Thought Picnic: The Many Mirrors of Criticism

The Mirror and Its Drip

Criticism is a mirror, but not all mirrors are polished the same way. The polishing might bring clarity, or the mode of polishing might scratch the surface and distort what we see. When we look in the mirror, we hope to see the best reflection of ourselves rather than a caricature that makes us recoil.

Dripping criticism is subtle and persistent. It is the raised eyebrow, the “interesting choice” comment, the slow leak of disapproval that erodes confidence over time. A manager who says, every week, “We'll need to tighten this up eventually,” without clarity or support, creates doubt rather than direction.

I dare say this almost always comes from familiar settings: the parent who has constantly said something that becomes ingrained in memory, a habit formed with the intent to change yet one that does the opposite, creating tension, resistance, and resentment.

Left unchecked, those early and well-meant words settle into the inner critic we carry into adulthood, a voice that goes on speaking in a parent's cadence long after the parent has fallen silent.

Burning on Contact

Caustic criticism burns on contact. It is sharp, often clever, and sometimes public. “Did you even read the brief?” may get a laugh from bystanders, but it scars the recipient. Its power lies in humiliation, not improvement.

Its purpose is to reduce a person to insignificance; it highlights inadequacy in order to expose weakness. The person on the receiving end is likely to shrink, wishing the ground would open so they might fall into the crevasse. It is wholly unkind, the bailiwick of the sociopath.

Tearing Down

Destructive criticism tears down without offering a path forward. “This whole plan is a mess” ends the conversation instead of advancing it. It may be emotionally satisfying to the critic, but it leaves both the work and the worker diminished.

This goes beyond cynicism; it is the need to complain without helping or offering solutions. It sees the problem clearly yet fails to realise that identification is not resolution. There is a close cousin here in withering criticism, the scornful, contemptuous remark designed to make a person wilt on the spot.

It borrows the sting of the caustic and the finality of the destructive, which is perhaps why it is so hard to place: it wounds like the one and forecloses like the other.

Care and Clarity

Constructive criticism, by contrast, is anchored in care and clarity. It names the issue and points towards growth. “The introduction is strong. The argument would be clearer if you added evidence in paragraph two” respects both the person and the goal. It assumes capability.

This brings the best of helpfulness to the fore: empathy, guidance, and emotional intelligence, which engender growth and productivity. It takes a wholly different mindset. Yet every sort of criticism, given with the right intentions, can become constructive; it depends on motivation, desire, and drive.

Gentler Forms and Love

There are gentler forms too. Reflective criticism asks questions rather than making declarations. “What outcome were you hoping for here?” invites ownership.

Self-criticism, when healthy, refines craft and character; when excessive, it becomes an internalised drip. Cultural criticism challenges norms and systems rather than individuals, asking whether the rules themselves deserve revision.

Ultimately, criticism reveals as much about the giver as the receiver. The best criticism carries three traits: specificity, proportionality, and goodwill. Without goodwill, it corrodes. With goodwill, even hard truths can build something stronger than what existed before.

Its reach is wider than the work in hand, for over time criticism shapes confidence and character, bolsters or erodes self-esteem, tips us towards obstinacy or leaves us open to persuasion, and quietly colours the way we see the world; but that is a thread for another day.

Beyond goodwill, perhaps the real driver of the best kind of criticism is love: a deep love, concerned to bring about the kind of change in others that we wish for ourselves. The root of that is self-love, from whence springs the ability to love and to be loved in return.

 

Count Binface and The Farce That Defines Us

A Comical Contender

Count Binface might seem comical or ridiculous to you, but in my view he is a send-up of the farce that sometimes defines British life and politics. That he had to give up the aristocratic title of Lord Buckethead for the more continental title of count was an unfortunate result of a humourless copyright dispute.

Count Binface courtesy of countbinface.com

A popular figure in significant elections, contesting against sitting prime ministers in their constituencies, standing in the London Mayoral elections, and more recently in the Makerfield by-election, the count has emerged as the only candidate who will stand against Nigel Farage in the Clacton by-election, a contest that hinges on Mr Farage first being appointed to the position of Crown Steward and Bailiff of the Chiltern Hundreds.

Update for 10^th July 2026

Nigel Farage has since been appointed to the office of Crown Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead, an alternate position created for handling the departure of an MP from the House of Commons, so the by-election goes ahead.

Death, disqualification and expulsion are the only means by which a member’s seat may be vacated during the lifetime of a Parliament. [UK Parliament]

An Ancient Escape Route

That appointment is an ancient office, one that serves as a legal fiction to handle the departure of an MP from the House of Commons; under a resolution of 1624, it is illegal for an MP to resign or wilfully give up their seat. The appointment is approved by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and there is every likelihood that Mr Farage will not be permitted to resign until the parliamentary regulator on standards in office has reported its findings.

Nigel Farage announced on Tuesday his intention to resign and trigger a by-election in which he would run again, seeking to escape or forestall the parliamentary sanction he was likely to receive for failing to declare properly some of the various streams of finance and payments he has received from the year before he became an MP to the present day.

Dementors in Politics

While Nigel Farage purports to speak for the people of Clacton, he is, in effect, a dementor who feeds on human happiness and joy, leaving those he represents to relive their worst memories; Brexit is a case in point for the people of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

He is not alone in this cohort of depraved malevolence, for he attempts to re-enact tropes from the playbook of Donald Trump, no less a dementor of the worst kind. The Americans have offered a recent illustration of just how this dementor operates.

The FIFA Fiasco

With the FIFA World Cup hosted in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, the president persuaded FIFA to rescind a red card given to the American star striker. This unfortunate development brought unnecessary focus and opprobrium upon everything representative of the United States, tarring FIFA with the deserved taint of corruption, while giving Belgium the impetus to trash the United States 4-1.

That intervention sucked the spirit, resolve, and ability out of the US Men's National Team, so that whatever wherewithal they might have had to make an appearance was served back to them as just deserts for choosing exception over acquiescence to the rules of sportsmanship, fairness, and good conduct in football.

A Serious Manifesto

Count Binface should not be dismissed as laughable, yet his manifesto has included punishments for the public use of speakerphones, the return of 99p Flake ice creams, the restoration of the BBC Ceefax service, a cap on the price of croissants, the linking of ministers' pay to nurses' salaries, the building of at least one affordable house, the nationalisation of Adele, and the moving of the hand dryer in the gents' toilet at the Crown and Treaty pub in Uxbridge to "a more sensible position". [The Tab: Everything to know about Count Binface, the ‘space warrior’ standing against Nigel Farage]

These are serious issues that have garnered votes from serious people, and the odds of Count Binface winning against Nigel Farage present the kind of likelihood that inspired the British public to vote for Boaty McBoatface as the name of a £200m polar research vessel.

The Dustbin of History

If Nigel Farage's political career is consigned to the dustbin of history in his defeat to Count Binface, after a lifetime of pretending to represent people he has deluded and exploited with half-truths, conspiracy theories, and simple solutions to complex problems, no better story could have been written of British politics since the bulb of lettuce outlasted Liz Truss's premiership.

In his quest to escape accountability, after intense scrutiny of his financial arrangements, his ignominious undoing would come in the farcical match-up with Count Binface. He could then return to his grift, never to appear on our screens again except as a pantomime character, a parody of hubris shipwrecked on utter humiliation. I endorse Count Binface.

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Community and The Neighbours We Never Knew

The Vanishing Neighbours

It was only a few weeks ago that I had a conversation in the office kitchen, near the coffee machine. I was curious as to why a company on our floor seemed to keep a three-day week. They were in on neither Monday nor Friday.

The lady I spoke to said that they worked from home on Mondays and had Fridays off. As usual, this week I did not expect them in on Monday, but by Tuesday it became apparent that they had gone. The hive of activity that sat between my office and the kitchen became a scene of eerie calm and emptiness. A part of my office community had gone without notice.

Communion and Loss

Earlier in the week, during Communion at church, people lined up for the gifts. My place in the seating arrangement means that I am one of the first congregants to go forward, ahead of others.

After returning to my seat for contemplation and to listen to the choir sing, I could also watch the other congregants go forward for the breaking of bread. A male couple usually sits to the side, on the right as one looks towards the altar, but only the taller of the two went forward.

It seemed peculiar, as they were never apart, and the shorter of them still carried his age well, being a nonagenarian, though I cannot say why we had never exchanged pleasantries in all the time I had seen them.

Comforting the Bereaved

After the Sung Eucharist, I saw other church members go to chat with the one who was present, and it caught my eye that they were shaking his hand and patting his knee. Everything pointed to the premise that something might have happened to his partner, and from these interactions, I had drawn my own conclusions before I enquired of another person.

The old man had passed away during the week, and they were comforting his partner. I had not made his acquaintance well enough to be familiar, yet I felt that we had, even from the distance I maintained, lost a dear member of our community. May his soul rest in peace.

A Summer Barbecue

Our village, which comprises five apartment blocks with shared facilities and a rather cantankerous WhatsApp group of restless people who have not yet found the natural circadian rhythm of silence and peace at a certain time of day, gathered in the communal garden for a summer barbecue.

I was not sure I would attend, as I am not good with crowds, but when my neighbour, one of the organisers, saw me a few hours before the event, I could not excuse myself from the fête. I paid for my ticket and took a bottle of South African shiraz and a bottle of orange juice to the gathering.

Gathering in the Garden

Dressed in traditional and colourful apparel, I was easily the centre of attention, while at the same time hoping to be inconspicuous. This was the first time something like this had been arranged in our decades-long residency of the village, and over forty people came.

From someone who had moved in only a fortnight ago to others who have lived here for over thirty years, I gleaned enough from the conversations I had. I was better off sitting in one place, with people interacting with me, than moving around networking extrovertly, which is a total drain on my mental reserves.

Proximity Without Intimacy

It struck me then how strange it was that so many of us should live so close and yet know one another so little. That WhatsApp group is the perfect emblem of it; we are near enough to disturb each other's peace, yet not close enough to know the names behind the complaints.

We had shared walls, stairwells, and a garden for years, and it took a barbecue for some of us to exchange a first word. Proximity, I realised, is not the same as intimacy, and living side by side is not the same as living together.

What Community Means

What it revealed to me was that we do not do neighbourliness and community enough, at least for those with an interest in others. I once had a neighbour whom I never met and who kept to themselves in the eighteen months they lived next door. Whether a recluse or simply indifferent, one could only be glad they were gone when I learnt of the situation.

I only want neighbours I can check on and who check on me; people who, when we meet in the corridor, would stop to have a chat; people ready to help one another in the ordinary and the more so. They become a kind of family, and that too is what community is all about.

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Brian at 49

A Journey Long Delayed

I was out socialising in Johannesburg, a journey I had finally scheduled after vacillating for weeks over the idea of travelling to South Africa, at the end of 2018.

Though the thought was on my mind, I had other pressing concerns. Only a few weeks prior, in October 2018, I had undergone a colonoscopy, and I can testify that the insertion of a tube at either end is thoroughly unpleasant. I speak as one who had also had a camera tube trailed down my oesophagus into the duodenum in mid-May 2026.

This was a time when I was shuttling between Manchester and Cologne. In one of those moments of self-talk, I said to myself, "If you do not book this trip, you'll regret it."

An Unexpected Encounter

While in Cologne, I booked a flight to Johannesburg, flying out from Manchester on Christmas Eve to arrive in Johannesburg on Christmas Day, via Paris.

It was on my third night that I ventured out and, ensconced in a corner as the introvert, I sat and observed others. Earlier, I had seen this man, but I perished the thought of an encounter; he looked already spoken for, and quite out of my league.

Then, probably an hour after I first saw him, and he must have been observing me too, he came round and said hello. I am not good in crowds, but if anyone makes a beeline towards me, I might just be eased out of my shell; and did he not tease me out of my social reclusiveness.

Conversation Never Stopped

We started to talk, then went to the bar and ordered drinks. I would usually be teetotal, but time slipped away until he had to go; he was returning to Bulawayo late the next day. I used the opportunity to ask whether we could have lunch together, before his departure for Zimbabwe.

I was about to hail a cab when his friend offered to give me a lift to my hotel. The lively conversation continued in the car until I was dropped off. Our earlier exchange of phone numbers meant the chatting carried on through the night, until we were overcome by tiredness.

Meeting Brian

Just before noon, I asked whether he was still up for lunch. That was our first date. When I left the UK, I was nine years into grieving the loss of a friend, a loss that carried the undercurrent of never having had the opportunity to say goodbye. I left Johannesburg having made a friend with whom the communication and conversation never stopped.

There was a connection between us and, though we only had a brief moment together, we were back seeing each other in late February. That is how I met Brian, who is 49 today.

Brian Birthday 49.pptx by Akin Akintayo

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Thick Skin and the Colour of Pain

A Familiar Ethnicity Pain Gap

It comes as no surprise to me to read that in the UK, women from Bangladeshi, Pakistani, and black Caribbean backgrounds were less likely than white women to receive an epidural whilst having a vaginal birth. [The Guardian: “Women from minority backgrounds in UK less likely to receive epidurals, research finds”]

The ideas, conceptions, perceptions, or prejudices that feed the narrative that non-white people, especially from the aforementioned backgrounds, do not need adequate pain medication to arrest high levels of discomfort and distress have appeared in studies for decades.

This situation, termed the "ethnicity pain gap", is quite concerning, and it might persuade one to surmise that there is a seething racialised disadvantage in the public health system, one that ascribes thick skin to the Black population and precious delicateness to the Asian cohort.

My Own Experience

My experience of this in late 2009 came as a result of cancer pain in its enduring intensity. I was on multiple regimens of pain medication, with Fentanyl dispensed as a transdermal patch being the most critical palliative, yet I was in pain.

When I informed my consultant that I was still in pain, and this was in the Netherlands rather than in the United Kingdom, he did not acknowledge my distress or seek to address it. Instead, his response was that the pain medication I was on should be enough. An ill-informed perception that I should have a higher pain threshold.

I remonstrated that it was not, and he then sought to double the dose from 12.5 micrograms to 25 micrograms. This made all the difference because it tackled the pain, and I got much-needed relief. Why I was not also told that transdermal patches could fall off, and that they could be held in place on the skin with an adhesive film, escapes me.

Knowledge Withheld

Returning from church, one Sunday, a few weeks after I had the new prescription, I was in a lot more pain than usual, and then I saw that the patch had fallen off.

I laughed myself to delirium to produce endorphins as pain relief whilst the new patch took hold. It was only when I told the nurse who came to dress the lesions on my foot daily that he told me I could get an adhesive film to keep the patch in place.

The knowledge was there all along, but it was never shared. As a race, in our encounters with the medical establishment, we are constantly pathologised, and this is characterised by either not being listened to or being ignored, because the medical personnel assume they know and understand our bodies more than we do with the intimate experience of our own skins.

Asserting Our Reality

That Caucasians are immediately responded to and given palliative succour on demand speaks volumes, without suggesting something untoward. Whether it is bias, prejudice, or indifference, we need to be better equipped to ask pertinent questions and persuade our doctors of our reality, without having to jump through hoops, trapped in suffering until it becomes unbearable.

It is not just in matters of pain, but in decisions being made about diagnostic and treatment regimes without explanation or rationale, delay in action when the full knowledge of a condition is evident, the lack of respect, courtesy, and the according of dignity to your personhood and humanity, or the use of the wrong indicators based on race for decision trees towards useful outcomes.

I approach the medical establishment on the premise of “It is my body first, before it is your guinea pig.” This need never be the default, because you are then preparing for a fight instead of fully trusting someone who took the Hippocratic Oath to do you no harm. Yet you find you need to assert yourself and manage the egos to ensure that you, at the very least, leave the hospital better than when you went in.

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From Compote to Coulis

The Value of Cooking

Being able to cook, or at least understanding the processes of cooking, not only informs you about quality and taste, but it also helps you appreciate the kind of labour involved in bringing a dish to the table.

Sometimes, we allow convenience to trump the need to slave over a cooker or an oven, or, in these times, a crockpot or slow cooker, a steamer, and an air fryer. Well, a rice cooker has now joined the appliances in my cramped kitchen. Utility meets facility, and the rest is the memory of the palatable.

Convenience Versus Craft

Supermarkets tend to offer convenience at the expense of kitchen activity; the onions come ready-chopped in a pack when I could use a mandolin and store them in a Ziplock bag in the freezer. When I could not get Agege bread in Cape Town, I began to bake my own; now that it is sold here, I simply buy it in the shops.

One time, whilst mixing the dough, one of the mixing hooks broke. It should have been an easy replacement, but by then the novelty of baking had worn off.

I can make most of what I like; it is the lack of time, patience, or will that militates against the creative process, so you reach instead for the processed food shortcuts in supermarket packs or obtain takeaways from restaurants.

Experiments with Yoghurt

For a while, I stopped buying yoghurt with fruit servings. Instead, I would get Greek yoghurt and add it to a fruit salad drizzled with honey, but I wanted something different. I made a compote of blueberries and raspberries, cooking the fruits with a little water and lemon juice, though I did not have any vanilla essence.

I liked the first result with Greek yoghurt and honey, but I left the compote too long in the fridge and it was developing a culture, so I had to throw it away. I soon made another portion, which I never used. I warmed it up in the microwave and it bubbled out of the container, filling the microwave plate with red juice. That was annoying to clean up.

From Compote to Coulis

When I went out shopping yesterday, I bought a pack of wonky raspberries and one of blueberries. Something about the chunky feel of the compote did not appeal to me, so this time, after cooking the fruits and mashing them in the pot, I decided to try something else. What about blending the compote, I thought?

Well, that changes a compote into a coulis. I did not pass the blended compote through a sieve, but I think the NutriBullet blender did a good enough job, and this time I added some Madagascan vanilla essence. I might also add a splash of brandy to give it longevity, which is what you would expect in a compote rather than a coulis.

The knowledge of cookery does not just give you the ability to follow a recipe, even though much of one's expertise comes from learning, experience, practice, and memory. The recipe, like rules, can be broken to suit your own requirements and taste, and you would be neither persecuted nor prosecuted for it. That, my friends, is the joy of knowing how to cook.

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Thought Picnic: Meeting Your Estranged Children Where They Are

Adapting to a Changing World

I am constantly told that I need to make allowances for the older generation because they are set in their ways. This might be true, but the world is always changing around us, and thriving in any community requires steady, sometimes sudden, adaptations if we are to relate to people, events, ideas, and circumstances.

Whilst reading an article on LinkedIn titled “Meeting Your Resistant Children Where They Are”, I immediately realised that it seemed to address only one part of the wider issue of relationships. The article focused more on divorced parents and their apparently adolescent children, and I appreciate that the writer's area of expertise is divorce and parenting.

If I were to extrapolate, however, the issue extends well beyond divorce, which is merely one of the elements contributing to the breakdown of relationships, just as resistance is only one facet of parent-child estrangement.

The Generational Cycle

It is interesting to observe how we all move through the generational phases of life, beginning as children with parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents, and then transitioning through these phases as those who came before us begin to drop off, in that natural cycle of life.

How we relate to those before us sometimes follows an established code of community, reverence, and respect. What rarely finds adequate scrutiny is the need to adapt for those who come after us.

For instance, when does a parent begin to see their child as an adult, one to be treated with some acknowledgement and, I dare say, respect for their autonomy, independence, initiative, and decision-making?

A Personal Reflection

Then again, this topic is probably too broad to be addressed in a blog, or from an amateur's background, even with the lived experience that might cloud one's judgement. My parents were never divorced; rather, with the palpable tension, the middle-aged theatrics, and the passage of time, they grew apart.

It might have been better had they gone their separate ways a long time ago, rather than being hemmed in by middle-class values until their cohabitation became untenable. Each kept their own record of what the other might or might not have done, and we, the children, were corralled into narratives that expected us to take sides; in the main, we tended to remain neutral.

However, to bring this conversation back on course, there is where my parents expect me to be, where they see me, and where I actually am. These are entirely different places. Whether I am a child, an adult, pliant, or recalcitrant, I can only wonder whether I am all of these at the same time. The fact that I have never been a parent might inform other perspectives.

Naming the Thing

Still, there is a name for the thing I am circling, and I only came upon it recently: relational maturity. It is not the same as being agreeable, nor the same as being patient, though it borrows freely from both. It is, rather, the capacity to meet another person where they actually stand, without insisting they first travel to where we happen to be waiting for them. I had felt its absence for a lifetime without ever knowing what to call it.

The question that follows is not a comfortable one: who is obliged to do the adjusting? Tradition has a ready answer, that the younger defers to the older and the child to the parent, and like most tidy arrangements, it survives chiefly because it serves the people who designed it.

Relational maturity refuses this one-way traffic. It accepts that adjustment must flow in both directions, that the parent who demands reverence might first ask whether they have offered acknowledgement. I say this as a sexagenarian, mind you, and not as a young firebrand with a grievance, for I am now of the very generation that is customarily granted the latitude I am here declining to claim.

There is a temptation to mistake all this for weakness, as though meeting people where they are were merely a polite word for capitulation. It is nothing of the sort. The mature party is not the one who folds; it is the one who can hold their own position firmly whilst still granting the other their dignity and their difference. Anyone can be tolerant of those who already agree with them; the test arrives with the person who does not.

And yet relational maturity is not infinite. There comes a point where meeting someone where they are reveals only that they have no intention of moving, and no interest in your moving either. At that juncture, the mature response is not to keep travelling toward a meeting that will never take place, but to disengage calmly and without rancour, which is itself a form of maturity.

Snipping the Cord

Certain interactions have rubbed me up the wrong way, and my reaction has usually been to disengage. People, and this goes beyond parents to siblings, relations, friends, and others you encounter throughout life, seem to forget that, regardless of what they assume ties you together, you can snip the cord and walk away, unbound, unfettered, and unconcerned.

The way you address and talk to people, their slight and unfortunate expressions of indifference, and the use of words that fail to give credence to the multifaceted nature of a person, or that fail to acknowledge the changes we see in ourselves and in others, can alter things so radically as to put them beyond redemption.

Tradition Versus Individuality

Tradition might dictate one thing, but personalities are individual and unique; they may not conform to any prescribed norms and may fall entirely outside our common frames of reference.

The question, then, becomes whether you are ready to shift your position, find common ground, seek resolution, and even accept that you were wrong, despite your ways being set in reinforced concrete.

The Cost of Indifference

I remember conversations and interactions that informed my decision to withdraw fellowship from certain people. You may not realise you have done something wrong, albeit inadvertently, but whoever is doing the kicking is rarely the one doing the hurting.

There might be another way to work through this, yet I am only human, and there is a dignity in that which demands the courtesy of others, regardless of the ties.

Restrict this ever-constant need to adapt our relationships, the need that keeps conversation thriving and engaged, all in the name of conserving what we think we hold dear, and the consequences will be exactly where we find ourselves, whether we are involved or not.

Honour and Provocation

Parents tend to think of estranged children as personifications of the Prodigal Son. Yet we, the children, eventually begin to see our parents with all their flaws, and for all the care and responsibility that went into their parenting, they were never in the class of God; they were simply human. Where the holy book says, “honour your father and mother”, it also says, “do not provoke your children unto wrath”.

Someone really ought to write an academic study on “Meeting Your Estranged Children Where They Are”.

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