Authors Electric

I was looking for something to repost this month - way too much real-life going on at the moment with both parents incapacitated in various ways and a big birthday (and party) coming up in the next couple of weeks. I first posted this blog below in December 2016 and it struck me how little really has changed. Plus  ça  change and all that, but 2026 is scarily close now in early 2024 ... 2016. A year of change. I wonder when they look back on 2016 in the years and decades to come, whether they will say that 2016 was the turning point, the pivotal moment when the world reached some kind of critical mass? I say they because I’ll be 53 in January and while I’m not planning on leaving anytime soon, this isn’t my world anymore – this world belongs to my daughter and her generation, to make the best of as they see fit with whatever legacy we’ve left them. Brexit and the US elections. Neither gave the result that was expected and both, I think, made people sit up and realise ...

“So, young man, what do you plan to do with your life?” It’s one of the most annoying questions that well-meaning people ask of the young as soon as they leave school or university, and at most points before and in between. It may be annoying, but even the most innocent, or rebellious, of young people know that finding the answer is the key to everything. When you get to the other end of your working life and look back, these people are asking, what sort of path do you want to see stretching out behind you? In some ways I was one of the fortunate ones. From the age of sixteen I had an almost clear idea of what I wanted that path to look like, but when I described it out loud it sounded pretty naïve, not to mention vain, so I tended to respond to interrogation by looking down and mumbling something non-committal like everyone else. What I knew I wanted was to be free to follow anything that caught my interest. I wanted to attack life like an overexcited dog hur...