Disco with dinosaurs and drinkypoos
Single tickets to events tickle my fancy, especially stand up comedy. I love a laff with a room full of strangers. When I go alone to a thing, I stand in the queue and someone will usually shriek LUCY BLOOM! And there ya have it, I’m not alone anymore.
The Queen didn’t guard the throne
What Dolly Parton taught us about professional generosity
Humans of Tanzania – Charley Swynnerton
I arrived at Charley’s place in Arusha, Tanzania, with an open mind and a two-week booking. What I found was a 55-acre Fever Tree forest, and within it a beautifully styled one-bedroom mud brick cottage. I could tell that a stylist had put this place together, although it would be a few days before Charley herself appeared at my back door. By then, I was already fan-girling her hard, whoever she was.
Humans of Tanzania – Thamrat
When I arrived in Paje (pronounced paah-jeh) on the east coast of Zanzibar, I went directly to the beach to have my freckles blown off by a powerful onshore wind, straight off the Indian Ocean. The trade winds which made this place famous blow North East for the whole summer.
Humans of Tanzania – Mussa
In another adventure off the beaten track, I met Mussa near a place called Bububu (go on, say it). I think it sounds like driving through pot holes. Bububu is a half hour drive from Stone Town in Zanzibar, Tanzania, through many, many pot holes. Mussa has a shop in town and I’d wandered in to look at the beautifully made batik dresses when next thing you know, I was signed up to learn the art of batik with the master himself.
Who is going to be replaced by AI?
A guide to which jobs are on their way out and which still require eye contact
52 things I know now that I’m 52
I wrote a listicle like this when I was 42. Ten years on I have learned some more…
This is a 12 minute read. Not one word of this article was generated by AI.
Proof of Life: six lessons learned from sourdough baking
I chased a new squirrel this year: sourdough baking. It took me three months of baking a loaf a day to nail the perfect loaf. I was coached by a friend who took four years to get it right. A sourdough coach! True story.
What to do when you’re bored: 5 ways to gamify your brain
Boredom isn’t just an everyday drag, it’s a neurological signal. When your brain says, I’m bored, it’s signalling a mismatch between what it craves (novelty, challenge, meaning) and what it’s getting (doom scrolling, waiting in the school pickup line, boarding a plane, another Zoom meeting that could have been a poke in the eye).
What’s the worst thing that could happen? Don’t let fear trick you into a boring life
If you catch yourself asking that question – what’s the worst thing that could happen? – you’re doing exactly what the brain is designed to do: ‘suss the sitch’ to make sure you will survive. But in the modern context and by some irritating glitch of the brain, perhaps an obsession with avoiding discomfort, humans like to focus on the worst-case scenario much more than they ever should, leading to safe, comfortable BORING lives and a lot of worry about things that will never ever happen. Stuff that! When you have only one wild precious life to live, an appetite for risk is your gateway to greatness.