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For the first time in a very long time, I have four day work weeks to look forward to. The theory behind getting these nine Fridays off is that they have been earned by working an extra thirty minutes each work day. How productive those extra minutes have been remains to be seen, but I suspect their value to our employer lies more in promoting a sense of being cared for in us than anything more tangible. The first of these was spent down south, catching up with friends and reacquainting myself with Stratford and the Olympic park. ...

She is wolfing down a doughnut, cup of coffee in hand when I appear, trying to find my assigned seat. I feel like I have startled her somewhat, given how quickly she begins to organise the stuff she has all over the place. The sense of having intruded on a private, unguarded moment is made worse by finding my assigned seat is across from her, in seats so tight our feet play that dance of hide and seek beneath the table until we find a system that works. ...

Sometime last week, I found myself waiting in what was wet, grey and windy weather - typical summer fare for this part of the world - waiting for a taxi I had requested. As I had arrived downstairs a few minutes after 8.30 am when I had ordered the taxi for, I was a little uncertain as to if he had been and left or was yet to arrive. He turned up at 8.40 am, by which time I had come close to phoning the taxi company to confirm if I had missed my ride. The cab ride which followed - all 45 minutes of it - was spent in a gloomy silence, the tension in the taxi palpable. I’m sure he meant no ill, much as I didn’t either but something about the circumstances under which we met seemed to have soured our taxi driver-passenger relationship. That he had all sorts of weird tattoos on his arms, drove with only one hand on the steering wheel and stared straight ahead didn’t help break the ice either, I suspect. ...

David Dunn and Jordan Feliz cover Jarryd James’Do You Remember?. #StumbledUpon

It was with a mixture perhaps of Joy - Zadie Smith might disagree - and most certainly relief that I read the final lines of Kelly Sundberg’s It Will Look Like a Sunset, turned the page and realised I had finally finished reading my copy of The Best American Essays for 2015. It - the niggle at the back of my mind constantly reminding me I was yet to complete any of the books I’d started this year - had begun to feel like a thing around my neck. The 13 book target for the year - measly as it were - is now about as achievable as skiing in Kaduna, I suspect. ...

They say the good is the enemy of the best or something to that effect. I am learning that this also applies to people. The worst kind of those has to be those who are happy to take one’s time without making any commitments in return. Over the last few days of reflection it has become apparent that I have a number of those (as well as being that sort of friend to some other people also). ...

When you see broken beyond repair I see healing beyond belief When you see too far gone I see one step away from home #Mended

The quote above had only been posted to a Whatsapp group I’m part of for all of an hour before it set off a firestorm. The bone of contention was Anais Nin’s body of work, (probably rightly) deemed inappropriate for the context in which it was posted (it’s a group filled with the super spiritual folk I serve alongside on my church’s tech and media team). I made a spirited attempt at defending the value of her body of work - risque subject and bohemian lifestyle notwithstanding - a position which left me just short of getting my knuckles rapped. I started typing a lengthy response in the group but did the sensible thing and backed off, taking the time to ponder what I felt was a wider philosophical question: can an artist’s lifestyle be decoupled from their body of work? Or even certain elements of that body work? ...

Brexit - full – It’s official, we’re the leaving kind after all. Voting last Thursday concluded with a 52% majority that Great Britain’s future path lay outside the EU framework, ending a 43-year association. The easy conclusion - particularly given how much the result has been affected by voted cast south of the Solway-Tweed line - is that insular England has held the Union hostage, but I suspect things are far more nuanced than that. ...

Last year, I went to a different church for Father’s Day, keen to avoid the big song and dance that usually ensues on the day at my regular one. Being a very single thirty-six year old bloke — a few months shy of turning thirty-seven — does put celebrations of fatherhood in perspective, the realisation being that that phase of life is at least eighteen months away for me. I suppose rather than bemoan my fate, I can ask myself the difficult questions, trying to wrap my head around why I am still a single bloke. To be honest, the year of being thirty-five was the one in which I most seriously began to think and see myself as a father. Still though, a couple of liaisons down the road, the sense is very much one of getting to the party a tad late. ...