four-storey mansion squeezed into a cosy bungalow, sitting in pleasant grounds by the side of a canal in a commuter satellite of Amsterdam. It had been chosen for its comfort and the double-height downstairs living area was scattered with sofas, armchairs, pillows and cushions. Off to one side was a Japanese style dining chamber, to the other a jacuzzi. The hosts were clearly used to having tourists coming here to take advantage of the psychedelic loopholes for which Amsterdam is famous.
After a sage blessing, we enter the house in thoughtful silence and, one by one, brew a lemon, ginger and honey tea. When the water has cooled, we add 22g of strong Psilocybe Hollandia truffles. This will contain enough psilocybin to trip, but the exact quantity isn’t verifiable. The Dutch legal loophole that permits the sale of truffles doesn’t extend to extracting the psychoactive psilocybin compound, so we can’t dose precisely. Some of the more experienced, or adventurous, members of the group also take a capsule of Syrian Rue, an enzyme inhibitor that prevents the breakdown of tryptamines, including the psilocin that makes us trip, thereby deepening and extending the experience.
I drain the first infusion. Some people experience stomach cramps: that’s why we make the tea with ginger. I feel the first tinglings of a high, but it’s no more than a strong cup of coffee.2 I prepare a second infusion. I try to suppress my laughter, like I’m in a library, watching a bunch of strangers trying to keep it together, while everything dissolves around us. As my vision begins to fragment and my fingers lose their precision, I dig the truffle fragments from the bottom of my glass and chew them down. Then I lie back.
The first indication that anything might be amiss is when I see how the wind in the trees becomes a woodsman with a moustache talking to me through the window. I can’t hear his words, and it’s no more remarkable than an optical illusion or imagining the man in the moon. I’m still able to switch between reality and dream. It feels as though my blood is flowing engorged through my veins, somehow closer to the skin surface that usual. My heart seems to centre itself in my throat while a dull ache ties itself into my stomach. At precisely the right moment, I stand up and make my way into the garden, just about holding it together. I lie down in the grass, put on my eye mask and immediately disintegrate.
***
My upbringing was most definitely drug-negative. I went to a school where ‘drugs’ were for drop-outs, all illegal pharmaceuticals trawled and dumped in the same drag-net of mystery and fear. I never knew for sure whether my friends and family had taken psychedelics, and I had certainly never been in a situation where I could have taken any — and I’m fairly certain I would have refused if I had been offered.
Fear began to mutate into curiosity when, in my thirties, I first met people who were both well-adjusted and regular psychedelic users. Indeed, these people weren’t just well-adjusted, they were in many ways better-adjusted than I. Through them, I learnt that behind the fearful media image of psychedelics there was both science and history, which could, if we allowed, contribute to a much more mature and complete awareness of psychoactive compounds. Psychedelics have been used as both medicine and spiritual guide by humans for thousands of years and to dismiss such compounds as of ‘no known medical or therapeutic value and bearing a high risk of abuse’ seems to me at best an act of gross arrogance, at worst gross negligence.
After the hysteria of the 1971 global shut-down on scientific psychedelic experimentation, the doors are once again creeping open. Recent academic studies have found that responsible psychedelic treatment can help war veterans recover from post-traumatic stress disorder, patients with advanced cancer diagnoses face death, and addicts overcome their drug, tobacco and alcohol dependencies in cases where years of conventional treatment have failed.3
For those of us mercifully free of serious addiction or severe trauma, Roland Griffiths at Johns Hopkins University led a 2008 study into the power of psychedelics to occasion mystical-type experiences. More than half of the 36 people involved in the study, none of whom had ever taken psychedelics before, found that just one session with psilocybin was enough to rank inside their top five most personally meaningful experiences of their entire lives. This remained true fourteen months after the psychedelic was taken. Almost two-thirds concluded that this one psilocybin session had increased their sense of well-being moderately or very much, again with the results undimmed over a year later.
In 2008 I was diagnosed with an under active thyroid and my doctor told me that I’d have to take synthetic hormones every day for the rest of my life. Over the first few months of taking these drugs, what I’d call my personality changed dramatically. I went from being comatose calm, cold even beside the radiator, sleepy-headed and slothful, to being energetic, carefree and ready to devour the life that had gone missing with my dying thyroid.
As the absurdity of our gaoled florists shows, all substances have psychoactive effects: everyone buzzes after strawberries and cream, and crashes with the sugar come-down. The only question is whether the balance of psychoactive effects make the drug valuable to the user. Thyroxine, for me, unequivocally answers the question in the positive; but if you, dear reader, took my dose, you’d probably shit yourself (and lose your hair and your sex drive, have trouble sleeping and climbing stairs, besides the heart palpitations and arrhythmias, nausea and vomiting).
In 2015, I became a vegetarian. My energy levels dropped through the floor: I just couldn’t eat enough. On day five I felt on the verge of dizzy collapse and had to roam the streets at night begging for vitamin pills. I gradually recovered, but over the following six months I lost four kilograms in weight. This caused a knock-on effect to my medication, flipping my thyroid into over activity. This imbalance led to anxiety, irritability, sensitivity to heat, fatigue and insomnia.
Whether we are aware or not, our biological and psychological well-being is in lock-step with all the stuff we ingest: food, drug, drink. The unnatural dichotomy between legal and illegal drugs is a distinction that I see as increasingly arbitrary and untenable. In my opinion, it would be shocking negligence indeed to dismiss the exploration of entheogens that human beings have used for millennia to explore the buried riches of our psyche and the furthest dimensions of the universe.
***
Don’t Panic. There is no established scientific link between taking psychedelic drugs and either physical or psychological health problems. Psychedelics are extremely low in toxicity: it is far easier to overdose on paracetamol, which is deadly in quantities you can pick up in any supermarket. According to the Drug Policy Alliance, there has never been a recorded overdose of psychedelics and, in a comprehensive review of the literature in 1984, psychiatrist Rick Strassman found that “well controlled studies of neuropsychological function have generally failed to discern significant differences between groups of LSD users and controls”.
Two 2015 surveys with a combined population of over 300,000 people found that users of psychedelics were no more likely to suffer from mental health problems than anyone else. Quite the opposite, in fact: one of the surveys, of 190,000 people, found that “[l]ifetime classic psychedelic use was associated with a significantly reduced odds of past month psychological distress”, suicidal thinking and planning, and suicide attempt. One team of researchers conclude that “it is difficult to see how prohibition of psychedelics can be justified as a public health measure.” In other words: if you are a healthy adult, you have nothing to fear from responsible psychedelic drug use.4
***
It would be easy to screw up. We are entering a delicate phase in our cultural appreciation of psychedelics. As the scientific community is finally permitted to resume sober examination of the potentially remarkable therapeutic and personal development uses of psychedelic drugs, there is a responsibility on all of us to educate ourselves and re-awaken a mature awareness of this precious treasure from our more enlightened past. We must remember that it was only in 2008 that the Netherlands made magic mushrooms illegal. The psychedelic truffles we ingested are only legally available in so-called Smart Shops (€25 per trip) because they were (probably by accident) left off the schedule of banned substances. Politicians very rarely lead; they react.
During this delicate phase, the work of organisations like The Psychedelic Society is vital to connect the strengths of the scientific academy with individual experiential knowledge and us. Only when we have taken personal responsibility and shown our courage, knowledge and maturity will politicians be able to find the courage, knowledge and maturity to change the laws we live by. The signs are promising, but — as the enduring 1971 global ban shows — it would be easy to screw up.
***
One of the beauties of the psychedelic experience is that you are entirely lucid throughout: everything you see, feel and do, you can remember and bring back to earth afterwards. That’s what makes psychedelics so useful for therapists treating anxiety, post-traumatic stress, addiction or depression: the patient can face their pathologies in a very physical and experiential way. There is no sense that my visions are unreal or that my thoughts and imaginings are fantasies: I can reach out and touch them and return home with them if I choose.
The first hour or so of my trip is spent rolling around on the grass, watching the light play with kaleidoscopic colours and geometry. I laugh at the absurdity of my internal narrative voice and watch as ‘I’ play whack-a-mole with the different voices of ‘myself’, squashing each one, only for another to arise. ‘Outside of this eternity,’ I write, ‘there is a me to wake up to. And who do I want that to be?’ There’s a lot of underlining in my notebook, as the words land with weight on the page.
At some point, one of the facilitators brings me out a sandwich. ‘Are you hungry?’ the voice says. ‘I’ve made you a sandwich. I’ll leave it here for when you’re ready to eat.’ I thank him distantly. Time and space has lost its meaning. Audio turns to visuals. The sound of a rustling in the shrubbery behind me turns into a family of rabbits, or a squirrel who snuggles to me for warmth. The harder I close my eyes, the more the universe turns purple. Later (whatever that means), I notice the sandwich beside me and eat half, leaving the remainder on the plate to dry in the hot sun. I gulp down the water someone has left for me.
Gripping my notebook like a life-buoy as the world swirls around me, I try writing down some of the realisations that arrive as I overhear other people talking. ‘Everyone’s on their own trip, but we’re all together,’ I note. ‘It’s frustrating because we’re not all as connected as we are.’ Then: ‘We share a memory.’ And: ‘Understanding each other is hard. So just listen.’ It feels like the veil of what we call reality has fallen away: I see that we are a unified, mysterious us — an us that includes each soul in its human body, but also each thread of consciousness in the plants and the planets — and we are all, in every moment, co-creating the universe.
***
After this peak experience of visionary revelation is over, I manage to stand up. I make my way slowly up the stairs to the attic room I share. As I poke my head through the trapdoor, I see the following, in series: a collection of cushions arranged around the sun-trap window overlooking the garden I’ve just left; a plate bearing a half finished hummus, avocado, spinach and tomato sandwich on continental dark bread; and a half full bottle of water — my bottle of water. I can’t help but be overtaken by the odd sensation that I’ve just entered a scene I only recently vacated: the same meditative garden view, the same sandwich, and my bottle of water. Finally, I understand the depth of gratitude we feel towards each other for sharing the bounty of consciousness with all of us.
The weekend ended exactly the way it should: slicing tomatoes, cooking spinach and spreading hummus on bread. Making sandwiches for others.
While still a true statement, it’s worth nothing that, since I wrote this story back in 2016, psychedelics have been legalised, decriminalised or made low priority for criminal conviction in numerous countries around the world, with the USA, Portugal, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK joining the traditional heartlands of psychedelic use in Central and South America and Africa — and, of course, good ol’ Amsterdam.
The following are a selection of studies available at the time I wrote this story in 2016. Much much further research has been done since then, including systematicreviews and meta analyses that find in favour of guided psychedelic use as a safe breakthrough therapy for a variety of psychiatric disorders.
Oehen, Peter, Rafael Traber, Verena Widmer, and Ulrich Schnyder. “A randomized, controlled pilot study of MDMA (±3, 4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine)-assisted psychotherapy for treatment of resistant, chronic Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).” Journal of Psychopharmacology 27, no. 1 (2013): 40-52.
Gasser, Peter, Katharina Kirchner, and Torsten Passie. “LSD-assisted psychotherapy for anxiety associated with a life-threatening disease: A qualitative study of acute and sustained subjective effects.” Journal of Psychopharmacology (2014): 0269881114555249.
Bogenschutz, Michael P., Alyssa A. Forcehimes, Jessica A. Pommy, Claire E. Wilcox, P. C. R. Barbosa, and Rick J. Strassman. “Psilocybin-assisted treatment for alcohol dependence: A proof-of-concept study.” Journal of Psychopharmacology 29, no. 3 (2015): 289-299.
Johnson, Matthew W., Albert Garcia-Romeu, Mary P. Cosimano, and Roland R. Griffiths. “Pilot study of the 5-HT2AR agonist psilocybin in the treatment of tobacco addiction.” Journal of Psychopharmacology (2014): 0269881114548296.
Strassman, Rick J (1984) Adverse Reactions to Psychedelic Drugs: A Review of the Literature The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease Vol. 172, No. 10 October 1984 Serial No. 1223 p591
Hendricks, P. S., Thorne, C. B., Clark, C. B., Coombs, D. W. & Johnson, M. W. Classic psychedelic use is associated with reduced psychological distress and suicidality in the United States adult population Journal of Psychopharmacology March 2015 vol. 29 no. 3 280-288 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0269881114565653
Johansen, P-Ø. & Krebs, T. S. Psychedelics not linked to mental health problems or suicidal behavior: A population study Journal of Psychopharmacology March 2015 vol. 29 no. 3 270-279 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0269881114568039 (2015)
See also: Krebs TS, Johansen P-Ø (2013) Psychedelics and Mental Health: A Population Study. PLoS ONE 8(8): e63972. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0063972
These studies used data from the US National Survey on Drug Use and Health. 130,152 respondents, of whom 21,967 (13.4% weighted) reported lifetime psychedelic use. “[I]n several cases psychedelic use was associated with lower rate of mental health problems”.
Last night, I went to an event put on by the universities of Bournemouth and Southampton called Sharing The Coast: Should We Extend The Right To Roam?
The format was simple: three fifteen minute stories from a legal historian, a community organiser and a marine biologist. They were all provocative tales, but, as the title of this little story might suggest, it was Andrea Jarman, the charismatic legal historian, who blew my mind with the following revelation:
Not even the judges of the supreme court know on what legal basis any of us have any right to go to the beach — any beach.
The confusion began in 2008 when the French owners of Newhaven Port decided to fence off the adjoining beach for that ominous spectre: ‘future development’.
In response, the council and townsfolk of Newhaven tried to get their beach legally recognised as a ‘village green’, which would force the bucket-and-spade hating owners to restore public access.
Despite being very obviously not a village, not green and, in fact, completely underwater half the time, the Court of Appeal averred: West Beach was indeed, in legal terms, a ‘village’ ‘green’.
While deliberating on this case, one of the questions that the judges of the Supreme Court tackled was whether or not cap-doffing members of the public had any right at all to feel the sand between our toes.
As it happens, the wig-wearing hotshots felt that they didn’t actually need come to a final decision on this fundamental question of our access rights to all beaches in order to make a final decision in the particular case of West Beach.
Nevertheless, they did make sure to write down their thinking-in-progress on the topic in a kind of non-binding legal document called an obiter dictum. So that’s nice of them.
According to the finest legal minds in the country, there are three possible answers to the question of whether the riff-raff have a right to build sandcastles. Here they are:
We all have a freestanding right to seashells on the seashore. Yay!
We can all presume that we have permission to get sand in our sandwiches — unless the landowner says NO by means of a sign, fence or mutant sharks. Meh.
We have no right to be there at all. Bathers = trespassers. Yikes.
In a way, I’m mightily glad that the judges didn’t make a firm decision on this. As the Newhaven case shows, the will of the people rarely overcomes the will of the landowner — at least in England Wales.
Access rights extend to beaches and the foreshore. Follow any local guidance aimed at reducing dune or machair erosion or avoiding disturbance of nesting birds. Public rights on the foreshore will continue to exist, including shooting wildfowl, fishing for sea fish, lighting fires, beachcombing, swimming, playing and picnicking.
(Very cute that they specifically include ‘playing’ in that little list.)
We could have that kind of deal in the rest of the UK —
But back to the talk last night — and, as a legal historian, Angela Jarman is an optimist. She’s seen progress unfolding over the centuries and it’s always uneven, a serrated graph of triumph and setback.
It does, however, take a lot of graft to fight power. When there is such an imbalance in financial and property resources as there is in the UK, the people have to use the only thing they have: people.
And that’s the story of the night’s second speaker, Steve Elsworth.
Steve was one of the movers behind a community campaign to restore public access to Castle Cove beach in Weymouth.
A postcard of Castle Cove beach
Castle Cove beach had, since at least 1899, been accessed from the town cliffs via a set of steps. In February 2013, the steps were removed, supposedly due to health and safety concerns, but (in my eyes) suspiciously soon after the beach had been bought at auction.
Imagine the horror of the townsfolk — no, even better, imagine your local beach, park, forest, river, lake suddenly enclosed. Steps are removed, signs go up, a fence is hammered down.
After a period of typical English catatonia — shrug shoulders, shake head, maybe some tutting — a meeting was convened by the local Green Party, where the community was urged into action. No one else will stand up for this. No one else cares.
So they organised.
They started with simple proof: an Ordnance Survey map from 1899 proving the existence of the coastal footpath, including the steps down to the beach. They backed this evidence up with a wonderful collective memory box: a hundred years’ worth of postcards and holiday snaps, showing how the community had enjoyed the beach ‘as of right’.
Holiday snaps like this one, taken of local lad Brian Wilkins in 1938:
Brian Wilkins exercising his rights at Castle Cove in 1938
When documented proof didn’t result in the immediate restitution of the beach steps, the community group started pulling every other lever they could.
Petitions, pamphlets, socials, fundraisers, freedom of information requests, publicity stunts. All of a sudden, The Steps of Castle Cove became a national problem.
Steve’s big tip for building a campaign is simple: communities have families and families have children and children need to be entertained. So make sure your community events are actually FUN and people will show up and get involved.
With this approach, the campaign snowballed (beachballed?) and, three years in, the community group became a charity, The Friends of Castle Cove Beach, so that they could take donations to fund their increasingly determined struggle for access.
Steve originally thought that the campaign would take six months; it took six years.
Eventually the council caved in. The Friends could have their bloody steps back. But they’d have to design them, get planning permission, pay for the builders and then manage the beach.
So that’s what they did.
Finally, on Easter Saturday 2019, the stairs were opened in a grand fancy dress ceremony. Local politicians, now tripping over themselves to bask in the reflected glory, were turned away.
Instead the red ribbon was cut by that very same Brian Wilkins, back on the beach he’d been enjoying since 1938.
Having done his ceremonial duty, Brian went for a swim, which his wife thought a bit silly at his age.
~
If you’re vaguely local to Dorset or Hampshire and have even a passing interest in spending time in nature, then I implore you to go to the second access rights event that Bournemouth and Southampton are putting on: Sharing The Forest: Should We Extend The Right To Roam, next Wednesday 15 November in Lyndhurst, New Forest.
On this remembrance weekend, what I personally wish to remember is that now is not the time for shrugging, shaking and tutting in the face of oppression. Egregious power imbalances, wherever they show up, can be challenged, but only through the strength and support of community. And, as per Steve, a bit of fun doesn’t hurt either.
Alice Baddeley arriving at Camber, the last village in Sussex
It’s 2021 and, in this photo, Alice has just arrived in Camber at the end of a long bike ride around Sussex, her home county.
It wasn’t the bike ride she’d had planned for that summer, but you remember — that wasn’t really the summer for best laid plans, was it?
I was meant to be doing the coastline trip [cycling around the whole coast of Britain], but it was Covid and obviously I had to keep postponing it. And, you know, we had this message of ‘stay local’, stay in Sussex…
So boy did Alice ‘stay local’ — in the most extreme way imaginable:
This is the story of how Alice ended up on a one thousand mile bike ride that passed through every single city, town and village in Sussex. Every. Single. One.
Ridiculous.
Genius.
Even though it was on my doorstep, it was a real adventure. And the great thing about doing things locally is that now, when I’m a bit bored on a weekend, well, I know pretty much every pub in Sussex.
And, thanks to Alice’s obsession with map-making, now you do too.
Clearly, this is a very silly route to cycle. And I’m no stranger to very silly bike routes myself: in that same summer of 2021 Thighs of Steel rode out the words REFUGEES WELCOME in GPS artwork across the entire south of England.
Crucially, however, I did none of the route planning for that ride. I graciously let Georgie take that task. It sounds like a total nightmare.
Not so for Alice:
It did take a long time, but I love route planing so it was sort of like a hobby during the evenings — time that most normal people would spend at the pub.
The west to east zigzags were actually version two of her route: a pattern of north to south rides wouldn’t work because, Alice quickly realised, that would mean cycling up the steep hills of the Sussex Downs over. and over. and over. and over. again.
Instead, by going west to east and east to west across nine switchbacks, each day Alice got to see the same landscapes at different levels: yesterday’s ride followed the contours below her; tomorrow’s ride will follow those above.
It was a bit psychologically exhausting because you go from one end to the other, and then you have to go all the way back again.
Ah, yes. The psychological torture of the arbitrary cycle route!
‘Hey Georgie — why are we going around Dartmoor again?’
For no good reason, Alice made her goal of cycling through every habitation in Sussex twice as hard with the entirely arbitrary rule that she would neither leave her home county, nor cycle down the same road twice.
Why, Alice, why?!
It was like being in a video game
Golf, it has been said, is a good walk spoiled. And it’s spoiled by some very silly rules about tiny balls, long sticks and holes.
But the same thing that spoils a walk for some is considered sport — and even a profession — by others.
Likewise, cycling means many different things to all kinds of different people.
Besides a universal love of whooshing downhill, what Alice and I do has little in common with what those folk on the Tour de France and Tour de France Femmes do.
And I love how Alice is bringing playfulness back to cycle touring. By introducing silly rules, Alice turns the art or drudge of riding her bike into a challenge and a game.
It was like being in a video game. I find cycling a bit pointless if I don’t have rules — I’m not in it for the pedalling. Physical exercise is a good byproduct, but a lot of people do rides to really punish themselves. Imagine — that’d be hell!
I didn’t realise it was possible to do massive long distances
Alice got into cycle touring back in 2008, when she rode Land’s End to John O’Groats with her friend, er, Alice.
I’m always really interested in what first moves people from Not Doing A Thing to Doing That Exact Thing. In Alice’s case: what inspired her to go from Not Cycling Long Distances to Cycling Long Distances?
What triggered the notion that this would ever be a good idea?
A long time ago I remember overhearing a group of men talking about cycling Land’s End to John O’Groats and I remember at the time thinking, wow, I’d never be able to do that. Like: that’s not something that is possible.
But something in this overheard conversation stuck with her. She shared what she’d heard with Alice 2 and together they started to wonder aloud: ‘Hang on, wait… Maybe we could?’
They pulled out some maps (this was before the whole world had smartphones) and started to break the journey down, day by day, until ‘maybe we could’ morphed into ‘fuck it, let’s try!’
So they did.
(The self-help aficionados among you will have spotted an absolute classic of the genre: Alice and Alice broke down something that felt intimidating and abstract into smaller concrete and achievable pieces. The technique works, people — use it!)
From that first Land’s End-John O’Groats ride, Alice got obsessed, following up with two more ‘end-to-end’ diagonals of Ireland and New Zealand.
I knew that I loved cycling, but I didn’t realise — I think a lot of people still don’t realise — it was possible for a normal cyclist to be able to do these massive long distances.
Actually, once you do it, it does become a bit of an addiction. I felt such a high. The combination of daily exercise and constant adventure is like an actual drug.
But the one place that keeps Alice coming back for more is the place she calls home: Britain.
The more I see, the more I realise that it’s just fantastic
Starting with her Sussex ride in 2021, the past three years have seen Alice take on three massive long British rides that form an impressive body of work.
I think cycling in Britain is so underrated. The more I see of it, the more I realise that it’s… it’s just fantastic. Some people would say they want to do Europe or travel around Asia, but I feel content with this island — and I suppose I’m on a bit of a mission to see all of it. I want to be able to say I’ve done it all.
Round Britain is a ride that we both have in common — although Alice rode 700 miles further because she didn’t do any cheating island hopping AND she did it ‘backwards’, starting instead of finishing with the toughest cycling in the whole world: Devon and Cornwall.
I won’t dwell on our shared love of coasting round Britain because, in a way, those rides make the least interesting stories: impressive, sure, but so dense with experience that it’s hard (for me, anyway) to process and package the whole into a beginning, middle and end.
Tiny Co-op: ‘All pastries gone by mid morning. Most customers are on first name terms with the staff. You can leave your bike unlocked outside.’
Medium Co-op: ‘My favourite type. Well stocked, quick to get around and a choice of humans at tills.’
Too big for its boots Co-op: ‘These stores are so big that you have to manually pause your GPS recorder in case it thinks you are still active. All self service check outs. I often get stuck for ages over an item that confuses the system. Usually a banana.’
So let’s skip her 80-day coastal epic and fast forward through to this summer, when, with very little forethought or planning, Alice rode the full length of the country from south to north — wait for the twist — in as straight a line as possible.
And shockingly hard (at least once she’d chugged through the first few days of commuter land).
From the Midlands to the Borders, central England is dominated by the Pennine Hills: the backbone of Britain, the English Andes. And, when you’re trying to cycle in a dead straight line, there’s no question of following the gentle, but meandering, dales.
No: Alice was cycling the more direct Pennine Bridleway: ancient drovers roads and packhorse trails over grassy gravel and stone setts.
I say ‘cycling’ — there was actually a lot of walking, a bit of a first for Alice and Cindy (her new mountain bike).
It’s opened my eyes to what’s possible by combining hiking and biking. A great invention would be a ‘comfort handle’ that could be clamped to a seat post.
(Note: bike carry handles already exist, including ones like this and this that you can — and I have — make for yourself.)
Alice kind of enjoyed this hike-a-biking — she wasn’t in any rush and didn’t have a rigid schedule, unlike previous tours — but it wasn’t the pedestrianism that was the problem.
The problem was fuel:
It was very remote in stretches. You think you’re just gonna find a shop, but there were times where I didn’t have any food and I was like, ‘Oh god!’
It turns out that the middle of Britain is far less inhabited than its edges — a fact that makes sense when you remember that we are, by and large, a lowland people.
Roughly 85 percent of people on the British mainland live south of the Lake District, Yorkshire Dales, North York Moors and the North Pennines.
North of that famous band of national parks, people tend to be concentrated in the cities — Middlesborough, Newcastle, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee, Inverness Aberdeen — while inland village communities are spread further and further apart, meaning fewer and fewer Tiny Co-ops and fewer and fewer bananas.
Unexpected hunger in the biking area.
The upside of cycling through quieter country? Random encounters with generous strangers, especially those who dole out massive slices of vegetarian lasagna from the back of a colour-coordinated campervan, lime green inside and out.
Ahhh, the joys of cycle touring!
I always have that fear: ‘What if I hate it?’
I’m curious to hear how Alice’s mindset has changed off the back of three consecutive years of epic British cycle touring.
Out of all of the rides, the straight line was probably the most physically challenging, but also the one I was most casual about beforehand. That’s the great thing about pushing your limits: it makes big things seem less daunting.
And big things do feel daunting:
Before all of these trips, I always have that fear: ‘What if I hate it?’ But that never happens. I always love it. More and more, I’m trusting that this is what makes me happy.
And what makes us happy is such an important thing to learn about ourselves.
It is good to acknowledge that doing big things is hard, but equally to remember that we have chosen that path and to know ourselves well enough to trust that, one day, maybe not today, we’ll look back and see how this path guided us all the way to happy.
For me, for many years, the fears of failure, unknown disaster and hating the whole experience would only ease as the finish line came into view and I’d realise that it’s all going to be okay.
Then, before I know it, it’s over.
Nothing good ever ends well
And so here we are: at the end.
Gosh. Endings can be a bit weird, can’t they?
I always have a little bottle of wine or something to celebrate finishing, but I tell myself don’t expect to feel really good because it’s kind of the saddest bit, isn’t it, when it all comes to an end?
There’s this great line I heard earlier in the year that’s been rattling around my head ever since: ‘Nothing good ever ends well’ — and I love it because it sounds so horribly pessimistic, but is in fact wonderful.
The quote starts with the joyous recognition, so easily glossed over, that this Thing that’s happening right now is actually good; and it ends with the Stoic acknowledgement that, in addition, this Good Thing shall soon pass by, as all moments and feelings have passed before.
It reminds me to cherish what I have now.
When Alice finally rolled onto the beach at Oldshoremore, onto the ‘roof of Britain’ after twenty days of hiking and biking, technology and landscape conspired to create ideal conditions for an eminently cherishable ending:
I didn’t have any mobile phone signal, which I think was really good because otherwise there’s a real temptation to get on my phone and start texting people. Instead, I found this lovely spot on the beach to camp and just had a really nice evening.
That’s one thing I will always do at the end of these trips now: have that moment to myself and soak in the atmosphere.
My one big thing is don’t underestimate what you’re capable of.
The worries you have are really normal, but they’re kind of pointless because most things that you worry about don’t happen on the trip. And if they do happen, or if something else happens that you haven’t worried about, there’s always a way to overcome it.
2. Make your own way
Route planning is a real part of the whole trip.
A lot of people think that they have to stick to ‘official’ paths or do a route that’s waymarked. But there’s a real joy in making up your own trips. Often the roads I’ve cycled are not part of a cycle network or named route.
Discovering stuff: that is the joy of touring — and there’s loads of undiscovered turf in Britain so don’t be shy.
3. Don’t underestimate Britain
Don’t always think that you need to go abroad for a big adventure. Don’t underestimate the value of things on your doorstep. Don’t underestimate Britain.
And not every adventure has to be loads of days in a row or wild camping every night — there was one night I stayed at Champneys health spa!
As backpackers or bike tourers, we can be a bit hard on ourselves. We think we have to do everything on the rough. Touring with a bit of luxury is also an option.
And greetings from Okehampton Youth Hostel, where I’ve spent the last ninety minutes on a work Zoom call.
But the six hours before that were spent up on Dartmoor, happily tramping around in the sunshine. Yes: sunshine. Look!
True love on Dartmoor
But all I know is that I felt super grumpy this morning.
State of mind: gloomy
The man with whom I was sharing a hostel room got up three times in the night to empty his bladder — once every two hours, like the shittiest cuckoo clock — each time he’d clump woodenly across the floor in what can only have been vintage Dutch clogs before setting off the scary movie cree-erk-thunk of the snap-close fire door.
Then, exactly three and a half minutes later, like the shittiest runny egg timer, the same cacophany in reverse.
I was then terminally awakened in the lightless pre-dawn by a persistent bleeping alarm — you know the ones: a fridge door that’s been left open, a washing machine that’s reached the end of its cycle, a smoke detector overwhelmed by the nocturnal farts of too many teenagers — that came from somewhere both way too close and not close enough for me to punch repeatedly until it stops.
This delightful morning chorus went on and on and on until the ensuing headache forced me out of bed around seven, the opposite of rested.
I feel, then, not unreasonable in my opinion that, this morning, I did not want to see, speak or share space with any other human being.
In other words, not a good time to find oneself in a popular youth hostel, surrounded by the lowest rung of humanity’s ladder: the loudest jolly good morning people who could ever have summoned the temerity to wantonly occupy what I thought of as very much my kitchen.
‘Can you please not do that here?’ I told a couple peacefully preparing porridge on the stove, before turning to a healthily-dressed, Wheetabix-obsessed family of four: ‘Why don’t you all shut up and sod off until I’ve had breakfast?’
But none of them heard my silent cries.
They all just kept on saying syrupy things like, ‘Good morning!’ and ‘Doesn’t your breakfast look delicious!’ and ‘Do you know where we can get more Wheetabix?’
So I gritted my teeth, kept my head down and did the bare minimum to ready my stomach and rucksack for a day’s hiking on the moor.
It was not going to be a good day, but I didn’t have to enjoy it: I’m here with a job to do.
A fork in the life / railway
Since late 2018, I have been training as an outdoor expedition leader.
The impulse to retrain came from the fact that, as a writer, my work can make me feel boxed in. Writing is an indoor and solitary occupation, but humans have undeniably sociable and outdoorsy brains.
So when I realised that some people actually get paid to mess around in the outdoors all day, I quickly signed up and passed my Lowland Leader award. Despite a false start due to the Covid lockdowns, I have been lucky enough to work in the outdoors ever since.
(Side note: If you even have mild feelings that you might like to do more work outside, then I urge you in the strongest possible terms to get your Lowland Leader award. The barriers to qualification are low and there is currently a shortage of leaders so you will immediately find work paid in money.)
Since I got that Lowland Leader award, I have been working towards assessment on the next rung in the outdoor hierarchy: Hill and Moorland Leader.
This qualification wouldn’t massively change the work that I actually do — I enjoy working in the lowlands of England, which is handy because that’s where most of the opportunities are — but technically becoming a Hill and Moorland Leader would mean I could work in areas like Dartmoor, Brecon Beacons and the Peak District.
This is what Dartmoor looks like (sometimes)
Before I can take my Hill and Moorland Leader assessment, however, I need to log at least forty days hiking in hilly and moorlandy terrain (logically enough).
But there is one problem: I think the Hill and Moorland Leader assessment requirements are very… how to say? Masculine.
Forty days out on the moors — fantastic. And, naturally, in order to lead, one must know the land.
Where I take issue with these days is the stipulation that they must involve at least four hours of ‘travel time’.
At least four hours of watching, listening, sketching, writing, meditating, sensing — none of that is good enough.
We must have four hours of travelling, each and every day. And what that means is hiking. A lot of hiking.
For me, even across the boggiest moor, four hours’ hiking covers at least 14km. Today it was nearer 19km. Over my forty days, I’ve stomped down about 600km of heather, gorse and sphagnum moss.
I know that, historically, a lot of hiking is exactly what people expect when they come to places like Dartmoor.
But I am saying that this is wrong and we should not be training our outdoor leaders to follow this very masculine ‘smash out a proper hike’ mentality.
The emphasis of the training falls too easily on breadth of coverage rather than depth of experience.
But it’s depth that I desperately need — particularly after grumpus nights like last night — and it’s only in wild open places like Dartmoor that I can sink down and reach the fathoms of nourishment and restoration.
Clocking kms, bagging tors: that speaks to our masculine energy of domination. (Especially when the literal red flags are flying around the military firing exclusion zone.)
Here be guns
The energy of domination is not what our often addled bodies and brains need. And it’s not even what nature does best. We’re wasting the riches that time on the moor affords those of us lucky enough to be out here.
A 14km yomp is basic military efficiency. It’s not going to teach me anything I don’t already know: that my body can follow orders.
What I need to learn and relearn is much slower and more delicate: I need to learn to stare at the ground and notice the eyebright, knapweed and oxeye daisy; to stare at the sky and read the changing cloudscape; to close my eyes and listen for skylark, snipe and cuckoo.
From time to time, I need to lie on the ground like it’s my sofa and soak up nothingness.
I don’t need an intense day of exercise. I need the moor to become my living room, literally: an open expanse with room for all living things.
There is a medicine that you can only absorb through eyes, ears, nose, feet, breath: wind, air, sunshine, rain. Nature, the moor, the relentless acceptance and infinity of it all.
Welcome, it says, welcome all. You are whole, it says. We are together, it says, together at last.
I probably stayed irritable for about two hours as I stomped across the moor this morning.
And then, from one minute to the next, for no reason in particular, I noticed that I wasn’t so grumpy anymore.
My kind of adventure is the kind that you can do around your day-to-day: it need be nothing more than a bike ride to a woodland for sale or a morning spent getting in the English grape harvest.
Having said that…
The bulk of my summer, 43 days’ worth, were spent cycling from Glasgow to Athens with Thighs of Steel. So there is definitely big-ticket adventure in my life as well.
But now I’m back from Greece, things are about to get small.
I can’t wait.
I’m so excited that I’ve come up with a neologism.
From Outdoorsy To Exploresy
We all know what outdoorsy means:
Associated with or characteristic of the outdoors; fond of an outdoor life.
I don’t know how to crab-hunt, but I do own a pair of boots and can (just about) light a fire in the woods.
However, there are two limitations to being outdoorsy:
No one thinks that an urban existence is compatible with being outdoorsy, even though, technically, a traffic island on Oxford Street is entirely outdoors.
Outdoorsy doesn’t necessarily include the sniff of adventure: novelty, daring, audacity or excitement.
That’s why, humbly, I think we need a new word: exploresy.
Exploresy is used in the same way as outdoorsy, but to describe someone who is fond of exploring — whatever that means to them.
Indoors, outdoors, online, offline, together, alone, in walking boots or fluffy slippers.
The only unifying requirement is that the exploresy person sets out to discover something new (to them).
Now then. There is a school of thought that says that neologisms need justification.
But you know what I say to that:
Even so: why make a new word when an old one will do. Isn’t exploresy the same as being curious?
No. Well, yes, but I can’t copyright the word curious, now can I? Also, it’s a bit insulting to call someone a curious fellow. It just means they’re weird.
So, as we crawl head down into winter, I would like to propose an expansion of adventure. It doesn’t have to be outdoorsy, especially if (like me) you find yourself more urban than Alpine.
It can, instead, be exploresy.
Keep your antenna up for moments you could explore. Shelter from the rain in a public museum, slow down to soak up a stone-grey street scene, swivel your lobes for a little light earwigging on the bus.
While the great green outdoors is a wonderful place to explore, it’s beyond okay to invite adventure inside and take it out on the town.
And a warm welcome from the Gipsy Palace, where I’m waiting for the delivery of my sixth laptop of the year.
This technophobic rigmarole sprawls without resolution over the past two and a half months, spanning four countries, three vendors, TWo IRritating SHift KEys, two HPs, two Lenovos, two Acers, one faulty fan and one blue screen of death.
And, so far, the only machine that appears to be working perfectly is the one that I originally needed to replace.
The rigmarole has got me thinking, though. How much of what we do, as writers, is done through the medium in which we write?
The two most ambitious works of European literature that I can think of are Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu and James Joyce’s Ulysses; both were written longhand in pen and ink (and both primarily, incidentally, from bed).
Staggering: the ability of these authors to hold in mind the overlapping constellations of such complex novels, without the aide-memoire of a decent spreadsheet.
More bedsheet than spreadsheet: Marcel Proust’s preferred writing style
But Joyce’s inspiration, The Odyssey, wasn’t even written.
Homer, perched on a three-legged stool in his little eighth century bedsit on the Greek island of Chios, could never have dreamed he’d become one of the most famous novelists of all time.
He was, after all, a beat poet, a wandering bard, a story-singing balladeer who never wrote a line, never even put pen to paper, let alone pinky to SHift.
Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story
of that man skilled in all ways of contending,
the wanderer, harried for years on end,
after he plundered the stronghold
on the proud height of Troy.
Homer would be tripping out if he learnt one day his words were read. Homer, if they ever existed, would scream and shout — no, no, no — this is not canon, this is not where the storyheart lies!
The story of The Odyssey is in the song, in the improvisation, in the tone, the cracking of the voice, in the manipulation of attention by performer to rapt audience.
In printing, in canonisation, some things are lost, just as they are when novelists move from bedsheets to spreadsheets.
For better or worse, I’m the spreadsheet kind.
Anyway — I’ve just had a message that my driver Anthony will be with me between 10:19 and 11:19, so I’d better get cracking.
Today’s story is for anyone who has ever struggled to shower themselves with the kind of indulgences that they would so easily afford to others.
You’re not alone.
I have been at the receiving end of some mockery this week for saying that a slice of my homebaked bread is a treat. Not only delicious, but a treat. As in: ‘I’m going to treat myself to a slice of bread.’
The offending loaf
With only a couple of weeks before the door knocking of Hallowe’en begins, the question has never been more pertinent:
What makes something a treat? (And why the bloody hell isn’t my bread one?)
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a treat is:
Something highly enjoyable; a great pleasure, delight, or gratification
By this definition, my bread is certainly a treat: it is highly enjoyable, especially still warm, fresh out of the oven.
But, my loaf-disparagers argue, that doesn’t get anywhere near the nub of what it means to treat oneself.
And, with heavy heart, I have to agree that they are right.
The Essential Element Of Naughtiness
There is a strong line of argument that a treat should contain an essential element of naughtiness.
The argument goes that it’s the naughtiness that makes what you’re doing for yourself a rarity, and it’s the rarity that makes it a treat, in this case, by definition.
I don’t necessarily agree with this blanket definition of essential naughtiness — I would hate to rule out the angelic — but the concept of a ‘guilty pleasure’ is as good a starting point as any for learning what it is that makes a treat.
And even I confess that there is nothing naughty or guilty about my seeded rye sourdough. If you could bake, slice and butter the word ‘healthy’, then it would taste exactly like my bread. (If you want the recipe, it’s here.)
Naughty, however, is a relative term. What’s naughty for me — buying cut flowers for myself, catching the bus for two stops, or staying in bed past nine — might feel totally square to you.
That’s why I’ve devised a little game that will standardise our relative naughtiness. It’s called
The David Charles Patent-Pending Cocoa Solids Naughty-Treaty-Chore Scale
and you can play along at home.
Start reading from the top of the following list of chocolate bars. The game is to notice three points on the scale:
When do the bars stop feeling downright naughty to you?
When do they start to feel like a treat you’d happily and occasionally scoff?
When does even the idea of passing them between your lips feel more like a chore than a delight?
Here we go:
Milkybar or any other white chocolate (zero cocoa solids)
Hotel Chocolat Island Growers Saint Lucia Milk Chocolate (70%)
Green & Black’s Dark Chocolate (70%)
Pralus Madagascar Criollo (75%)
Chocolate & Love Panama (80%)
Republica Del Cacao La Concepcion (85%)
Amedei Toscano Black (90%)
Amedei Acero With Maple Sugar (95%)
World Market Dark Chocolate (99%)
Hotel Chocolat Rabot 1745 (100%)
(Scale created with thanks to the encyclopaedic Chocablog.)
My personal naughty-treaty-chore range runs from the Chocolate & Love Panama (80%) to the Amedei Toscano Black (90%).
What that means is that anything below the Chocolate & Love Panama is proper naughty territory of which I would be a little scared and anything above the Amedei Toscano Black would be more of a battlefield than an all-you-can-spa pamper day.
But what’s really clever about The David Charles Patent-Pending Cocoa Solids Naughty-Treaty-Chore Scale is that the cocoa solid percentages can be used as a direct correlate for your own personal tolerance for naughtiness in any kind of a treat — indulgent desserts, luxury holidays, consumerist splurges, you name it.
So this is me:
As you can see, my tolerance for naughtiness is pretty darn low. For whatever reason, I shy away from naughty treats: they come with too much guilt to be pleasurable.
If this bell curve, spuriously derived from the pleasure I take in various chocolate bars, really can stand for how I view pleasure more generally, then it also reveals something mildly earth-shattering about my existence: how stingy, how limited, how unambitious I am with myself.
The human pleasure-verse, the area under the bell curve, is enormous and, for me, the vastest hump of experience is out of bounds.
I can see now: that really has to change.
Saunaing Alone
Something weird happens to my Naughty-Treaty-Chore Scale treat range when other people are involved.
Suddenly things that were, for me alone, unambiguously naughty, are back on the table (quite literally in the case of a decent tiramisú).
Have you ever noticed that?
It’s like my brain is constantly running up a ledger of okay-not-okay behaviour.
Not okay: tiramisú alone
Okay: tiramisú shared
But why should the presence of other people skew my behaviour so decisively in the direction of treatiness?
And what would it take to allow myself the treat, without company?
Well, yesterday, quite by accident, I learned the answer.
A couple of weeks ago, one of the Brothers in our men’s circle dropped a message in our Whatsapp group to say that he was going to The Saltwater Sauna on Sandbanks beach this Thursday at 15.45.
I love a sauna, but this is a fancy treat sauna — they have qualified Sauna Masters, for goodness sake.
It really is quite nice in there
Rather than straight-up deciding that I wanted to go to the sauna for myself, my brain did a rapid mental calculus and concluded that I was indeed permitted to attend this event because, not only would I get a sauna, but I would get to spend time with a Brother in a social setting outside of our men’s circle.
In other words:
Not okay: £15 sauna for me alone
Okay: £15 sauna with someone else
With only eight places available, this sauna sells out fast so I booked to join him right away.
Fast forward two weeks: I show up at the sauna yesterday at 15.45.
The man’s not there.
I spend 65 minutes at this treat sauna, all alone. And it’s worth saying right now that I had a lovely time.
This is a crucial point: I enjoyed the treat that I never would have allowed myself.
The logic of my pre-sauna calculus, however, boils down to something quite horrifyingly existential:
I believe that it is worth my while making a connection to others.
I do not believe that it is worth my while making a connection to myself.
Working within the confines of this belief, my little brain can make things incredibly complicated.
Instead of going straight for what I want, my little brain must find external factors that justify and permit what I want.
And it’s not only a connection with other humans that will permit my desires. There is a whole inventory of okay-not-okay justifications that my brain must run through before coming up with its final decision.
The Calculus
On and off for the past couple of years, I have been a member of a less fancy sauna and I would go two or three times a week, quite alone.
But these sauna sessions are not justified as me-time treats. They are justified by the following calculus of external factors:
Saunas are a healthy workout for the cardiovascular system
The period of cooling between sessions is an opportunity to read books, make notes, learn stuff and have ideas
Sometimes the conversations and stories I (over) hear in the sauna make me laugh, give me inspiration or shake old prejudices
Therefore, this quiet me-time, away from technology, is far from being an indulgent treat — it’s actually super productive!
It’s like my brain needs to be constantly monitoring my thought processes around my decision-making in order to evaluate whether or not what I’m doing is worthwhile.
My brain is happiest when it finds plenty of evidence that my desires are indeed permissible, like with the sauna. I’m going for my health, for my work, for the sake of other people.
Only then can I excuse my behaviour and justify each relaxing sauna with the soothing knowledge that it’s not really for pleasure.
But my brain really struggles when the evidence is mixed or conflicting. The poor thing keeps bashing at the buttons of the calculator, searching and researching for evidence to back my desires, and, ultimately, overheating, leaving me feeling exhausted and fully stressed out.
Ouch.
And my brain is so proficient at this process of justification and permission that it will always get there before me. It’s had forty-one years of practice and it’s going to take a lot of unpicking.
Noticing, as ever, is the first stage of recovery.
Noticing when my brain is cranking up to work on The Calculus. Credit the brain for how hard it’s working: how clever, how fast, how complex — respect to you, brain!
Only in the moment’s pause after noticing, might I have the space to reconnect with what lies beneath The Calculus: my needs and wants.
Somewhere, deep beneath all that high-wire brain gymnastics, there is a part of me that wants the treat for me: the simple reward of being alive.
Appendix
Troubleshooting Treats: Start With Micro-Nice
There are days (like Wednesday) when it feels almost impossible to treat yourself with much love.
You’re grumpy. You’re unmotivated. You’re convinced that you’re nothing more than a lazy piece of crap.
What do you do with days like that?
The answer (courtesy of my friend Nettles) is the micro-nice.
You might not be able to give yourself much love today, but can you give yourself five minutes to roll around on the floor like a dog? (This was Nettles’ first suggestion. She’s that kind of person.)
Grand gestures are off the table today. No gourmet meals for one. No all-you-can-splash baths. No solo tickets to the cinema, theatre or bounce park.
Instead, ask yourself: What is the micro-nice version of being kind to myself today?
Start from where you are (a bit pissed off with yourself) instead of where you feel you should be (your own best friend).
See if there’s not still a corner of compassion where you and yourself can go for a little sit down and a cup of tea.
Now it’s the dominion of the dog walkers of Muswell Hill, the ring-necked parakeets of London, and me: a man in a green and gold jumper, perched on an ivy-wreathed beech trunk, staring into his lap-topped laptop.
We all know how many hours there are in a day (24), how many minutes in an hour (60) and how many seconds tick by in a minute (also 60) — and every schoolchild knows all too well how many nanoseconds there are in a double maths lesson (54,000,000,000,000).
But how many moments do we get in a day?
You know what a moment is, I hope. If you’re not sure, then let me show you what I mean.
On Friday, when I started writing this heinously delayed thought-prayer, I counted seven moments.
Seven, for the whole day.
A moment when I woke up in bed, on a boat, with the roaring of the weir all around me.
A moment of nostalgic reflection as I stripped our Thighs of Steel support van of its soapy assets, wondering when we’ll ride again.
A moment in the car, parked up by the farmhouse, admiring the weeds that have grown up along the red brick garden wall, mortared with moss.
A moment in Marlborough, playing my part in a traffic crawl along the Bath Road, idly watching the schoolkids in tartan skirts, blazers or tracksuits, all clutching binders of notes, walking between lessons.
A moment of pilgrimage with the family plum tree in the sunshine. All bar five leaves fallen. The five nibbled by unseen insects, leaving bullet holes against the blue sky
A moment in the ticket hall at Bournemouth train station. No words, holding each other tight.
A moment of stretching on the yoga mat, sharing poses before sleep.
A period of time (not necessarily brief) marked by a particular quality of experience.
(p.s. If you are based in the UK, then you almost certainly have access to the full subscriber edition of the OED through your local libraries card. GTK.)
For me, moments are the little times in life that you notice that you are alive.
Moments dawn on us: aha, we might think, this is a moment.
It’s awareness.
‘Well, if this isn’t nice, then I don’t know what is.’
A good way to practice noticing moments is to look around you and say to yourself, ‘Well, if this isn’t nice, then I don’t know what is.’
Another good way to notice is to write or sketch the moment.
I’ve done a little of the latter and a whole lot of the former.
Writing makes a moment pop out into consciousness instead of passing by.
Even the most mundane moments take on a meaningful significance if you sit and notice them for long enough.
There was nothing special about that moment, only that it was noticed.
This kind of writing is something I call close writing.
Here’s a snatch from my first (published) close writing, back in 2007, sketched out while sitting on a bench in the gardens of Russell Square:
Opposite, two police officers talk to a man, standing, pointing. Another man sits and the dog plays around them. They are taking details. The man sits and I can see that he is aged, with a flat cap and white beard. The mother bends to take a photo of the child and the dog interrupts, sniffing at whatever that is. He leaves to take a piss.
It’s not a big moment, not like that moment you met the love of your life. Maybe it’s not even a moderately significant moment, not like that moment you got your maths exam results.
But it is a moment, nonetheless, and one that I’ve remembered vividly for more than sixteen years.
It was a moment when I — the I back then, whoever he was — took the time to notice that I and we, the cast of characters around me in the square, were indisputably alive.
And that is a joyous thing to remember indeed. All the more joyous precisely because there was nothing ostensibly special about that moment, only that it was noticed.
This really could be a moment.
I’d encourage you as I would love to encourage myself today and tomorrow. Let’s look up and around us. Let’s notice things. Above all, let’s notice the living breathing awareness of things.
We could, just as easily, be not aware of things. And yet we are. Or we can be.
This really could be a moment.
And, when we do notice these moments, we can always go back to them. Recognition of a moment extends that moment into the future and beyond.
A part of us will always be sitting in Russell Square gardens in the sunshine, will always be paying pilgrimage to the family plum tree and will always be holding each other tight in the ticket hall at Bournemouth train station.
That is a wonderful thing to remember.
Only then, if you like, share.
A word to the wise: writing can take you out of a moment as well as deeper into it.
This is especially true when our noticing mutates into the modern urge to share too soon: to take our words, or images, and send them to distant loved ones, nownownow.
My favourite form of noticing is when my words or sketches come from inside the moment. There becomes a oneness, a unity between art and presence.
Against this unity, sharing our noticings too soon is like ‘othering’ our own experience, creating distance in place of connection.
Allow your art to explore the moment in its fullness. Then, when the moment has passed, return there in the art, refine and expand.
Only then, if you like, share.
~
In the fifty-five minutes that it has taken me to write this little thing, Merlin tells me that I’ve shared space with seventeen woodland birds, including a nuthatch.
And a warm welcome from Thorpeness, Suffolk, a smugglers’ village that was re-designed from the sand up in 1910 by Glencairn Stuart Ogilvie, the son of a Scottish railway magnate. Ogilvie’s vision was for the village to become:
[A] Temple of Tranquillity, where the Soul of over-civilised Man may escape the thraldom of the Great Cities and find its Self alone with Nature and at one with God.
I’m sitting here in the hour after dawn, listening to birdsong, and watching my phone.
For the second time in my life, I have downloaded Merlin, a free bird identification app from Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
As everyone keeps telling me: Merlin is insanely good, using my phone to ‘listen’ for bird calls and flashing the screen when it identifies likely matches.
In the last half hour, Merlin has come up with twenty-three bird IDs.
I’m pretty sure some of them are false positives, surely, but, for me, it doesn’t really matter. By exploring the database, I can still learn what a coaltit sounds like, whether or not there ever was one footling and furtling in the bushes behind me.
This feels a lot like magic — not only because I personally have no idea what a siskin or a dunnock sound like (except perhaps a pair of Shakespearean insults), but also because of the speed at which Merlin works.
While writing just now, I was keeping half an eye on Merlin’s radar — magpie, chaffinch, robin — when I saw it pick up a greylag goose.
Now, I may be an idiot, but even I know what a goose sounds like and I couldn’t hear anything. Black mark for Merlin, I thought.
Then I looked up.
In the distance, and now here, over the houses, two teams of geese are sledging across the sky, all at once, here and above me. In the silence of a Sunday, I feel their wings beat the air.
How Merlin could detect these geese before my human ear, I’ll try not to wonder too much on — but I’m so glad that he did.
Time enough for me to stop writing, look up and, for a moment, marvel at this Temple of Tranquillity.
Cycling long distances in the company of other humans has many benefits, but I think my favourite is how the movement, landscapes and conversation moulds the way our brains perceive the world.
Today’s little story comes from a realisation found in conversation, somewhere among the gentle hills of Magnesia and Pthiotis.
Why is it that the phrases ‘C’est la vie’, ‘That’s life’, and ‘It is what it is’ are only ever deployed, most often with a shrug, with reference to unlucky, unpleasant or undesirable events?
You miss your turning on the motorway: ‘C’est la vie.’
Your computer shows you the blue screen of death: ‘That’s life.’
The Tories are somehow re-elected: ‘It is what it is.’
I’m not arguing: that is life. It is what it is.
But I would argue that there is a lot more positive than negative in what it is. And we could all do with pointing that out to each other more regularly.
More often than not, life does wear rose-tinted glasses.
The slow autumn sun rises over the trees, the wind rearranges the turning leaves, and a robin out calls to me: ‘C’est la vie, my friends, c’est la vie.’
And a warm welcome from the back of a 2005 Ford Transit called Beryl, doing 110kph into the Aosta Valley, an hour shy of Chamonix and our beds for the night (👋RK🙏).
Beryl
I left home on 10 July, eleven weeks ago, to ride Thighs of Steel 2023.
This was the sixth time we’ve cycled to Athens and the second year we got there all the way from Glasgow.
It’s a bloody long trip: in fact, I’m pretty sure that it’s Europe’s longest fundraising bike ride.
It took our freewheeling community of 101 cyclists eight weeks of hard sweat to ride the full distance.
I was there at the beginning, rolling down from Glasgow Youth Hostel under drizzle skies, and I was there at the end in Athens, calves burning, asphalt melting, song shouting, up Mount Lycabettus, the steepest of all finish lines.
It feels mad weird to be unravelling our tyre tracks in only six days of diesel-powered vanlife.
Our community (including a fair few of you👋) has now raised over £90,000 for grassroots solidarity projects that support people on the move.
Sorry Not Sorry
I can’t promise that I won’t shut up about this fundraising for a few weeks because it’s important to me to ensure this ride makes the biggest possible contribution to the grassroots solidarity movement.
It takes about eight months of hard work to prepare and launch Thighs of Steel. It’s another three months of work to, not only cycle across the continent, but facilitate the experience and ensure a safe environment for more than 100 participants.
We don’t do all that just for the jollies.
We do it to support grassroots solidarity initiatives, starved of cash in a hostile environment for people on the move.
Since 2016, Thighs of Steel cyclists have raised about £740,000 for projects like the Khora Collective’s social kitchen, Hakoura Organic cooperative farm and the Chamomile housing project for displaced people with mental health challenges.
If you believe in free movement, or even free-er movement for people having a rough time, you can share and donate here.🙏
The Flood
The final week of the ride brought together sixteen mostly-strangers to cycle 600km down the east coast of Greece from Thessaloniki to Athens.
That was the plan, anyway.
This was a week with some breathtaking highs — sunsets over Mount Olympus, sea swims and watermelons every day, hot springs and mineral mud baths, beach camps, olive groves and a spooky abandoned hotel resort frequented at all hours by teenage canoodlers.
But our little bike ride was, of course, dominated by the devastating floods left after Storm Daniel passed through central Greece.
Barely a week before we cycled through, the region was hit by more than a year’s worth of rainfall in just 24 hours.
At least 17 dead. Homes, farms and villages wrecked over an area of 730 square km.
Thessaly floods. You can just about see where the reservoir used to be. Everything else was once fields, vineyards, homes — there’s even an airport under there somewhere. Before Storm Daniel, this region provided 15 percent of Greece’s domestic agricultural produce.
It will take five years for the bread basket of Greece to recover its soil fertility. Assuming no further catastrophe.
And that’s a big assumption.
Finding A Way
We reached the floodlands on Day 3 of the ride. After an open discussion, one group of cyclists formed an advance party to find out whether our planned route was even remotely feasible.
From our beach camp, we climbed 20km up and over a mountain to gather more information (and a bag of frozen spinach) from the nearest town, Kalamaki.
The local supermarket owner encouraged us to try the old road that ran alongside the reservoir that had once drained the fertile plain. The reservoir had burst its banks and now the water stretched beyond the horizon.
The end of the road
At the end of the road, we found only a police blockade and had no choice but to cycle straight back over the same hill in the heat of the day with flies swarming our faces.
It wasn’t the most fun I’ve ever had on a bicycle, but finding perspective was easy. A fly swarm sandwich is no hardship at all compared to the massive rescue and cleanup operation happening in the fields and villages below.
Former vineyards, former livelihoods
While we climbed back over the mountain, the rest of the cyclists pioneered a rocky off road route along a ribbon of coastline, which blessedly and eventually joined asphalt roads that, we were told, would circumnavigate the floodwaters.
Thank you to the people of Kamari for welcoming us in that night and letting us camp on their beautiful beach, now littered with storm debris, flotsam and jetsam swept down from the hills.
Almost cut off from the rest of the country, supplies of fresh food were at a premium in the coastal settlements. The crates stacked up on the back of a single pickup truck was all they’d seen for several days.
We were lucky. Our resourceful cyclists rustled up a dal dinner from the dry stores we’d brought with us from Glasgow — plus that long-defrosted bag of spinach.
Here & Now
Gazing out over the inland sea was a sobering reminder that climate disasters — massive and accelerating drivers of displacement — are here and now.
Globally, more than 20 million people are forced to flee their homes every year due to climate catastrophes.
Here and now.
Here and now, the kindness shown to us by the people of Thessaly was humbling. Their lands and in many cases their homes and livelihoods were underwater, yet everyone we met was open and supportive.
People helped us navigate off-road between devastated vineyards and orchards, find safe places to camp at night, and opened their shops, bakeries and cafes to we travellers.
These acts of generosity made a huge difference to us and helped us complete our quest.
The devastation we witnessed made each of us feel powerless in the face of inexorable nature.
The support we received from the local people made us feel strongly that anyone, any one of us, still has the power to make a difference.
We can still tell the story of solidarity with people whose lives have been turned upside down by increasingly frequent disasters like the recent cyclone that struck Bulgaria, Greece, Turkey and Libya.
Even when we’re up against unstoppable forces, we are not powerless. Small acts of solidarity are signficant.
So Thank You
Thank you to all the cyclists who made this final week, with all its highs and hardships, a supportive and joyful space.
The Thessaloniki-Athens cycling crew. Somewhere in the background: Athens.
Thank you to all our hosts and the dozens or hundreds of humans who supported us along the way, from the octogenarian neighbourhood watch in Thessaloniki who helped us lift a car out of the way so we could get out of our parking space, to the team at Vicious Cycles Athens who once again welcomed us with cold drinks and spray bike tattoos.
We’ve now raised over £90,000 for grassroots refugee solidarity projects through our charity partner, MASS Action.
2,908 people have already donated to the main page, anything from £5 and up. A fiver might not seem like much, but it could be a hot meal with friends for someone who might not have much of either during a difficult time in a hostile environment.
Thank YOU for all your donations and your sharing of our stories. This kind of fundraising, so important for organisations working on the ground, only works because of our shared networks.
Thank you for caring. Thank you to every person reading this.
We reserve our deepest gratitude for the people leading the real work, putting in a shift at projects that open up dignified and sustainable spaces for migrants and asylum seekers.
100 percent of your donation (more if you Gift Aid) will be redistributed by MASS Action to grassroots solidarity projects across the UK and Europe.
And a warm welcome from Thessaloniki, named contemporaneously for the sister of Alexander the Great of Macedon, an etymology that hints at the long human history for culture and conflict at this crossroads of the world.
But (in the words of The Tim Traveller) we’re not here to discuss any of that.
Or maybe we are, but not until after showing you a map that does absolutely nothing to hint at how hard and beautiful the last week has been: cycling 738km across (what felt like) a dozen mountain ranges through Montenegro, Albania, Macedonia and Greece.
738km and 8,672m of climbing from Kotor to Thessaloniki in six and a half days
There will be some of you who will now be expecting a 6,000 word story about cycling hundreds of miles clean across the Balkan Peninsula, from the Adriatic to the Ionian.
Sadly, I shall have to disappoint you, for tomorrow at dawn I don once more my padded shorts and prescription sunnies and take to the saddle.
For tomorrow we ride to Athens.
This is but a snatched midpoint.
For some ridiculous reason, after four weeks of crewing Thighs of Steel from Glasgow to Milan, I decided to cycle the whole of the last two weeks: a lucky thirteen days riding from Dubrovnik to Athens, via Thessaloniki.
No wonder the ride began with some pretty heavy anxiety.
The night before we left Dubrovnik I found myself eyes wide open until past three in the morning. Breakfast was at five.
I couldn’t. I shouldn’t. It wouldn’t have been safe so sleep deprived on those hectic roads out of the city.
So I cancelled my alarm and caught a few hours’ kip.
I spent the morning in the support van, back as an auxiliary core team member, helping fetch and carry crates as we packed up the weekend.
Fast driving, slow borders, and finally I joined the ride further down the road in Kotor.
I spent the rest of the day sweeping and scratching up the infamous Kotor Serpentine — twenty-five or more switchbacks offering views grander and ever-grander, south, north, south, north, for a thousand metres of elevation and a place in the heavens with a sunset never beat.
The point of this whole ride is to raise funds for refugee solidarity projects across Europe.
If you’ve watched as much football as I have, at some point you’ll figure out what’s happening in this video. It still made me cry a bit.
It also made me notice the massive role that crowds have to play in our experience of spectator sport.
The more supporters there are in the stadium, the bigger the occasion, the higher we rate the skills of the players on show.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise: a big part of the reason we laugh at comedians on stage more than we laugh at random show-offs in the street is because there is an audience there, laughing along with us.
We are infectiously social animals. It’s been wonderful to see a flourishing enthusiasm for another side of the beautiful game spread over the past few years.
As well as being generally badass, this video also reminds me to appreciate the more neglected moments, the moments where the cameras aren’t rolling, where the crowds aren’t already cheering.
An overhead kick at the under-8s down the park is as good as one from the boot of Sam Kerr.
2. The Biggest Problem With Journalism Today
A couple of weeks ago, Future Crunch ran an experiment to see what kind of stories ‘humanity’s prime information-gathering apparatus’ are telling.
It wasn’t good news:
The news is supposed to tell us what’s happening in the world. It doesn’t. Instead, thanks to a combination of commercial pressures, cognitive biases and cultural habits, news organisations have become modern-day doom machines, showcasing the absolute worst of humanity. There isn’t even a pretence at balance.
That’s why we think the biggest problem with journalism today isn’t fake news, or filter bubbles, or polarisation, or elitism, or the ongoing obsession with the website formerly known as Twitter. The biggest problem is bad news.
We all know that time can be stretchy or compressed—we’ve experienced hours that plodded along interminably and those that whisked by in a few breaths. We’ve had days in which we got so much done we surprised ourselves and days where we got into a staring contest with the to-do list and the to-do list didn’t blink.
And we’ve also had days that left us puddled on the floor and days that left us pumped up, practically leaping out of our chairs. What differentiates these experiences isn’t the number of hours in the day but the energy we get from the work. Energy makes time.
