Personal

In the nineteen-nineties, there was a small chain of shops devoted to men who wished to be, or seem to be (both were catered for), women. I discovered this after reading the autobiography of the transgender owner, part of an exploration that was very important in my life. Visiting the shop in London blew my mind. There’s no doubt in my mind that if things then had been like they have been in the twenty-twenties, I would have gone the whole way down the gender reassignment road, the sheer inevitability carrying me....

Politics has become poisonous. I don’t think it needs to be. Government doesn’t work. I think it can. I have some ideas, and because I have no power and no platform, writing them down here is the best I can do. The positive ideas will be at the end, and it gets negative first. Bear with me. The ideas make more sense with the framing. What do you MEAN, government doesn’t work?...

We live cheaply. By choice. I don’t talk about it, usually, because it’s difficult to say anything and walk the tightrope between people’s pity if they get the impression we have to, and them thinking we’re holier-than-thou if they don’t. But sometimes I wish I could explain, so I’m going to give it a try. When we got married, I was used to spending whatever I felt I needed and not looking too far ahead....

Right now feels like an excellent time for any British citizen who cares about the direction of the UK to join the Conservative Party. Wait, don’t go, I know how that sounds, considering “right now” is April 2024, and everybody in the UK hates Tories and wishes they’d go away. And yes, it feels very important to spell out that this is April 2024, because this take will date very fast and won’t apply in a year’s time at most....

We are shaped by our experiences more than most of us like to think. And I grew up religious. For all of my formative years, and quite a way into adulthood, religion was the dominant force in my life. So a very big part of how I look at the world has been formed by that. I see religion everywhere. It’s all religion. Especially the parts full of people who would look at me strangely for insisting on this, because religion is alien to them and they don’t understand it at all....