Twenty years ago, this piece of land near Thornaby station was home to The Rocket. This was the Students’ Union associated with Stephenson College at Durham University, where I started my medical degree… and where several of my fellow students performed a ‘full monty’ striptease for the local mayor. I’m not sure that would be a University-sanctioned activity in 2024. It feels more like an event that could lead to a political scandal.

I’m not certain when The Rocket closed, but it had been long abandoned and had suffered a large fire by the time it was torn down in 2021. It could hardly be called a rapid unscheduled disassembly.

It’s surprising how quickly things change, and also how quickly time passes.

Here in the Northern Hemisphere, it was the Vernal equinox yesterday, which means only one thing…

I didn’t realise how wonky our egg-house doors were until I took that photo!

So here’s a question that occurred to me today: with more and more Local Authorities in financial straits, are we likely to see fewer overnight counts in the forthcoming general election?

The answer is ‘no’, for two reasons.

The first is the law. In the run-up to the 2010 election, when a quarter of councils proposed leaving counts until the next working day, the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill was passed. It had a provision requiring counts to start ‘as soon as practicable and within four hours of the close of the poll’.

The second is money. For general elections, councils can reclaim the cost of counting votes, so it doesn’t come from limited Council resources. The funding for local elections does come from council budgets, but given that starting the count within four hours is also a legal requirement for those, it seems likely that even the most financially embarrassed councils will be required to do so.

Whether or not that’s the best use of money is debatable.

The image at the top of this post was generated by DALL·E 3.

I can’t remember when I first read a Kazuo Ishiguro novel, but I can remember when he became one of my favourite novelists: I was blown away by The Remains of the Day in 2016.

I can’t remember when I first heard Stacey Kent’s singing. I suspect I’d have first heard her on Monocle Radio, and I know for sure that she’s been on my playlists for about a decade.

I can remember when I first learned of a connection between the two: it was six months ago, when Faber announced the publication of this book. It is a collection of sixteen songs Ishiguro has written for Kent since 2007, several of which are still to be recorded. Some of my favourite Stacey Kent songs are in here: how did I miss that they were written by one of my favourite novelists?

Reading the lyrics of familiar songs on the page is a strange experience, and it is most definitely not the best way to experience these pieces of writing. They are made to be sung.

And yet, seeing them written down in the book, alongside beautiful cartoons by Bianca Bagnarelli, gave me a different appreciation for the work.

As astoundingly obvious as it may be, I’ve never before noticed that many of Kent’s songs are rooted in the present day, unlike jazz standards. No matter how many times I’ve heard The Ice Hotel or Bullet Train, it’s never previously occurred to me to think, ‘Gosh, that’s an unusually modern setting for a jazz song.’

I was also surprised by how short many of the lyrics are: the songs tell complete stories in my mind, and I’ve never before realised the linguistic brevity with which they’re told—or, perhaps, how much of the story-telling relies on Kent’s performance.

This book therefore gave me a renewed appreciation for the talents of both Ishiguro and Kent—but if you haven’t already heard the music, then it might not do much for you.

According to BBC News:

To the jazzy sounds of Nancy Wilson’s 1960s tune I Wish You Love, the Duchess of Sussex emerges from the kitchen of her Californian mansion in a teaser unveiling her new lifestyle brand.

Although little was revealed in the 16-second long video, an Instagram account for Meghan’s new brand has already amassed hundreds of thousands of online followers.

For the past week or so, I’ve had Blossom Dearie’s 1964 cover of the same song stuck in my head after Spotify kept serving it to me. It seems that I’ve more in common with the Duchess of Sussex than I could ever have guessed, though I’m not certain I’d have chosen a break-up song to launch an aspirational lifestyle brand. I defer to the Duchess’s much greater knowledge and experience in this area!

A year ago, a visit to the Rijksmuseum’s Vermeer exhibition left me completely astonished.

Obviously, it’s the paintings that are the star here. That unexpected, indescribable presence, the astounding attention to detail, the lifelike quality. They really are utterly unbelievable, completely astonishing.

I was so unexpectedly bowled over by the exhibition that I did something I’ve never done before with any exhibition: I went back the next day. I was so surprised by the strength of my own reaction that I couldn’t quite believe it, and wondered if I’d just been tired or overawed at being back at the beautiful Rijksmuseum. But no: the paintings really are spectacular, unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.

This weekend, Art Fund members—myself included—are being treated to the opportunity to stream the film version of the show, created by Exhibition on Screen. And so, last night, I found myself settling on the sofa to watch.

I was impressed. Obviously, seeing paintings on TV is not nearly the same as standing immediately in front of them. Many of the things I liked about the exhibition, such as its spare use of commentary and explanation which really allowed the work to sell itself, wouldn’t lend itself to film.

Yet, the film really did a fantastic job of bringing across that ineffable quality in Vermeer’s work, the arresting way they pull in the viewer. The experts featured in the film explain that this is partly attributable to Vermeer’s use of light, as I thought when I saw them. They also point out that Vermeer’s brushstrokes are invisible: an attribute I hadn’t noticed independently, though I suppose it should have been obvious.

It was an hour and a half well spent. That the opportunity to watch the film appealed even after seeing the exhibition twice made me reflect on quite how big an impact that once-in-a-lifetime show had made on me. As I said last year, Vermeer got inside my head; he clearly hasn’t left yet.

This book sold by the tonne last year, and the resulting coverage of ‘ultra-processed food’ was unavoidable. I studiously avoided reading the book, though. I’ve dabbled in nutritional research in the past, and have a reasonable handle on how complicated the subject can be. I assumed that this was another book by a celebrity doctor who would be giving an oversimplified, somewhat self-promotional message.

But then I gave in and was pleasantly surprised.

This book is quite narrowly focused on the under-recognised harms of ultra-processed food. As one of van Tulleken’s interviewees memorably puts it: ’It’s not food. It’s an industrially produced edible substance.’

This is explicitly not a diet or self-help book, and van Tulleken repeatedly emphasises that there’s more to diet than this narrow topic: cutting out all ultra-processed food from one’s diet does not guarantee a long, healthy and happy life. The central argument is merely that the introduction of ultra-processed food is probably an under-recognised driver of ill health at a population level. I was fairly convinced by that argument.

I found the book easy and enjoyable to read, partly because of van Tulleken’s humorous style of writing and his personal anecdotes, but also because some of the background literature he cites is familiar to me. I sometimes found some arguments in the book a little reaching, particularly when it came to trying to connect the development of ultra-processed foods with wider ethical concerns in some multinational corporations. I came to accept this as a rhetorical device in keeping with the tone of the book.

I enjoyed this and felt that I learned from it, and regret misjudging it from its cover!

Eleven years ago, I wrote a post about coffee shop loyalty schemes, and the way that they deviate from the psychological evidence base.

The thing that links all of the common schemes is they are effectively fixed ratio reinforcement schedules. That is, they entice customers to buy more coffee by promising a freebie every X visits. But a wealth of literature from psychology reveals that this isn’t really very effective in getting people to form habits, not least because their motivation to consume drops off immediately after claiming free coffee Y.

A far more effective method of getting people to establish habits is to build a variable ratio reinforcement schedule. As with gambling, this means that the punter / customer never knows when the win / free product is going to materialise. This keeps motivation consistently high.

In practice, what I’m suggesting is that the ratio of visits to free coffees is kept the same (X+1:1), but that the free coffees are dispensed at random.

I still think about this a lot. Eleven years ago, most coffee shops used paper stamp cards, which didn’t really lend themselves to this sort of thing. I proposed using scratch cards as an alternative.

These days, these schemes use apps, so the switch should be much simpler. Indeed, some coffee shops use variable ratio reinforcement within the apps for special promotions: Caffè Nero’s app sometimes has a fairground spinner, and it has crackers at Christmas—both operate on the variable ratio reinforcement principle. I see no good technical reason why the randomised approach couldn’t be used for the core loyalty scheme.

And yet, the fixed ratio ‘stamp card’ approach is ubiquitous. Costa, which had a different system when I wrote that post, has come into line. Even M&S has a version now.

I don’t doubt that there’s a good reason for the lack of adoption of a variable ratio approach, but I’m not sure what it is: I struggle to imagine that large corporations are squeamish about using gambling-like mechanics to increase sales, so I expect that it’s to do with effectiveness. I’d love to see a trial, not least as it might help illuminate the limits of effectiveness of variable ratio approaches.

The image at the top of this post was generated by DALL·E 3.

The cover of this book caught my eye when it was first announced, but its subtitle—’an A-Z for the weary’—didn’t appeal. I imagined it to be a slightly patronising self-help book, and I didn’t buy it when it was published in January. This brief review in the TLS changed my mind, and I thought I’d give it a go.

The book is a literal A to Z, from ‘A is for Acceptance’ through to ‘Z is for Zeitgeist’. Each chapter is only a few pages long, but provides some genuine insight into burnout, and the relationship between modern work and exhaustion. Schaffner is a ‘burnout coach’, which is not the sort of title that fills me with confidence, but she is a great writer and clearly brings a wealth of experience and insight.

This isn’t a self-help book in as much as it isn’t directive: there are no instructions here for overcoming burnout. It’s a book designed to provide insight. Many of the chapters were about things that were already familiar—Bartleby the Scrivener, for example, or the Stoic philosophers—but I did find value in having Schaffner’s reflections on how these examples related to modern-day burnout.

So, I enjoyed this more than I expected.

Here are some passages that I highlighted:

The writer Jonathan Malesic defines burnout as the experience of being pulled between expectations and reality at work. We burn out, he argues, not because we are exhausted but because our hearts are broken. Our love for work went unrequited – it did not love us back. And nor did it bring us the dignity, purpose and recognition for which we hoped. Burnout, he writes, is ‘an ailment of the soul.

When we are in the grip of anhedonia, we often cannot even remember what used to bring us joy, and what it feels like to be properly alive, engaged, connected and full of zest. If that is you, then I urge you to find a hobby. This is not facetious advice for the following reasons: hobbies serve no purpose other than making the person who performs them happy. Like child’s play, they are unapologetically non-instrumental activities. They cannot be monetised nor utilised.

Sometimes, being caught in a bad situation can drain us of all vitality, even destroy our will to live. When we are that unlucky, we turn into ghosts, neither fully alive nor dead. We may continue to function at a physical level, but our spirits appear to have departed. Empty shells, we are incapable of experiencing joy. In fact, more often than not, we don’t feel anything at all. We have numbed our feelings to such an extent that we don’t even register the true scale of our suffering. And this is the point, of course: because it would be too devastating to hear what our feelings have to tell us, it is safer not to feel anything at all.

‘Within our power are opinion, motivation, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever is of our own doing; not within our power are our body, our property, reputation, office, and, in a word, whatever is not of our own doing.’ In other words, what tends to be within our control is our inner life, our judgements, our reactions and how we treat others, while most other things, including what people think of us, are not.

The news we are fed is almost unremittingly negative. Studies have shown that it triggers our limbic system and stimulates the release of cortisol, thus deregulating our immune system, inhibiting the release of growth hormones and making us more prone to infections. As well as making us more fearful, aggressive and desensitised to the suffering of others, it can become a source of chronic stress. It can also kill our creativity.

During those dark nights of the soul, when all hope is gone and we feel lost and alone, we still have one option: to do the next right thing.

Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.