This will be the last of these posts, at least for a little while. In 2023, I’m going to go back to posting about books individually, rather than in a compiled end-of-the-month post.

But for now, I’ve five books to tell you about.

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

This Booker-shortlisted 2015 novel is one of those books that has been recommended to me by many people over the last few years, but that I’ve never quite found time for. This is partly because it is long, and starting a long book always feels a bit like taking on a big commitment. But mostly, it’s because the premise didn’t attract me.

This is often described as a story about four male college classmates, following them and their ever-changing relationships over the course of their lives. And yes, that is a part of this book, but it’s not how I’d describe it. I would call it a fictional biography of a brilliant lawyer with a traumatic childhood.

In my premise, this is a book which looks at the lifelong effects of trauma on both the person who suffers it and those around them. There’s a second thread about fatherhood, and the father-son relationship in particular, explored through an adult adoption process. The stuff about modern male friendship is interesting and under-explored in modern fiction, but I didn’t think it was really the focus of the book.

One thing those who recommended this book didn’t get wrong: it is very moving, harrowing even. It was a little over-written, and it took a while to find its focus and get going, but all of that is outweighed—for me, at least—by the complex layers of emotion that the book explores. This is definitely one of my favourite books of 2022.

With thanks to The London Library for lending me a copy.

Happy-Go-Lucky by David Sedaris

This latest collection of funny observational essays covers the COVID-19 pandemic and, movingly, the death of Sedaris’s father.

As documented in his previous books, Sedaris had always had a strained relationship with his father. In this book. Sedaris describes how his father’s late-in-life cognitive decline brought them closer together. He also talks about the complex emotional reaction to his death, given the history between the two of them.

I thoroughly enjoyed this, as I have Sedaris’s previous books… but if you’re new to his essays, you’re probably better off starting with the earlier volumes.

With thanks to The London Library for lending me a copy.

Emergency State by Adam Wagner

I was a bit reluctant to dive into this newly published book reviewing the legal framework governing the COVID-19 pandemic in England. I wasn’t convinced that I was ready to relive earlier parts of the pandemic we’re living through, especially considering the impact it had on my professional life.

However, the reviews seemed strong, and I couldn’t resist at least making a start—and then ended up racing through the whole thing.

I was struck by the extensive similarities in the ‘chat’ Wagner reports among legal professionals and the ‘chat’ I participated in as a public health professional. Like Wagner, I was surprised that the Government chose to underpin so much of its guidance with law, in a way that is most unusual for public health practice, rather than concentrating on outlawing only the most egregious behaviour. Like Wagner, I was frustrated that the law and guidance rarely aligned. And, like Wagner, I was confounded by late publication of crucial documents, which often came hours or even days after Government announcements, leaving us all guessing in the meantime.

Wagner’s central argument is that the ‘emergency state’ needs clearer boundaries within the English constitution. His argument won me round.

With thanks to Newcastle University’s library for lending me a copy.

Intimations by Zadie Smith

Written in the early part of the pandemic, this is Smith’s short collect of short essays which reflect on her experiences and her relationship with Marcus Aurelius. The final essay is a version of the opening section of Aurelius’s Meditations.

Despite its short length, I describe this as “patchy” and “uneven”. There were sentences that produced that vertiginous effect of totally changing my perspective on something:

Writing is routinely described as ‘creative’ – this has never struck me as the correct word. Planting tulips is creative. To plant a bulb (I imagine, I’ve never done it) is to participate in some small way in the cyclic miracle of creation. Writing is control.

but also passages which seemed inconsequential. I suppose, to some degree, that was the pandemic experience for many—so perhaps the form is more considered than I took it to be.

With thanks to The London Library for lending me a copy.

The Lover by Marguerite Duras

I was inspired to read this bestselling 1984 French classic translated by Barbara Bray after seeing a short piece about it in The Atlantic. It is an autobiographical novel set in what is now Vietnam in 1929, and concerns the poor 15-year-old narrator falling into an affair with a rich 27-year-old man. Duras wrote this when she was 70 years old, so had considerable distance and perspective on the events it describes.

The novel is short, a little over 100 pages, and is written in a fragmentary style which is not always strictly linear. I found it difficult to get into, and didn’t take much from it. It’s possibly a book that would close study more than my casual read, though I’m aware that Duras herself described it as “a load of shit” that was written “when I was drunk”.

Basically, this just wasn’t up my street.

With thanks to Northumbria University’s library for lending me a copy.

A few things I’ve been thinking about this week. The final post of a series of fifty-two.

Yes, this is a day early, but I’m starting something new tomorrow, and it would seem weird to finish a 2022 series on the first day of 2023.

So, we’ve finally limped to the end of the year of two monarchs, three Prime Ministers and four Chancellors.

And while the NHS is on its knees—or perhaps having collapsed—the Department of Health and Social Care has seen four Secretaries of State for Health this year, seven Ministers of State and seven Parliamentary Under Secretaries.

We can’t go on like this.

I can’t go on like this.

I had a moan about the Council cutting down trees a few weeks ago, so I feel it’s only proper to give credit where it’s due: I counted fifteen newly planted trees in green spaces on my way to work recently. We can but hope there will be more next year.

This article in Le Monde about EU nutrition labelling warmed my heart. It’s extremely difficult to summarise the complexity of the nutritional value of a foodstuff in a single letter. Any straightforward formula will inevitably throw up anomalies like the olive oil discussed in the article.

Yet, that very complexity is the reason that a simple indication is worth fighting for. It’s good to see the political effort going in to making it work, and also good to see people standing their ground and thereby helping to improve the end product.

The picture at the top of this post is an AI-generated image for the prompt ‘new year fireworks above a long queue of NHS ambulances, dramatic art’ created by OpenAI’s DALL-E 2.

A few things I’ve been thinking about this week. The penultimate post in a series of fifty-two.

On Christmas Day, I hope you’re finding peace and happiness in whatever you are up to, and whether or not you are celebrating.

One of work’s national leaders tied himself in such knots this week in his attempts to be religiously inclusive that he ended up robotically “wishing you all a wonderful set of end-of-year activities.”

No other Christmas greeting has ever made me laugh so hard and, while not his intention, perhaps that makes it the best greeting of all.

This week, I’ve been reading Heaven on Earth by Emma J Wells. In her section on the Notre-Dame de Paris fire of 2019, she talks about Father Jean-Marc Fournier running into the burning building to rescue

the Blessed Sacrament: the consecrated wine and host used in the Eucharistic ritual, which literally was, to Fournier, an act of saving Jesus himself from the flames.

How awesome his faith must be to risk his life for some bread and grape juice. And how fine the line between religion and madness.

Christmas is Alan Bennett’s diary in The LRB, but as it always appears in the New Year issue, this is (I think) the first year I’ve read it on Christmas Day. I enjoyed Richard’s Christmas morning walk, too.

The picture at the top of this post is an AI-generated image for the prompt ‘a robot in a Christmas scene, oil painting’ created by OpenAI’s DALL-E 2.

A few things I’ve been thinking about this week. The fiftieth post of a series of fifty-two.

For most of this week, the temperature in Newcastle has remained stubbornly subzero all day long. Our front door froze shut a couple of times and needed a good shove. Some of our outside pipes required defrosting more than once after icy blockages tripped the boiler. The wheelie bin was so firmly iced shut that I couldn’t persuade it open.

The layer of ungritted ice across most footpaths prevented me from walking to work for fear of slipping. One benefit of the local electric buses is that they’re heated before they’re sent out, so even the first services are pleasantly toasty. I’m not someone who typically feels the cold, but it’s been… cold. And I’m lucky enough to be able to afford to put the heating on.

On days when we have broken freezing point and some of the ice has melted, I have walked home from work. One wander was in freezing fog. I can’t remember ever experiencing that magical phenomenon of being surrounded by floating specs of ice glinting in the light before, but I surely must have.

While watching a medical education session online this week, I had the disconcerting experience of a question being put in the “Q&A box” by a “Simon Howard” that wasn’t me. It was, at least, a good question. There are three of us on the GMC register, so I wonder if it was my GP doppelgänger or my neurologist doppelgänger? From the question, I’d guess the former… but then perhaps they were in an allied profession. This wasn’t a session exclusively for doctors, and from misdirected emails to our very similar NHS mail addresses, I know there are non-medical Simon Howards out there too.

A few things I’ve been thinking about this week. The forty-ninth post of a series of fifty-two: I’ve decided not to continue writing weeknotes next year.

I want to do something a bit different for 2023, though I haven’t quite settled on what. The blog will turn twenty years old in May. This feels significant, though mostly reflects time plus inertia.

I’ve been reading Zadie Smith’s Intimations this week.

Writing is routinely described as ‘creative’ – this has never struck me as the correct word. Planting tulips is creative. To plant a bulb (I imagine, I’ve never done it) is to participate in some small way in the cyclic miracle of creation. Writing is control.

I’ve also been writing plenty of emails and briefings which boil down to “it’s under control, panic is the enemy here”.

When I am writing, space and time itself bend to my will! Through the medium of tenses!

I’ve long known and used the fact that “writing is control”, but never had such an elegant phrase to describe it. And in describing it so well, Smith has helped me to see for the first time the now obvious connection between creating control through writing at work, and marshalling my thoughts through writing at home.

Note to Paul McCartney: you may be one of the most celebrated lyricists in history, and you’re welcome to the singular ‘they’, but really I must insist on agreement between singular subjects and their associated verbs.

The choir of children sings their songs.

If you could record a small retake 43 years on, it’d really help me to have a wonderful Christmastime.

The backspace key on my wireless keyboard became a bit mushy this week. I prised it off to clean it, and in so-doing, snapped one of the retaining clips.

I got my spare wireless keyboard out, and was irritated to find that it wouldn’t charge.

But get this: replacement clips and keycaps are available cheaply for the first, and the batteries in the second can be easily changed.

After all the talk lately about ensuring consumer goods are repairable, not least for ecological reasons, it finally seems to be actually happening.

The images in this post are all AI-generated images for the prompt ‘computer keyboard with Christmas decorations’ created by OpenAI’s DALL-E 2. You’d have thought that a computer would have a better idea of what a computer keyboard looks like.

A few things I’ve been thinking about this week. The forty-eighth post of a series.

Having enjoyed the Channel 5 version twenty years ago, I decided to watch the Netflix take on the international game show format The Mole this week. I felt it lost something in the slickness of the production.

There was a baffling decision to include an obviously staged shot partway through the series, which all but confirmed the identity of the mole. I assumed this was being included solely to be back-referenced in the finale—the Channel 5 version had a whole ‘how did viewers miss that clue?!’ episode. But it wasn’t mentioned, so I’ve no idea why they included such a blatant spoiler.

I’d still watch another series, though.

It’s a while since I ranted about “whilst”. This week, I’m being involuntarily irked by people writing “utilise” when they mean “use”. Many would say that this is grammatically fine, but it nevertheless gives a similar sense of someone trying to complicate their language for effect, which is almost always a mistake in expository writing. Why obfuscate? What have you got to hide?

I’d also like to propose a ban on the phrase “just some of the”—as in “just some of the things in this issue” or “just some of the photographs from this event”. The “just” and “of the” are both unnecessary, their rhetorical function outweighed by the irritation caused by this phraseology being insufferably twee.

Public health bodies need stability and institutional memory. Their recent history in the UK shows little of either. UKHSA became fully operational in October 2021 as part of reforms to replace Public Health England (PHE). The government had introduced it under a different name, then spent £560,000 on consultants to provide it with a ‘vision and purpose’ – suggesting to some observers that ‘policy makers did not have a clear plan in mind’.

Indeed.

The images in this post are all AI-generated images for the prompt ‘The word “utilise” crossed out on a piece of paper’ created by OpenAI’s DALL-E 2. Every so often, the results are surprisingly inaccurate.