Essays, observations and ideas to explore.
People have to make a life within circumstances they would never have chosen. There are meals to prepare, relatives to worry about, small pleasures worth keeping. Even under repression, ordinary life continues. From a…
Read article →If you have to wait for an important visitor before your concerns receive attention, you learn something uncomfortable about your place in the ordinary life of a country. Attention can arrive without much changing…
Read article →Disagreeing with people we care about can feel surprisingly disloyal. A conversation changes temperature. Someone begins explaining something we already understand, because they assume that understanding it would mean agreeing with them. Soon the…
Read article →Getting through a working week, bringing up children, disagreeing with somebody over dinner: these are demanding enough without having to calculate whether an opinion might put you in danger. There is something worth defending…
Read article →It is possible to want a government department examined closely without wanting everyone who works there exposed. That distinction becomes harder to maintain when anger has found a target and a large file of…
Read article →To be judged before you have spoken is to enter a conversation someone else has already finished. Your name, appearance or ancestry has supplied everything they think they need to know. You are left…
Read article →A neighbour becomes a representative of a country they may never have visited. A colleague is expected to explain a conflict before being allowed to express distress about it. There is something deeply intrusive…
Read article →Being able to make plans is an ordinary freedom, so ordinary that its importance can disappear from view. A repair can wait until next month. A child can finish the school year. Something planted…
Read article →For someone seeking justice, another person’s sympathy can be welcome and still leave everything unchanged. There is a peculiar loneliness in having your concern acknowledged, perhaps eloquently, and then discovering that the conversation has…
Read article →A family can agree that someone needs looking after and still leave the same person to do nearly all of it. There need be no deliberate cruelty involved. One person lives closer, has more…
Read article →A person tells you something during a difficult week. Months later, the difficulty has passed, but you still have the message. Whether you keep it, forward it or bring it up in company becomes…
Read article →It is difficult to tell someone in authority that something is wrong when that same person can affect your future. Even where speaking carries little obvious risk, there is the calculation: will anyone listen,…
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