On Monday morning, the room started spinning
Last Monday morning I rolled onto my left side in bed, and the room started spinning. I lay still until it stopped. Later, when I was up, I bent to pick something off the floor and went over. I very nearly landed on my head. No harm done. But I was startled, and a little […]
Is there anything else?
At six minutes past one on Wednesday morning, the year tipped. The autumn equinox. Light and dark almost level. I slept through it, and I imagine you did too. It looks like the stillest moment of the year. Everything level, everything in balance. It isn’t. This is the week the light goes fastest. In London […]
The question she hadn’t asked herself in twenty years
At about one o’clock on the Wednesday we climbed onto an jagged rock at 1,875 metres and none of us said anything for a long time. I had not expected the view. I knew there was one. I had not expected that.Two lakes below us. Then forest. Then ridge after ridge of blue going back […]
They asked the traders to count their own heartbeats
About ten years ago somebody walked onto a trading floor in the City and asked the traders to do something faintly ridiculous. Sit still. Hands in your lap. Don’t touch your chest. Don’t take your pulse. Now count your own heartbeats. They were given intervals of between twenty-five and fifty seconds. Afterwards, their count was […]
Say it at dinner and watch the pause
Try this at dinner sometime. Say, lightly, that you’ve been thinking you might stop for a while. Then watch the pause. Watch somebody’s fork hold still for half a second while they work out whether you’re all right. You wouldn’t say it twice. I’ve been thinking about that since Saturday, when a friend rang to […]
I only meant to add one date
It’s the first of September. Yesterday afternoon I was at a barbecue and someone mentioned something happening later in the month. Hold on, I said. Let me put that in before I forget. And I got my phone out, the way you do, and opened the calendar. Here’s the thing about calendars. They never open […]
Hesitation or judgement: can you still tell the difference
You’ve been careful about AI. Perhaps you’ve used it and not mentioned it. Perhaps you’ve barely touched it, and there’s a low hum of being behind that you’d rather not examine. Either way you’ve filed it under something unflattering: not technical enough, no time, slower than you used to be. It’s none of those. Researchers […]
She’d lost her spark.
She had built the business herself and run it for more than twenty years. She was extremely good at it. Everyone said so, and they were right. Quite early on she said: I’ve lost my spark. So she went looking for a new direction, thoroughly, the way capable people do. She had the profiling done. She […]
Typecast by your own competence
It’s Sunday evening. You’ve actually had a good weekend. Then you open your calendar and glance through the week ahead. Monday looks full. Tuesday has those back-to-back meetings. Wednesday, the client call. Thursday, the piece of work everyone comes to you for, because you know exactly how to handle it. Nothing terrible. Nothing you can’t […]
Nobody knows, do they.
Nobody knows how tired you are. Not properly. The people closest to you think you’re just busy. Your clients think you’re brilliant, and you are — that’s rather the point. The work happens, the standards hold, everything runs beautifully. And there’s that minute in the car. You’ve arrived somewhere — the meeting, the office, […]