Akin Akintayo

Essential Snobbery 101: The Etiquette of Getting Caught

2026-06-17T21:36:58.012+01:00

The Art of Discretion

If one were to court controversy, one could say that infidelity is congenital or consanguineous, but rarely learnt or taught. The debate around that is for another forum.

However, the tendency to stray must surely come with the essential common sense of, first and foremost, not rubbing your partner's nose in it. This means according those liaisons the respect of keeping them at a distance, and being as discreet as you possibly can in order to avoid getting caught.

History, as I have read it, would suggest that the Victorians and Edwardians who kept mistresses made sure their spouses were not disadvantaged in dignity, position, attention, or latitude. It was usually a case of knowing without feeling threatened.

A Cautionary Commotion

What I cannot abide are those who break the rules in wholly unforgivable ways, such as placing their matrimonial bed at the very centre of the travesty whilst hoping not to get caught. What on earth are you thinking? The follow-up question is unprintable.

I was once privy to a narrative relayed to me of a commotion that brought the police to a home, the cacophony having included the shattering of glass, and whatever else might have been flung, in both words and objects, when a hapless fool was caught in the act.

His wife had gone away and was not expected back until the weekend; she returned the previous night, however, only to find her husband canoodling with another woman. There is no need for a graphic replay, at the risk of sensationalising the matter with the aplomb of a village rag.

A Failure to Plan

There must be a reason why she did not telephone ahead to forestall what might have been her suspicions of something untoward. Some people spare themselves the possibility of such situations by making allowances, in the spirit of "out of sight is out of trouble".

He, however, in his careless and carefree manner, played the oily mouse whilst the cat was away. He should have planned his rendezvous for a motel, or somewhere far from home, yet he did not.

Stepping back to view this from an objective angle, the effrontery and audacity required to bring someone else home should always have come with the forward planning of a number of things. First, an alert system that detects proximity, so as to avoid an encounter. Then, easy sequestration, should your spouse enter the house when there is no chance of escape.

Hiding the Evidence

You cannot put the interloper on the window ledge outside if you are on the tenth floor, especially if that was not intended as a final goodbye. Slipping them under the bed, behind the curtain, or into the wardrobe are far too common as places to hide, and so to be found. Just roll a bottle under the bed; if it does not come out the other end, take a look.

Someone suggested the oven or the fridge, which left me thinking of the double-jointed contortionist who performs at the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront in Cape Town, doing such unimaginable things with his body that the spectacle is too suggestive for a polite audience, and yet impossible to look away from.

Perhaps the clothes basket could help, and what you would need next is a snake charmer to play the pungi as your quarry wriggles to the swaying hypnotism of the sound, lifting the lid of the basket and unleashing the scandal that would ensue. You may not be prepared for the confessions.

If you do not have a number of well-planned escape routes, no amount of explaining would extricate you from a complex situation that would serve as entertainment for your neighbours, and inspiration for this very piece. You got caught, pants down, and the only thing you might ever salvage is your dear life, by the skin of your teeth.

A Google NotebookLM AI Podcast on this blog

Men's things XXXIV: Saving the life, and saving some lifestyle

2026-06-15T15:42:09.288+01:00

The Shadow of Mortality

The pall of mortality hovers like a dark cloud at certain times, but you cannot dwell on that feeling at all. Every time you escape the dread it portends, you are grounded by the good fortune of survival and by the uncertainty that reliving it might present.

Above all other questions, it did occur to me whether I had it in me to face another cancer diagnosis. As much as I presented as stoic two years ago, my concerns and anxieties were a rumbling thunderstorm in my mind. I reached for comfort in sermons and in the faith that things, no matter how bad, would be fine.

A Diagnosis Already Known

However, when I saw the consultant at the Christie Hospital in mid-June 2024, it was not to discover anything new. I had already known for a week that adenocarcinoma of the prostate had been diagnosed, because my medical notes from another consultation had been merged with the findings from a biopsy taken three weeks before.

The doctor who made the mistake offered to redact the notes, but how do you unsee the facts as they were presented? The damage of letting the information slip through, without the essential conversation in a controlled setting, had been done.

I was reviewing the consultant's notes yesterday, and I wondered whether there had not been a haste to act, considering the stage at which the cancer was found, given their recommendation of active treatment as opposed to active surveillance.

In the haze of the moment, you do not see everything your medical results indicate; you grasp at the headline and let the detail blur. Looking at the same notes two years on brings a new realisation, a clarity that was simply not available to me then. Yet what can one do now? The decision has been made, the treatment taken, and hindsight, however sharp, cannot rewind the clock.

Registered Without Consent

I attended the consultation with a friend, but what shocked me still more was that, once cancer was diagnosed, I was immediately added to the National Disease Registration Service (NDRS), which comprises cancer diagnosis and analysis along with congenital anomaly and rare disease registration. No one told me I could opt out.

Then, on the matter of cancer, I have always felt that all who have encountered it are treated on the basis of the body of knowledge acquired from survivors and non-survivors alike. We are rarely pioneers of this unfortunate human condition.

Brian, because of his exposure to the medical field, would have been aware of what was developing, but I wanted to tell him when we met up in Cape Town, and that was just over a week away.

Weighing the Options

Meanwhile, between the visible and painful skin cancer of 2009 and the invisible, seemingly benign prostate cancer of 2024, I was totally conflicted. I was hoping that chemotherapy, of which I already had some experience from the last time, was an option, but I soon learnt that the only options were surgery or radiotherapy.

The treatment I eventually had was hypofractionated radiotherapy, effectively External Beam Radiotherapy (EBRT), over 20 weekdays in September and October 2024.

This week, NHS England will begin to offer a more targeted radiotherapy treatment for prostate cancer called Stereotactic Ablative Radiotherapy (SABR). This was first proposed in 2021; it's only five years late.

This focused treatment is down to five doses over a fortnight and lends itself to fewer side effects. [Sky News: 'Cutting-edge' prostate cancer treatment to be rolled out by NHS from next week]

Proposed Patient Pathway
Stereotactic ablative radiotherapy (SABR)
for patients with previously irradiated,
locally recurrent primary pelvic tumours [PDF]

Progress and Its Price

More recently, the website of Elekta, the company that supplied the radiotherapy equipment for my treatment, features equipment that could offer the same radiotherapy in two fractions. MR-guided adaptive radiotherapy even promises minimal side effects compared with other interventions.

The selling points are that it lowers acute Gastrointestinal (GI) and Genitourinary (GU) side effects while better protecting erectile function. That is the elephant in the room that rarely gets talked about, where cancer treatment saves the life yet does little to preserve the lifestyle.

Then, one must acknowledge that these advancements in technology are welcome progress in tackling these issues. One cannot live in the regret of not holding off on essential treatment to wait for better options to select from. You work with what is available, and you study the changes that come along.

The Elephant in the Room

Even as I insisted on not being co-opted into a form of chemical sex to ease the issue of sexual dysfunction, I was invited to take a prescription of sildenafil citrate, typically at half the normal strength. I feel like the boy of fifteen whose first job was in a brewery, working in the laboratory, where the first wort was said to be an aphrodisiac.

Hey! Medicine expects that, if you can get it up, you already have the sexual confidence for everything else to follow. I beg to differ, as the package gathers dust in my bedside cabinet.

Blog - Men's things XXXIII: Prostate Cancer Screening and UK Black Men

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

Blog - Men's things: Prostate Cancer blogs

A Google NotebookLM AI Podcast on this blog

When Are You Going to Sit Down?

2026-06-14T02:15:41.151+01:00

An Unexpected Enquiry

Just over two years ago, a man whose history in journalism stretches back more than 45 years contacted me for a copy of my CV. He had held top editorial positions at four of the most prominent Nigerian newspapers and magazines, and he still writes syndicated copy today.

He had come across my blog and, from a link on the page, requested access to my CV. To satisfy his curiosity, he wanted to determine whether I had a journalism background that might explain how I had sustained a blog for 20 years. On reading my CV, he expressed both shock and surprise that I held no formal qualifications in the humanities; I am an engineer who has broadly pursued a career in IT.

Recognition and Striving

Acknowledgement and recognition come from many places, and I hope I am able to take a compliment with grace whenever it is offered.

However, even as one strives for excellence, there are others who observe what you do and for whom you are not yet performing at your best. There is always that feeling that you could do better, and that in itself overrides every other concern.

Why I Began

When I started my blog in 2003, I saw it as an outlet for my views, and I had no intention of turning it into a commercial venture. I did everything at my own pace and wrote as I was inspired, usually hoping to bring a fresh perspective to matters that others tended to cover with a common view.

I do not believe I ever came to any agreement with anyone that my blog would become a platform for other activities, such as publishing a book. The idea of writing my story only took hold after my first bout with cancer and the period following treatment in 2010. Things developed from there, and I also battled prostate cancer in 2024; today marks two years to the day since I received the diagnosis of adenocarcinoma of the prostate.

A Loaded Comment

Imagine my surprise, then, when a comment was left on one of my recent blogs to the following effect: “When are you going to sit down and assemble relevant topics of your writings into books for future generations, particularly in Africa, to benefit? Your use of the English language and construction is superb. Some of your writings could come under, for example, tourism, based on your experience in South Africa and Amsterdam, or business management.”

You could take a good deal from that comment; the commendation and the suggestion were both gratifying and informative. Yet you could just as easily miss the criticism buried within it, and I heard it in the voice of the writer, as I have many times before, whenever their expectations were not met by my application, rigour, or initiative.

Refusing to Please

One thing I learnt a long while ago was to jump off the bandwagon of trying to please people. I do my work to the best of my ability and constantly strive to do better. That is my conviction, and it is the energy I bring to every endeavour.

It is the phrase “When are you going to sit down…?” that does the heavy lifting here, implying that you are not directing your abilities and faculties towards the essential.

In this case, that means writing books for which I have so far received no commissions. I have no obligation to write either another blog or a book, but I do have the desire to, at a time of my own choosing, if and when I convince myself of that need.

Parents and Approval

I still have my parents, who are octogenarians. I receive the occasional expression of pride in me, but that can easily be a speck in a bowl of displeasure at one thing or another. The fact that I am totally estranged from one and barely in communication with the other is the sum of the difficult relationship we have had since my childhood.

I was a difficult child and adolescent; I had my own issues, just as they had theirs. However, I am so completely past seeking their approbation that the desire fizzled out at twenty, and, as far as possible, I resolved that their influence on me would be as minimal as it could be, just as my dear uncle, around that time, shielded me so that I could flourish in my own way.

Words That Matter

What could it have cost to word that comment another way? “Your use of the English language and construction is superb. I can see elements that might lend themselves to books on your travels to South Africa and Amsterdam. Other topics, such as business management, I have seen in your recent writings, show that you could benefit future generations, especially in Africa.”

Imagine how warmly I would have received that version, responding with gratitude and grace whilst taking the ideas into consideration. The manner and tone of a conversation, along with the order of the words, do matter. Instead, I am riled, annoyed, and spitting tacks. It might have been well-intentioned, but it failed to hit the mark.

I might just have lost the desire to write a book. The medal for royally pissing off your child must surely have been awarded in the King’s birthday honours list, released on Friday.

A Google NotebookLM AI Podcast on this blog

The Author I Have Not Yet Become

2026-06-13T14:29:24.557+01:00

From Bricks to Code

Just imagine you had a Lego set, and a spurt of inspiration allowed you to build interesting structures consistently. Taken together, someone might think you had the makings of an architect; providence, or perhaps persuasion, might spur you in that direction.

If you did eventually become an architect, and a successful one at that, you might think your earlier Lego experience was the genesis of your talent, and indicative of it.

My exposure to computer programming and code goes back almost forty years, if I can remember clearly anymore, because dates can become fuzzy. Yet what I got to do and what could be realised were completely different things.

The Elusive Slipstream

I can write code to do utilitarian things, such as administrative activity, converting complex repetitive tasks into structured automation with logging and reporting. However, I have not broken the mould by writing a productivity tool like Microsoft Office, a game, or an app.

The ability to do this is probably there somewhere, but I have not caught the slipstream that eases me into the knowledge that it can be done. I find myself hoping for a Eureka moment that makes the scales fall from my eyes and puts my mental capacity in gear, allowing me to do something that feels extraordinary to me, yet is quite perfunctory to others.

Doubt and the Page

Everyone harbours a modicum of self-doubt in areas where others have seen a scintilla of skill and assumed it is the crack in the doorway to the expression of amazing talent. Indeed, looking at my compendium of almost twenty-three years of blogging, you could conclude that I am a good writer; I am, however, nowhere near where I would consider myself an author.

In considering a return to school, this is one area where I am ready to be taught how to put my thoughts on paper. Not for the blogs, which alone are hard enough, carrying a train of thought through three pages of verbiage with a sense of coherence, but for taking that to a book of 300 pages or more, which looks like comparing a swim to a voyage.

Both are journeys of a kind on water, but the preparation and mode of travel are so totally different that they are not the same. There is writing blogs and there is writing books; I probably have enough material in my blogs to write many books, but I feel overwhelmed at the prospect. I think there is a slipstream of authoring somewhere that I need to catch.

Stories Worth Telling

Over a decade ago, I began writing the elements of a biography, and I would be the first to suggest that we all have stories to tell. I could probably tell the most fascinating story, or the most soporific yarn, of my life, but in either case you would sense the gratitude of privilege, blessing, and hope as the substrate of everything told. None of the first four chapters look like what my blogging prowess would suggest I do so well.

Could I have this story ghostwritten? The idea alone of using another mouthpiece to give my own life story in a second-hand narrative weakens me to total impotence. Where I have not found the impetus to get ahead by myself, I suppose that means I need the education and tutelage to bring that ability and facility to the fore.

If this were to be achieved by pep talk, daring, acknowledgement, or the recognition of what others see as my talents and gifts, I promise you, it would already have been done.

There is the truth and there is reality: even men of great renown have their fears, their misgivings, and their doubts, all part of what makes each of us human and, hopefully, part of the appreciation by others that we are all still a work in progress.

A Google NotebookLM AI Podcast on this blog

A World Cup Letdown: From Golden Boys to the Ugly Game

2026-06-12T16:25:04.168+01:00

A Listed Building's Walls

My office sits in a Grade II listed building with uniquely fascinating décor: wallpaper made from a collage of newspaper front pages marking world events.

The Kennedy assassination, the birth of the first test-tube baby, the moon landing, the Beatles arriving in America, the birth of Prince George, the murder of John Lennon, the death of Elvis Presley, Usain Bolt breaking the 100m world record at the 2012 Olympics, and now, crucially, England winning the World Cup.

The Sunday Mirror, 31st July 1966. The morning after the only World Cup that ever truly mattered to me, and I was barely old enough to know it.

It is the little things, the unfairness and the distrust, that have exacerbated my disinterest in global events. The minor infraction of the Formula 1 rules by a race steward, the one that robbed Lewis Hamilton of an eighth world championship, means I have never watched another race since.

Three Flags, One Cup

I was just a few months old when England lifted the trophy against West Germany in 1966, the Sunday Mirror crowing "Golden Boys!" the morning after. To have seen them win it in my lifetime, even if I cannot remember a moment of it, is perhaps why I am no longer troubled by whether they excel or falter in this edition.

My allegiances have wandered as my life has. I have supported England, where I was born; Nigeria, my country of heritage; and the Netherlands, where I lived for twelve years. Each has handed me its own disappointment.

I watched Nigeria play Bulgaria at the Parc des Princes during the 1998 World Cup, and I donned the orange of the Netherlands for the 2010 final, hosted in South Africa, though I watched it on holiday in Spain. Walking back to my hotel in Dutch colours after Spain's victory remains one of the worst sporting indignities I have endured.

Festivals Losing Their Shine

We used to gather in May for Eurovision, but the controversy around Israel's participation, which led to a boycott by five countries, meant I felt it was no longer a contest. Though it produced a new winning country, I refused to watch anything, including the highlights. In 2026, we had Euroblindness, and I do not know what might make it exciting again.

Yesterday, the FIFA World Cup began in Mexico, hosted this time by three countries, including Canada and the United States. The United States is at a war of its own choosing with Iran, a participating nation. Iran has moved its base to Mexico. A FIFA referee from Somalia was denied entry to the US, and FIFA simply shrugged.

Politics Invades the Pitch

The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement is threatening to raid World Cup venues to apprehend and arrest supposed illegal immigrants. President Donald Trump is quite cosy with Gianni Infantino, the FIFA President, who conferred a FIFA World Peace Prize on Donald Trump in a farcical imitation of the Nobel Peace Prize.

With players and officials alike suffering indignities at the behest of the policies prevailing in the US, it is no wonder that interest in this World Cup is not showing up in record hotel bookings. The somewhat exorbitant match tickets will now have to depend on local fans to fill the stadiums, as the prices fall to more reasonable levels.

No Enthusiasm Here

No, I have garnered no enthusiasm for this fiesta at all, apart from snippets that fall into sight from partly obscured social media statuses, informing us why South Africa lost their match against Mexico. This was a reference to the largest number of red cards ever issued in a World Cup match, which left South Africa down to nine men by the end.

Yes, there was one video of Burna Boy being lauded by his mother after his performance at the opening of the tournament, yet I have not turned on my television to watch any clips or updates. I am neither playing nor engaged, and I hope the month slithers away into insignificance whilst we find other joys of living beyond this enterprise of chicanery that pretends to unite the world in the pursuit of a leather ball.

What Is the Point?

Heck, there are 48 teams playing, and yet Nigeria, Italy, India, and China cannot find a minimum of 23 men to fly the flag. What is the point? The way things are going, all countries might as well be invited to a three-month World Cup to cure the world of boredom, and we might enjoy one long holiday from its troubles.

No one could ever have thought that the US, being the main host of a FIFA World Cup, would portend less eagerness than the ones in Qatar or Russia before. But if this ends up being the least entertaining ever, the record alone would leave a big smile on our faces. I can assure you, it would be just deserts.

A Google NotebookLM AI Podcast on this blog

Memento Mori in the Modern Workplace

2026-06-11T21:52:17.361+01:00

The Two-Headed Fear

I usually say that I am only scared of a person with two heads, and thankfully, I have never met one. Yet in my working life, I have had many encounters with colleagues, juniors, seniors, and C-suite personnel.

In the main, they have been nice, respectful, considerate, and courteous. It is the workplace that brought us together; our backgrounds can be radically different, just as our outlooks on the world might never be the same. If we are human, humane, and accommodating of each other, it makes for a pleasant working environment.

Frustration Is No Excuse

There have been exceptions, people who think their positions give them room to misbehave and be discourteous. Usually, they get away with it, and the behaviour becomes compounded and accepted by many. Once, I was offering support to a caller at work when he began hurling expletives out of frustration.

We all get frustrated, but frustration is no excuse for abuse. I calmly told him that I did not get paid enough to take abuse at work, and informed him that I was going to put the phone down.

When he was ready to discuss the matter calmly, he could call me again. We ended that conversation, and a few minutes later, he called back, apologised, and I resolved the matter.

The Gracious Senior VP

On another occasion, a deployment for which I had provided statistics showing a high success rate just happened to brick the Senior VP’s device. His secretary was implacable, and other senior staff were running around like headless chickens. I was instructed to call the SVP to explain my actions.

I had never met him before, but he immediately acknowledged me, then said he had seen the statistics and understood that, on occasion, something might fail; it just happened to be his device. He closed with, “Take your time, I appreciate what you do.”

There have probably been other technical personnel elsewhere, in the very same position, marched out of the office simply because the screen on a manager’s computer flickered.

Things can be that brutal. I learnt early in my career that keeping users honestly informed reaped more dividends than leaving them ignorant of what might affect what they do or how they work. To inform is to liberate.

The Master of the Universe

Bring in the esteemed fellow, the one to whom no one says no. He has the ear of the CEO, and anything he says is gospel and unquestioned. To have attained that status is commendable; but unlike the generals of ancient times, who at their victory parades had a man whisper memento mori into the ear of the celebrant, this master of the universe, for all that they have achieved, yet so lacking in character, thinks they own the world and that everyone answers to them.

They seek exemption and exception in the demands they make. Aggression and coarseness are their raison d'être; nothing is ever a request. They hold Aladdin’s lamp, incessantly summoning the genie to grant any wish, and should the wish be denied, truculence becomes them.

Any resistance, even a reasonable challenge to their requirements, is met with forceful tales of woe about how they cannot get anything done because the system, the design, or the personnel are lazy, wasting time, and derelict in their duties.

The thrust of the conversation leans towards disparaging you, your work, your team, and anything else you have done professionally and diligently.

Winning the War for Peace

It is tempting to assume nothing can be done when management indulges its favoured figure. Yet such attitudes can be named and challenged, and I have done so many times, with success. The behaviour is not untouchable; it simply relies on everyone presuming that it is.

Each encounter is weighed on its own merits; sometimes you yield, and sometimes you hold firm. Where there is no point in holding the fort, and they are used to having their way, you make that allowance too, for the peace of mankind.

Yet even in those bruising encounters, you can own facts that clearly prove their position wrong, leaving them with no option but to concede the point, even if they remain unrelenting in pursuit of their self-aggrandising goals.

We do not have to win every battle when the war is for peace, for respect, for dignity, and for the recognition that in every endeavour, no matter the position, the esteem, or the remuneration, no one of us is better than another.

We are equal as human beings, deserving of the same courtesy, respect, and dignity. It is in our efforts together that we all make the organisations we work for successful.

A Google NotebookLM AI Podcast on this blog

Brick on Brick, Without a Plan

2026-06-10T23:11:49.952+01:00

The Art of Communication

The art of communication is one that should never be left without nurture. It is a skill I have honed since childhood, when making myself heard, and hopefully understood, mattered.

I know the many times in my working life when being articulate, honest, truthful, clear, and detailed about ideas, events, or situations has been the difference between staying put and being walked out of the door with alacrity.

Conflict and the Power of Words

Conflict leers around the office or the workplace, where genuine engagement can easily slide into belittlement and being patronised. Both could be mistaken for compliments, only to be turned into something backhanded or used to upbraid you.

Besides that, there are the power plays and egos, where choosing your words carefully can significantly change the tone of an exchange. Drawing on a wealth of vocabulary with studied deployment is hardly putting the quality of your education to waste.

Finding the Right Analogy

When the going gets tough, and it usually does, finding the correct analogy to depict a situation becomes the best tool to deploy.

Consider a scenario where a user expected us to exhaust every avenue to determine why his anticipated long-running script terminated after two hours, even though nothing on the system had changed.

I posited that when a washing machine does not complete a wash cycle, you explore issues with the device, the water supply, or the connection to the mains; you do not ask for a building inspection.

That thought came to me as I finished taking a shower.

A Managerial and Political Issue

This afternoon, I was met with a complex managerial and political issue. For all my protestations about the guidelines, framework, and structure needed to govern a process that I felt left us exposed, all management wanted was for us to do something, anything, first, before addressing concerns that would fill reams of paper dating back to July last year.

After I had answered a series of questions, the activity was cherry-picked out of a larger case for correct procedure and directed towards a decision to be enforced.

In what I could only term a dare to challenge authority and face the consequences of stepping out of line, the manager, now assuming control where earlier they had failed to provide support, asked on the Microsoft Teams group chat:

The Challenge on Teams

"Everyone, anyone here unhappy with the approach?"

He might as well have said, "Anyone up for a fight? I'm here to bludgeon you."

I was dissatisfied, but this required tact, and there came the inspiration for another analogy.

The Bricklayer Analogy

"To put it another way, we are the bricklayers, and you want a house for which no architect has been engaged to design and no structural engineer has assessed. We are just putting brick on brick and hoping we end up with a shelter everyone can use."

As bricklayers, we know what houses should look like, but without a plan, a lot can go wrong. My job is to paint the picture; how you appreciate that work of art is beyond my ability to dictate, but the work has been done.

It will sink in somehow, and the message will not be lost in the morass of politicking and power plays.

Eloquence as Construction, Not Evasion

Let me be clear about one thing: eloquence here is not a tool of evasiveness. It is the means by which I explain and construct a clear narrative of the risk profile of an activity, one that could lead to penalties, the loss of professional reputation, or a negative impact on business operations and the user community.

Knowledge shared through such communication exposes the blind spots and pitfalls that are usually not taken into consideration.

Nor is this a matter of perfecting a process. There is no process. What we have is a range of assumptions that have not been properly tested or validated, yet are forced into implementation by expediency.

There is a further purpose to all this. By communicating in this way, one is also documenting the issues, so that when the matter of responsibility for any action arises, the points made earlier will show that management was informed and chose to act against the identified risks they had been asked to appreciate.

Experience Speaks for Itself

Many of us might hold junior roles in the multilayered hierarchy of the organisation, but never confuse our positions with a lack of maturity.

After 40 years in this business, where this is probably one of the least significant roles I have held in 30 years, I think I know a fair amount about management, and about being managed, and about getting a point across without equivocation.

We didn't just start at this yesterday.

A Google NotebookLM AI Podcast on this blog

The Two Gospel Writers Who Were Not Apostles

2026-06-10T01:18:47.157+01:00

Questioning What We Assume

The search for knowledge must never cease, but more critically, we must question the assumptions we once held as true without ever examining them, until new information challenges a viewpoint we never thought was in dispute.

Last night, I found myself at the end of an interesting discovery. Although I know a great deal about the Bible, in theory, by osmosis, through tradition, and sometimes through an application that makes the reality of God and the salvation of Jesus Christ the most heartwarming experience of my faith, I remain just as ignorant of some fundamentals.

The Twelve Apostles

¹³At daybreak he called together all of his disciples and chose twelve of them to be apostles. Here are their names:

¹⁴Simon (whom he named Peter),
Andrew (Peter’s brother),
James,
John,
Philip,
Bartholomew,

¹⁵Matthew,
Thomas,
James (son of Alphaeus),
Simon (who was called the zealot),

¹⁶Judas (son of James),
Judas Iscariot (who later betrayed him).
[Luke 6:13-16, reference Matthew 10:1-4]

There are four gospels of the Lord Jesus Christ, attributed to the named authors in the Bible and traditionally accepted to have been written in the order of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John, between AD 66 and 110. Luke also wrote the Acts of the Apostles. [Wikipedia: Life of Jesus]

An Overlooked Detail

What I never bothered to check, and what you, the reader, might already know, is that Mark and Luke are not in the list of apostles. They were not apostles at all. Luke was known as the physician who travelled with Paul the Apostle, and Mark is mentioned too. [Colossians 4:14, Philemon 23-24]

This is not an exposition of the facts, which have been dealt with extensively and with a scholarly and academic expertise I cannot expect to match. The theological debates belong elsewhere.

A Discovery Worth Sharing

This is, however, a note in my journal and an introduction to a YouTube channel I discovered a few months ago, Deep Made Simple. Its short videos, which deal with topical elements in the scriptures, have brought me insight and enlightenment I cannot keep to myself. The video "The Gospel of Luke: Why a Doctor Wrote the Bible’s Longest Book " had me scrambling for information.

The shock, the realisation, the quest for more knowledge: the small hours of the morning crept upon me as I listened to the video again before playing back the dramatised New Living Translation of the gospel. [Google Play: NLT Bible with Audio]

Luke could have been a gentile, and he was indeed a journalist, a correspondent, and a meticulous historian.

One last thing, I was on YouTube that I learnt to recall the Ten Commandments by counting fingers and hand signals, in 5 minutes.

Note: All Biblical references are taken from the Bible Gateway.

Luke's Place in Scripture

The Gospel according to Luke is not the longest book in the Bible; by English word count, that distinction belongs to the book of the prophet Jeremiah.

However, the gospel is the longest book in the New Testament, and taken together with the Acts of the Apostles, Luke would have contributed more to the standard Bible, in English word count, than any writer except Moses.

Patterns of Truth: Why Are Mark and Luke Not Named as Disciples?

A Google NotebookLM AI Podcast on this blog

Men's things XXXIII: Prostate Cancer Screening and UK Black Men

2026-06-04T22:28:41.084+01:00

A sobering statistic

The statistics in the UK show that Black men are twice as likely to get prostate cancer and, consequently, twice as likely to die from the disease. In plain numbers, this means that 1 in 4 Black men will encounter the disease in their lifetime.

So, it was quite disappointing when, in November 2025, the UK National Screening Committee (NSC) advised against routine prostate cancer screening for the majority of men.

That advice included the very men most susceptible to the disease, and it was justified by concerns over the overdiagnosis and overtreatment of what might essentially be benign conditions.

Blog - Men's things XXVIII: Shame, no national prostate cancer screening

To withhold the opportunity from a cohort that is most medically affected and usually clinically ignored, especially given the tendency of such men to be culturally diffident on intimate matters, where masculinity, machismo, and sexual virility are taken to demonstrate manliness and personify manhood, was as close to unconscionable as one could get.

Renewed hope: TRANSFORM

It is therefore gratifying that, two days ago, the TRANSFORM prostate cancer screening trial received further funding. The trial, which began in autumn 2025 after being proposed in spring 2024, will now invite men at the highest risk of prostate cancer to benefit from research, early detection, and more effective treatments. [GOV.UK: Major expansion of research and treatment for prostate cancer]

All eligible Black men will be invited to participate in this initiative, which is jointly funded and supported by Prostate Cancer UK and the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). This should accelerate community engagement and deepen it, particularly amongst Black men.

In June 2026, when stage 2 of the trial commences, all eligible Black men will be invited, including Black men who:

are aged 45 to 74
are resident in the UK
have not had a PSA test or prostate MRI scan in the last 5 years

My own journey

Two years after my prostate cancer diagnosis, and twenty months after completing radical radiotherapy, the prognosis is good. My PSA is at the lowest reading it has been since I was first screened in February 2024.

I urge every Black man to take up this screening opportunity, all the more so if he carries the BRCA2 gene variant and has a family history of prostate, breast, pancreatic, or ovarian cancer.

Know the warning signs

Beyond that, a man should have his prostate checked if he gets up multiple times at night to urinate, waits a while to start, strains to begin, does not feel he has fully emptied his bladder after a visit to the toilet, or has pressing urges to pass urine.

Not every prostate enlargement is indicative of cancer, but it must be investigated by medical personnel. This is good news for Black men; now step forward and take control of your health.

Blog - Men's things XXXII: For the Boys in the Room: Why Your PSA Matters

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

Blog - Men's things: Prostate Cancer blogs

A Google NotebookLM AI Podcast on this blog

When the Backstop Becomes the Plan

2026-06-04T15:50:24.492+01:00

From Doldrums to Hope

The days carry varying degrees of emotional toll, from the palpable to the expectant; the feeling that you may not be pulling your weight gives way to the exhilaration of success, because what was once intractable became resolvable.

We have moved from a week that seemed to present diminishing returns to one that appears to offer appreciating results. While we are not totally out of the doldrums, there is hope on the horizon, and things have been better than expected.

Governance Left Behind

Yet we get embroiled in administrative issues that should have had governance born from contractual obligation, including the clear requirement specifications that would apply to an architectural design, with guidelines for solutions to be crafted on agreed policy.

A backstop activity, meant only to tide us over until automation could take hold, has evolved into the core solution. This is because resources will not be committed first and, evidently, the architectural element is missing altogether.

Shortcuts Over Policy

The project manager, under pressure to deliver, has short-circuited the process, favouring the concept of ease over the policy guidelines that should govern it. The ideas are lifted off a contract statement and put into play, leaving the implementation resting on broad assumptions.

What we hear is that it must be done because the contract demands it; what we do not have is any documentation describing what is actually to be done. The best element of guidance to materialise today came in an email. However, can governance be run from an email, you wonder?

That is why this is being escalated. I am not convinced a proper resolution will be forthcoming before the pressure to act overwhelms the tendency to err on the side of caution; not out of any impossibility to perform, but because of the absence of governance that informs the processes required.

A Google NotebookLM AI Podcast on this blog

Twelve Years a Resident, Fourteen Years Away

2026-05-31T19:16:27.118+01:00

Memory and the Reason for Writing

Fourteen years begin to tell you how dull the memory really is. I suppose that is why we write things down, and probably why this blog exists as a journal of stories and experiences.

My visit to Amsterdam, both impromptu and incognito, was for the single purpose of maintaining the status of a loyalty scheme; one that gives benefits and privileges money might buy, but at a higher cost.

My preference was Paris, but Brian adamantly withstood me, fully expressing his concern for my safety, and only he could know why.

Returning After Many Years

I was tempted to let people I knew through my Holland odyssey, which began in May 2000 and ran for the twelve years I called the Netherlands home, in on the visit. To think I found a hotel in Hoofddorp, where I started my first job with AUCS Infonet 26 years ago, is quite something. I was charged city tax; Hoofddorp is over 10 miles as the crow flies from Amsterdam.

Back then, I lived in Amsterdam and commuted out to Hoofddorp by train each morning; now, all these years later, I was sleeping in the very town I once travelled out to. So much has changed, and yet other things remain the same.

Arriving in Amsterdam yesterday, I made for the public library that opened on the 7th of July 2007, intending to have a meal at Vapiano, not knowing they had closed their business in the Netherlands the year before.

Then I thought to walk up to my old apartment block in the Oostelijke Havengebied, the eastern docklands. The flat, which I bought in November 2001 and sold on the 1st of May 2012 when I handed the keys over to the new owner, was on the 7th floor and overlooked two stretches of water: IJhaven and Eersthaven.

These harbours separated my building from Java-eiland and KNSM-eiland, the two long, narrow islands that, together with my side, make up the regenerated docklands.

The Lessons Wasted on Youth

The funny thing is, for all the ten and a half years I lived there, I never once walked from the city centre. I took the tram, the bus, or rode my bicycle. If only I had known the benefits of walking back then, but this kind of knowledge is wasted on youth.

I did not have a flood of memories when I got there, but soon enough, a resident from way back then wheeled out from the garage. We both had a moment of recognition and greeted each other.

That was enough; my plan to attend my old church on Sunday was now under review, as I wondered whether I could handle the emotional overload of so many reunions. I honestly was not prepared for that.

A City Subtly Changed

Tram numbers had changed. What was once Tram 10, which had not yet been built when I first moved there, is now Tram 1. Tram 25 to IJburg is now Tram 26, with the terminus moved to the back of the central station, on the IJ River side.

Then another face I recognised, still looking good, not weathered by time and deserving of a compliment, which I gave liberally. The things you think you remember, only to realise that your memory is a bit jaded.

Even so, all these encounters encourage the recollections of people, events, and ideas that made those times significant in their different ways. For instance, I sent a message to an old friend whom I had once helped pick out gilets and outfits for his wedding, drawing on my familiarity with the outfitters around Amsterdam and my comfort with formal wear.

We had gone shopping together on Nieuwendijk, one of the city's oldest shopping streets, running north from Dam Square towards the Central Station.

Walking the Singel

Today, I went looking for a restaurant on the Singel, thinking it was further down the canal. I had walked all the way in the opposite direction before retracing my steps, only to find it was nearer the central station after all, and that I needn't have taken the tram in the first place.

After my breakfast, which had Danish bacon as it should be, but hash browns as something else entirely, I set out on a small adventure into the past. My first residence had been in the Jordaan, where I rented from June 2000 until November 2001, when I moved to the apartment I had bought in the eastern docklands.

The Jordaan place was a large garage converted into a one-bedroom apartment with two separate toilets, on Palmstraat. It was all unrecognisable now; even the old had been seriously gentrified.

The Indignities of Travel

You could easily be housebound in Amsterdam, as I saw no disabled toilets. The public toilets at the central station charged a hefty €1.10, which is just unforgivable, and there were no staff on hand to help out with failed automation. But that was yesterday.

There was a time when wearing glasses was considered a grave disability, so much so that once laser surgery for corrective eyesight became widespread, the Dutch were beating a path to every practitioner offering the service.

On toilet anxiety, today was worse, as I was far from any known facilities, and the accident happened. By the time I eventually found a toilet, my underwear had to be binned. We suffer in silence, hiding the shame that cannot be avoided because of nature or affliction. Yet we must live life as best we can, for that is the better story.

The Living Existence of a Life Story

I can boldly say Amsterdam is not about the lost, but the living existence of a life story; visited by adversity and failure, but blessed by the gift of life, the promise of a bright future, and undying hope that makes every travail transient.

Beyond my expectations, there was even an ocean liner at the passenger terminal. So much for reducing seafaring tourism; the reality bites harder than ideas in a council meeting with harebrained resolutions.

The old lady of green politics in the Netherlands of the days of yore is the mayor of Amsterdam. Femke Halsema, I doff my hat. Respect!

A Google NotebookLM AI Podcast on this blog

AI, Only for I: When Shared Abundance Becomes Scarcity

2026-05-29T00:39:09.131+01:00

A Generous Gesture Meets Reality

When I read earlier today that Uber had burnt through their AI budget for the year 2026 in just four months, I did wonder whether that burn rate had produced commensurate productivity gains to have made it worthwhile. According to the CTO, the headline figure suggests otherwise; else, it might have been less concerning. [Quartz: Uber's COO says the company's AI spending is getting harder to justify]

In the same vein, news has emerged that Microsoft is scaling back internal Claude Code licences, indicating that reliance on this toolset has burnt through budgets and forecasts to become an unsustainable revenue drain. [MSN: Microsoft retreats from Claude Code as AI costs soar]

My Poe Setup

I use Poe as my interface to a broad range of bots, grouped under official, budget-friendly, search, image, video, audio, and programming categories. My monthly subscription comes with 1,000,000 points and, despite my usage, I would consider myself a tad frugal. I barely use 75,000 points before the month is out.

For value, access to premium services across many platforms through one interface is, for me, the best deal you can get in AI access and provision. There might be better offers out there, but I am quite satisfied with what I have been using for over two years.

Sharing the Largesse

In demonstrating the features of Poe a few days ago, I discovered that I could share my points with up to 99 others: family, friends, or colleagues. I assumed such sharing would carry the kind of usage and frugality of one gentle owner of a vintage car, with little mileage on the clock, and much to enjoy if the pleasure of driving were shared with another.

How wrong I was. In the space of three days, an invitee had already burnt through more than half of the monthly allocation. At that rate, there would be no points left to do anything in another two days. I was in shock. People are doing things with AI bots that it seems I am yet to discover, even when I think my own use of this facility is quite involved.

A Cold Blast of Reality

What to do? I shared a graphic illustration of the spending activity with the invitee, along with a note about how the burn rate puts the idea of fair use into precarity. Beyond that, sharing this largesse based on my frugality cannot be representative of its usage in reality.

Poe only shows the daily usage of points of those with whom the points have been shared, and we all have full access to the pool. As the administrator, I have two options: to share or to remove. Whilst I have not opted for the nuclear option, my enthusiasm for generosity has met a cold blast of the actualité.

Weighing the Options

I could purchase add-on points that are usable for one year, and are not refundable, transferable, or redeemable for cash. However, I want to hope we are not at a crisis point, just a spot of bother and concern.

What is not helpful is the sudden realisation that what looked like abundance could easily become scarce, like a swarm of locusts swooping down on a field close to harvest season. That is devastation on a grand scale; it is the kind of mindset one can ill afford to have.

The thought that I must monitor the points I have left, out of concern that my modest subscription will not last the month, is not the prospect I planned for. Then again, I cannot even share this with Brian, my husband, because the service is not available in Zimbabwe. What luck!

A Google NotebookLM AI Podcast on this blog

The Tired of Tired

2026-05-27T16:10:04.215+01:00

A Spell of Funk

The past few days have been meh! A total lack of interest or enthusiasm. The usually sunny and hot weather has done little to brighten any sense of existence. In bed last night, I felt the tired of tired, but I had to fight off that feeling. It was not healthy.

I had tried to engage in some activity, beginning with the Africa Day event on Saturday, which left me unimpressed. Then at church the following day, I read the notice for the Whit Walks on Monday and was promptly dissuaded from attending: the preacher invited to minister was lauded not for her ministry, but more for her celebrity and her appearance on Gogglebox. I do not care to remember her name.

A Surfeit of Bad News

It does not help that, with my radio tuned to a BBC news channel, the snippets of interesting stories came laced with a surfeit of depressing news. Abuses, infractions, illegalities, and criminality by those who should know better, yet who would neither be held to account nor held accountable by those who matter, the latter too afraid to take a moral stand for fear of the blowback.

At times, you would think you need a holiday from the world, to a place of peaceful reflection on the beauty around you that you almost always fail to see.

In Search of Tranquillity

On Monday, I did go into the country, hoping for that very escape, but the tranquillity and fun I had expected never quite arrived. Tuesday brought another attempt at engagement: a men's group billed as a dance session.

In practice, it was more body movement and the rather boring projection of closing our eyes and imagining silly things. The only genuine pleasure I drew from it was setting up the table for food.

It was at that group, too, that the broader sense of injustice came home in a far more personal way. A fellow attendee had been attacked, and his assailant had received only a light prison sentence. I could do little more than commiserate with him and offer a hug.

The Weight of Work

On the work front, which brings its own share of excitement, things have been somewhat depressing. There is no wherewithal to achieve; the hours like the deepest, longest night of a nightmare, failing to find a conclusion even as the day breaks.

Unease, dissatisfaction, lethargy, fatigue, and listlessness leave you in recoil from living to the full. Once again, I find myself striving to escape this state of funk, and I know it will pass; I just wish it would pass quicker than I can remember I was ever this disturbed.

A Google NotebookLM AI Podcast on this blog

Thought Picnic: Quiet Pursuits of Excellence

2026-05-20T22:13:45.253+01:00

Quiet Pursuits of Excellence

Sometimes, I reflect on the fact that I lead a number of public lives which revolve around simply doing what I love, without seeking acknowledgement or reward. Something in my upbringing, in the observation of my parents and mentors, drives me towards excellence.

Much as I seek perfection, I quite frequently fall short. I upbraid myself, accuse myself, and talk to myself in a voice that calls me by my own name, because there is a conversation to be had before someone else has it with me. I would rather be my own critic, so as to be prepared to receive a better critique, one of recognition, of merit, and of acknowledgement.

Stories That Once Scared Me

There are stories from my past that frighten me, where the infirmity registered in the ravine of failure offered no opportunity or facility for recovery. It was unsalvageable wreckage, beyond repair, and utterly hopeless.

Yet, I have a better story to tell. No narrative I share today wallows in helpless resignation, for I am blessed beyond measure with testimonies of goodness, success, victory, and triumph.

The Pleasure of Work

At work, I enjoy what I do, not for the remuneration, of which I have once earned stupendously, but for the satisfaction that the knowledge and expertise I bring to bear on the mundane and the complex still matters.

I get to learn as much as I help others learn. I do what I do, not to get noticed, but to make things work. In the process, acknowledgement, respect, and rewards may well come. My motivation, however, is the pleasure.

Appearance and Carriage

In appearance, I have my own kind of dressing, something I pay attention to, because appearance and carriage matter. There have been times when I have been stopped so that pictures could be taken of me.

Once, a young man, after complimenting me, said he would love to have the confidence to dress like me. I suppose hardly a day goes by without some sort of recognition from strangers, and yet I am not out to attract attention. My motivation is simply looking good.

The Wealth of Expression

On this blog, I write about anything that takes my fancy, not for want of engagement or readership. To think there was a time when I hated writing, even though I had a great deal to say in conversation.

I am easily shy, quite introverted, and socially awkward and nervous in organised meetings where people are networking. It is in the use of words that I truly flourish. My motivation is the wealth of expression.

The Story of a Man

What all this says to me is to keep doing what I know to do, in the best possible way, with every aim to impact, improve, and perhaps impress. I will never be everyone's cup of tea, but I hope those who drink this tea enjoy it tremendously.

Decades of work, portrayal, and expression all become the story of a man. Thank you for coming by.

A Google NotebookLM AI Podcast on this blog

I've Never Liked Liquorice

2026-05-17T18:22:10.432+01:00

A Restless Anticipation

I had a good enough night's rest, setting my wake-up alarm for 7:00 AM in anticipation of my oesophagogastroduodenoscopy procedure. In the end, the main thing that weighed on my mind was whether this apparently simple but unpleasant procedure could lead to complications.

I did not prepare myself for adverse outcomes, instead steeling myself with the inclination that everything would turn out right. I had already expiated my deepest concerns in the blog "Tubing Down the Gullet", which I wrote yesterday.

Setting Off to Hospital

After chatting to Brian, whose words of comfort and support meant a lot to me, I called an Uber to take me to the hospital, and sent a message to my neighbour about what was going on.

Arriving at the endoscopy unit, I was registered by the desk clerk at the reception. I had hardly settled into a comfortable seat before the coordinator of the unit invited me in for a preprocedural assessment, checking my details, gaining my consent, and explaining what the procedure would entail.

Briefed Before the Bed

It would last 7 minutes. You could add "long" or "short" as a qualifier of time; the personnel opted for "short", which was to minimise the conceptual understanding the patient might have of enduring such a long and uncomfortable intrusive activity.

The most important piece of advice was to keep breathing: in through the nose and out through the mouth. I ended up breathing entirely through my mouth, as my nose was slightly blocked when we started.

After that engagement, I was led to another waiting room to wait for the consultant who would conduct the endoscopy.

Meeting the Consultant

The consultant arrived: pleasant, amiable, and professional, doing his best to keep me at ease. After introductions, we walked to the examination room, well-lit and neat, with nurses giving off a warm aura of encouraging mien that could disarm every sense of anxiety.

She took my bag, cane, coat and hat, and had me sit on the bed. I was asked for the third time if I had any allergies. I always respond with "jealousy", something I learnt from the song "Footsteps Following Me" by Frances Nero, which contains the line, "I am allergic to jealousy". It is quite an icebreaker, I think. [Footsteps Following Me (Lyrics) / (YouTube)]

As I was not going to be sedated, I had this foul-tasting numbing spray squirted down my throat and larynx before I lay down on my left side on the bed. A mouth guard was inserted to stop me from biting on the camera tubing.

The Endoscope Goes Down

The endoscope, which I had seen earlier, looked like a generously thick length of liquorice, just a little over 1 cm in diameter from my estimation. It was introduced into my mouth and wound its way into my throat, where I had to swallow to give it access, and then I began to gurgle. My head was held still as I was advised to keep breathing.

I was breathing, but my gag reflex was triggered so many times that I was retching violently, somewhat scared I might aspirate any fluids. The nurse used a suction tube to draw out the fluid, and there were moments I was comfortable just breathing through my mouth before I was retching again, with my body and legs reacting wildly to the inconvenience.

The camera travelled down to the deepest reaches of my duodenum within two minutes, and for thorough examination, the endoscopist had the camera look back on itself, which is called retroflexion. With air being blown in to allow for a better view, all of it was coming back up in the gurgling and retching.

Biopsies and Relief

Towards the end, I was asked if biopsies could be taken. I'd rather suffer this once than have it done again, so I signalled my consent, and a thin red line was channelled into the camera stem for that purpose.

Imagine the relief when the endoscope was finally extracted, only for me to find that despite all the preparation, my top was soiled to the back of my left shoulder. I tried to dry up before being taken to recovery, where I awaited the preliminary findings of the procedure.

Another set of blood pressure, blood oxygen, and temperature measurements was taken, showing my blood pressure had fallen some 20 points between when I arrived and soon after the procedure.

The Findings

The findings indicated a hiatus hernia, suggesting my stomach had moved slightly above the diaphragm. This is apparently common and could be age-related. Further along, there was an incomplete Schatzki ring not causing any significant narrowing. This is a circle of tissue in the lower oesophagus that might make it difficult to swallow food.

These findings might not fully explain the food impaction and choking events, but they might indicate something to be aware of. The nurse in the recovery ward suggested I give more time to chewing and mastication before swallowing.

The histopathology of the biopsies is expected in anything from 6 weeks, scribbled in over the printed two weeks. I also had to wait an hour after the application of the numbing spray before ingesting anything.

Heading Home

Then I was discharged and walked back home to take a long bed rest. While I feel alright, the invasion of my innards was quite a shock to my system, bringing on exhaustion and tiredness.

I could have written this blog in the hospital, but it has taken hours afterwards, using AI to explain all the medical terms that are inscrutable to the layman, and trying to understand everything that happened: the findings, and the possible issues that might result. The premise is that there is nothing to worry about, just knowledge that explains some historical issues.

A Parting Thought

One final thing: I was their first customer, and it looked like 3 others had cancelled their appointments. I was never once addressed as a patient. Was I the bigger fool for attending what others were not ready to endure? I have no answer to that question.

A Google NotebookLM AI Podcast on this blog

Patience and the Idiot Behind the Wheel

2026-05-16T17:27:04.090+01:00

A Scene in Bucolic Cheshire

Accidents are exactly that, and some are caused by avoidable human error. In bucolic Cheshire, where the roads are pleasant and everyone drives with the abandon of suburban, carefree distraction, I happened upon a scene.

A fire engine stood with lights flashing, and as the details began to make sense, I saw two cars involved in a collision, with a tow-away truck arriving to cart one of them away. The police had cordoned off the road; in fact, there was no thoroughfare. Cars were being diverted further up the road, except for residents of the area.

Surveying the Wreckage

I did not tarry. As another tow-away truck navigated the roadblock, I noted the cars were a wreck, and could surmise from my observation who might have been at fault. One car had been accessing a busy road, and the driver's judgement must have deserted him; he was not fast enough to cross the oncoming lane to turn into the road as another car approached from the right.

There would not have been enough time for the other car to react with a sudden stop or a swerve. The result: a crash, fenders ruined, airbags deployed, and one foolish act becoming the inconvenience of many.

Reflections on Patience and Policing

I have always opined that the speed and manoeuvrability of a car present many opportunities for patience; but you only need an idiot behind the wheel for a vehicle to become a weapon of catastrophic consequences.

Yet, for all the unfortunate interactions I have had with the police before, I was persuaded that their helpfulness on this occasion was commendable.

A Google NotebookLM AI Podcast on this blog

Tubing Down the Gullet

2026-05-16T17:19:39.497+01:00

The Weight of Anticipation

Anxiety is a weight. It sits on your chest and bears down regardless of whether you are lying down, sitting, or standing. Anxiety also signals that the issues of life, though measurable in the brain, are situated in the chest cavity where your heart and lungs reside.

For instance, when you feel confident, you are likely to beat your chest rather than slap your head. Slapping your head, it turns out, is an act of self-deprecation in recognition of one's silliness or foolishness. Anticipation can create anxiety, and nothing quite causes that feeling of foreboding like the hours just before a long-scheduled medical procedure.

Lessons from a Previous Encounter

With hindsight, two years ago, after a multiparametric MRI scan, the consultant sprang a biopsy of my prostate gland on me without first reviewing the results or explaining the reasons. Even so, I was quite well prepared for the encounter.

I asked questions, demanded answers, and only acquiesced to the procedure once I was convinced of the need. The importance of reading up on your medical situation is paramount.

A Portmanteau of Procedures

Tomorrow, I am going for an Oesophagogastroduodenoscopy. I could have sworn that is not a word, but welcome to the world of medical terms that suggest a portmanteau of activities. The word reminds me of German, where portmanteau words are joined up with the letter "S". I would suppose, with medical terms, it is the letter "O", much like when I had that inguinoscrotal abscess last month.

In summary: I am having an endoscopy that will reach down through my oesophagus, past the gastrointestinal junction, to the first and shortest section of my small intestine. I have not deigned to measure that in miles, but it feels like a long way down to places never before visited, rather like the first landing on the moon.

Why This Procedure Is Necessary

This is pursuant to an investigation that presaged my visit to A&E after a choking incident which impacted my ability to swallow anything, including fluids, for hours. I was eventually discharged about five hours into my hospital attendance, after managing a sandwich and a drink. Taken alongside a history of choking events going back decades, and three such incidents since that discharge, this procedure is necessary.

Herewith, the cause of my anxiety: without a chaperone, I can only elect for the most basic palliative, which would be a numbing spray to the back of the throat, rather than a sedative.

Finding Peace

I believe I shall be fine. I suppose it is just part of human nature to be slightly concerned at that kind of invasive activity, and it is not helped by a mind full of others recounting their own endoscopic odyssey.

Shalom! Peace to my mind, peace to my soul, peace to my thoughts, peace through it all.

A Google NotebookLM AI Podcast on this blog

When Change Borrows the Lexicon of Grief

2026-05-14T16:13:29.524+01:00

A Week of Lethargy

I would hate to admit to being lethargic, but there could be no other word to explain it. Last week, when returning from London, I bought a piece of rump steak and a salad, with the view to having it for supper.

That never happened. Each day as I returned home thinking I might cook, I was simply too tired to be bothered, so in most cases, I went to bed on an empty stomach and only got up quite late to take my pills.

When it comes to food, I enjoy cooking, and there are times when I do crave something different, but I never immediately act to fulfil that craving. It sits on my mind for a while until it is either dismissed as exhausting or I am compelled to act.

Steak, Finally

After more than a week, I took the steak out of the fridge, marinated it, and rather than tossing it in oil in a frying pan, I left the cooking to the air fryer. Soon it was done, wrapped in foil for five minutes, before I put it on a plate and served it with the salad.

I probably did not recover the sense of satisfaction that had greeted my initial intention and purchase, but I am glad it did not end up in the bin through disuse and spoilage.

Shifting Ground

Then, as I navigated the issues that needlessly occupy the mind in uncomfortable ways, I attended an all-hands meeting that dwelt on the future of work. It was the kind of situation where you feel the ground shifting under you as if you were experiencing an earthquake.

I was able to link this to another experience where, as a sitting tenant, my apartment was sold to a provincial carpetbagger who probably should not have been speculating in my city. Considering not much had changed in my apartment for a decade, I was receiving demands to meet rates relative to the area without any corresponding changes to the commodity.

Loving where I live and my neighbours, I have made adjustments and accommodations, but there are limits to acquiescing before it becomes untenable. A recent posting in my village would suggest I am paying over the odds.

A Contract in Flux

The shifting sands metaphor also applies to work. The services contract between my employer and the client is changing such that the functions I perform will transfer to another service provider, whilst my employer assumes an overarching responsibility between the client and all the engaged service providers.

I think my employer is somewhat conflicted, because they would lose personnel engagement but acquire a broader first line support profile, along with that control and interface between the service providers and the client. The question is whether I am transferred to a new service provider or retained to function with other clients.

Grief Is Not a Career Change

For me, that meeting was rather depressing, and it was not helped by someone in a top managerial role trying to be a psychologist, addressing issues of fundamental change to career trajectories.

For someone who has studied and traversed the Five Stages of Grief with respect to two life-threatening episodes of cancer, the last thing I expected was to recognise those words adapted into a philosophy of change at work.

The intent was commendable, but I do not think due consideration was given to the effect such associations would have on the attendees. Changing jobs or having employment contracts change whilst retaining the same role can never equate to any stage of grief of the kind I had experienced.

It was almost as if she were having a laugh whilst trying to be empathetic and serious.

In the end, I was unimpressed and totally nonchalant, even as the burden of other concerns, including health challenges, became a lexicon of daily struggles seeking ascendancy over better stories and good living.

A Google NotebookLM AI Podcast on this blog

The Family We Inherit, the Family We Choose

2026-05-13T06:10:00.004+01:00

The Family We Inherit

When I was a child, family was a map already drawn. There were parents at the centre, solid and unquestioned. Grandparents orbited with stories and memory; I even had a great-grandmother into my twenties. Siblings came later, not quite close enough to grow up alongside, as it was to fight with and lean on in the same afternoon.

As I grew, the map widened to include aunts, uncles, cousins, and distant relations whose names carried branches of a tree I had not planted, but to which I undeniably belonged. Nowadays, a name from that stock carries some resonance but no clear recognition.

Family, in those years, was inheritance. You were someone’s son, someone’s brother, someone’s nephew, someone’s grandson. You did not choose your place; you occupied it.

An Unspoken Expectation

The expectation, though rarely spoken aloud, was that one day you would recreate the pattern. The heteronormative construct was laid out as tradition, without any consideration that you might be differently inclined. You did not create yourself; you became yourself, but you were still required to represent them as part of that genealogical framework.

You would find a wife. You would have children. You would extend the line. The structure felt inevitable, almost architectural: generation building upon generation, each layer confirming the last. The scaffolding stood there as a template, but what sort of building would emerge once it was removed?

The Expected Script

In adulthood, society tends to follow a predictable rhythm of questions:

“Are you married?”
“What does your wife do?”
“Do you have children?”

Closer to the traditions with which I have some affinity, the question is inevitably:

“How are your wife and kids?”

These questions are not malicious; they are rituals. They affirm that you are participating in the established arc, that you have stepped into the role once held by your parents.

Marriage, in that script, is not just about love. It is about continuation, about replication, about becoming what raised you. In fact, the word used is “responsible”, and you are apparently not responsible if your image of adulthood is not framed as husband and wife, home and children, the next branch growing from the familiar tree.

My Reality

My name is Akin, and the centre of my adult life is Brian. Brian is not my wife. He is my husband.

He lives in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. I live in Manchester, England. And regularly, as often as we can, we both travel to Cape Town, South Africa. We met in South Africa and meet there because it was the first country to recognise and legalise same-sex unions.

Cape Town is not just a city for us. It is a promise, a rehearsal for the life we are building. It is where time feels concentrated, intentional, and fiercely protected.

Measuring Life in Countdowns

Everything we do is designed to maximise the hours we have together. Flights are booked with military precision. Calendars are negotiated. Work is arranged around reunions. We measure life in countdowns: how many days until Cape Town.

We have been together for over seven years. Seven years of distance. Seven years of choosing each other. Seven years of making geography bend as much as it possibly can to commitment.

The Conversations of a Marriage

When people speak casually about spouses, they often describe the ordinary:

Morning coffee conversations.
“Darling, what shall we have for dinner?”
“Love, how was your meeting?”
“Babes, did you sleep well?”
“I mean, how are you in yourself?” [I smile at this question.]

Brian and I have those conversations.

I speak to him first thing in the morning and last thing at night. That is not symbolic; it is simply how life works. He is the first voice in my day and the final presence before sleep.

The Fabric of Our Bond

We talk about finances, health, frustrations, politics, and our families. We argue occasionally. We reassure constantly. We plan relentlessly. We discuss where furniture will go in the Cape Town home, we have not yet secured. We imagine neighbourhoods. We calculate costs. We picture morning light in rooms that exist for us only in hope.

These are the conversations of spouses. They are not lesser because they occur across time zones. They are not diluted because they travel through screens. They are not temporary because they are stretched by distance. They are the fabric of a marriage, the centre of what tugs at our hearts.

Recognition and Silence

Yet the world does something subtle.

A man mentions his wife and is met with easy follow-up: “What does she do?” “How did you meet?” “Do you have kids?” The questions flow naturally, as though the script has already been agreed.

But when I speak about Brian, there is sometimes a pause, a recalibration. Not hostility, not necessarily rejection, just a slight disruption of expectation. And often, no further questions come.

While I appreciate that some people need time to get used to that construct, in other cases it is those who give no consideration to that reality who make this conversation necessary.

This relationship will not fade into insignificance or irrelevance; the indifference of the original setting I was born into will not obviate the consequential position of Brian to me and in my life.

The Unfitting Template

It is as though the conversation does not quite know where to place us. We do not fit into the inherited template of husband-wife-children-grandchildren. There is no automatic branch extending from us into the next generation.

We have no children. Our relationship does not replicate the structure we were born into. But it is no less central, no less serious, no less real.

We as individuals might have deigned to conform, satisfying the cultural expectations of tradition whilst complicating the lives of those who, in my view, would have fallen victim to a lavender marriage, one in which our intimate desires were met elsewhere, where a wife could not compete.

We chose instead to be who we are, without scandalising others through the revelations that might have emerged from the liaisons we had proclivities for.

The Myth of Continuation

Much of how society recognises marriage is tied to reproduction. Parenthood acts as proof of adulthood, of stability, of contribution to the future. Children become the visible extension of a couple's bond. Yet even people within those constructs may not have children, for all sorts of reasons.

Without children, a relationship can seem, to some, self-contained. But what if continuation is not only biological?

Brian and I are building continuity of another kind: continuity of devotion, continuity of shared planning, continuity of showing up, again and again, despite visas and airfare and the blunt inconvenience of geography. Our lineage may not be genetic, but our commitment stretches forward just the same.

Cape Town: The Dream

Cape Town is the convergence point. I fly from Manchester. He flies from Bulawayo. Two separate lives narrowing toward the same coastline.

We walk the same streets each time as though tracing the outline of a future. We talk about where we will finally set up home, not as a fantasy, but as an inevitability we are patiently engineering.

The Sacred Mundane

That is our dream: to close the distance permanently. To wake up in the same space without calculating time zones. To make breakfast without screens. To argue about which cupboard the mugs belong in, or the clocks on the oven, for which I have been accused of having OCD.

Domesticity is not mundane to us. It is sacred.

The Centre, Not the Periphery

Whether others like it or not, Brian matters. He is not an aside in my story. He is not an interesting footnote. He is not an exception to a rule.

He is my husband, my partner, my integral and significant companion. The person I consult first. The person whose opinion steadies me. The person who knows the texture of my thoughts before I fully articulate them.

The absence of children does not shrink that reality. The absence of a wife does not make it incomplete. He is my full responsibility, before all others.

The Family I Choose

As a child, I belonged to a family I inherited. As a man, I have formed a family I chose.

It may not look like the one that raised me. It may not produce grandchildren. It may not trigger the standard conversational questions. But it is no less a family.

Brian and I are building something deliberate, intentional, and resilient. Every mile travelled, every reunion planned, every late-night call is a brick in that foundation.

Family is not only about bloodline. It is also about allegiance, about persistence, about saying, across continents and years: “You are my person.”

And that, however quietly the world acknowledges it, is marriage. That is just the way things are.

A Google NotebookLM AI Podcast on this blog

I Am Not Your Gayologist

2026-05-11T17:34:00.002+01:00

The Courage to Deviate

I cannot say how it works for everyone, but eventually, some people must find the courage of their convictions to deviate from what is considered the norm and set their own conventions instead.

To them, their norm, whilst being different, is their existence, their expression, and their life. To choose to live that life fully as themselves, without having to apologise for it, is probably what many others might have wished they dared to do.

In my own case, I did not set out to be unconventional. In the beginning, though I knew my inclinations were different, I did not understand why, nor whether there were others so inclined and ready to explore the possibilities that such difference offered.

A Diverse Humanity

The societies in which I have grown and lived have met this situation with varying levels of acceptance or revulsion. I suppose that is the story of our humanity: we are offered such a range of diversity that keeping track of divergence can be overwhelming. Yet, we can all belong to one celebrated and richly diverse humanity.

Behind all this are stories, very personal and intimate stories of struggle, fear, anxiety, confusion, guilt, grief, or rejection, all borne without a means of sharing one's deepest feelings.

We may never get to narrate those stories if the circumstances do not present the opportunity, but when such a moment does come, even the things you thought you might never share come out in ways you could not have anticipated.

Telling Your Story

How anyone reacts to that story, once told, is left to them. They can listen to the telling or read the message, then respond in whatever way they have been affected, having been given a different perspective on the person they had heretofore thought they knew.

Understandably, we hold high expectations and too frequently are met with indifference or ignorance. Yet a few respond with understanding and empathy; they see you, and that might just be enough to know that everything which became your story is not meaningless.

A Uniquely Owned Experience

Even that premise can be challenged. Why should someone else's viewpoint change your own narrative, even when they have attempted to walk a hard, long mile in your shoes? Nobody can live the life you have lived. They can understand, comprehend, appreciate, embrace, or even endorse it, but your experience will always be uniquely yours.

I started this blog hoping to say that it is not my responsibility to explain my sexuality to anyone. I am who I am, as you are who you are. You not understanding or acknowledging it does not make it insignificant or irrelevant.

Neither is it my problem if you cannot accept me and the choices I have made, without regret or second-guessing myself, in trying to live up to the requirements or standards of others.

Not Your Gayologist

The title of that blog would have been, "I Am Not Your Gayologist." Forgive the neologism; there might well be a blog with that title when the words are fully formed for that range of expression. I guess this is it.

A Google NotebookLM AI Podcast on this blog

Of Bus Screens and Wandering Thoughts

2026-05-09T23:06:00.005+01:00

A Lazy Saturday's Prelude

Through Saturday, I vegetated at home as I began to binge-watch the second series of Bull, a television programme about trial science which I find quite fascinating, whilst also putting me at risk of learning things that might make me more forthright and less personable.

At the back of my mind, I agonised about getting some shopping done. This involved catching a bus to the ethnic grocer's first, then walking up to the affordable supermarket, before returning home.

As the ethnic grocer closed at 9:00 PM and the supermarket an hour later, I could spare a few more hours of lazing about until I really had to get out; otherwise, the shopping would have to wait for another day, an idea that held no appeal.

Setting Off at Last

When I did eventually leave home with barely 90 minutes to go before the first shop closed, the nearest bus stop, just half a kilometre up the street, was closed, so I had to walk further down to the next one. On another day, with enough strength and the leeway of sufficient time, I would have walked the whole way and clocked up a few thousand steps in the process.

The Bee Network buses on the Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) enterprise are part of a modern integrated service under the mayoralty of Greater Manchester. There is an app to check routes and timetables, along with the current status of buses at specific stops.

The Trouble with the Screens

On the buses themselves, the contactless payment method is a convenience, but it is the screens showing the route and next stops that I find most useful for keeping my bearings. Unfortunately, on the bus I boarded, the screen was stuck on stopping information from well before I got on, and that was annoying.

I thought it was a case of broken windows syndrome, with such a minor detail of keeping passengers apprised of the journey and the next stop not being attended to as part of a pre-flight checklist for bus transport. I was remonstrating quite vehemently in my mind, with a view to writing to TfGM about the malfunctioning information screens. I had seen this many times before.

A Curious Coincidence

I had barely put together the words and suggested tone of my missive when, four bus stops after I boarded, the screens seemed to catch up and start working. That was uncanny, as it had me wondering if I now had the means to project my thoughts, not just for registering a complaint, but for the remediation and resolution of an issue to a satisfactory standard.

By extension, this would also suggest that I ought to guard my thoughts and arrest those straying out of the bounds of reason into the outlandish.

Others might put this down to coincidence, when it seems propinquitous enough to aspire to the causative. I do not know, but I was glad the screens got fixed, and I allowed myself the wry thought of levitating my shopping bags home instead of carrying them.

A Google NotebookLM AI Podcast on this blog

In Wine, In Play, In Anger, and In Indifference

2026-05-06T01:02:00.007+01:00

Wisdom From the Mother Tongue

Yoruba provides a rich seam of wisdom that, even as a second language, I have mined to find gems that sparkle and light my path. “Ibi eré ni à ńmọ òótọ́ ọ̀rọ̀” is a saying that has meant so much to me; it has made friends and broken relationships. “It is at play that the truth spills out.” That would be a liberal translation, and I'll stick with it.

The Romans arrived at much the same conclusion by a different route. “In vino veritas,” they said, “in wine, there is truth.” Where the Yoruba sage observed the loosened tongue at play, the Latin observer found it at the bottom of a cup. Two cultures, two settings, one shared recognition: the heart, given any opening, will speak its mind.

What reinforces that viewpoint comes from the words of Jesus Christ in the Bible: “A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.” (Luke 6:45)

A Watch Over the Lips

The unguarded expression, spoken without thought or consideration, regardless of disposition, is one reason why we need a watch on our lips. So says the Psalmist, in a prayer asking for divine assistance in controlling one's speech, preventing hasty, sinful, or hurtful words, and acting as a guard over what is spoken. (Psalms 141:3)

It takes only a moment of lacking restraint, and everything comes crumbling down: the dismissing of issues consequential to others, simply because there is no background to their stories beyond what surfaces at the point of interaction.

Yet everyone has both the prerogative and the right to be unburdened and unbothered by external issues. In some cases, silence trumps expression, but that requires a modicum of discipline.

The Many Faces of Unguarded Speech

Wine and play are only two of the settings where the heart slips its leash. Anger is another: the row that begins over a small grievance and ends with a cruelty no apology can quite retrieve. Tiredness is a quieter cousin, where exhaustion strips away the patience that ordinarily holds the tongue in check. Grief, too, can sharpen words into instruments that wound bystanders who happened only to be nearby.

There is also the casual cruelty of group settings, where a joke at someone's expense earns laughter, and the laughter encourages the next, sharper jibe. Social media has industrialised this dynamic; the keyboard is a kind of wine in itself, lowering inhibitions whilst removing the face that might otherwise have stayed our hand.

Then there are moments of fear, jealousy, or wounded pride, when the words we reach for are not the ones we believe but the ones that will hurt fastest. And let us not forget the seemingly innocent slip during gossip, where a confidence shared in trust becomes currency in another conversation entirely.

Seven Words, One Covenant

"I don't have the energy for this." Those are seven words that broke a covenant, though one can be certain they would be used to castigate me as truculent, impossible, and recalcitrant. My relevance is transactional rather than in recognition of my own journey or story. I have my own issues, but everyone needs to see themselves in the mirror, too.

Going back to the verse I quoted earlier, an interpretation would suggest that a person's words reflect their inner character, thoughts, motivations, beliefs, and emotions. The "heart" represents the core of one's being, and what is stored inside inevitably spills out through speech.

The Fool in the Play

As a student of myself, and sometimes of others, I have learnt a lesson about the heart once again. It does not take drink alone to loosen the tongue; play, anger, fatigue, grief, indifference, or just plain spite are enough.

You had better be attentive to what is being said before you become the fool in the play where you are also the lead.

A Google NotebookLM AI Podcast on this blog

Essential Snobbery 101: Ritzy on Piccadilly

2026-05-04T20:48:00.003+01:00

A London Weekend

A fascinating London weekend it was, in which most of what was intended was achieved, including the benefit that being over the age of sixty offers; a third off transport fares, if you remember to show up with the bona fides for your age.

On the Piccadilly line of the London Underground, the glimpse I caught of buttons on the back of a jacket suggested an untucked, ruffian look from the front; with a tie rather than a bow tie or cravat, it was a tailcoat of undecided pretensions to putting on the Ritz.

The Ritz and Recognition

Indeed, I did alight at Green Park and exited onto Piccadilly on the side of The Ritz London, one of the swankiest hotels in the city, opened by César Ritz in May 1906.

I could never walk down Piccadilly without being acknowledged, and I was quite dressed down, standing out simply because I wore a straw hat, carried a walking cane, and had a jacket finished with an elaborate pocket square collage.

The doormen at the Ritz doffed their top hats and even muttered a greeting, which I returned.

Heading to Fortnum's

I was on my way to Fortnum & Mason, a walk that takes you past The Wolseley Piccadilly, the Caviar House, Burlington Arcade across the street beside Burlington House, the home of the learned Royal Societies too.

Fortnum's is always busy, yet a very different busy from Harrods in Knightsbridge, which I only ever entered once at someone's behest; the less said of the garish, gaudy place, the better.

Inside Fortnum's

In existence since 1707, this shop is famous for its teas and other exquisite foods. It has been picketed many times for selling foie gras, the making of which does not greatly concern me, as the taste is as different from pâté as fish roe is from beluga caviar.

I have a predilection for Earl Grey tea, and they have many blends, of which Smoky Earl Grey wins every time. It is best to have the loose tea dispensed at a counter by weight rather than buying packaged tea bags or the ready tins, which can be more than 33% dearer.

Along with some Lapsang Souchong aromatic tea and Strawberry with Fortnum's Champagne Preserve, which takes the edge off the sweetness of the jam, that was my first visit in about seven years.

Leaving Piccadilly

As I left for the station, the doorman at the Wolseley offered a greeting; not the one who always took time to compliment my dressing, but they do see enough to know the difference between being dapper and just snooty.

He had a bowler hat on, and I had to ask where he got it, as mine, bought from a gentleman's outfitters in Ipswich some thirty years ago, was looking the worse for wear.

He recommended a milliner near Liverpool Street, but that might require another visit to London.

There is a quiet, unbothered sophistication about Piccadilly; the London tour buses gather at the entrance to Green Park just as a patron of The Wolseley urges his dog to take a pee. The carefree appearance demands a dress code enforced on the serving, whilst remaining non-existent for the served.

Putting on the Ritz

A short note on the places that punctuated this walk: The Ritz London, opened in 1906, was the realisation of César Ritz, the Swiss hotelier whose name became shorthand for refined luxury. Fortnum & Mason, founded in 1707 by William Fortnum, a footman in Queen Anne's household, and Hugh Mason, his landlord, has supplied the British establishment with provisions for over three centuries.

The Wolseley, by comparison, is a relative newcomer; a former car showroom turned grand European café, it opened in 2003 and has since become a Piccadilly fixture in its own right. Burlington Arcade, opened in 1819, remains the original covered shopping promenade, still patrolled by its top-hatted Beadles. The Royal Societies along Piccadilly include the Royal Academy of Arts at Burlington House, where the learned and the artistic have gathered since the eighteenth century.

It is no accident that the Ritz lent its name to a song. When Irving Berlin wrote Puttin' on the Ritz in 1929, he was reaching across the Atlantic for the very idea César Ritz had built into a brand. The original lyric pictured "Park Avenue", with its "high hats and Arrow collars, white spats and lots of dollars", as the place to dress to impress.

The 1946 revision moved the scene to "up on Lenox Avenue", but the spirit remained the same; to put on the Ritz was to wear your best and walk as though the pavement belonged to you.

Piccadilly, in its quieter, more unbothered way, has always done the same. Park Avenue performs its wealth; Piccadilly assumes it. The doormen still doff their top hats, the bowler hats still need replacing, and the tailcoats of undecided pretensions still ride the Underground, hoping nobody notices the buttons on the back.

A Google NotebookLM AI Podcast on this blog

The Laws Being Flat: Hereditary Peers and the Monarchy's Exposed Flank

2026-05-01T15:09:00.009+01:00

The Last of Their Kind

The news that the last 92 hereditary peers in the House of Lords were sitting for the very last time, following the implementation of reforms by the Labour government, left me quite saddened. [BBC News: Hereditary peers' last hurrah as 700-year-old system abolished]

The peerage system, which has effectively functioned as a kind of patronage, has existed for centuries, perhaps approaching a millennium. The very last hereditary peerage conferred on a non-royal was awarded in 1984 to Harold Macmillan as Earl of Stockton.

Born to Greatness

William Shakespeare, in 'Twelfth Night', Act 2, Scene 5, writes, “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.” That, to me, has always been the story of mankind; the way greatness or privilege arrives in a person's life is sometimes an indeterminable process, yet worthy of note.

For instance, the longest extant hereditary peerage in England is the Earldom of Arundel, created in 1138, which is currently held by the Duke of Norfolk. He also bears the ceremonial hereditary position of Earl Marshal, with the duty of organising state occasions such as the coronation of the monarch and the state opening of Parliament.

The family is Roman Catholic, with the pre-eminent non-royal function of serving a Protestant monarchy.

Peers and the Magna Carta

The Magna Carta, upon which many principles of our modern-day democracies and human rights are based, came about when the peers, hereditary barons, rebelled to limit the power of the king. A charter of rights was signed in 1215. The ordinary folk would never have had the clout and facility to rise against a king who, in those times, literally held the power of life and death untrammelled and was considered sanctioned by God.

That said, I recognise that the significance of hereditary peers had been waning for well over a century before their removal. In Victorian times, some peers served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, on more than one occasion.

Reform and Patronage

In the early twentieth century, the constitutional balance between the two chambers was formally and irrevocably redrawn. The Parliament Act 1911 stripped the Lords of the power to block money bills entirely and reduced their ability to delay other legislation to two years; the Parliament Act 1949 cut that delay to just one year.

The elected House of Commons, as the chamber that forms the government, had been established as the primary legislative authority, and the Lords' independent power had been reduced, step by step, to little more than a holding position.

The Salisbury-Addison Convention of 1945 settled what remained. Under that arrangement, the Lords agreed not to oppose legislation at second reading, nor to substantially obstruct any bill that the government had put to the electorate and won a mandate to implement. What had once been a chamber of real and rival legislative power had become, by stages, a revising chamber, its role defined more by restraint than authority.

Life peers were introduced in the United Kingdom through the Life Peerages Act 1958; this removed the hereditary component; a case of greatness being thrust upon one as part of political or influential patronage. The conferment stays with the person, and each individual earns that elevation for themselves alone.

The Winds of Change

My concern with the loss of hereditary peers, though some of that cohort have been given life peerages to sit in the House of Lords, is that the only hereditary component of the political system is now the monarchy. They stand alone, without the buffer of any other hereditary roles in our political system to shield them from the billowing winds of change. [The Guardian: Starmer restores powers to ousted hereditary peers in Lords shake-up]

The hereditary peers were, in a meaningful sense, the monarchy's constitutional companions. Both derived their place in public life from the same foundational principle: that certain roles could be inherited, carrying with them centuries of obligation, service, and a legitimacy built not on a single vote but on long continuity.

The presence of peers embedded in the political landscape normalised that principle within the constitutional system itself, making the monarchy less anomalous and less conspicuously alone.

With them gone, the Crown stands as the only institution in British public life whose authority rests on birthright rather than democratic mandate or appointment. It has not merely lost allies; it has lost the broader constitutional culture that once made the hereditary principle comprehensible and defensible.

It brings to mind a conversation in the play 'A Man for All Seasons', where Sir Thomas More was implored by his wife, his daughter, and his son-in-law to arrest someone.

Alice More (Wife): Arrest him!
Sir Thomas More (England's Lord High Chancellor): For what?
Alice More: He's dangerous!
William Roper (Son-in-law): For all we know he's a spy!
Margaret More (Daughter): Father, that man's bad!
Sir Thomas: There's no law against that!
William Roper: There is God's law!
Sir Thomas: Then let God arrest him!
Alice More: While you talk he's gone!
Sir Thomas: And go he should, if he were the Devil himself, until he broke the law.
William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
Sir Thomas: Yes!
Sir Thomas: What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
William Roper: Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!
Sir Thomas: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat?
Sir Thomas: This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down (and you're just the man to do it!), do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?
Sir Thomas: Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!

Sketch from A Man For All Seasons about Sir Thomas More from What Delicate Balance? by John Loeffler.

A sketch from A Man For All Seasons.

When Laws Fall Flat

Taking the hereditary peers as the laws in More's analogy, the Labour Party have done precisely what William Roper threatened; they have cut them all down, leaving only the monarchy standing. When the devil of republicanism rears its head in a swell of revolutionary fervour, I do wonder how the Crown can be defended against the onslaught.

We have seen this before in England, where political conflict between the Royalists and the Parliamentarians led to the conviction of Charles I for high treason and his execution in 1649, ushering in the Commonwealth of England and the Protectorate, but the monarchy was restored in 1660.

Patronage and Its Limits

Hereditary peers were born to their positions of greatness and should not, in general, be beholden to political influences that do not serve their interests or the purposes of a life of public service, if they choose that path.

Life peers are appointed through patronage that may carry elements of nepotism, cronyism, and corruption; they are a means by which a Prime Minister could tilt the balance of the House of Lords by stacking the chamber with loyalists and sycophants. The core revising function of the chamber can easily be lost, reducing it to a rubber stamp for poor government policy.

In all, having an appointed or elected House of Lords without the hereditary element does not augur well. Even as we aim for a more egalitarian society, the source of greatness will always come by birth, by achievement, or by conferment. Hierarchies will always exist, no matter how we try to abolish them.

A Google NotebookLM AI Podcast on this blog

The many tests of a patient waiting in patience

2026-04-27T03:48:00.003+01:00

A Week to Fathom

What a weekend that was, or rather, let us consider the full week, because the thought of all that transpired is hard enough to fathom.

Fresh from the good news of my PSA having fallen to its lowest level, buoying my confidence in the radiotherapy for prostate cancer, I was having chest pains that led to my attending A&E first thing on Monday.

That was one unplanned visit to the hospital. The result was reassuring; it was nothing serious, just musculoskeletal pain that some bed rest could help.

Good News, Then Distress

Friday was the main day scheduled for my biannual monitoring at the Christie Hospital. Going there never ceases to be as impactful as it is critical to saving lives. It is a visit to a renowned cancer hospital to review my PSA result and discuss the attendant issues from radiotherapy.

That went well, so I stopped by Nando's for a meal and used the opportunity to call Brian. Halfway through my meal, after our call had ended, I had a choking episode. I won’t suggest this is a longer-term side effect of radiotherapy, as dysphagia, and I have not considered if it could have exacerbated it; I’ve had choking episodes going back decades.

Thankfully, I had enough napkins to contain the relief in bringing it all back up. Not a beautiful sight, and no one noticed I was in distress either. I cleaned up in the conveniences and returned home to lie down.

Saturday Takes a Turn

Whilst that should have resolved things, as I do usually have episodes of choking on food, this one was different. Some cereal before midnight did not go down, likely due to food impaction, an obstruction, or inflammation in my throat. I threw up in the toilet and decided to postpone my pills for a few hours.

The pills did eventually go down, and I had a lie-in for most of Saturday into the afternoon.

Getting up, I made a cup of tea. I thought I had drunk the full mug, but there was pressure in my throat and quite a bit of discomfort. I had to throw up again.

The tea came up with some mucous-like substance that fell to the bottom of the toilet bowl. That was concerning. I was about to return to A&E for another ailment.

A Night in A&E

Calling an Uber, I made it to the hospital soon enough, though as I alighted, I was sick in the bushes before being triaged. From then on, I was vomiting a thickened, mucous-like substance every thirty minutes or so into a sick bowl.

Just about two hours after arrival, I saw a doctor. She gave me a drink of water, which seemed to stay down. I have not vomited after that. I was then referred for a possible endoscopy and left in the Emergency Room for two hours.

Then another doctor called me in for review. We agreed on an experiment: I would have a sandwich and a drink, and if that stayed down, I was to be discharged for further outpatient review. If I could not keep the food down, it would mean hospital admission, nil by mouth, and a possible endoscopy on Monday to identify the obstruction.

The food stayed down, but it was left waiting for a few hours before I received an email notification; an after-visit message; it was sent 30 minutes earlier. Apparently, I had been discharged, and no one had bothered to inform me. I left the hospital over eight hours after arriving. It was almost 2:00 AM.

The Weight of Being Alone

I appreciate that these matters take time. Anyone attending A&E is busy juggling the precarity of their situation that brought them to the hospital with the need to keep others informed, especially if they are alone in that predicament, and that is just the way it is.

I have every reason to want a better situation, to be in a hospital with someone. Everyone else seemed to have someone with them, but as one person, you are a container of the reflexes of concern, anxiety, or even panic of others about you. You must wonder whether it is necessary to inform anyone during the crisis or only after it has passed.

There is an emotional toll involved in the desire for information and details. I have had calls whilst a doctor's stethoscope was feeling around my body, calls I have had to ignore.

My going to the hospital should be part of accepting that the right decision has been made and that I am in good hands. Not much can be helped beyond everyone holding their nerve, thinking good thoughts, and praying for the best outcomes.

Everything takes time, and the patient patiently waiting for answers and assurances, first for themselves before finding the form of words for dissemination to others who duly need to be informed, is probably the most impacted by it all.