This 2011 debut novel was much-acclaimed—but passed me by completely. When I came across some of the extensive praise for it recently, I thought I’d take it out of the library to see what all the fuss was about.

It’s a slim novel in 19 chapters, each of which presents an individual vignette. It is narrated by the youngest of three brothers who were born to teenage parents in 1980s rural New York. The chronologically presented chapters take us through their childhood, exploring their close knit family unit until it loosens as the boys come of age.

I have to confess that I didn’t really enjoy this. There is something about novels narrated by children that I struggle to connect with, even (or perhaps especially) when they are critically acclaimed. I often find their perspective a little unbelievable, and the device of imaging what a child sees in adult relationships tends to come off as a little twee to me. The effect is to reduce the emotional impact of the plot, which seems a shame when it is as loaded as in this book.

I suppose this just wasn’t for me.

In the early days of this blog, the political debate around whether to ban fox hunting was a big deal. Those were, perhaps, simpler times.

I think some would be surprised to read these days that I argued against banning hunting with foxes. It may seem even more surprising that I probably still would—yet I would argue perhaps more forcefully against repealing the ban now that it exists.

My arguments against the ban were essentially liberal: we shouldn’t go around banning stuff, cruelty to animals was already illegal, and we should use the laws that we’ve already got. But there was also a significant dose of priority-setting: it seemed to me that banning an activity as perversely niche as fox hunting could not possibly be the best use of Parliamentary time. There is no way that it could possibly be viewed as ranking among, say, the top hundred problems facing the country.

My arguments against repealing it would be basically the same: we shouldn’t signal through a change of the law that cruelty to animals is okay and it absolutely shouldn’t be anywhere near our list of top priorities.

I think you can read a lot into this. I’m all for a permissive society that tolerates difference. I’d rather see something that I personally disagree with continue than restrict freedoms for us all. And, at least to me, reversing a ban is qualitatively different from being permissive in the first place—even if it’s philosophically equivalent.

I was reflecting on this today when I was trying to figure out why Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to remove tampons and sanitary towels from the men’s toilets at Meta seemed so offensive. After all, I’m not offended when these facilities aren’t offered, as in the vast majority of workplace and public toilets—though I am impressed when a business does offer them, demonstrating that they are thoughtful and inclusive. The same goes, by the way, for sanitary bins in men’s toilets—a rare sight, but one needed by far more than just the trans and non-binary population.

But if I’m not offended when these facilities aren’t offered, then why am I when they are removed?

Well, because while it may return the business to their original position philosophically, the act of making the change is petty, vindictive, persecutory, and fucking cruel. It makes the world a tiny bit worse for all of us—and especially for some of the most marginalised communities in our society. It tells me that the company does not care about the needs of individuals, and would rather see people suffer than stand up for basic values of inclusivity and respect for other human beings.

And that’s not my standard at all.

Middlesbrough’s Royal Exchange building opened in 1868, and quickly became one of the most important sites for industrial deal-making in England at the heart of the town nicknamed ‘Ironopolis’. A very grand Italianate building, it featured all sorts of intricate stonework and decoration.

It was, however, demolished in 1985 to make way for the much uglier A66. As a sop to the historical importance of the site, some of the twiddly bits of stonework are retained on these little poles in Exchange Square, near the original site of the building.

There’s something distinctly and disturbingly Scarfolk about these metal sculptures of children in North Ormesby, now swallowed up by the surrounding foliage.

The FT had a lovely ‘long read’ by Daniel Thomas about the success of the West End last week: footfall is well above pre-pandemic levels and the industry is in rude financial health. But not so on Broadway, where neither footfall nor revenue has recovered from the pandemic.

It feels like we often hear a lot of depressing stories about the financial performance of the arts in the UK, so it’s heartening to read some positive news… and even moreso given the brief mention of Newcastle’s very own Theatre Royal.

It’s less than seven years since Wendy and I wandered along Hollywood Boulevard, comparing it—not entirely favourably—to Blackpool’s promenade.

It’s astonishing, distressing, and tragic to think that, at the time of writing, it’s now in a mandatory evacuation zone due to wildfires. The situation as a whole will doubtless be worse by the time this is published.

Ryan Broderick recently shared the observation that ‘climate change will manifest as a series of disasters viewed through phones with footage that gets closer and closer to where you live until you’re the one filming it.’

LA may be thousands of miles away, but the familiarity makes it feel closer—and perhaps that’s the apt interpretation of the word ‘closer’ for these purposes. It’s hard not to feel a scintilla of guilt about the way that trips like ours might have ultimately contributed to the destruction, just as they contributed to the touristic development of the area in the first place. Flygskam is a complicated emotion.

Britain’s planning laws are often described as slightly mad, unfit for purpose and antiquated. But this nugget, reported by Phineas Harper in The Guardian and highlighted by John Naughton, is quite delightful:

British domestic architecture has also been shaped by idiosyncratic rules that contribute to its poor environmental credentials. For instance, in many parts of the UK, homes that face each other at the rear are required to be built 21 metres apart. This large distance means that instead of clustering buildings together around cool courtyards or shady streets, as is common in hotter climates, many homes in new neighbourhoods are directly exposed to the sun.

The 21-metre rule is, according to the Stirling prize-winning architect Annalie Riches, a bizarre hangover from 1902, originally intended to protect the modesty of Edwardian women. The urban designers Raymond Unwin and Barry Parker walked apart in a field until they could no longer see each other’s nipples through their shirts. The two men measured the distance between them to be 70ft (21 metres), and this became the distance that is still used today, 120 years later, to dictate how far apart many British homes should be built.

It was covid that drove me off Facebook, but it perhaps wasn’t until nearly five years later that it left my mind entirely.

Wendy and I were writing Christmas cards last month, and I—perhaps not fully embracing the Christmas spirit—commented that it was a risky business, as some of the families we were wishing well might have divorced in the years since we last spoke.

‘No, they definitely haven’t,’ said Wendy. ‘I’m friends with them on Facebook.’

It simply hadn’t entered my mind that there might still be a social media connection between us. Facebook is no longer in my thoughts.

And yet yesterday’s news that its founder has chosen to remove fact-checkers caught my attention. I was even more surprised to see the company had changed its ’hateful content policy’ to permit ‘allegations of mental illness … based on gender or sexual orientation’, among many other unpleasant changes.

It baffles me that this makes for an attractive proposition. If I were seeking information, I wouldn’t choose to do so on a website that is explicitly designed to make it easier to spread misinformation. If I wanted to socialise, I wouldn’t do so in a place where people are free to hurl around stigmatising accusations of psychiatric illness. And if I wanted to advertise, I wouldn’t do so on a platform where my ads would appear alongside any of this vitriolic effluent.

But… I’m pretty sure I’m in the minority, and it’s not like my objections have any meaningful impact anyway given that I don’t use it in the first place.

It was CP Scott who said that ‘comment is free, but facts are sacred’. It seems nothing is sacred at Facebook.

This is the clocktower at Wallington. Wallington is one of a number of North East National Trust properties—perhaps most of them—with which I have strange mental associations, having worked on a ward named after it. But that needn’t detain us today.

Today’s scintilla of curiosity is found in the National Trust’s insistence, in signage and even on their website, that the thing pictured above is the ‘clocktower’—one word—not the ‘clock tower’, as I’d have written it. So let’s crack open the Oxford English Dictionary and see what’s going on there.

Except… there’s not much to say. ‘Clock tower’ is only listed as two words, with one example where it has been hyphenated. ‘Clocktower’ doesn’t appear. And in it’s National Heritage List for England Grade 1 entry, the structure is referred to as the ‘Clock Tower Gate’

So why the insistence on ‘clocktower’? I think it might be because they are often using it—perhaps even in all the examples I’ve seen—as part of a compound phrase, like ‘clocktower cafe’. This seems like a reasonable bit of linguistic tidying which even I can forgive… even if it’s not absolutely correct.