Akin Akintayo

Jerry Eze in Manchester

2026-09-27T02:28:35.982+01:00

More Than an Internet Personality

A search for him on the web reveals that he is an internet personality, a description that barely captures who he is. He is the founder and lead pastor of Streams of Joy International and the convener of the New Season Prophetic Prayers and Declarations (NSPPD), a 7am online prayer broadcast that grew during the pandemic into a global movement across YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Mixlr. With the kind of following he commands, he is an arresting presence who has mastered the social media platforms to spread his message.

An AI-generated infographic on the blog content. (Click to enlarge.)

My scepticism had a particular source. I am no stranger to Pentecostal and Evangelical settings, and I have long followed English, Australian, and American "Word of Faith" preachers, whose cultural and social frame of reference I have grown accustomed to and readily taken in. This, however, is a specific brand of exuberant Nigerian Pentecostalism that I never encountered even during my years in Nigeria. A shared heritage does not always guarantee a shared instinct in worship.

Years ago, a friend sent me links to recordings of prayer sessions, both rowdy and cacophonous, in which I could not fathom what was going on. My sensibilities, broadly Anglican and attuned to the liturgical, would have felt criminally assaulted.

Yet this, I suppose, speaks to the mystery of a God who is as attentive in all our noise as He is in our orderliness. I should not be too much of an Englishman for God; I know that He understands, listens to, and answers Englishmen too.

Getting to Old Trafford

The venue for the NSPPD UK Prayer Conference [YouTube] was Manchester United's football stadium, commonly known as Old Trafford, and getting there was quite an ordeal. The buses were filled to capacity by the time they reached the second bus stop, so we had to board a tram. I spent the ride recalibrating our journey, and we opted to get off five stops earlier, since it proved the nearest stop to the venue on foot by that route.

We met up with friends, a couple I had not seen in forty years, and as we queued to gain entry to the grounds, we reminisced about our times of youthful religious innocence. I learnt that I was the one who had ministered to the husband when he gave his life to Christ some forty-one years ago. I simply had a recollection of where his conversion had happened.

A Feat of Organisation

On finding our seats in the stadium, we sat together, and from our vantage point the ground was almost at capacity on three sides, save for the area behind the stage. The whole setup was a logistical operation involving troops of security personnel, guides, ushers, helpers, and many more volunteers. It was a feat of organisational ability that left me quite impressed.

Something about the ministry of the man Jerry Eze suggests that prayers are answered, exemplified in big notices such as "We Dey Pray, E Dey Show" and "What God Cannot Do Does Not Exist." The first, in Nigerian Pidgin English, carries the sense that when we pray, the answers show; the second is the ministry's confident refrain that no situation lies beyond God's power.

This outfit caters for a broadly black audience, with a few attendees of other races. Patrons had travelled long distances for a touch of God through the ministration of this man.

Swept Up in the Sound

When the sound of praise and worship enveloped the stadium like a roar that would put an ecstatic football crowd in the shade, I was swayed by the sheer volume, and one could easily be caught up in the mass hysteria of congregational participation.

Most of the earlier songs were unfamiliar to me. I felt like an alien impostor, persuaded beyond my comfort zone to engage as I tried to appreciate this thing. The worship leader might have allowed the microphone to carry her singing voice to the speakers, rather than appearing to perform in a stadium yet losing out to sometimes unintelligible shouting. In fairness, the sound and acoustics did seem to improve as the event went on.

Another worship leader, apparently a Nigerian gospel singer, stirred my participatory enthusiasm at the prompting of old-time songs drawn from the recesses of my memory. Closed-caption signage, readable from my seat, could have helped, nearly as much as sign language would have. The default, as I saw it, was the ability to create a raucous din through the extreme exertion of voice and bodily movement, all for maximum effect.

Give Me Substance

The most impactful message I heard in this setting came in the lyrics of "Let It Show [YouTube]" by Kaestrings, partly excerpted below:

Give me substance,
Give me proofs,
Give me presence,
Give me You;

Give me substance,
Give me proofs,
Give me evidence,
Give me You;

Give me Your substance,
Give me proofs,
Give me fire,
Let it show that I met with You.

These words clearly identify with what this ministry is all about.

Yes, I was looking for ways to engage, even as I was overwhelmed by spectacle, performance, agitation, and vigorous incantation. It was so different to me that at times I was left a total observer, waiting to be shaken out of my stupor.

Prayers and Declarations

My concern was heightened as I heard many prayers and declarations with no punctuation, and no invocation of the name of Jesus except in the songs; as things progressed, however, we heard more in that respect. The many names of God were mentioned, but prominent in the list was El Roi, the God who sees me, first spoken by Hagar, an Egyptian servant to Sarai (Sarah) in the book of Genesis and the mother of Ishmael, Abraham's first child.

All the representatives who appeared on stage to take the microphone, regardless of how far afield they had come, including from Canada, prayed in the same almost riotous manner, one I had difficulty connecting with. It brought to mind the trigger behind the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, the three Hebrew men who refused to bow to King Nebuchadnezzar's golden statue. I simply imagined it as, "at the time ye hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and all kinds of music."

I concede that far more people are attuned to this environment than I am. It yields results, judging by the testimonies of impossible situations transformed and the amazing, mind-blowing stories of triumph in life and circumstance. I probably need a better interpretation of the goings-on.

Testimonies Before the Man

In the run-up to Pastor Jerry Eze coming on stage, some testimonies were shared. A few spoke of answers to prayer received at previous conferences, and others of breakthroughs that had come through attending the 7am meetings online.

These accounts appeared to steady the atmosphere and to remind the crowd why they had gathered. Whatever my own difficulty in connecting, the conviction in the room was plain, and the testimonies carried a weight that the spectacle alone did not.

Gospel Royalty on Stage

Three hours into the orchestrations and events, Pastor Jerry Eze was somewhere in the background, yet to be ushered to the podium, perhaps long after I had gone. Then Nigerian gospel royalty came to perform: Mercy Chinwo, the winner of the second season of Nigerian Idol in 2012 and now one of the most celebrated voices in Nigerian gospel, known for anthems such as "Excess Love" and "Obinasom." I know none of her music, yet even I could muster the swagger, deigning to move to it.

After her, Dunsin Oyekan, the worship leader affectionately called "The Eagle" and known for immersive songs such as "Fragrance to Fire", became like John the Baptist, preparing the way for the man of God.

That figures of such standing would grace his stage said something in itself. It lent a weight beyond the capacity crowd, and confirmed that Jerry Eze is a good deal more than an internet personality.

An Acquired Taste

At the fourth hour, Pastor Jerry Eze mounted the stage, first articulate in a call-and-response declaration over the dry bones in our lives, commanding them to rise to life and living, before we were led to see that the place we were in was too small and that we needed to break out. After being led in prayers to bare our hearts and souls to God, we were blessed by the preacher to celebrate the answers to our prayers.

Then it was testimony time, and we rose to leave. I heard that proceedings drew to a close barely half an hour after we departed.

In concluding this piece, my honest opinion is that Pastor Jerry Eze is an acquired taste; it has to grow on you. I am glad I attended, for it was revelatory, and I tried to remain as open-minded and receptive as I could, even where those long conversant with his ministry were plainly carried along and I was not.

This should not in any way diminish the wonder and miracles that others have experienced by attending this conference, for which the testimonies would tell of a God who sees me, where I am, and touches me in miraculously stupendous ways.

A Gemini Notebook AI Podcast on this blog

Essential Snobbery 101: Good Food Is No Substitute for Good Manners

2026-09-23T22:54:52.723+01:00

A Daring Customer

I am that kind of customer, sometimes daring and adventurous. I have ordered prescription glasses online, and I have been fortunate enough to order clothes, suits, and shoes from a catalogue without the need to return them, because they fit.

Most people would prefer a brick-and-mortar shop or a high-street store for such articles, where they can try before they buy; the daring, for me, is in trusting that they will fit at all.

I rarely try on clothes in a fitting room, except for tailored suits, where I expect the service personnel to be knowledgeable about style, fit, comfort, and suitable choices. That is their métier. Whether I am buying blind from a catalogue or standing at a tailor's counter, the thread that runs through it all is the same: service.

Curiosity and Its Rewards

Walking down a street, I might find an ethnic goods shop and step inside, my curiosity piqued by a sense of nostalgia; the same goes for restaurants too. What I expect is friendliness, professionalism, and service. Our common familiarity, if we choose to converse in our own language, still requires that standard to be kept.

Nine years ago, I walked into such a shop in Edinburgh, and what a welcome I received. A smiling, affable proprietor, ready to assist, presided over an Aladdin's cave of mouthwatering and irresistible delicacies. Amidst all the pleasantries, I treated myself to ready meals and drinks, but I could not leave without taking pictures of the shop.

A Tale of Two Reviews

A few days before, in the same city, I had visited a Nigerian restaurant, and I had a worse time of it than Dr Foster's visit to Gloucester. The service was abysmal. I was not attended to when I arrived, the place was dirty, dishes had not been cleared from the tables, and the personnel were glum. I had travelled far, and I should have left.

I wrote about both experiences. I write reviews about forgettable and extraordinary things, rarely about anything in between.

An AI-generated infographic on the blog content. (Click to enlarge.)

I published a review on my blog, along with an accompanying Google Maps page, and the shop has since garnered over one million views. Every few months, I get messages from the proprietress thanking me, though I thank her simply for being good, and for being good at what she does.

Blog - Edinburgh: MaDeb African Shop (June 2017)

Choosing Where to Spend

There are businesses I have visited that have never had a return visit, for all sorts of reasons: unprofessionalism, bad customer service, bad manners, a lack of attention to detail, or lapses in honesty, probity, and integrity.

There is also food served so hot that it scalds the fingers, usually because it has just come out of a microwave, and service so tardy that by the time the food arrives you have lost your appetite and it goes home in a doggie bag.

Sometimes it is the mild infractions that speak volumes; cutting corners, or bad vibes. In the latter case, it might be a me rather than them issue. Just as any business can choose to whom it opens its doors, I have the option to choose to whom I give my custom.

The Okra Stew That Never Was

A sudden desire for some home food had me grazing through Deliveroo last week, and from the menu I chose okra stew and semolina, asun and fried fish. Some time after my order was accepted, I received a call: they had run out of okra stew. I settled for egusi stew, when I should have cancelled the order altogether, but the logistics of getting my money back, coupled with hunger, had me settle for less.

However, I was promised that okra stew would be available the next day, or later in the week. Before I placed my second order, I rang ahead to find out whether it was on offer, and it was not. I would not go for second best if I had not already ordered or paid for anything.

Today, I called again, hoping to get my preferred choice. As soon as the male voice heard the words "okra stew", he simply hung up. All he had to do was say that it was unavailable, or off the menu. Service is the first component of an enduring business.

Good Food, Bad Manners

I did have my eye on bigger orders after sampling those portions. I am a random customer who chose this outfit from a list of options, and I will not be placing orders here again; good food is no substitute for good manners. That was the sum of my review.

In my view, how I am treated as a stranger could well be the experience of others. I do not assume I was singled out for the best or the worst a business has to offer. Nor do I wait to express my opinion on a service; I was on their web page, tapping away, and that was the seed for this blog.

The Call That Saved a Name

Halfway through writing this, I placed an order for Italian food from Vapiano, a global chain, using a 40% voucher Deliveroo had offered against any order, to be used by the end of the month. I had not used Deliveroo in over four years until last week. The discount left scope for a generous tip for the courier.

Then came a phone call. It was the man from the restaurant where I had wanted okra stew, pleading that he was returning a missed call. There was enough elastic stretching the truth to turn a wristband into a waistband. He had answered my earlier call, and I had spoken more than ten words before he hung up; that could hardly be called a missed call.

It is likely he had read the review I posted on their web page, and that this call was meant to ameliorate, to soothe my feelings. I had to hear him out before I remonstrated. That call saved them from being named and shamed in this piece. I have to write of my experience, though, rather than of my expectations.

This is the sentiment that governs every review I have given or written, and it follows that notable quote from Maya Angelou: "People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." You rarely ever get another chance to improve on a bad impression.

A Gemini Notebook AI Podcast on this blog

Seventeen Years of Blessed Time

2026-09-22T14:35:38.509+01:00

A Diagnosis and a Diary

I have just read through the blog I wrote 17 years ago today, and I can only be amused at the humour that infused those pages: an admission to hospital that lasted 18 days, a cancer diagnosis, and the possibility that I had only five weeks to live. That earlier writing found the light amid it all, and reading it back now, I am struck by the tone I managed to keep.

An AI-generated infographic on the blog content. (Click to enlarge.)

That was how serious things were. I was in unbearable pain that medication did not seem to manage, and could barely tolerate. As long as I was lying flat, I was fine; the moment I put my left foot down, I was in agony.

The Path to Referral

I still remember the conversations that led to this, beginning on the Wednesday before. From the moment I saw my doctor, who took one look at the sole of my foot and immediately said, "This looks serious, I need to refer you," things moved quickly. She was soon on the telephone, urging the hospital to register me for the next available appointment as a matter of urgency.

She bandaged my foot, sent me home with painkillers, and secured an appointment for the Friday. When I attended the hospital that day, the staff decided I had to see the internist, who was not available until the Tuesday. No further palliatives were on offer, yet I somehow survived the weekend without the need for an emergency evacuation.

Admission Day

On the Tuesday morning I was chaperoned to the hospital. I took only a change of underwear, for I had no idea what to expect. For the first time in my life, I sat in a wheelchair, exhausted by the pain, when the internist, after the briefest of introductions, did not hesitate to say, "You're not going home; we have a bed for you upstairs."

I was registered, prepped, and soon wheeled on a gurney to the ward, where my vitals were taken and the process of medical triage and diagnosis began. They first ruled out diabetes by taking my blood pressure at my extremities, at my lower arms and below my calves. Then I was cannulated and given an intravenous infusion of saline solution with antibiotics. Thus began my first day in hospital. The very next day, my netbook was delivered to me, and with it the chance to write from my bed.

A Note on the Bread

With the netbook at hand, I set about recording the daily indignities, and here is the sort of thing that occupied me at the time.

"I ended up with the gluten-free bread meant for the patient in the next bed – tasteless, YuK! Yuk! I was, however, bothered because the bread was clearly labelled for the lady; I do not remember undergoing a gender reassignment overnight."

That, more or less, was my state of mind: frightened, in pain, yet still affronted by a bad slice of bread and a case of mistaken identity.

A Prognosis of Weeks

From a medical perspective, I am not expected to still be here. At prognosis, I was told my condition was treatable, but only if I could tolerate the treatment. The internist, who was also an MD, said, "If you cannot tolerate the treatment, you probably have only five weeks." Beyond that, studies at the time suggested that people presenting with my symptoms did not last a decade.

As it turned out, I could tolerate the chemotherapy, and it worked. For me to be here today, 17 years on, is a miracle of mercy and grace, blessed time rather than borrowed. I am thankful for each day. I have even survived another episode of cancer, and it is almost two years since I completed radiotherapy for that. That day is etched in my memory, and I am grateful to God, to my doctors, the nurses, my friends, my neighbours, colleagues, and the many well-wishers. You are all part of this amazing story.

Between the Pain and the Healing

I shall borrow an excerpt from the blog I wrote about my admission then, the closing paragraph, and whilst recollections might vary, through the pain and the ordeal I also saw beyond it. "Even in all this, one has many things to be thankful for; health is wealth, any day, any time. For all that suffer, I wish them a speedy recovery – yes, I got my netbook delivered to the hospital – there is much to talk about, between the pain, the sheets and the healing." (Yes, I used em-dashes in 2009.)

Thank you.

Blog - In hospital to kill the pain (September 2009)

A Gemini Notebook AI Podcast on this blog

Wine is a Mocker

2026-09-19T18:40:14.104+01:00

An Early Acquaintance

My story with drink is long and interesting, yet these days I do not have a ready palate for alcohol.

My first taste of alcohol came with palm wine. My paternal grandfather had palm trees; though I do not think he was ever a palm wine tapper, he had the kind of demeanour that suggests he might have clambered up a tree at some point in his youth.

Traditional alcohol was offered to children, but bottled alcohol was completely forbidden.

At ten, away from my parents, I did drink Tennent's Light, a low-percentage lager in a can. None of the adults frowned on my consumption, and I always drank in moderation; there was never a second one, even when offered.

Lessons from the Brewery

My first job, at fifteen, was in a brewery, where I worked in the laboratory; I doubt I would have been allowed that opportunity outside Nigeria. My days were spent testing water quality, peering at dead yeast cells drawn from the fermentation tanks, and running quality-control checks at the end of the production line. There was enough in all of that to put me off lager, and consequently beer, ale, and cider.

Strong drink was an acquired taste that I eschewed rather than developed.

Yet in my family we have no history of the abuse of drink or drunkenness; everyone held their drink with dignity, and it would appear that more of the generations close to mine are teetotallers.

An AI-generated infographic on the blog content. (Click to enlarge.)

A Discipline of My Own

In social settings, I drink wine, preferably with meals, and never alone. It is a standard and a discipline I have set for myself, and I find the loss of self-control brought on by drink you have chosen to consume, rather than been forced to ingest, literally contemptible. Even the wine I enjoy is rarely more than a single glass, and I doubt I drink more than once in two months.

Once I had a sherry, from a bottle the barman probably had to prise out from a mooring of cobwebs spun by spiders long deceased, kept well out of sight, and then a glass of port, which does go well with Stilton cheese. I was soon sick all over the place, at home.

At any sense of feeling tipsy, I never wait for my legs to give way beneath me; one instance of apparent inebriation was a lesson for a lifetime. I also refuse to lend my tongue to the looseness that alcohol affords, as some people, who are no longer friends, once did to break the friendship.

Carried in the Blood

I do, however, appreciate that people have a drink problem for all sorts of reasons, including a congenital predisposition, for which there might be a need for intervention if a person has lost the levers of moderation.

There are those for whom the pull towards drink is not merely habit but something carried in the blood. A grandparent or great-grandparent who could not master it may leave a predisposition that surfaces generations later, and I would not dismiss that as fancy; the science of inheritance is real enough.

Yet a predisposition is a tendency, not a sentence. It explains the steepness of the hill; it does not excuse refusing to climb. Indeed, the one who knows such a weakness runs in the family has all the more reason to be watchful, for he has been warned by his own lineage.

Recognising a Problem

Even so, that warning is of little use to the person who will not hear it, and denial remains the first obstacle. I know people who will not admit they have a drink problem. You definitely have one if you soon lapse into incoherence and find that the marshalling of your faculties has deserted you.

In some cases, it is borderline; and when at the border, we cannot assume it has not already been crossed.

Whether there are excuses that stand the test of reason is debatable, but steeling yourself for any endeavour should not be achieved through Dutch courage, for it is a prop that would soon collapse under the pressure of application.

Wisdom from Proverbs

While my greater abstemiousness from alcohol is not religious, you only have to visit the Book of Proverbs to read the many admonitions regarding alcohol.

Proverbs 31:4-7

4 It is not for kings, O Lemuel, it is not for kings to drink wine; nor for princes strong drink:
5 Lest they drink, and forget the law, and pervert the judgment of any of the afflicted.
6 Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine unto those that be of heavy hearts.
7 Let him drink, and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no more.

And yes, there are places where wine is the bringer of joy and festivity, as in the ritual use of wine in religious service; but in each case, one would expect controlled and measured use.

Elsewhere, in Proverbs 20:1

1 Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise.

These verses all suggest that the abuse of alcohol leads to unfortunate consequences. The refuge of drink opens the door to foolishness, destruction, and forgetfulness of the essence of living; there is nothing productive in it.

A Final Word

Before I come across as preachy, I am not advocating a temperance movement or a form of prohibition, but moderation that can still be moderated. For those who drink to excess, you leave those close to you, who do not partake as much, all the more worried that you have already taken a few too many.

And if, on reading this, you recognise yourself in these words, do not take it as an accusation but as a hand held out. If this is you, there is no shame in the recognition; there is only the next, better step.

Most importantly, seek help, because there is a great deal of help out there. Wherever you are, a first step is often as near as your own doctor. Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon operate in most countries, and many nations run free, confidential helplines; a local search, or a word with a trusted clinician, will point you to what exists near you.

Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) – Wikipedia

Alcoholics Anonymous ZA/ZW

A Gemini Notebook AI Podcast on this blog

Imperfection Is Not Invalidation

2026-09-18T10:22:57.797+01:00

An AI-generated infographic on the blog content. (Click to enlarge.)

A recollection is, first and foremost, someone's story. That a memory may be imperfect does not invalidate the one who holds it, and denial by another does not disprove the event. On the Spencer revelations, and on why a recalled truth deserves more than a rebuttal.

A Book That Unsettles

The current serialisation, in the Daily Mail, of the 9^th Earl Spencer Charles Spencer's book "Swan Song: Diana, My Sister" is yielding quite interesting revelations about Diana, Princess of Wales, who died in 1997, and it has left the Royal Family reeling.

At the heart of the matter lies a phone conversation between the then Prince Charles and Charles Spencer. In the book, the earl recalls words the prince spoke to him in the days after Diana's death, to the effect of, "Rest assured, we'll forget her soon enough."

In response, the Palace has released a statement: "While we do not comment on books as a matter of principle, His Majesty is mindful that the pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason, affect judgement and colour memory in ways others do not recognise, even many years after such a loss."

Why Fabricate?

When I first heard this response, I did wonder why the earl would choose to fabricate such a statement and attribute it to the prince who is now Charles III. I am a supporter of the monarchy as an institution; at the same time, I appreciate that it is peopled by humans, just as you and I are, with all the vicissitudes of humanity in frailty, attitude, behaviour and conduct.

The conversation took place on the phone between two men who were, it seems, affected to differing degrees by the death of Princess Diana. The eulogy the earl gave at her funeral suggested there were issues between the Spencers and the Royal Family; I still remember the applause that rippled from the crowds outside into the church. I commend him for using that platform the way he did, even if a stuffy cohort felt it was improper.

Words That Stay

In my view, many conversations take place around us, and usually there is something within them that simply sticks; you never forget it. You hear it in your head, in the very voice in which it was spoken to you. For me, a medical professor stood by my hospital bed, after a cancer diagnosis, in September 2009, and one thing I remember him saying, amongst other things, was, "You probably have five weeks."

If I met that professor today and recounted that conversation, there is a likelihood I could be told that, in my pain, my reason had been clouded, affecting my judgement and thereby colouring my memory. Yet those words I heard clearly. Whether another might agree they were spoken is another matter entirely, and it does not invalidate my story.

The Survivor's Truth

This is not an abstract concern for me. I recognise the shape of this dispute, because I have watched the same manoeuvre used against me, where a memory is met not with denial of the facts, but with doubt cast on the one who remembers. I understand this better than I would wish to.

The same goes for other memories I recall vividly, whether it be child sexual abuse or serious emotional abuse, along with utterly reprehensible and unbelievable acts of cruelty meted out to me by people to whom I was a ward. I have heard denials, perhaps out of forgetfulness, or out of an inability to face the consequences of their actions, once committed in private, now brought to light. My experience and my story will not be erased by their blanking the event as though it never happened.

Any book I hope eventually to write as an autobiography will contain explosive revelations, and many of the nuggets already exist, scattered across almost twenty-three years of my blogs. The memories, even those from childhood, still play back like reels of film, each movement or sound relaying in emphatic slow motion, unmistakable cranial celluloid. I know what I lived through, how I felt at the time, and how some of it has affected me today.

When Memory Is Named

In the same vein, I am wont to believe Earl Spencer's recall of that phone conversation. A survivor does not owe you a convincing story; they can only tell you what they know. Whether you believe them, in the end, is entirely left to you.

Too often, a memory is renamed grief, pain, loss, misfortune or spite, or any other unfortunate experience that can be used to neatly dismiss it, or to cast doubt on its veracity. A memory may be imperfect, since we rarely have a recording to replay, but imperfection should never be mistaken for invalidation.

A Gemini Notebook AI Podcast on this blog

The Folly of Promises Before Practicalities

2026-09-16T17:49:57.047+01:00

When Reality Meets Design

In a moment of lucid piquancy, we have come to realise that reality has a way of touching realism in ways so radically unexpected that a rethink is required. As I have written elsewhere, in my earlier posts on our laptop remediation activity, the theory and the terrain are rarely the same country.

I say this whilst appreciating the amount of work that has gone into crafting a "perfect" solution, only to find it unsuitable, or challenged by inconvenient situations that threaten the very premises we thought had accounted for everything.

Where Solutions Are Tested

When a solution is put to the test in a real-world setting, you find the gaps in your thinking first; then you discover the ways in which the common, the outlier, the exceptional, or the impossible render your solution inadequate.

In our case, a deployment to just 0.2% of the cohort revealed issues that will remain insurmountable until we have better data. Only then can we skew the solution towards those we can genuinely help.

What unsettles me is the arithmetic of it. If we are already encountering this many blockers with so tiny a group of testers, then the impact on the full 100%, had this gone out early, would have been more than a disaster; it would have been an overwhelming failure of insight and foresight, the very faculties none of us can afford to lack.

An AI-generated infographic on the blog content. (Click to enlarge.)

I remember a comment I made in an earlier blog: "we were working with architects whose confidence outpaced their familiarity with the environment in which their solution was meant to run." To use a colloquialism, the rubber has hit the tarmac and the tacks are flying.

The Value of Restraint

Within this morass lies the urgency to get the solution out, yet our initial reviews and feedback suggest that my reticence has forestalled a catastrophe. Restraint, however, never receives the honour it so well deserves.

We are at an impasse: how do we find normalisation amidst this chaos, so that a subset of the solution's settings can go out to the largest majority whilst we decide how to handle the difficult ones, and whether it is even worth our while to tackle them?

Promise Before Practicality

The biggest failing of this whole exercise is that promises were made long before the practicalities were addressed. The architects gave their assurances to the business before ever consulting the implementors on whether those ideas could be delivered, and that ordering, the pledge preceding feasibility, is where the trouble was seeded.

If you are not seeing through the glass clearly, you should not be gambling on the reality of the little you can see.

So, we do the only honest thing left to us: we wait for the data first, because only the data can tell us who we are truly able to help, and we promise nothing until it does.

Related blogs

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A Gemini Notebook AI Podcast on this blog

Photons on the Prostate: My Life After Prostate Cancer Treatment

2026-09-14T18:33:09.943+01:00

A Diagnosis at Fifty-Eight

I was just over fifty-eight when I was diagnosed. As a black man in the UK, where one in four of us will encounter prostate cancer compared with one in eight of the broader male population, the PSA test ought to have been offered long before I had to ask for it, especially as other indicators in my blood work already needed addressing.

An AI-generated infographic on the blog content. (Click to enlarge.)

I asked for it in early February 2024, and by the end of March my PSA had risen from 3.5 to 4.0. What followed I have set out in full in my earlier series, "Men's things" and "Photons on the prostate": the examinations, the imaging, and the biopsy that confirmed adenocarcinoma in mid-June 2024. I will not retread it here. [Prostate Cancer UK: The PSA blood test] [Check4Cancer-Private]

Twenty Sessions Begin

Two years ago, I began twenty sessions of hypofractionated radiotherapy for prostate cancer. It was scheduled for weekdays alone, so I thought I could fit both work and the treatment in comfortably.

The treatment began on a Thursday, which gave me two sessions before the weekend. Little did I know how impactful radiotherapy would be. The chronic fatigue set in far earlier than expected, and the weekend literally wore me out.

A Toll on the Body

By the fourth session, I returned from the hospital and had to go straight to bed; I simply had no energy for anything. I obtained a sick note, though with the proviso that I would not be completely signed off work.

Then came a range of side effects. After the fatigue, my voice became a husky whisper, betraying such tiredness and exhaustion that, after one meeting, a participant asked my manager why I was still working. I had the capacity and the facility to continue, yet the toll could not be ignored.

Alongside this came urethral pain, bladder incontinence, and a greater urgency, all exacerbated by a prostate gland reacting to the radiotherapy. Coupled with nocturnal insomnia, I began to wonder whether I could be productive at anything at all.

Planning Around the Pain

Towards the end, I had to plan my outings carefully, as I could not go twenty minutes without needing to visit a toilet. I was prescribed paracetamol and codeine to ease the pain, along with Tamsulosin to manage the prostate issues, which I am still taking. I also obtained a RADAR key to access disabled toilets, and a "Just Can't Wait" card to show premises owners whenever I had an urgent need.

Four weeks later, I was ringing the bell, ending the treatment and ushering in a new life: the beginning of the story after prostate cancer. However, I needed to recuperate by taking long-term sick leave and having someone care for me, because home in Manchester was no longer convenient.

A Journey to Recover

Against the wishes of many, I jetted off to Cape Town to be with Brian, my partner. The trip was comfortable enough, because I used airport assistance for every leg of the journey. Even though I arrived in Cape Town literally a shell of myself, the weather proved almost as good an elixir as the companionship.

Much as I had every urge to return home, I took as much time as possible to recover sufficiently for general activity. My sick leave eventually ran to seven weeks, and I returned to work in January 2025.

In truth, I should have taken a phased return, but the burden at work was light, so I decided against it and settled in well enough. In time, working alongside an occupational therapist, we found ways to manage both the work and the pressure.

Two Years On

Two years on, some side effects linger. The loss of my voice remains unexplained, even after review by an otolaryngologist and her team, and I put it down to one of the rarer side effects. Bowel incontinence can be occasional, bladder incontinence is quite frequent, and sexual dysfunction is not helped by the mental stress of it. The nocturnal insomnia, meanwhile, should have me beavering away late into the night.

Now, better and more targeted treatments are available in the UK, including ultra-short five-visit radiotherapy, tissue-sparing focal therapy, and new at-home medicines, all a far cry from the twenty to thirty-nine sessions of hypofractionated radiotherapy. [ICR: Thousands of men with prostate cancer will now be offered high-powered radiotherapy on the NHS]

Even so, I do not think I would have wanted to wait for these developments, given my determination, once advised to pursue active treatment at diagnosis, to rid myself of the cancer as soon as possible. I would not have been persuaded of watchful waiting or active surveillance in the circumstances.

A Word to Men

Three check-ups at the Christie Hospital, every six months, have had my Prostate-Specific Antigen (PSA) test results read at the lowest level ever. I can only advise that men keep their prostate health in view, have it checked, and follow through on any adverse results.

A visit to the Prostate Cancer UK website for the risk checker, followed by an at-home review of your own symptoms using the International Prostate Symptom Score (IPSS), is a sensible place to begin. Not every prostate enlargement is indicative of cancer, but every such situation must be checked and kept under monitoring. Thank you.

Blog - Photons on the Prostate - Three Things I Wish I'd Known

Blog - Photons on the Prostate - A year from starting radiotherapy

Blog - A prostate cancer diagnosis, one year on

Blog - Men's things - Prostate Cancer blogs

A Gemini Notebook AI Podcast on this blog

The Deed and the Doer

2026-09-13T21:31:59.133+01:00

On a T-shirt, a rainbow, and a play on a sacred word, there is offence enough to summon a mob.

Yet before we take up arms for our gods, we might ask whether Western Christianity would truly accept an Arabic Christ, and whether we have the sense of the old cow, who eats the hay and leaves the baling wire.

This is a reflection on symbolism, belief, and the fine but firm line between the deed and the doer.

An AI-generated infographic on the blog content. (Click to enlarge.)

Where Offence Begins

Religious symbolism, individual perceptions, and beliefs provide many opportunities to take offence. This became the core of a conversation in which I was invited to comment on someone wearing a T-shirt depicting a religious personality, with a play on one of the final words of supplication or veneration, all set in the context of human sexuality.

At first glance, there are so many things capable of causing offence, ranging across a spectrum from the merely unfunny, through the disrespectful and the sacrilegious, to outright blasphemy.

Each could attract anything from a simple flinch to an outrage that seeks out a mob for retribution, all in response to this perceived denigration of symbols and language. Such reactions often arise in the quest for an expansionist embrace of all things represented in our humanity; a sometimes-worthy goal, though one that needs wisdom in its deployment.

I will not dwell on the particulars of the item itself, for my concern is not the object but the impulse it stirs in us; the principle interests me far more than the personality behind it.

Confrontation and Its Limits

I would suggest that the confrontational approach sets people up against one another. It might well be a way of challenging norms, yet it is rarely the means by which one wins converts.

In terms of religious figures who walked the earth more than a millennium ago, it is quite unlikely that anyone truly knows what they looked like. The pictures we see of them today are figments of human imagination and artistry, quite awesome and commendable, but not real. For those who claim to have had visions or apparitions, my view is that revelation is only presented to the limit of one's capacity to perceive.

Depictions and Idolatry

Depictions might offer a sensual connection to the unseen, but they do not replace it; to think otherwise opens one's appreciation to a form of idolatry. Then again, depictions can be instructive or misleading.

For instance, the European masters have in many cases depicted Jesus Christ as Caucasian, with northern Scandinavian features, when, by reason of history and region, He would most likely have looked Arabic. Such features would not have made Him seem alien, nor His parents, when they sojourned in Egypt at the time Herod massacred every boy-child in Judea under the age of two.

The question then becomes this: would Western Christianity have been amenable to an Arabic, Black, or Asian Jesus Christ? Now, that is to court controversy, meddling with images and depictions preconceived to accentuate belief, yet upended by reasonable supposition.

The Lesson of Gideon

I am reminded of the story of Gideon in the Bible, who one night destroyed the idols of his community, so that they rose up to put him to death. His father was able to convince them to let the offended gods avenge themselves.

We should be careful of emasculating our deities by offering to fight for them as though they were utterly powerless, because the deeper issue is this: if a god cannot fight for himself when slighted, what is the power we believe he possesses? Gideon came to be known as Jerubbaal.

Belief and Fellowship

We all believe differently, to the extent of our own persuasion, and we do let the beliefs of others influence us, hopefully to buttress what we know rather than to pull apart and pull down our creeds. At worst, those who choose to meddle with the elements of our foundational beliefs put themselves at risk of forsaking our fellowship, communion, and friendship.

They might be misguided, but it is impossible to read motivation or intent from afar; we are left with our conscience to decide. One may hold an act to be unwise, even unnecessary, without presuming to indict the one who acts; the deed and the doer are not the same thing.

Perhaps I feel quite unperturbed because, in the admonition of one preacher, I have as much sense as an old cow: I eat the hay and leave the baling wire. The beliefs we hold are like seeds sown, which will grow in the ways we allow, for the ground of our hearts tends the seed to be fruitful, affected by heat, thorns, or weeds, for it is in these very things that offence reveals itself.

Keeping Offence in Perspective

Yes, we do get offended, but we must limit the impact to two things. First, the offender acts in a foolishness that does not engender the best of our humanity. Secondly, for all the offender does, I do not attach myself so closely to any man that I cannot cut loose when he is falling into the ditch.

The offender might be worthy of rebuke, and in extreme situations they might find themselves in receipt of mob violence. Even where the latter could be justified, I would not subscribe to it. We are allowed to deviate in how we believe, and to break away if no compromise can be found.

At the intersection of symbolism, language, depictions, and beliefs, the apparent offence of any one thing is kept in perspective. Another's journey, leading to redemption or perdition, is theirs alone; I refuse to follow in folly.

A Gemini Notebook AI Podcast on this blog

A Picasso No One Can Repaint

2026-09-10T22:53:23.819+01:00

The Mad Hatter's Drawing Board

Every good farce needs its Mad Hatter, and mine arrives armed with a drawing board. That drawing board, the one we have returned to many times over the last six weeks, was the receptacle of imperceptible scrawls by a mad scientist whose antics do not, on the surface, look like a frenzy of demented absentmindedness coupled with a sense of all-knowing confidence.

No, what comes out at the end is what makes this a Mad Hatter you could, in your complete docility, be persuaded to strangle. The task itself was simple enough to state: to improve laptop performance in a tightly controlled environment.

There we were at the end of last week, on the cusp of completing this intensive work of art, in the sense that the automation now had snapshots, verbose logging, and user-initiated rollbacks, all at my insistence, achieved in stages of improvement that registered close to fifty versions of the code.

An AI-generated infographic on the blog content. (Click to enlarge.)

Two Questions

Then two questions, from different perspectives, quite literally upset the applecart. The first was why something that could be done by policy was being implemented by scripts. It was possible because the architect, the same mad scientist, had tinkered with the engine enforcing policy, in what I saw as a neat piece of coding.

The second question concerned supportability, to which I responded that, although there was a spectrum of knowledge available, the code presented a level of complexity that no one would grasp beyond tweaking it. My own suspicion, if I am honest, was that the code would eventually be ripped out rather than developed and maintained.

I suggested it was a work of art, the progeny of the architect, and that you will not get another painter to daub on a Picasso. A good analogy, but probably too suggestive in its reading, because the architect was soon back to trying to fix it. What resulted was a new design for what the code did, and we were back to square one with deployment by policy and preference; twenty-three tweaks had become ninety-two.

Policy Versus Scripts

The policy-versus-scripts argument comes down to something quite practical. Policy carries comprehensible text and well-known, configurable settings that are recognised right across the industry when it comes to endpoint devices.

Scripts, by contrast, are bespoke by nature, and far too many of them end up impossible to maintain or are simply left to function with their faults until something new can replace them. I am firmly on the side of adapting the concepts as designed and moving them into an implementation that others can actually support.

Skimming through the document, I could already see problems, some easy to correct, but others requiring a total rethink. The concept remained the same in terms of what was to be delivered, but there was a paradigm shift in the implementation that could no longer be done in the phases the scripts were best suited to.

A Promise Disappointed

Worse still, the settings from the scripts did not transcribe directly into policy text; I needed a reference website to derive the policy text for each required setting. Then came the realisation that many of those settings from the script had no commensurate policy text at all.

It did not help; it merely exacerbated the amount of unnecessary work that could have been done right the first time. I sense a kind of aversion to explaining or describing anything that has been done, with emails and Microsoft Teams chats substituting for this essential piece of communication that I have requested many times before.

At the end, an XML file that could have saved me hours of work was in the wrong format for ingestion. None of it was helpful; a promise at first sight was, in truth, a total disappointment deserving of excoriation, but I am too polite for that. I have a pattern-recognition insight into things that suggests an Originally Conditioned Distraction (OCD) to fix. At a glance, I saw that an XML delimiter had not been properly set.

Meticulous to a Fault

Perhaps I am meticulous to a fault, but it is to forestall and arrest faults before they cause issues. Erring on the side of caution always trumps bludgeoning through like a bull let loose in a china shop. Many may not agree, but you do not build a forty-year IT career on being reckless, especially after learning from interesting or costly mistakes earlier on.

This remains a work in progress. I am hoping the transition from scripts to policy will hold, though there are the various unhelpful gaps I have referred to the architect. So, I await the response, before chivalry from the Middle Ages requests the violent disembowelment of someone mercifully dispatched before they wreak additional havoc on the peace of our noble workplace.

Related blogs

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A Gemini Notebook AI Podcast on this blog

Men's things XXXV: A Man's Search for Dignity

2026-09-06T20:14:41.591+01:00

Pursuing a Diagnosis

An AI-generated infographic on the blog content. (Click to enlarge.)

I have found myself at the intersection where solutions designed for women seem to be just as suitable for men.

Many years ago, this first arose when I set about addressing folic acid deficiency anaemia. It was flagged when I noticed an out-of-range and irregular reading of my MCV (Mean Corpuscular Volume) blood test, which pointed, in the first instance, to a possible nutritional deficiency of folic acid, iron, or vitamin B12.

At my insistence, I persuaded my GP to order the specific tests for serum folate (folic acid), serum ferritin (iron), and serum B12. It was discovered that my folic acid levels were quite low; hence the diagnosis of folic acid deficiency anaemia.

Since then, I have requested the granular serum tests that sit beneath the headline MCV.

Pills Made for Mothers

I bought over-the-counter folic acid tablets, each with a strength of 400 micrograms. The label on the container carried the message, “Supports the overall health of your baby during conception and pregnancy.”

Well, I did a double take. The ability to conceive or carry a baby is not one I possess. My GP then gave me a prescription for folic acid at a strength of 5 milligrams, twelve and a half times that of the over-the-counter tablet. It meant I was not going to fix my deficiency by popping chemist pills.

A New Reality

Anyway, we have grown inured to watching adverts for sanitary towels and pads on television, and to seeing what the women using such protection get to do once their fear of leaking, and of embarrassingly revealing their flow, has been overcome by advances in sanitary towel technology.

Now, following treatment for prostate cancer with radical radiotherapy, I have experienced occasional bowel incontinence and regular bladder incontinence.

Once, in the case of the latter, it was the cover of darkness and a long overcoat that spared my blushes when my red chinos were soaked through.

Searching for Protection

For anatomical reasons, I could not simply start wearing feminine sanitary pads, just as I had taken to correcting folic acid deficiency anaemia with pills marketed primarily to fertile and pregnant women.

The male incontinence underwear I found was expensive, and it did not contain the urgency to the extent needed to forestall embarrassment.

The protection did not entirely eliminate the fear of emission or excretion; it offered only temporary safety, in the hope that you might reach the refuge of a convenience before the dam burst.

Adverts Not for Men

It goes without saying that the strain of advert music with the line “body formed for you”, or the tagline “Always with wings”, does not pertain to menfolk. Either we are too poorly served, or I need better discreet guidance when I visit a department that accounts for dignity in its solutions, without public spectacle.

So, imagine how I felt when a new advertisement came on television this afternoon for the Always Discreet Maxi Comfort Pads 9 Drop, offering the highest-absorbency pads designed for heavy bladder leaks, with a wider back for 50% more coverage and OdourLock technology. If only that catered for me too.

What We Actually Need

You might ask why I have not considered nappies for adults. It is a valid point, but that also suggests a level of incapacity and loss of control that is probably excessive for my current situation. It is a concession I do not think anyone, adult female or male, would make willingly if nature had not imposed it without option.

Minimal, unintrusive, anatomically aware, fully absorbent, and effective is what we need: coverage, protection, and odour lock without bulking out your trousers. There, I have written the advert for a product that serves bladder incontinence in men.

Breaking the Silence

My own route to this predicament was prostate cancer, but I am hardly the only man walking about with a secret and a spare pair of trousers in mind. Age brings it, an enlarged prostate brings it, so too do surgery, diabetes, neurological conditions, and plain bad luck; the company is far larger than the silence would suggest.

That silence is convenient for everyone but the men living it, and it is worth naming the circular trap at its heart: manufacturers under-serve men because men under-report, and men under-report because they find themselves so poorly served. Somebody has to break the loop, and it will not be the men, who have every reason to say nothing.

Which leaves the people who make and sell these things. I have, after all, written their advert for them; the product is the easy part, and dignity costs no more to design in than to leave out.

A slim thing built for male anatomy, an honest range of absorbencies, odour locked away, trousers uncreased, and a shelf a man can reach without rehearsing an explanation, none of this is beyond an industry that manages it handsomely for women.

A Matter of Dignity

The country decided, from January 2021, that period products should carry no VAT, recognising them as a plain necessity of life rather than a luxury; a woman buys them relieved of tax and relieved of explanation.

Incontinence products, as it happens, can also be had free of VAT, but only once you have declared yourself “chronically sick or disabled”, the very badge of incapacity I was at pains to avoid. [The UK Parliament: VAT on incontinence products (PDF)]

So, the tax is not quite the point. The point is that one necessity is met with a shrug and the other with a form; that dignity, for some of us, still comes conditionally. These things need thinking about, even if men's things rarely get talked about.

Related blogs

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A Gemini Notebook AI Podcast on this blog

Give the Doctor Somewhere to Go

2026-09-03T15:12:32.388+01:00

Why reading your own clinical results and asking the right questions turns a consultation into a collaboration.

An AI-generated infographic on the blog content. (Click to enlarge.)

An Unexpected Appointment

Once again, I found myself in hospital, more times than I would have liked in a single year. I have lost count. I had no reason why this appointment had been scheduled, and my anxiety was not assuaged when, just over a week before, I received a call telling me to attend the diabetes centre.

It was a poorly delivered message. The department I used to attend had been relocated to what was once the Diabetes and Endocrinology Department, but you can imagine how I felt until I received clarification.

In any case, it would have come as a great shock, because nothing in my blood test results indicated any cause for concern in that area.

A Confusing Journey

When I did set off from home, I realised the bus was running seven minutes late. Although I had given myself enough time to find this new location, my appointment notice had not been updated accordingly. So I returned to the old place, where the receptionist registered me before advising me to take a seat.

A few minutes later, the receptionist came to tell me I had to go to another department. She gave directions, but the signage left me navigating a labyrinthine route, unsure whether I needed to explore further down or check with someone else. I did eventually find the place, and it was kitted out like a temporary setup, with patients barely out of a daze from the trouble of getting there.

Checks and Confusion

A nurse called out my name to check my height, weight, and blood pressure. Having arrived later than expected, and given the discombobulation that ensued, I feared the readings might be high. I took deep, controlled breaths and folded up my sleeve; they fell within the normal range. Phew!

Half an hour after my arrival, another nurse came to check what I was there for; it seemed the relocation had also introduced inefficiencies. Apparently, I had been invited for the second jab of the HPV vaccine, which, when I took it, proved quite painful.

Being My Own Advocate

This is part of my personal medical advocacy. Literate people should spend some time reading and understanding their clinical results, because doctors sometimes do not have enough time to tease out the issues with you.

I recognise, too, that not everyone can do this alone; those constrained by education or digital access may need a trusted interpreter, whether a family member, carer, or advocate. That is precisely why those of us who can engage should and could do a little more.

When I do raise something, it is rarely idle curiosity. My questions are usually a way of satisfying myself whether a course of action is genuinely necessary. If you notice something outside the normal range in your results, bringing it up immediately elicits a response, whether an assurance that there is nothing to worry about, or an investigation requiring further tests.

Working With, Not Around

This is where prompting matters. When my consultant noticed my name on the board and invited me for a chat, my question about the creatinine levels gave the conversation somewhere to go. Those levels had been off the scale in late July, indicative of either an infection or kidney problems; if it were the latter, a change of medication might enter the fray.

Had I not raised it, the consultant might reasonably have assumed there was nothing more to discuss. Advocacy of this kind is not working around the doctor; it is working with them.

Along with the vaccine, a urine test was ordered, and late last night the results returned well within the normal range. I did not need a doctor or a consultant to tell me that, and my concerns were immediately allayed.

Essentially, we underserve ourselves in the quest for the best clinical outcomes if we leave everything to doctors as omniscient experts on our bodies, when we should be doing a bit more to keep them apprised.

A Gemini Notebook AI Podcast on this blog

Whom Is Pride For?

2026-08-31T22:07:31.467+01:00

An Early Farewell

The Manchester Pride Weekend comes to an end today, and it could not have come much sooner. The August Bank Holiday, from Friday until Monday, is taken over with festivities, revelry, and debauchery, depending on what takes your fancy.

I would rather be elsewhere, however. Last year I was in Cape Town, in the company of my husband and taking things at my own pace.

Falling Out

In the thirteen years that I have lived in Manchester, I have grown progressively disillusioned with the event, both for its commercialisation and its seeming lack of broad representation.

From the day in the Easter break of 2013, when a friend and I were refused entry to a club for no discernible reason beyond bouncer ego and racism, I have fallen out with Canal Street, which constitutes the main part of the Manchester Gay Village, along with the adjoining streets.

What frustrated us further was that there seemed to be no recourse, no obvious means of registering our displeasure. Yet a search of the Internet turned up news reports of exactly these discriminatory door policies, predicated not on fact but on prejudice, assumption, or the subjective judgement of the door staff at many venues.

An Unfair Assessment

That experience coloured my view of the Gay Village and left me with the impression that all the associated voluntary support organisations were of the same ilk. It was an unfair assessment, I concede, but it took hold because none of the ones I hoped might help were willing to do anything.

I live on the border of the village, yet I am the least engaged with the place, apart from walking through it if I need to get to other parts of the city.

Rights and Nuisance

As for Pride itself, the whole area is cordoned off into an enclave of activity that requires a ticket to attend; even so, you cannot be denied the public right of way to traverse it if you need to get through.

That, some years ago, became a point of contention between the security personnel, who did not know the law, and the police, who affirmed our rights.

Beyond that, there is the unneighbourly inconvenience of the cacophony, and of inebriated and sickly attendees becoming a nuisance on our side streets.

Not My Demographic

For what is supposed to be a community event, given the cost to attend and the interest in whatever entertainment is arrayed, I have found that I am probably not the demographic best served by most of what goes on there.

When I have deigned to purchase a ticket, I have never attended any of the performances; and once caught in the thickened crowd, I am already suffocating, so I rush back home for respite.

It is simply not a place of any comfort, whether alone or in the company of others. Now, I avoid it altogether and skirt the place, rather than insist on my right of passage.

Losing Its Way

Beyond community, Pride is supposed to help good causes, and we have many that represent different interests.

A few years ago, the establishment running Pride hiked prices, made their greatest profit, and then reduced their charitable contributions. It had lost its way, trying to rival and outdo the events in Birmingham and London by bringing in global acts best viewed at entertainment venues.

These acts were an exorbitant waste of resources in the quest for fame, and it led to the eventual, and just, collapse of the organisation, which still owed lesser acts who had given their time, resources, energy, and talent in the community spirit.

A Case for Change

This year, we were assured that the event would be more representative. I have not noticed as much. The ticket prices were still high; and whilst the acts celebrated more local talent, so that the total cost came to twenty per cent less than what was paid to the main act last year, I am still failing to find any sense of engagement.

My premise for sponsorship is broader accessibility and affordability, without anyone having to declare that they are in straitened circumstances to qualify for a concessionary ticket, assuming any are available at all, or so few that access becomes a lottery.

The influence sponsors hold over Pride management should be codified as invitational rather than institutional, never commanding or directing what Pride can and cannot do. There must be strict autonomy, alongside broad community representation in the decision-making process.

Watching from Afar

Apart from stepping out of my apartment block onto the street with my folding chair to watch the parades on Saturday, which had over 150 distinct participants, including organisations, companies, clubs, charities, establishments, and political parties, I have done nothing more.

The clouds did gather and rain on the parade at certain times, but it did not dampen anyone's enthusiasm. I was in my rain jacket and poncho, which kept me dry, though some braved the chill and the wet as if it were a bright summer's day.

Even the Service for Pride at Manchester Cathedral, which I would usually steward and sometimes take part in, I gave a miss. Two invitations to garden barbecues I ignored, rather than offer my regrets and risk being persuaded against my own inclination.

Protest and Celebration

It is my view that the Pride principle has long deviated from its founding ethos of both protest and celebration; it has become an over-commercialised affair that now merely grants access to those with the means, rather than a broad community celebration that recognises the diversity it comprises, in groups large and small. Pride has drifted from access towards exclusivity.

So the question remains: whom is the modern Pride for? The answer I have seen suggests it is not for everyone, nor for the well-meaning members of the wider community who wish to embrace one another in the pursuit of human rights and dignity, both for those affected and for their allies. These are all reasons why I am no more supportive of Pride in Manchester today than I have been for the past few years.

No Curmudgeon

As peace returns to my city by the end of today, I am not being curmudgeonly. We can simply agree that not everyone is energised by these things, and that there should be acceptance of this without heaping on any kind of excoriation.

Maybe, next year, I shall be just as absent from this annual charade, in the company of my husband, who, for his lack of exposure to these settings, is far too easily excited about Pride events for my liking or comfort.

Thought Picnic: Identity Formed by Timing

2026-08-31T00:27:03.695+01:00

Returning After War

Way back in my late teens, I had a friend, or someone I thought was a friend. We were agemates, and something interesting and significant caught my attention. It seemed that those who returned from the UK at the end of the Nigerian Civil War integrated better, taking up the growing opportunities in a recovering country, than those who did so almost a decade later.

Between those who returned well under the age of ten and those in their early teens, there was a generational difference in adaptation, a sense of being caught adrift. Staying in the UK for longer proved less beneficial to their sense of belonging or identity; though they had better English accents, they were unsettled, and sometimes having a less prosperous time of it.

A Shared Beginning

For some context, the people I write about and I were all born in the UK in the 1960s. I returned to Nigeria well under the age of ten, having barely been exposed to inner city mechanics and situations; they returned in their teens, late in the 1970s. What separated us, then, was not origin but timing. We were cut from the same cloth, yet a few years of divergence would shape us differently.

My observations are, of course, anecdotal rather than academic. Even so, I think the age-of-return hypothesis is significant, and I have alluded to it in other blogs. It is the quiet variable running beneath everything I am about to describe.

An AI-generated infographic on the blog content. (Click to enlarge.)

What They Brought

What they brought into the fray was a sense of fun. They were the best chess players and had figured out how to solve the Rubik's cube, though they were not better Scrabble players. The Nigerian educational system was a challenge, amongst the other things that left them yearning to return to the UK, if only they had the opportunity.

They were a restless lot, and of the many, there were two who, on reflection, had been exposed to the race and deprivation politics and the discrimination of the 1970s into the 1980s. They carried the scars of inner-city influences, influences that would not have engendered the most positive sense of self and status, even in Nigeria.

They were suspicious before they were trusting, questioning more than listening, ready to respond with violence on a dare without first putting things in perspective. That people envied their exposure, without understanding how they were the personification of a social construct beyond their control, one that amounted to a material deficit, could make for an interesting study.

An Identity Formed at Home

Here is where the timing mattered most. My blackness was always simply part of me, and that was settled in Nigeria, quietly and without apology, long before it was ever questioned. I grew up where blackness needed no explanation and carried no burden; it was simply the ground I stood on. There was nothing to defend, because nothing had been challenged.

So, when I returned to the UK, and the racist abuse came, as it did, it met an identity that was already whole. The abuse did not shape how I saw myself; it had arrived too late for that. I could regard it as a reflection of the abuser rather than a depiction of myself, precisely because the depiction had been drawn elsewhere, at home, on my own terms.

The teenage returnees, I suspect, had that sequence reversed. Their sense of racial self was worked out amid the hostility, not before it, and so the hostility got inside, where mine never could.

A Sudden Slap

This friend of mine gave me a stinging slap after a dare, a playful situation that suddenly turned strange. It taught me a few things. I would not rise to a dare that I had no intention of acting on in the first place. I do not care if I am called a chicken; they are the hardiest and most abused of animals, and they probably possess the greatest survival instinct and resilience in the animal kingdom.

As a consequence, I have no fear of missing out. I am usually told that I do not know what I am missing, to which I would respond that I cannot miss what I do not know. A slap is a momentary event with no follow-on; the embarrassment quickly fades into irrelevance. My temperament is not conditioned for violence. I am comfortable letting things slide, because what defines me is character, not machismo. Class is always understated, never dramatic.

On Character and Circumstance

I think environments and societal settings can influence character as much as mould it, though to varying extents. I cannot speak to the sociological truth of that. Yet I am left wondering whether my own equanimity was truly character, or simply the good fortune of a gentler formative environment, a self settled before it was ever tested.

Perhaps that is the paradox worth sitting with. The returnees had the richer exposure by one measure, the metropolitan UK, the accents, the chess and the Rubik's cube, yet the more unsettled outcome by another. I had the lesser exposure, yet the steadier sense of who I was. Sometimes, it seems, less can be more.

A Gemini Notebook AI Podcast on this blog

Contempt from the Ringside Seat

2026-08-25T23:01:40.632+01:00

The Ringside Seat

Imagine having a ringside seat at a boxing match, not because you paid good money for it, but because you share such a close relationship with the boxer that no other person would be allowed to take that seat, even when you were not present to sit in it.

The person you are supporting is the challenger for a title, and through the rounds they are pummelled and battered. Every round portends a possible knockout, yet the challenger endures. They keep going, taking the blows but never being beaten, and the points tallied at the end of each round add up to hand the challenger the victory and the belt.

Then, in your telling of that encounter, you speak of bloodshot eyes, of mouth guards being knocked out, and of the uselessness of the challenger, insisting that you could put up a better fight and walk away unscathed. That becomes the report you file, neglecting the simple fact that your person was the victor.

Telling My Story

In the story of my life, about which I have written quite extensively, there are many strands of adversity and failure; but the successes and triumphs bookmark the telling of this story, so that it would seem strange to major in the misfortunes.

One narrative could have been given in this light. Akin has had such a blessed life. I have watched situations of failure, joblessness, two debilitating bouts of cancer, and challenges that seemed insurmountable.

And yet you would not look at him and think he had been touched by anything but the good fortune of scaling through life on sheer luck and almost undeserved providence. What an inspiring story he has, should he ever wish to talk about it.

Rather, of all that could have been said, what got relayed back to me was a mis-telling of my story: a conflation of events, suffused with half-truths, then given the veneer of a wastrel and ne'er-do-well, constantly down on his luck because of his irresponsibility.

There is a useful distinction to be drawn here between interpretation and misrepresentation. Two honest witnesses may weight the same night differently, one dwelling on the punishment absorbed, another on the resilience shown; but neither is entitled to erase the result. Perspective explains emphasis; it does not license fabrication.

There is every possibility, like the person invited to the ringside seat, to tell a different tale with the outlook of a curmudgeon incapable of seeing the good in anything. We own the filters of our perspectives on things.

The Four Pillars

An AI-generated infographic on the blog content. (Click to enlarge.)

The architecture of trust, whereby your ringside supporter reports your story in the best light possible, the truth and not embellishment, the honest and frank assessment of what was observed, rests on four pillars: care, concern, consideration, and confidence. One could define those four Cs in the terms that follow:

Care: the baseline emotional investment a person has in your wellbeing.

Concern: the active protective instinct they feel regarding your vulnerability.

Consideration: the cognitive foresight to understand how their future actions might actually affect you.

Confidence: the secure container that the first three pillars create.

Blog: Thought Picnic: Confidences, Not Secrets

The Honest Retelling

An honest retelling, then, is one the subject can recognise, even when it is unflattering. You may wince at a true account, but you will not fail to find yourself in it. When the portrait no longer resembles the sitter, the fault lies with the painter.

Honesty also requires proportion. To recount the joblessness, the two debilitating bouts of cancer, and the seemingly insurmountable challenges, and yet omit that I am still here, still working, still writing, still standing, is not honesty; it is selective editing masquerading as candour.

When to Speak

With that in mind, it is difficult to understand how reality and retelling could diverge so far, so hurtfully, and so much to another's discredit, for reasons best known to the teller. When a portrait is this false, one feels there is little option but to confront it and to challenge the narrative set loose about you.

Invariably, if you have nothing good to say about someone, you are not obliged to say anything at all out of a need for conversation, small talk, spite, malice, or anything else. Your silence does not have to be bought; it is a quality of self-control to bridle your tongue.

Brian’s Point of View: Words Can Break Something We Thought Was Safe

A Gemini Notebook AI Podcast on this blog

Essential Snobbery 101: The Slow Death of Proper Address

2026-08-22T02:23:40.077+01:00

A Stringent Beginning

It was almost a decade ago when I underwent a stringent vetting process with all the officialdom that extracted more information from me than I would willingly have volunteered. This process was supervised by a department within the organisation to which I was contracted to offer professional services.

When the process was completed, I received a notice from a member of staff confirming that I had passed all the requirements. It began with "Hi!" Just "Hi", without a name, stripped of all formality, dignity, and function, as though we shared the familiarity born of mutual friendship going back decades, rather than mere acquaintance.

I was reeling and altogether taken aback; this could not seriously have come from within the company with which I held a formal contractual engagement.

Insult and Injury

To add insult to injury, the person who signed off the message bore names suggesting a common Nigerian heritage, where the expectation is that a modicum of formality should greet those with whom you have never interacted before. Only after you have introduced yourself and established communication through a cordial response and acknowledgement should informality be considered.

This was analogous to an ingénue who had abandoned the sophistication of speech for grunts and howls.

From that day, I wanted nothing to do with that individual, and I made a point of expressing my displeasure at such an approach to their manager. My own manager attempted to apologise on her behalf, then suggested that we might have become old-fashioned.

Manners Never Age

Maybe we were; but good manners, in my view, can never be old-fashioned. They should always be fashionable and properly taught. Comportment, decorum, respectful address, honour, regard, and etiquette make the person and exude character.

I have worked in places where informality is the culture, yet I would still address you by name, and with deference, because I was brought up that way, and what you give out comes back to you in spades.

The Order of Greetings

Whilst I have spent four decades in the corporate world, any first contact with a person would always come with a greeting for the time of day: good morning, good afternoon, or good evening. Good night is usually goodbye.

Then comes the person's name, which might be preceded by a standard, academic, religious, military, royal, or political title. Professions deployed as titles, apart from "Dr" for medical doctors, are an exercise in pompous superfluity and self-aggrandisement.

At other times, it is "Dear" and the person's name. "Hello" is for friends. Then I close my messages properly, with a variation of "regards" and my name. In speech, it is formally the greeting for the time of day; I introduce myself with purpose if required, or await a response with names and preferences.

Pronouns and Coherence

On the new trend of pronouns, especially those that challenge the natural flow of the English grammar I learnt from well-appointed schooling, I would rather use a name than defeat the ends of coherence and adherence.

Good and traditional forms of address will always establish the standard of communication and the protocols of language. If someone is too well-spoken to use expletives in any way, it is unlikely others would deploy them when speaking to you; or at least they are guarded, and moderate their language with apologies for any unfortunate slips of the tongue.

The Art of Subtlety

Maybe, indeed, I am old-fashioned. I would rather be that than uncouth and uncultured. From my youth, my mode of address has earned me consideration, respect, and a hearing. Yet if I am overly formal in beginning a message with "Dear Mr Jones", when we have always been on first-name terms, you need not read any further to know that this is an expression of great displeasure.

Subtlety and discretion; the polite turn of expression that, on first reading, seems complimentary, until some thought is put to it. It is the way of the English, an art of communication lost to many for whom a good education might have been a luxury. It is not their fault.

You Do Not Get A Painter to Fix Another's Art

2026-08-20T02:25:00.621+01:00

The Value of Vindication

Vindication comes in different ways, not to gloat or to point fingers, even if, after all is said, the concern you raised has been proven true. Good communication, alongside the ability to articulate one's thoughts even in the heat of the moment, remains the most critical skill every time.

In a long-running saga of urgency and wits, from which workplace stress can be the damaging consequence for motivation and wellbeing, withstanding authority and office in the quest to improve a proposed solution, so that it works as intended and engenders confidence, is not a battle for the fainthearted.

There are so many ways to express oneself, and the power of persuasion comes in the form of words that walk people down a reasonable lane of acknowledgement, misgiving, challenge, and requirement, before acquiescing to the notion of a willingness to engage and always help.

A Question of Ownership

In this instance, after a solution did not work as intended, a project manager had the bright idea that it was now the job of the implementor to fix the problem with a complex set of orchestration scripts; scripts that the implementor had long before determined would not deploy cleanly, for various reasons previously given but seemingly ignored.

The truth was that collaboration had never quite been on offer. What passed for it at the outset was minimal, closer to an imposition than an invitation, and it was only our steady, well-argued pushbacks that drew out any real interaction. Even then, we were working with architects whose confidence outpaced their familiarity with the environment in which their solution was meant to run.

The first line of my response was that his reading of the situation was wrong, and I then went on to make the case for why, starting with a simple analogy. Because scripts and programming are an individual's way of thinking and a style of expression for what they want to achieve, and without the full immersion of others in the coding process, "You do not get a painter to fix another artist's work of art."

An AI-generated infographic on the blog content. (Click to enlarge.)

I appreciate that there was something I could do, but what was requested was input; it could not be interpreted as taking ownership of the solution. The fundamentals of the intended solution were sound, but its enterprise deployment, so that it consistently works once rolled out, requires the inside knowledge of the implementor to point out why certain constructs will fail, so that the developer takes those ideas seriously when modifying elements of the proposed solution.

Back to the Canvas

The response of the project manager was at first patronising and then emotional, but the artist, the developer, understood the import of my message and got back to work fixing their solution, which is now in its fourth iteration and possibly still a work in progress nine days on.

As far as I was concerned, what I intended was achieved: to draw out the work of the implementor, before the solution was complete, and to inform of the essential changes and improvements needed to make it deployable.

Invariably, I believe the result would not only be fit for purpose; once fully done, all sides of development, through implementation, to the end-users would see the intended benefits the solution would offer.

The whole trajectory now sits in the slipstream of practical engagement with the implementation process, rather than in acquiring accolades from promising the client outcomes that, from the onset, would never have worked, back when the first ideas were put to us over two months ago.

Authority and Consent

One higher management person did interject in the email chain, suggesting we were involved in verbose communication; the same person who used the lexicon of grief to explain the effects of change some months ago. None of these replies required a response once the artist was back to fixing their work of art, rather than hoping another might attempt a dash of graffiti to improve it.

The authority to propose still requires the consent to implement. Badly designed systems tend to be a symptom of the same thing: responsibility placed in the wrong hands, and too little respectful engagement with those who must carry a complex solution through deployment.

Had the environment been understood from the start, much of this could have been avoided. In the workplace, this is the challenge faced by many who need the kind of articulation that ensures a solution has the best set of inputs to work.

We are not seeking perfection, just something good enough to understand, implement, manage, and hand over cleanly, when the time comes.

Blog - Authority Without Consent

Blog - When Change Borrows the Lexicon of Grief

A Gemini Notebook AI Podcast on this blog

Thought Picnic: Confidences, Not Secrets

2026-08-17T16:01:33.067+01:00

Confidences, Not Secrets

In the broad scheme of things, we have no secrets; what we have are confidences that too often get betrayed in unguarded yet frank moments to others.

Much as I hear and listen to a great deal, I am guarded about how I use what I have learnt. I could form opinions about people, but I am very flexible and, hopefully, tenderhearted, making allowances until indifference or unkindness breaks the bond.

Indifference is, for me, the most wicked form of expression in any communication, because it means there is no care, concern, consideration, or confidence. Whatever confidences you might have thought you had in that setting are then ready for the careless abandon of reason and a carefree dissemination to anyone.

An AI-generated infographic on the blog content. (Click to enlarge.)

Words have an effect, a great effect, when what should have been kept in mind finds an outlet to others. I am also a believer in the biblical saying, “From the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh.” Even discretion and moderation can scarcely stand in for self-control once you have resolved all inner contention and convincingly arrived at the conclusion you have uttered.

Being Spoken About

From people I trust, I have heard the most hurtful things, sometimes directly, though usually relayed to me through other channels. I bat them away most of the time; yet, in other situations, the covenant is broken beyond redemption, and the relationship sours or is terminated for my own peace of mind.

What we cannot avoid is that we will always be spoken about by someone else: in praise, in jest, in commendation, in spite, in jealousy, in rancour, or much worse. That is a given.

I have the outlet of my blog to reflect on these many things, and perhaps to limit the impact of malevolence whilst maximising that of benevolence.

Words That Wound

Perhaps decades ago, it was a guardian relating to someone else that I had been picked up off the street. I am grateful that my story, which has had many failures, has been greeted with amazing successes.

Another, whilst I was in the throes of personal angst and the loss of confidence to project myself, grew fed up with the process I took towards rebuilding character and purpose. Out of nowhere came words to the effect that my inability to produce results was inimical to their social standing; I was the illuminant of a bastard.

To them, that was a kind of radical intervention to jar my senses, but it did the opposite. It fell into that rubric of dripping criticism, the kind that strips you of your dignity to force a reaction and their view of the right result. It is about them, rather than you.

Shedding Old Skin

For me, there was no second instinct; I ceased initiating communication from that point. It is the kind of talk the speaker believes is necessary, but which the listener, with an appreciation of nuance and the use of language, would find, basically, unforgivable.

Yet these examples might tempt a recipient to deem such incidents forgettable, until you are broadsided by the notion that you are living a fake life. I do wish a whole lot of things were fake: the losses, the cancers, some experiences, a few tragedies. But what kind of a life would that be?

Perhaps, for once, I am not remotely my own harshest critic when I allow myself the pleasure of living, of loving, of existing, and of doing my own thing, unbothered by what others think, because that is their problem and not mine. Yes, the words do hurt, but they must not dampen the spirit of the joy of living. Like moulting, or the shedding of skin, some old bonds need breaking for the renewal of self.

A Gemini Notebook AI Podcast on this blog

The Ghosts We Author Ourselves

2026-08-17T12:00:34.938+01:00

A Late-Night Encounter

A while ago, on a walk late at night, I unwittingly wandered past a disused cemetery. It occurred to me that I was looking at tombstones left unkempt in grounds untended, ensconced between a road junction and a cluster of residences.

I was immediately in a heightened state of anxiety, expecting, through the power of mental suggestion, to see something, and yet dreading whatever it might be. My rational mind insisted there was no reason to run; and on reflection, I determined there was none to be afraid either.

An Impressionable Mind

Even so, I know how my impressionable young mind, in the past, has conjured apparitions, visible only to me, of dreadful things I find difficult to talk about.

An AI-generated infographic on the blog content. (Click to enlarge.)

For this reason, I avoid anything that invites paranormal phenomena, including horror films, since I am perfectly capable of dreaming up anything without the need for a prompt.

Back in March, when our apartment overlooked a Jewish cemetery from the seventh floor, we would close the windows and draw the curtains once it grew dark, refusing to let our avoidance of the unknown take hold.

Why Fear the Peaceful Dead?

There is a strange irony here worth pausing on. A cemetery is, by any rational measure, among the most peaceful places we might ever be; quiet, still, and given over entirely to rest. And yet we fear it.

That fear, I have come to think, is not something the ground itself emits; it is something we bring with us, inherited from the tales, fables, and stories we absorbed long before we could question them. We frighten ourselves with a script written by other hands.

The unknown, in many senses, is precisely that: we have no inkling of what is out there, or of who that patch of land once harboured or memorialised. But that very lack of knowing should work in the opposite direction.

If I have no association with these graves, no bond with those who lie beneath them, no shared history at all, then why on earth would the dead, or any other world, take the slightest interest in me? Why would they trouble to cast me as the leading player in some living horror film, with themselves as the supporting cast?

Nothing Buried Here

Put plainly, the less connection there is, the weaker the hold it should have on us. Then I found myself wondering about the humorous placebo effect of a tombstone planted as a prank, with nothing buried beneath it, yet still exerting the full graveyard effect on anyone whose imagination readily runs wild. It is proof, if any were needed, that the fear lives in the beholder and not in the stone.

The least association, then, should leave no true affinity, only a sheer, willing victimhood scripted by a fearful mind. How hard it is to unlearn the tales, fables, and stories of ghosts, ghouls, and banshees. On that night, I also knew that if I were confronted with anything, I would engage with it and stand my ground.

The Voice in the Dark

Then, out of the recesses of a nearby building, someone appeared and said hello. This time I had the presence of mind not to jump out of my skin, and as I made sense of it, I realised it was a homeless man. He most certainly had not come from the graves; and if he had, it was nowhere near as bad as I had imagined.

A Gemini Notebook AI Podcast on this blog

Twenty-Seven Years and a Day

2026-08-12T21:11:44.576+01:00

A Manchester Eclipse

Time is measured in epochs that put our ephemeral existence into insignificance. I have been in the path of a few celestial events, solar eclipses that, without the explanation of modern science, would have left us in total dread and foreboding.

Today in Manchester, we witnessed a partial solar eclipse. Things did not really go dark, but everyone was looking up to behold this once-in-a-lifetime heavenly sight.

I could not get hold of eclipse glasses, so I improvised, making a pinhole camera. I probably needed a bit more depth to the box, but it occupied me enough that I did not dare to look directly at the sun.

An AI-generated infographic on the blog content. (Click to enlarge.)

Finding a Better View

As I live in an urban city centre with many high-rise buildings, getting a good view first entailed standing by the roadside, before I made my way to Mayfield Park, which we as residents sometimes forget is so close and quite vast.

I watched it well beyond the maximum before a lady offered me her glasses, and I then looked directly at the majesty of our universe.

Twenty-Seven Years Earlier

Twenty-seven years and a day ago, we had another solar eclipse. This one was quite prominent; not totality, but you saw and noticed the dimming of the light. As the light dimmed, it took on a sepia hue, almost like being inside a photograph from the 1940s.

It was also a different place. I was visiting a friend in the Netherlands, who lived out in the countryside at Doorn, and what a spectacle we saw in his garden.

Doorn is also the town in which the Kaiser of Germany spent his last days. Wilhelm II abdicated in 1918 and lived at Huis Doorn until his death in 1941; fittingly, he seems to carry that same feeling of the 1940s that the sepia light evoked.

The House at Doorn

My friend's mother took me on a tour of Huis Doorn. As her father had been the groundsman, their house stood on the grounds, and she, with the other children, would run around the house having tea with the Kaiser.

She showed me the chutes they slithered through to get from one part of the house to another: a historical monument, visited with a guide whose own history was formed within its walls.

A Turning Point

I cannot tell why an eclipse could be both momentous and auspicious. I did not see the future, for I had just come out of a seven-year relationship. We remained friends and planned a short holiday to Brussels.

As he returned to England, I headed north to Holland. Nine months later marked the beginning of a new life in the Netherlands, twelve and a half years of it. No, it was not to enter a relationship, though I remained in contact with my friend in Doorn.

Written in the Skies

And God said, "Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth." And it was so. [Genesis 1:14-15 NIVUK]

I do not do things by chance. This might be a harbinger of things to come; the least you can do is to be ready for when change and opportunity come.

Life is like a story written in the skies, sometimes clear, at times cloudy, and even, on occasion, in the dimness and haze of sepia. It comes as experience, to be written into memory and history.

A Gemini Notebook AI Podcast on this blog

No More Fucks to Give: On Experience, Rejection, and Self-Worth

2026-08-10T22:21:32.565+01:00

An AI-generated infographic on the blog content. (Click to enlarge.)

The Weight of Experience

I have met, read about, and heard from people who tell me it is tough out there. This is not for any want of skill or expertise; these are people who initiated, executed, and commissioned projects and programmes in-country, abroad, and within global conglomerates, bringing function and functionality into existence.

Yet, for all that wealth of experience, along with continuous adaptation and change, a keenness to keep abreast of developments, and a depth built over decades, the market for talent seems to have closed its doors. It offers little opportunity for the kind of knowledge and insight that would profit any organisation daring enough to venture from the packaged to the rugged.

Six Hundred Applications

My own experience of this came through posting around 600 applications for jobs I not only believed I could do, but for which, at times, I was overqualified. Still, you stick your oar in for the prospect of being seen and recognised enough for what they might think you can do.

At this point, it is not a case of looking for achievement. While we can set new goals for the circumstances in which we find ourselves, there is little else we need to prove to anyone, apart from the excitement we feel in doing things, doing them well, and then being given a platform to pay it forward through mentoring, coaching, and helping others grow.

The Toll of Rejection

Each application went out on the wing of hope that the response would not be one of rejection, but an invitation to have a conversation. Those who do not know you might subject you to unconventional questioning that borders on interrogation. You half bite your tongue at being patronised, belittled, or even humiliated, because they seem to hold all the cards while you are trying to be seen beyond what your CV says about you.

This process is not without a toll on your confidence and self-esteem. You begin to measure yourself according to what you are offered rather than what you are worth. It becomes a gradual, humbling climbdown; the high they think they are offering sits at a low you had never countenanced, perhaps not in two decades, but that becomes the price for being, unfortunately, out of the game.

Stooping to Conquer

Invariably, we stoop to conquer, resetting our expectations and redefining our horizons as our laurels begin to hang on the walls that deign to accept us. Perhaps some recognition comes with it, once they realise we were more than a bargain snapped up by a market less astute.

The corporate world might forget one thing. Where others are still in pursuit of hierarchical reward, we, after almost four decades in this sphere, probably know all the machinations of office politics, the power plays, and the egos that so easily toxify an otherwise conducive workplace.

A Word to the Weary

Indeed, I encourage those who have been denied prospect after prospect not to relent; perhaps some recalibration is all that is required. I remember all sorts of things said about my old CV. It was rewritten, redesigned, and refurbished until I could almost no longer recognise myself, my work, my voice, and what I could eventually defend. In the end, it was the old and trusty CV that won it.

Finally, I enjoy what I do as a senior sort of geek. I will not be disrespected, and I will speak my mind. I do not need to be confrontational, but if circumstance demands it, the challenge will be met. And heck, many like me have no more fucks to give; annoy us and we are gone. Thank you.

A Gemini Notebook AI Podcast on this blog

Badly Designed Systems Are Just That

2026-08-10T13:36:38.623+01:00

Learning to Laugh

Life can be a rather humorous existence, or at least, I tend to laugh at myself more than I berate myself. It is a healthy disposition to have. What fools we have been in too many things, though hopefully we have refused to allow those things to define us.

Consider the pressure to deliver a product that was less than ready for primetime, yet pushed towards deployment by the powers that be. This came after misgivings and concerns that eventually became valid and were proved so too.

An AI-generated infographic on the blog content. (Click to enlarge.)

A Premise That Failed

I found myself testing a premise that did not work. Every time I made an adjustment, I did not see the expected result. When I was asked to put it out immediately, I had one inescapable point: what is not working cannot be deployed. I had a slight window of protest, insisting that until it worked on my system, it could go nowhere.

When I eventually got the working parts to work, I realised my error had been using a similarly named old component when the new one was intended. The urge from one end had beclouded my ability to concentrate. Once I discovered what the issue was, I sternly suggested that people should ease off and wait for my update.

Back to the Drawing Board

The next morning, we saw some results, along with the proof of why the other parts would not work. We had the knowledge, but the architects, in their wisdom and hubris, thought they knew better.

Did I not write about this last month, when I set out why technical authority without social consent produces brittle solutions? The whole process returned to the drawing board, yet once again it missed the essential part of engagement that would take a great concept to a successful deployment.

Then came another issue. I had written a letter to express my frustration at being unable to secure a slot for a review. The website presented a user experience you barely wanted to relive once, let alone many times over a couple of weeks.

An Unwinnable Lottery

As I recorded all the issues that fed what had looked like an unwinnable lottery for access, I clicked on another link within the interface, only to find that a slot had already been booked on my behalf, though I could find no record of being informed of that appointment.

I did, however, find one message that allowed the rescheduling of an earlier slot; but I attributed that to another booking I had received a few days before. What was missing from the information exchanges was any indication of what each message particularly pertained to.

When Systems Forget the User

How much better it could have been if they had not assumed they were the only ones communicating with you, and that the possibility of multiple appointments scheduled within a short timeframe might exacerbate the confusion about what was what.

This discovery meant my letter of frustration did not have to be sent. It was also a relief that the said slot had not passed, as the alternative arrangements made would not have been realised for almost three weeks.

The Wry Smile

Essentially, badly designed systems are just that: badly designed, no matter how they seem to work. The end user is simply left with concerns, frustrations and misgivings, entirely out of the frame of what affects them the most, because they are not properly considered as part of why, and for whom, the system was designed.

Then, for each of these episodes, when things are not as bad as they once seemed, there is a wry smile, some mirth and laughter, and even that urge to step out for a walk for having been so worked up earlier.

A Gemini Notebook AI Podcast on this blog

Anecdote or Evidence? A Cancer Survivor's View

2026-08-05T11:54:10.314+01:00

Living with Cancer

As someone who has endured two life-threatening episodes of cancer, I do not trifle with the medical components of diagnosis, treatment, monitoring, and the continued assessment of my health and condition.

What is even more interesting to me as an individual is the range of expertise that pertains to each case: the skin cancer I had in 2009, the prostate cancer diagnosis of 2024, and the search for anomalies that prompted my visit to an otolaryngologist last Friday, owing to concerns about my changed voice.

Having had chemotherapy for the former and radiotherapy for the latter, I am well aware that these are highly specialised areas of cancer treatment, and that they must remain under the supervision and control of the experts.

My Body, My Terms

That is not to say I present myself as a sheep for the slaughter, handing myself to the medical establishment to do with my body whatever it wishes. Readers of my blogs on my personal health experiences will be aware of a trenchant assertion I have made many times before: "It is my body first, before it is your guinea pig."

My engagement, involvement, and consent are required once the interventions considered on the pathway to my recovery have been fully explained and detailed. I retain the option of a second opinion, though I have not yet needed to exercise it. I ask the questions that need answering, and I do so from the standpoint that I have autonomy, understanding, and decision-making authority in any process that concerns me.

What I would never do is deviate from qualified and established medical procedure, whether for prophylaxis, acute treatment, or maintenance therapy, on any condition that has been verifiably diagnosed.

The Lure of Snake Oil

That said, I do understand that some people have not been as fortunate as I have in securing the outcomes they want from the medical establishment, whether in pain management, effective treatments, the management of adverse side effects, or simply that plain understanding of human suffering which might persuade a doctor to be a little more empathetic when addressing their concerns.

This might well be the reason people resort to snake oil remedies and unvetted drugs peddled by illegal dispensaries or by merchants without pharmaceutical provenance. Yet whatever fantastic tales are told about a remedy, and whatever endorsements and anecdotes others might offer to suggest it has benefitted them, I cannot outsource the need for better medical outcomes to unregulated practitioners who are effectively exploiting the vulnerability of helpless people for profit, for fame, or for both.

Anecdote or Evidence?

Here lies the crux of it. Should the lived experience of unregulated remedies, with all its accompanying anecdotes and testimonials, matter more than the evidence of what the medical establishment prescribes? These remedies are not the product of any properly conducted clinical trial; their results are sentimental rather than proven. That, I concede, is open for debate, but it is a debate worth having honestly, and with a clear head, rather than one settled by the loudest or most moving story.

If a patient is genuinely not getting what they need from their doctor, in terms of listening, understanding, and acting to help, then the alternatives deserve proper consideration. A second opinion, recourse to a medical ombudsman, a formal appeal: these are the legitimate avenues, and these are the discussions we ought to be having. They keep the patient within the bounds of safety while still asserting the autonomy I hold so dear.

The Real Danger

And so the difficult question remains. How do you convince people that, no matter how fantastic the apparent results of snake oil remedies might seem, they endanger themselves first? There is the risk of outright poisoning. There is the danger of rendering their current regulated treatments ineffective. There is the very real possibility of complicating the conditions they already have to the point of being untreatable.

If I refuse to be the medical establishment's guinea pig, why on earth would I allow a stranger to sell me funny goods? This is the most baffling thing about the news story on the BBC, the one that leaves you asking: why? [BBC News: Dewormer and scabies drugs being sold as cancer treatments, BBC investigation finds]

A Gemini Notebook AI Podcast on this blog

AI-generated infographic on the blog content.

Crumbs In Our Wake

2026-08-03T15:12:16.531+01:00

Crumbs in Our Wake

As we walk the quiet streets of our cities in the assumed isolation of our seemingly contented spaces, we so easily and unknowingly leave crumbs of who and what we are in our wake.

Others, like pigeons of the air, swoop down and peck away at those crumbs, a meal provided by the divine hand of providence, in whom we can scarcely believe cares enough for us, even when neither bird nor beast worries, for provision does indeed come.

These crumbs tell other stories, the ones we cannot let go of because unanswered questions remain. It is unlikely we would ever get the opportunity to satisfy the curiosity that one strange encounter brings into view, even as we try to mind our own business.

A Chance Encounter

Much earlier today, a lady was coming towards me, pushing a pram. I presumed she was a grandmother, and not a walking miracle of Sarah begetting Isaac after the incredulity of her laughter at the idea that she could still bear a child.

She was adjusting a paper windmill, or pinwheel, and for that alone the expectation was that a child, reclined in the pram, was being entertained or distracted with the novelty of a spinning attraction. Had small talk ensued, it would have been about seeing a pleasantly focused, smiling toddler, whilst commending the grandmother for keeping the child at peace.

The Doll in the Pram

As I walked past, I looked to see a grinning face, teeth showing with the gaiety of the widest smile possible, even legs being thrown up in the air in acknowledgement of the object positioned for their attention. Nothing of the sort; the passenger in the ornate perambulator was a doll, unmistakably the plastic rigidity of a lifeless presence that only a doll could muster.

There was no need for a double take, but one did vacillate between concern and sympathy. Concern that this story was one of mental illness brought into the public sphere; the wish for a child now given over to the taking of a doll for an outing, with all the presence of mind to furnish that doll with the trimmings that might accompany a child.

Sympathy and Grace

Then came sympathy for whatever the tragic story might be, such as the loss of a grandchild remembered daily in this sad display of grief that I had now uncomfortably witnessed. A daily upset for her, and a lingering one for me, for how do you ask the pertinent questions?

There might be another angle, though, beyond concern or sympathy, this being eccentricity, and we all have some of that in us in different measures. Whether this be suffering expressed so vividly, or an expression too quickly misunderstood, the reality of a person's private world is not that private when brought into the public sphere.

A Good Samaritan Nature

Yet even this might not begin to cover the spectrum of life experiences that became that momentary observation, for any person's story is barely told in a brief encounter. Rather, what we know in part might define them too narrowly in comparison to who they really are.

And if we were to ignore the things we see, we could, in that very mindset, miss the moment when someone in distress could do with our Good Samaritan nature and our help.

Yet, in the crumbs that the pigeons do get to feed on, is a complete meal not better than manna, without a care for what tomorrow brings? There, but for the grace of God, go we, so that whatever story we tell might be a blessing to another.

A Gemini Notebook AI Podcast on this blog

An AI-generated infographic on the blog content.

Long Enough, Short Enough: A Blog Learns to Speak

2026-07-31T15:34:04.655+01:00

Twenty-Three Years On

The husbandry of a blog in its 23^rd year might leave one wondering whether there is a need to radically change its format and workings, or to provide other means of engagement with an audience whose attention is now grabbed by whatever suits these changing times.

When reviewing this issue, I have landed on the premise that textual expression still matters. I hope my blogs, as I have often suggested, follow the judgement of a good seamstress making a skirt: it should be long enough to cover the detail, whilst short enough to keep the interest.

I think I read that quip in the Reader's Digest, over 40 years ago, and it still matters. In terms of the format and appearance of my blogs, I have essentially maintained the same design for as long as I can remember.

A New Development

However, in 2026, I came upon an interesting development. On my Android phone, using the Google Chrome browser, there was an option to "Listen to this page". What you get is not a verbatim readout of the page, but an AI-generated summary, lasting up to 90 seconds.

For one blog I wrote at the end of January, I could not get an AI-generated summary; rather, it was a Read Aloud of the blog, word for word. I was not happy with that, and I could not find any mechanism to change it from a verbatim readout to an AI-generated précis.

It then occurred to me that, months ago, when working with Google NotebookLM, as it was known until earlier in July, the month we are now closing out, when it became Gemini Notebook, you could paste the URL of a source into a notebook and then ask for an Audio Overview.

The Audio Overview

In its default state, the Audio Overview is a Deep Dive: an AI-generated discussion between two people, one with a male voice and one with a female voice, on the content of the source. It offers explanation and exposition of the material to give a considered and thoughtful review of, in this case, the blog I have posted as a source.

This follows a podcast format, and you have options for a short version or one of much longer duration, with further formats beyond the Deep Dive, namely Brief, Critique, or Debate. I have plumped for the mid-range Deep Dive, which can run anywhere from 15 to 25 minutes.

To my mind, this is a judicious use of time: long enough to explore a blog's topics exhaustively, yet the podcast rarely rambles into the inconsequential or the insignificant. A five-minute podcast, by contrast, would do little justice to much of what I write about.

These conversations come in the M4A audio file format, which I upload to the Internet Archive and then share via an inline frame tag at the bottom of the text of every blog written in 2026.

I think this brings a rich context to the blog beyond just reading the material. Some discussions extend the reach of the blog to topics not clearly covered, or to issues that need addressing in clearer detail than a blog can offer.

A Matter of Inclusion

There is another benefit I had not fully appreciated at the outset. These audio overviews open the blog to those who might otherwise be shut out of it: readers with visual impairments, and those who find long passages of text a struggle.

They also serve the many who simply prefer to listen whilst commuting, walking, or going about their day. What began as an experiment in enrichment has quietly become a matter of inclusion, and I am glad the blog can now meet its audience in more than one way.

Weaving a Train of Thought

Beyond that, and this is still work in progress, I have taken links to blogs created in a monthly circle and asked for Audio Overviews that now weave an interesting train of thought. I have been surprised to see this, as each blog is usually written individually and separately, on its own subject, perspective, and merit.

I have put these out as much longer-form Deep Dive podcasts, published on a quarterly basis. I suppose the parameters for prompting in these situations require a bit more grounding and centring on the context of those blogs.

Occasionally, the Audio Overviews might misconstrue or misunderstand something; and while you can interact with a podcast, reproducing it, even on the same prompt, creates a uniquely different podcast.

That said, you have the option to put in clarifications and corrections until you are happy with the result. Some outputs are just too good to be discarded, the quality of the discussion outweighing the minor errors.

AI as a Useful Tool

My hope is that readers of my blogs can also become listeners to the podcasts, which serve as independent and usually objective reviewers of the material concerned, the blog being the core source of the podcast. As the author of these blogs, I have found the podcasts can untangle some awkward uses and styles of my writing. In this, I have found AI a most useful tool.

In the end, the same principle that has long governed my prose now governs my podcasts: long enough to cover the detail, short enough to keep the interest. The good seamstress, it seems, has taken up a new craft.

A Gemini Notebook AI Podcast on this blog

Dysphonia, Dysphagia, and the Dys- Between

2026-07-31T13:03:08.278+01:00

A Terrifying Observation

At the end of a flexible nasoendoscopy, a procedure in which a small camera was passed through my left nostril, the right one having proved less pliant, there were a few conclusions, though none of particular concern.

The procedure examined my throat and voice box for a simple reason: since I commenced four weeks of radiotherapy for prostate cancer in September 2024, I had lost my natural voice. It had been reduced to a hoarseness, carrying a semblance of weariness and tiredness that might suggest I was gravely ill.

In general, I am fine. The voice that comes and goes does not reflect that impression, and yet a consultant on another stream of the multidisciplinary team that handles my clinical issues and healthcare outcomes has been on my case since January 2025.

Questioning the Cause

While I had surmised that the change in my voice was a long-term side effect of the radiotherapy, she disputed this. Even if I, as a man, were kicked in the testicles, with the usual prospect of momentarily losing my voice, and I had indeed been through the equivalent by way of radiotherapy, the effect should not last as long as it has in my case.

I even dared to question how she, as a female, would know about this uniquely male anatomy.

Then, at my biannual consultation just over a week ago, the consultant took the initiative on the matters I had been reticent to pursue, and scheduled sessions with other specialists in the very fields she had been seeking answers in. My hospital visit yesterday was to see an ENT (Ear, Nose, and Throat) specialist, or should I say an otolaryngologist.

Into the Consulting Room

Before meeting the consultant, I filled in three pages of tick boxes, affirmatives or negatives, to provide a general overview of what needed assessing. I was then called into a consulting room to sit in an abridged version of a dentist's chair.

On what was my third hospital visit in eight days, I could be forgiven for feeling some trepidation, whilst remaining hopeful that nothing untoward would be found.

Understanding Dysphonia

The condition under review is called dysphonia, a medical term for any voice disorder that makes your voice sound hoarse, raspy, breathy, or strained. This is in addition to sexual dysfunction, an obvious side effect of the radiotherapy, and dysphagia, another condition that may have been exacerbated by radiotherapy but has existed for longer, for which I had an oesophagogastroduodenoscopy in May.

In layman's terms, my vocal cords were considered quite thin, not closing properly when I talk, and carrying a slight tremor. It was watching the video playback, while we discussed the prognosis, that left me a little terrified. The movement of my vocal cords looked like the wings of a bat about to take off from a perch. You mean that was happening inside me?

The Prognosis

A contributory factor to my snoring was that my palate is unusually low, though nothing was attributed to that condition beyond the raspiness in my voice, which is probably caused by acid reflux that does not occur all that often.

We agreed there was little else to do, unless I initiated a follow-up because my voice had noticeably worsened, or unless I wanted the filler injection known as vocal fold injection augmentation, not an endearing prospect from what I have read about it.

Exploring the Prefix Dys-

Meanwhile, the original consultant has already scheduled an appointment to discuss the results, and I am learning more about the prefix dys-, which might refer to any of the following kinds of situations.

Bad / Ill: working in a harmful or poor way.

Dysfunction: impaired or unhealthy functioning (e.g. family dysfunction)
Dyspepsia: bad digestion
Dystopia: a bad or undesirable society
Dysphoria: a state of unease or dissatisfaction

Difficult / Painful: causing trouble or hurt to do.

Dyslexia: difficulty reading
Dysphagia: difficulty swallowing
Dyspnoea: difficulty breathing
Dysmenorrhoea: painful menstruation

Abnormal / Impaired: moving away from the normal state or standard.

Dysplasia: abnormal development of cells or tissue
Dyskinesia: abnormal or impaired movement
Dysarthria: impaired speech articulation
Dysgraphia: impaired writing ability