(Pic I think from Sky News).

Was nailed-on certain that today was Saturday. So gently building to a crescendo of sports-fixated lounging: really looking forward to that, on a shocker of a day. (Can hear the wind in the window-frames; have heard the Doomsday Revisited forecast but it’s only raining intermittently here. Sounds like some folks will be in trouble).

Have no car – not on the road, currently – and am still in one of those No Expenditure Moments until a wee wedge of money lands with me in about three weeks, meaning really eeking-out stuff. Sometimes that’s hard to the point of depressing but it’s also enjoyable and kinda sustaining – or the bit where I walk two miles to get food from the farm shop is – as is the longer walk to see family, *actually speak to people* and maybe partake of caffeine in the village. Both yomps are medium-lovely, through farmland, down a quiet minor road. I’m doing both as a form of discipline, and to earn the right to food and possibly coffee.

Might be too gross out there to do the walk today, but that was kinda factored-in to yesterday’s purchase of an oggi (non-taffs go search) and milk from the farm shop. I think I now have a nourishment kit for the day, and ju-ust enough coffee to build a cafetiere-sized supply, which I’m not remotely addicted-to, but I do enjoy the indulgence in taste, time and slo-mo gestation that comes with a brew that lasts forty minutes. (Yes I do make hot milk in an old pan. In a farmhouse kitchen. Checking in on the cattle in the quilt of fields thrown delightfully but damply around the place. And how is Swindon, today?)

I look forward to and really value the two or three cups of coffee, knowing I’m only going to do that once every other day or so: that it really is an indulgence. And yes – interestingly or sadly or something – that filling of time is important… and kindof enriching.

Maybe I should explain that? It’s in the current context of a life temporarily very much in Struggling Artist Mode. (And sure, you can take that however you like: I know how feeble it might sound. But it’s true that I’ve part-chosen, part fallen-in to living day-to-day, working part-time and having or needing lumps of headspace. To write books, asitappens).

The thought suddenly strikes that walking may have been a more essential part of the thinking/writing process than I have given it credit for. Although we all know that we promenade or yomp or jog or whatever partly to give us ‘time to think’, yes?

Having finished my third book not too many months ago, and despite being in the throes of ‘publicising it’, I have the luxury RIGHT NOW of whole days where I don’t have to do anything. Meaning I can absolutely choose to make them feel productive or meaningful in any way I want.

Ten days ago I read three books about golf in crazy-quick succession. Initially partly out of loyalty to a good mate who leant me them, but then entirely because they were brilliant and even revelatory stories, about genuinely great sportsmen (largely), between about 1900 and 1950.

I’m not particularly a golf fan – except during the Ryder Cup – and rarely play, but was genuinely captivated by Mark Frost’s storytelling and I learned many things. Like why my pal thinks this time period was special: because men (in sport and in general) had a particular kind of humility and honour that we can barely even talk about, without drawing performatively unstifled yawns. And how sensational and god-like and yet quiet was the genius and talent and application of Vardon/Jones/Nelson/Snead etc etc. So we should in a sense celebrate and even grieve their passing and the passing of that era of innocence. Or certainly respect the simple truths – I bet you could guess at them? – that they would not transgress.

Yes. I was proper-collared by the integrity and courage and inviolable goodness of many of the protagonists in those books. And it will both re-inforce my inclination to call out shit-housery and cheating in modern sport and (therefore) expose me as a reactionary clown to many of my contemporaries. Those guys are worth it and so are these daft games of ours.

All of which points a sort of conservatism, or worse. But no. I am absolutely not advocating for a Better Time Now Lost, in a wider or more general sense. And I hope to (your) god(s) that arguing for the existence of certain perennial truths is not the same as *being a reactionary.*

Whatever. Life IS more complex now, because we do know more and we ARE more aware. These should not be bad things. Family life has changed; the whole idea of careers-for-life and of typical lives or a sort of common level of perceived happiness or acceptance has lurched somewhere new and different.

There were World Wars in the period of those books, so difficult and maybe obscene to suggest that our own multifarious predicaments can remotely compare to that, but it’s likely true that our (yes I’m talking as though there is some universal ‘we’, which I know is a nonsense, but) our headspaces are, percentage-wise, as traumatised or deluded or numb as ever. There *really is* a mental health epidemic. They’re not the only ones culpable but media and the internet really are colluding – not entirely but significantly – towards a dehumanised flux where, having been coached towards apathy or bigotry, we don’t recognise truths of any sort. The codes that we have followed are obscured.

Many of us are too entrapped by the images we see or want to project to penetrate moral, political or philosophical truths. In the standout distraction of the moment, most of us are being coaxed towards hating or fearing The Other. The BBC endlessly platforms Farage, enabling a xenophobically-driven Brexit and the rise of one-issue politics. Starmer wins then capitulates. Trump and Musk make White Supremacism kinda fashionable again – or possible. Immigrants – that we in the UK need; that statistically and culturally and practically contribute – are demonised. Thiel and Murdoch and Bannon and the arch technocrats stoke the pot: they get to control the ether. And in maybe another standout feature of contemporary life, almost no politicians have the guts or integrity to call them out.

All these things are in my head. It’s why I walk and why I write. (Why my current book is about Angels of Protest). I think we need to re-position truths that should have been everlasting, about decency and commitment and hope.

This is no party political broadcast but Polanski (UK, Greens leader, for those at a distance) is most notably calling-in most of these messages. Racism is nailed-on wrong. Obscene wealth – the sort that utterly controls dominions of thought and opportunity – is nailed-on wrong. Austerity, the shameful charade that protects obscene wealth, is nailed-on wrong. We must act, in whatever way we can, upon these things.

I’ve never voted for anything other than a progressive party in my life. Genuinely most people I know could not vote Labour at this time, because Starmer has been so weak and unprincipled generally, and particularly around Gaza and issues of race. He and Reeves have also been pathetically and intransigently protective of the wealthy and super-wealthy. Polanski, on the other hand, has been smashing it out of the park. Now coffee.