A Spider Amongst the Saints

A Restless Weekend

The quest for sufficient sleep is one goal that defines my weekends; the pall of nocturnal insomnia hangs over my weekday nights and threatens my efficiency and productivity at work.

Just as I was considering a lie-in on Sunday, I had a date in mind a week hence, when I was scheduled to read the second lesson in church. Just to be sure, I checked the rota, and it was for today.

I have gained more confidence to read publicly, with my voice regaining some timbre for short periods of time.

A Fright by Email

However, it was another email that gave me the fright. We were being invited to a "Celebration of Gratitude", which read rather like a "Celebration of Life", a confusion between a demise and a departure; we were seeing off a lady who had a long-standing relationship with the church, as she moved to a home in Cumbria.

The sender, an Englishman, should have known better, having received a note from someone who speaks English as a foreign language, and obviously, once we read the content of the email, we were better informed.

After I had read the lesson, with a slight hiccup where I corrected myself, saying "through" instead of "though", the service progressed to the serving of communion.

The Uninvited Guest

Then a creepy-crawly came down the aisle, its body about a centimetre square and its legs at least seven centimetres each; a spider unlike any you see at home.

People attending church for the fear of God were soon gripped by arachnophobia.

A man of the cloth boldly lifted his feet off the floor and onto the seats, obviously not to harm the spider, or perhaps he was one of the ilk of Little Miss Muffet, who is famed for the eponymous nursery rhyme.

Calm Restored

Then a lady of the sterner kind, with the cojones that men pretend they possess, picked up the spider with a piece of tissue paper, dropped it, but scooped it up again and relocated it outside to the church gardens.

Calm and peace settled on that side of the congregation, as we deigned not to point fingers at the affrighted.

The celebration after the service was a generous buffet, with applause from us all, bidding her godspeed and new friendships at the home by the sea.

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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.

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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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