I started noticing it in small, almost annoying ways. When my sister sent the same sleepy selfie every Sunday evening I felt steadier. When my favourite baker changed the placement of the croissants I felt briefly annoyed and then oddly unsettled. These are not grand revelations about human behaviour. They are cheap, everyday signposts pointing … Read more
There is a familiar, almost comic image: someone in the middle of a crisis who suddenly decides the chaos on the kitchen counter must go. They sweep, they reorganise, they locate the one bowl that has been missing for weeks. It looks practical. It also functions as behaviour with an odd psychological currency. Reorganizing space … Read more
I used to believe relief after canceling plans meant I was a small town villain. I do not live in a town of villains. Instead I live in Britain and I have a diary that fills up faster than a pub on a bank holiday. The sensation that follows a cancellation is seldom just laziness. … Read more
I once watched a man on a London bus lose his temper because his paper coffee cup leaked. He declared the morning ruined. People shifted seats. The man sat back looking oddly victorious and exhausted at once. That moment stuck with me because it was not about the coffee. It was about an economy of … Read more
I used to scoff at people who talked about comfort rituals as if they were a secret weapon. Then a winter arrived when my life felt like a radio with the dial half out of tune. Work changed. Friends drifted. Sleep became a blur. The small repeated acts that I had dismissed as dull suddenly … Read more
I remember a conference room where I froze mid answer and felt the conversation slip away. I tried smiling, I leaned forward, I nodded at all the right moments and still words failed me. Later that day I tried something ridiculous and simple I inhaled slowly for a count and let a longer exhale carry … Read more
There is a quiet kind of person everyone notices eventually. They do not fill the room with grievances. They rarely post rants. They do not turn every inconvenience into a conversation. That silence is not always contentment. It is often selection. This piece is not a neat taxonomy. It is a series of observations, a … Read more
I used to think empathy was a tidy skill you learned in a workshop then applied like a polite veneer. It is nothing of the sort. The communication habit that actually makes people feel instantly understood is quieter and less glamorous. It is not praise or advice. It is the deliberate act of returning someone … Read more
There is a tiny live wire in everyday conversation that we ignore at our peril a three second pause after someone asks you something. It is not dramatic. It is not theatrical. It is a silence that changes the balance of power in a room and quietly adjusts what people believe about who you are. … Read more
There is a strange intimacy to the colours we reach for day after day. They are small decisions that, strung together, make a personality habit. Sometimes those choices are deliberate and stylish. Other times they are silent acts of self protection. In my experience working with friends who have drifted into predictable palettes the latter … Read more