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It’s high summer. Traditionally, this is riot season. Angry young men are rarely roused to protest in the dead of winter, but give them a nice sunny day and they’re game for anything.

But aside from all the most eye-catchingly ugly racial violence that has accompanied protests in the UK this August, it is a postscript to the events that caught my attention.

BBC Verify wrote the following in the final paragraph of their analysis of violence in Hull: “We have also seen footage of looting in Shoezone, where a large pile of shoes was brought out and set on fire, Greggs the bakers and cosmetics retailer Lush.”

Thinking small

It reminded me of the riots of the summer of 2011, which included the looting of Argos, Currys, Lidl, Aldi and JD Sports and the smashing up of corner shops. Angry men smashing up shabby discount chains and small shopkeepers.

I spent that first rioting night in August 2011 in St John’s Wood in north-west London, and knew nothing about it until the morning. The fact that the poor were smashing up their own streets was striking and somehow pathetic.

Were they to walk down any street in St John’s Wood and run a key down every parked car, or maybe put a brick through the window of every BMW they passed, it would rightly cause deep alarm among London’s wealthy.

Shoezone in Hull city centre

When you see images of a Shoezone looted and burnt, or a Greggs the bakers smashed up, it is almost like an installation art piece depicting the decline of modern Britain. This is what we’ve come to.

The poverty of the high streets being smashed up speaks volumes for the state of the men doing the smashing, long before they even pick up the metal bars. The easy response is to see them as pathetic, and as a consequence, despise them.

The difficult response is to see the open wound in the pathetic. Men reduced to pathetic acts are a dangerous and sorrowful sight. There is something cruel in responding only with contempt.

This is the shelter Bush Trolls built. Bush Trolls is a group of children, plus a few adults, who go out into the Swedish forest once in a while to do stuff. One of the things we did was build this shelter as our HQ in the heart of the forest.

When we arrived for our first visit of the year in April this year, this is what we found.

The entire area had been clear felled. It was all entirely legal. The landowner gives us permission to use the land, but it’s ultimately a commercial forest. The trees are there to be harvested.

Total dislocation

But the effect was extraordinary. The children were in tears. There was a palpable sense of shock. But even in us adults – grown men who have seen much and aren’t easily moved – the disorientation was unmistakable.

What amazed me was the fact that I couldn’t envisage myself in the same place. There was our shelter, with one solitary tree that the loggers left standing to support it. But I couldn’t conceive it as the same place.

I knew every path in that forest. I knew how it felt and could guide myself almost without looking. It was as if I could feel where each tree stood. But with the trees removed, even the topography seemed unfamiliar.

Like First Nations

I walked around the site from every angle, searching in my senses for recognition. But I failed. It was as if our shelter had been airlifted to another place entirely. I could get no bearing on it anymore.

Is this a small hint, I wonder, of what an Amazonian tribesman feels at a cleared forest? Not so much sadness as total disorientation. You don’t mourn the space. You simply look upon it as alien land. A place you’ve never seen before.

The numb disconnection is profound. We left the shelter and walked, solemnly, together into the forest areas, searching for a new site to make our HQ. We felt like pioneers, a tribe setting off to find a new home.

And the site we left was not hard to leave, because it bore no resemblance to our memories. The old site, the one we all loved, was now locked only in the capsule of memory. That is the only place in which it now exists.

Talking of homelessness, are nomads bad?

There’s a lot that’s funny about the Swedish language. To English ears, the sound of it is probably the funniest part. Why else does the Swedish chef exist? (The Swedish chef exists?)

But surely the funniest single letter in the Swedish alphabet (and there’s some stiff competition, in the form of Å, Ä and Ö) is undoubtedly Y. What’s so strange about Y, I hear you ask? The pronunciation is what’s so strange.

Clear your throat

The Swedish Y starts way back in the throat. It then proceeds to clear the throat of all phlegm. It’s the sound (probably) made by an Olympic weightlifting champion just as he begins to lift the weight.

It’s not a clear, high-pitched ‘eeeeeee’, and it’s not a quick, solitary ‘ya’. In fact, the closest approximation in the English language is the sound English football fans make when they begin the chant of “England!”

As all English football fans know, they don’t chant “England” at all. Because the English don’t say “England”, they say “Ingland”. But they don’t chant “Ingland” either. They chant something that football writers have endlessly tried to replicate in written form as “Iiiiiiiingerland” or “Errrrrrngland” or similar.

That sound they first utter is uncannily close to the Swedish Y. Which brings me to the Grey Friars of London. Thanks to the indispensible History Today magazine, I learnt that the Chronicle of the Grey Friars of London wrote of their country using the spelling “Yngland”.

Dripping in the Danelaw

Could it be that this is a distant echoing memory of an “Yngland” pronounced as they would have done under the Danelaw? An “Yngland” whose pronunciation had travelled down the centuries to the English football terrace in the mouths of the nation’s commoners?

If it wasn’t for the throaty chant of “Yyyyyyyyngland” that I know so well, and my discovery of the peculiar Swedish pronunciation of the letter Y, I might not have paused on the Grey Friars and their “Yngland” more than a moment. I would have dismissed it as just another silly peculiarity of pre-standardisation English.

More links between English and Swedish? Well, Pardon my Swedish!

My son still believes in Santa. Just. A girl in his class at school was sceptical this year, and even suggested that parents did it. He said that was stupid of her to say, because if Santa heard her (and he hears everything, right?) then he won’t be bringing any presents to her this year.

Don’t tempt fate. 

This Easter weekend it was the same with the Easter bunny. Everyone says it’s your parents, but does the Easter bunny only turn up if you believe in him, too? Should you tempt fate again?

As long as he believes, I’m going to go on believing with him. That’s the gift he gave me, the one of discovering that in someone else’s belief, you’re given permission to suspend your disbelief. 

Don’t stop believin’

This is the great thing about stories. As long as enough of us believe them, they’re true. The Christian story, given that it’s Easter, is truly extraordinary. As outlandish as any you ever heard. Yet it is truly believed by millions of adults around the world.

And whether it’s the Christian story or the Hindu story or the story of the Big Bang and the burning spheres out there in the night sky, millions of miles away. As long as enough of us believe them, they’re true.

So I’m going to go on believing in Santa and the Easter bunny, for as long as there’s someone else to believe the story with me. Because somewhere, in the corner of the universe, maybe he’s right and I’m wrong.

On the subject of kids, have you tried talking to a three-year-old?

The defining factor of Emmanuel Macron’s entire presidency, if he were to resign tomorrow, would for me be the chest hair. Does that make me vapid? The only thing missing was a Galousies discreetly nestled between index and middle fingers. 

The defining thing about Rishi Sunak is surely his suits. My, that man’s dapper. The defining element of Donald Trump? Undoubtedly his hair. Bojo? Ditto. 

Dictator chic

But these are the image conscious aesthetes of the democratic world, hankering after votes. Surely, autocrats are more interested in industrial policy and geopolitical alignments than hair spray?

And yet. And yet, in a two-decade career as Russian supremo, what is the defining takeaway for me from Vladimir Putin? Why, that topless horseback riding shot (doctored or not), of course. Either he waxed his chest or he is unusually hairless. Either way, it’s suspicious. 

Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. Where do I start? Despite a long and patchy career in both domestic Libyan and international affairs, this man found time to pretty much define the sartorial cues of dictator chic. First, he brought the Raybans. Then, he upped it with those tasselled army jackets straight outta Michael Jackson’s wardrobe. And finally, he flipped again to full-on Saharan vibe in swirling robes.

The eyebrows have it!

I’m not saying what Michael Heseltine did for internal auditing among ministers wasn’t to die for. But really, it was that floppy mop and those eyebrows that won him a place in the annals. 

Tony Blair was a man imboiled in a lot of politics in his time. But what’s the enduring memory? Surely, that 2001 footage of him wielding his electric guitar as he relived his glory days as axeman in the band, Ugly Rumours.

And they say only female politicians are judged by their looks… Not a bit of it.

Want more highbrow politics? How about the damning verdict of the (first?) Trump presidency?

Clouds burst. Bulls charge. Birds shit. Sometimes nature just annoys us. Other times, valleys swoop, flowers bloom and sunlight dapples. So, is it ok for us to change nature the moment it irritates us? Is nature only acceptable while it gives us pleasure?

I live in a marina on reclaimed land. It’s beautiful but entirely manmade. Yet it’s amazing how quickly nature has moved in. Seagulls, spiders, worms, oystercatchers, waxwings, ducks, swans…

Those damn seagulls!

Seagulls, of course, are the ultimate survivors. They breed and raise their chicks on our rooftops, pretending they are seaside cliffs. In May and June, they are vicious in defence of their young. Everyone talks about it.

Sure, their endless wailing squawks are annoying. Their dive bombing is intimidating. And sure enough, this year a firm is coming to clear eggs and nests from our roofs. All will be orderly again. But is that a good thing?

It’s ok to be annoyed

The desire not to be annoyed feels of a piece with the very trendy desire not to be offended. Yes, it’s certainly comfortable to live in a world where nothing ever annoys you, but that involves either tight control of your environment or a new mindset.

A nature that is manicured in order that it doesn’t cause any friction with my mind feels lacking, somehow. As Barry Lopez brilliantly observes in his book Arctic Dreams, what is compelling and awesome in being next to an iceberg is not simply its beauty, but also something more disturbing.

“I looked out at the icebergs. They were so beautiful they also made you afraid.”

Barry Lopez

This disturbance is the reason some people (like me) enjoy being inconvenienced by nature. I love a storm, or a flood, or an inaccessible mountain. I like that something has been put in my way – something powerful and beyond my control.

If you like your nature less annoying, let me tell you about the day the waxwings came

“Should we risk loss of control of our civilization?”

This question was posed in the open letter from the Future of Life Institute, an NGO, signed last month by tech leaders including Elon Musk. It was a letter calling for a six-month pause on AI development due to concerns about the speedy advance of the technology.

What is interesting about the question is that it assumes that we currently have control. Do we?

Who’s steering this thing?

Of course, as individuals, we have barely any control at all at the civilizational level. Even collectively, that control is partial and often those partial levels of control are contradictory, acting against each other. 

This leads to the second unspoken question hidden in the open letter’s original one: would AI not do a better job? 

AI: the perfect answer

If there is an omniscient creator, then there is something beautiful in the idea that this creator decided to solve the problem of its errant, planet-destroying children by showing them a path to designing their own obsolescence. Quite brilliant, really.

And if AI would do a better job, then we can all relax. A better world awaits! As my colleague brilliantly put it the other day – “We could all become their pets” – and let’s face it, some pets have a great life.

Is ChatGPT really the end of work, and what does that mean?