Anger & Jokes
A joke is always one step away from someone getting angry.
Secrets
Secrets are a problem if fear makes them necessary.
Better Remembering
Someone I know mentioned a piece of advice she used to give students when she was teaching: say something in a class and you’ll remember it better.
We tend to remember things better if we try to recall them as close as possible to where we committed them to memory. What my friend was suggesting was very important. It suggested a way of marking a moment of remembering; of how to remember that you’ve remembered something.
It’s easy for things to ‘wash over’ you. If you let that happen, even if you then go on to make a note of something later, the chances are you’ll remember it less well.
Something Else
A Line of Responsibility
Cocteau, like Picasso, took the line seriously. His mark, undeniably his, a committed gesture: a signature.
I’m not one for football, probably because of everything that surrounds it, but catching up on what happened when some England footballers were unable to score goals in the final of Euro 2020, I feel more contempt than ever for most of our politicians.
What does it say that some very young men commit themselves to a course of action that will mark them for the rest of their lives, never able to shake responsibility for what they do in the name of a game that appears, for a little while, to a lot of people, to mean something, when people like our prime minister seems incapable of ever taking responsibility for decisions that really shape our lives?
Let’s respect people who take responsibility (Saka, Sancho, Rashford and Southgate) and cast off the ones who don’t (Johnson, Patel, Javid and Coffey – and Johnson again: he’s twice as bad). Nothing will improve if it’s administered by cowards and liars.