Coastalblog

It's all too easy to feel a bit down at the moment. As events across the pond roll the cause of truth, decency and not-all-dying-in-a-catastrophic-climate-event back a few decades, it's all too easy for the shoulders to drop, to think fucking hell, they've won. The grifters and chances, the con artists and thieves, the liars, the haters, the celebrators of all the worst traits in human nature not only won, they did so convincingly. And now all the things they said they'd do, they're doing. It's also hard to have faith in any future shaped by the likes of Musk, Zuckerberg and Bezos, men rich enough to fix all poverty and hunger on Earth, but who instead prefer to get ever richer by making others ever poorer, and morality be damned. Harder still to believe in a world where truth is valued, when it becomes increasingly impossible to believe the evidence of one's own eyes, when tech bros high on money force their shitty AI on you whether you want it or not, but ...

Ironic, I suppose, that I'm attempting brevity in the service of defending floral speech, but needs must. No one wants to hear me wang on, after all. This has been a recurrent theme of my life. I make no great claims for my intellect, and my exam results would bear that out, but I've always had a fondness for words, which comes out when I write, sometimes when I speak, and it's often been regarded with suspicion. I suspect it's one of the things about me that winds a lot of people up. As with so many insecurities and minor worries, it started at school; I remember sitting SATs in yr 7, and being marked down for using the word "ululation" which, according to my teachers, didn't exist, but which anyone with access to a copy of Chambers would know means a hiring or screeching sound. The same thing happened at A-level (!) when a teacher regarded me with deep suspicion over the word "verderer" (basically a medieval park ranger). In my professional lif...