Wings of Pride, Chains of Folly: Watching the Skies for Patriotism, Not Nationalism

There are few sights as stirring as a Spitfire banking low over the Cambridgeshire fields, sunlight catching its elliptical wings as though even the air itself were bowing in respect. That was the spectacle at Duxford during the Battle of Britain airshow: a living memory of a time when the skies above Britain were the thin line between survival and surrender. To stand there, neck craned and ears ringing from the Rolls-Royce Merlin engines, is to feel—if only briefly—that heady mixture of gratitude and awe. Patriotism, if it has a sound, surely hums somewhere between that growl and that whistle.

And yet, patriotism is not nationalism, just as admiration is not obsession, and pride is not paranoia. One can look up at the planes of Duxford and feel the joy of belonging to a country with history, sacrifice, and stubbornness in its bones, without immediately declaring that one’s neighbours, should they speak another language or eat another spice, are the enemy within. Unfortunately, the flag—our ever-flexible piece of cloth—has a way of being both a symbol of collective memory and a weapon of individual resentment.

Take, for instance, the English flag, often recruited for every pub wall and front garden during any major football tournament. On one hand, it is a cheerful backdrop for beer and sausage rolls, a symbol of shared hope that this might, finally, be ‘the’ year that football comes home. On the other, in less forgiving contexts, it becomes a semaphore for exclusion: a way of declaring that England, and by implication the English, are under siege. Immigrants, the story goes, are not just neighbours or workers or friends but unwelcome intruders gnawing at the very timbers of the house. The flag flaps over them like a warning sign.

That is the chain of folly. The flag, instead of flying above us all, gets wrapped around the idea that Englishness is a fortress under attack. The result is not unity but suspicion, not pride but defensiveness. We start to hear “take back control” as though control were an heirloom misplaced under the sofa by sheer carelessness, rather than a shifting, negotiated reality in a world where planes, people, and ideas cross borders whether we like it or not.

At Duxford, nobody looked up at the aircraft gracefully wheeling over the crowd and shouted, “Foreigners out!” Instead, they watched with moist eyes as engine sounds carried the echo of crews who were, in many cases, barely out of school when they took to the skies. They flew not because of what they hated, but because of what they loved—family, home, the right to wake up tomorrow with a chance of living in peace. Patriotism is that: the love of something enough to defend it, not the fear of everything else.

But nationalism? That’s different. Nationalism takes the same symbol—the same Union Jack or St George’s Cross—and drains it of love until only suspicion remains. The Nazi flag in 1930s Germany was not terrifying because it was red and white and black, but because it became shorthand for an ideology that made entire populations disposable. The Confederate flag in the US still sends a chill down the spine because, for many, it isn’t history but a continuing whisper of racial supremacy. Even the proudest banners can curdle into warnings when wielded to exclude.

The Spitfire teaches the opposite lesson. It was, ironically enough, designed by a man—R.J. Mitchell—who worked closely with European ideas in engineering, and whose plane was flown not only by British pilots but by amongst others (see below) Poles, Czechs, Canadians, Australians, and even Americans who slipped across the Atlantic before their own country entered the war. The “few” were never so few as we like to imagine, nor so exclusively English. The Battle of Britain was won not by closing England off but by opening her arms to those willing to fight alongside her.

Which brings me back to the flag at Duxford, the RAF ensign fluttering against the September sky. It was uplifting, not terrifying, because it spoke of shared memory rather than exclusion, of gratitude rather than grievance. Patriotism, at its best, is like that flag in the wind—visible, confident, and above all generous enough to wave for everyone. Nationalism, by contrast, is when the same flag is nailed to a stick and jabbed in someone’s face.

So perhaps the task is this: to reclaim our symbols not by hiding them away in embarrassment, nor by brandishing them in aggression, but by letting them fly as reminders of what was fought for at such cost. At Duxford, I watched children look skyward with mouths open, hearing the same sounds their great-grandparents once did. It was a reminder that pride does not have to be weaponised, and history does not have to be hijacked.

Patriotism lifts the eyes. Nationalism narrows them. One is wings; the other, chains. And on a breezy afternoon at Duxford, I knew which sky I’d rather be under.

As a side note, it is worth remembering that during the Battle of Britain, brave airmen from a number of countries flew above the skies during the summer of 1940

Great Britain - 2,342, Poland - 145, New Zealand - 127, Canada - 112, Czechoslovakia - 88, Australia - 32, Belgium - 28, South Africa - 25, France - 13, Ireland - 10, USA - 9, Rhodesia - 3, Jamaica - 1, Barbados - 1 & Newfoundland - 1

During the Battle 544 lost their lives and a further 795 were to die before the end of the war.

The Joy of Getting It Wrong (And Other Accidental Lessons) Because life’s best stories never start with “I nailed it first time.”

There are two kinds of people in the world. Those who pretend they’ve never got it wrong, and those who are worth having a drink with. The first group tend to speak in bullet points and wear pastel jumpers draped over their shoulders. The second group are the ones who will tell you about the time they accidentally boarded a train to Belgium when they meant to go to Bath. Guess which group has more fun.

Airports are the great levellers of human dignity. Nobody, however important, escapes unscathed. Business titans are reduced to fumbling with plastic bags of toiletries; seasoned travellers wander like stunned livestock in search of Gate 47B. My own catalogue of airport disasters includes the time I sat serenely waiting for a flight out of Barcelona, reading the Spanish sports pages (to try and learn Spanish, not because I understood it), and then glancing up into the smiling eyes of a lovely local lady throwing words I could barely comprehend at machine gun rate. Mesmerised by the language and her stunning good looks, I almost missed the disembodied voice calmly calling my name over the tannoy like a summons to purgatory.

In the ensuing chaos — the sprint, the pleading with gate staff, the expression on their faces that suggested evolution had taken a step backwards in me — I learned more about myself in that short moment of panic. The lesson wasn’t about time management or attention to detail. It was simpler: you will get it wrong, often, and the world will keep spinning. Sometimes it will even spin you somewhere better than where you intended.

Now, if I’d got it right — if I’d simply boarded the flight on time and unstressed, sat down, and eaten a cellophane-wrapped croissant in peace — I would remember nothing of that day. But because I got it wrong, I can still feel the sweat dripping down my back as I pleaded with the gate attendant, who looked at me with the expression of a person trying to decide whether incompetence is contagious.

And here’s the curious thing: I wouldn’t trade that moment. The memory has outlived the embarrassment. Wrong turns, I realised, have a way of burning themselves into your story far more deeply than anything you do “correctly.”

Paris taught me this again. Armed with a map and unearned confidence, I set out to find a gallery. Thirty minutes later, I was standing in a residential courtyard while a grandmother beat a rug over a balcony, showering me with dust and what I can only assume was centuries of biscuit crumbs. I apologised in broken French, which only deepened her suspicion that I was casing the joint.

Eventually, I gave up on art and wandered into a café where the waiter brought me a coffee so strong it could peel paint. It was, of course, the wrong café. But there I learned more about Paris than any gallery could tell me: the sound of scooters backfiring, the gossip of locals at the bar, the wallpaper peeling in elegant curls like the city itself growing weary under her own expectations. Had I found the right gallery, I would have stared dutifully at the right paintings and come away with nothing but a brochure. By getting it wrong, I met the city.

Not all mistakes are so picturesque. Some take place under the merciless fluorescent light of a British living room. Once, in a fit of optimism, I attempted to install a shelf. The instructions were in Swedish. The tools were blunt. My confidence, however, was sharp. Two hours later, the shelf was on the wall, slightly tilted, as if nodding in agreement with its own absurdity. A week later, under the weight of three hardbacks and a ceramic cat, it detached itself with the commitment of a kamikaze pilot.

Friends now ask about that shelf with the kind of affectionate malice reserved for inside jokes. And here’s the thing: I wouldn’t trade the disaster. Competence is silent. Failure leaves an echo.

Contrast this with perfection, which is sterile, airless, and frankly a bit smug. Imagine living a life where nothing ever went wrong — no missed trains, no wrong turns, no collapsing DIY projects. What stories would you tell? “Well, Margaret, I put up the shelves exactly as planned, and they’re still there.” Riveting. Call the publishers.

The great paradox is that the pursuit of perfection often creates more mistakes. Jeremy Clarkson — a man who treats mistakes not as missteps but as professional strategy — has blown up more vehicles than NATO and somehow became loveable for it. But would we have watched him so religiously if he’d driven carefully at 70mph, signalling properly? Not a chance. His calamities are his charm.

Comedy, too, rests on failure. Chaplin tripping on his shoelaces, Basil Fawlty losing his rag, Del Boy falling through the bar. These aren’t stories of getting it right. They’re reminders that we recognise ourselves most clearly in the pratfall.

There is, however, a darker side to perfection. A life lived with the volume of error turned down to zero would be unrecognisable — and unbearable. Imagine the tedium of flawless days: meetings on time, trains punctual, soufflés always rising, trousers never splitting. It’s antiseptic. It’s beige. It’s the motivational quote section of a stationery shop stretched across a lifetime.

Wrongness, by contrast, is colour. It’s the spice rack. It’s the reason why, when telling a travel story, we skip over the perfectly executed museum visit and go straight to the part where the taxi driver misunderstood the request and took us to a chicken farm on the outskirts of town.

And so, I’ve come to think of mistakes as souvenirs. Each one says: you were here, you tried, and the universe reminded you not to take yourself too seriously.

The point, if one exists, is simple: mistakes aren’t interruptions to the story. They are the story. When we laugh about them, we’re not just laughing at our own ineptitude, we’re celebrating the fact that we dared to do something in the first place.

And if the day ever comes when someone asks me to summarise my life, I doubt I’ll talk about the things I got right. I’ll talk about every trip, slip and fall.

Because those were the moments I was most alive.

And if you can say that — that you lived, and you laughed at the mess — then getting it wrong wasn’t a failure at all. It was the whole damn point.

Trowels & Triumphs: Gardening as a Rebellion Against Despair. Growing hope, even in terrible soil.

The last bank holiday before Christmas is a funny one. It creeps up on us like the last slice of cake at a family gathering—nobody’s quite sure whether it’s meant for them, but heaven help the soul who doesn’t grab it when they get the chance. We’ve all had the usual summer: rain, then heatwave, then rain again, with the occasional plague of ladybirds thrown in just to remind us we live on an island where nature enjoys a good laugh at our expense.

And yet, here we are, coffee in hand, ready to march into the garden armed with little more than optimism and a pair of gloves we’re fairly certain have not been washed since the Blair administration. It’s not that we think we’re Monty Don. We’re not. Monty floats serenely about in immaculate linen, whispering encouragement to roses. The rest of us are sweating buckets, swearing at bindweed, and trying to remember whether foxgloves are poisonous (they are, by the way—so don’t make a salad out of them).

But gardening isn’t about competence. It’s about habit. And ritual. And, if I may be so bold, survival.

Every bank holiday, the same dance plays out. Someone decides the hedge must absolutely be tackled before autumn, usually around 10 a.m., when the first cup of coffee is still only halfway gone. Out come the shears, which are blunt enough to qualify as heirlooms, and the massacre begins. By lunchtime, the hedge looks like it’s been trimmed by Sweeney Todd after a solid weekend down the West End, the wheelie bin is already overflowing, and someone has stormed off to B&Q muttering about “proper tools.”

It’s the same up and down the country. People are on their knees in flower beds, muttering “what on earth is that?” as though they’ve just discovered a new civilisation. Lawns are being scalped into submission. Barbecues are dragged out “just in case the weather holds,” which guarantees torrential rain by 4 p.m.

And yet, underneath the chaos, there’s something deeply reassuring about it all. The hopeless gardener is an eternal figure: ill-prepared, slightly sunburnt, but determined to keep fighting the good fight with the persistence of Helen Keller and the skillset of a Labradoodle.

This is where the rebellion comes in. Not rebellion in the grand, banner-waving sense, but in the small, stubborn acts. Cutting back a rose bush that has more thorns than leaves. Sweeping the patio clear of moss only for it to return two days later like an uninvited house guest. Planting bulbs in soil so poor it could qualify as modern art—and doing it anyway, because hope is the only fertiliser we can afford in bulk.

In a world that feels increasingly complicated—wars, elections, news so grim it should come with a health warning—the garden is our frontline. A patch of ground, however chaotic, that we can push back against despair with. Every clipped hedge and watered plant is a mutinous little act that says: I will not go quietly into the compost bin of history.

Let’s be honest—tea and coffee are the backbone of the whole operation. Without them, the garden would collapse into anarchy. Breaks punctuate the day like commas in a very long, muddy sentence. You sit, steaming mug in hand, surveying the destruction you’ve just inflicted on the hydrangea, and think, “Yes. That’s progress.”

And it is, in its way. Progress doesn’t always look like Versailles. Sometimes it looks like a slightly less unruly jungle than yesterday. Sometimes it looks like your neighbour leaning over the fence to say, “You missed a bit,” which is neighbourly code for “I’ll have my revenge when the leaves fall on your side in October.”

The triumph isn’t in perfection; it’s in persistence. A perfectly weeded border may last a week, but the memory of having tried lasts longer. You went out, you fought, you bled (usually via bramble), and you came back in with that warrior’s swagger only the truly bedraggled understand.

And when evening falls and the tools are shoved haphazardly back in the shed, when the garden chair groans beneath you as you collapse into it, that’s when the rebellion feels real. You’ve fought despair with a hoe and a half-dead hanging basket. You’ve turned exhaustion into quiet pride. You’ve proven that, even in terrible soil, something like hope can grow.

So this bank holiday, whether your lawn looks like Centre Court or a battlefield, get out there. Pull up a weed. Plant a bulb. Sweep a corner. Sip a mug of something hot and sweet. And when the inevitable rain arrives, retreat indoors with wet socks and the glow of victory.

Because gardening isn’t about skill, or neatness, or even results. It’s about showing up, stubbornly, joyfully, to say: I am still here. And so is the garden. At least for now.

And frankly, that’s enough.

Chasing Light, Escaping Screens

I’ve just had a week off work. Not the kind where you mutter something about “downtime” while secretly nursing your laptop like an injured pet. No, this was proper time away — stepping outside, leaving the glow of the screen behind, and remembering that life is not best lived hunched over a keyboard, but somewhere out there, in the wind and sun.

It took about forty-eight hours for me to notice how much the computer has been killing me. Not dramatically, of course — there’s no melodramatic “death by spreadsheet” headline in my future — but quietly, stealthily: sitting in front of a computer for most of your waking life is not, in fact, the route to vitality and joy. It’s the route to a posture that resembles a question mark and eyes that look permanently startled. As soon as I stepped outside, I felt it. That buzz of being alive again. Muscles working. Lungs filling properly. Thoughts loosening their grip from the artificial urgency of emails and deadlines.

The revelation arrived with a nudge from Krystle Wright. I stumbled across her National Geographic documentary on Disney+, and within minutes, I was halfway to throwing my keyboard into the nearest canal. Wright’s world is one of extremes: clinging to cliffs, dangling from helicopters, chasing the image and encapsulating the memory. Her images are not merely photographs — they are important snapshots, frozen in a time and place that many of us can only dream of. They remind you that the world is staggeringly big, untidy, unpredictable, and that’s exactly why it’s beautiful.

Her images are breathtaking, of course, but what struck me wasn’t just the drama. It was the spark. The way her work makes you feel like the world is alive, untamed, and waiting for you to come and at least try to meet it halfway.

Now, let’s be honest: I am not a photographer – just someone who enjoys taking photographs and yes, there is a distinction. My camera roll is more “wonky horizon” than “majestic cliff.” If she’s producing symphonies in light and shadow, I’m closer to a man whistling off key in the shower. But here’s the thing: it doesn’t matter. What her work sparked in me wasn’t envy, but appetite. A hunger for more light, more air, more life lived outside the inbox.

Michael Palin once said of his travels that the joy wasn’t in the distant destination, but in the small, ordinary encounters along the way. I think that’s the note I’m striking here. I don’t need to dangle from a paraglider in the Andes to feel alive (although if offered, I would consider it). What I do need is more adventures, a return to where I once was and what I once did almost without thinking.

And here’s the knot I’m wrestling with: I need to earn my way in the world, like anyone. The bills do not politely disappear because I fancy an existential rethink. But the balance is wrong. The screen has crept too far into my days. My body knows it. My mind knows it. My heart shouts it every time I catch the golden flare of evening sun on the horizon and think, “I nearly missed this again.”

So perhaps this week was more than just time off. Perhaps it was a reset button. Krystle Wright may inspire people to climb cliffs, she has for me, but her work has sparked the more modest, but no less radical, idea that I need to reclaim more hours outside. To swap the glow of pixels for the glow of sky. To remember that even small adventures — a walk, a camera, an hour under trees instead of fluorescent lights — add up to a bigger, braver way of living.

So perhaps that’s the real legacy of Krystle Wright’s work for me. Not to emulate her extremes, but to embrace her spirit. To be reminded that we are not here just to “get through” our days. We are here to chase the light, however clumsily, and to find ourselves — not in pixels, but in places.

And if my photos never grace the cover of National Geographic, well… at least they’ll remind me of something far better: that I was there, outside, living.

Go and check Krystle’s work out for yourself, see if her images resonate in you the way they have with me

https://www.krystlewright.com/overview

Engineering a Better Course: Lessons from the Astronauts Who Steered Us Home. Why the human spark to improve is worth protecting

Normally, I give myself a week to prepare these posts — time to sit, let ideas simmer, and see what bubbles up once the froth of the first draft has settled. But today the news of Jim Lovell’s passing hit like a sudden course correction, and my original plan for the week was promptly jettisoned, somewhere between the launch pad and the second paragraph.

There are certain stories you become aware of that feel almost stitched into the lining of your mind. For me, a visit to the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida sparked an interest in the NASA era of the ’60s, ’70s and beyond. Those scratchy radio calls from space, the crew-cut engineers hunched over consoles, the spacecraft that looked more shed than shuttle. And, at the centre of my favourite one of all, a calm Midwesterner named Jim Lovell.

Apollo 13 is the kind of story that, if you pitched it now, would be sent back for “believability issues.” An oxygen tank explodes 200,000 miles from home. The spacecraft’s computers would blush at being compared to a digital watch. Plans are ripped up, not by choice but because physics demands it. Yet somehow, with ingenuity, teamwork, and a very handy roll of duct tape, the crew make it back to Earth in one piece.

For all its drama, Apollo 13 is not a story about heroics in the Hollywood sense. It’s about what happens when people know their craft, respect each other’s skills, and are trusted to solve problems. It’s about using what you’ve got — however meagre — to close the gap between “this is broken” and “this works well enough to save our lives.”

Which brings me, somewhat reluctantly, to today. I have my own engineering problem to wrestle with. Nothing so dramatic as life support systems failing in space — I’m not currently orbiting anything more dangerous than my own coffee mug — but the challenge comes with its own ethical knots. The kind where the technical fix is possible, possibly even straightforward, but the “should we?” hangs in the air like an unanswered radio call.

It’s a reminder that engineering isn’t just about doing things. It’s also about deciding which things ought to be done, and which ought to remain on the drawing board, however clever they are. In the rush to solve problems, we can forget that why we solve them matters just as much as how. And sometimes the right answer isn’t a new design at all, but a decision to stop, think, and make sure the solution serves more than the spreadsheet.

This is where the Apollo lesson still matters. The team at Mission Control weren’t just trying to get three men home; they were doing so in a way that didn’t compromise their principles. There was no question of cutting corners that might save time but cost lives later. Every decision passed through a quiet, unspoken filter: is this the right thing to do, not just the fastest?

Today’s engineering challenges are different — climate change, renewable energy, AI — but the ethical compass is still the same. We need to keep trusting people to think creatively under pressure, but we also need to give them the moral framework to know when “yes we can” must be followed by “but should we?”

And perhaps, if we zoom out from our own industries and apply this thinking to society as a whole, we might chart a better course collectively. Imagine policy built with Apollo-style focus: evidence-led, resourceful, with a refusal to compromise long-term safety for short-term gain. Imagine technology rolled out with as much care for unintended consequences as for market share. Imagine infrastructure decisions made with the same patient problem-solving that turned a damaged spacecraft into a lifeboat. The problems facing our planet are vast, but so is our capacity to solve them — provided we steer with both skill and conscience.

So I find myself, like Lovell, staring at the controls and weighing the options. I have the tools, I have the know-how, and yet I pause — not because I don’t know the answer, but because I want to be certain the answer is one I can defend, years from now, when the dust has settled and someone asks: “Was that the right course?”

Jim Lovell taught us many things, but perhaps the most important is that steering home is never just about navigation. It’s about judgement. It’s about knowing that the course you set is not just the quickest, but the one you can live with once you land.

Here’s to engineering better courses — technically sound, ethically sure, and with enough room for duct tape, teamwork, and the occasional moral pit stop along the way.

The Lost Art of Doing One Thing at a Time Modern life is noisy. Here’s how to turn it down and tune in.

Somewhere in the blur of deadlines, dog walks, and digital notifications, we stopped doing things and started juggling them. These days, it’s perfectly normal to eat lunch, book a dentist appointment, attend a Teams meeting, and check your bank balance—all while trying to remember why you walked into the kitchen.

Life, for many of us, isn’t lived—it’s managed. Efficiently. Competently. Occasionally heroically. And while there’s great dignity in keeping the wheels on, there’s also a quiet ache that creeps in at 2am: Is this it?

Because, deep down, most of us aren’t just trying to survive the week. We’re trying to build a life that feels less like a spreadsheet and more like a symphony.

We Are Not Machines

There’s no shame in being busy. The world, frankly, runs on busy people. People who answer emails on trains. People who stack family, work, ambition, and a slightly stale Greggs sausage roll into a single lunch hour. That’s not failure—that’s modern life with the safety off.

But we’re not machines. We weren’t designed to process twelve tasks simultaneously while being permanently available via six channels of communication. We were built for rhythm. Focus. Breath. For the joy of doing one thing well.

That might be making soup. Writing a report. Planting a bulb. Watching the light change across a hill. Tiny moments, all—but done with presence, they become anchors in a drifting day.

The Seduction of More

Now, no one’s saying we should all pack up and go live in a hut. (Although there are days, aren’t there?) This isn’t about slowing down for the sake of it. It’s about choosing what we give our attention to—and doing it on purpose.

There’s a difference between wanting more and doing everything at once. Wanting more is human. It’s a glimmer. A dream. The whisper of something better—quieter mornings, deeper work, conversations that don’t feel like calendar entries. It’s the soul nudging us toward a life with a little more life in it.

But more doesn’t come from speed. It comes from depth.

Attention as a Superpower

In a culture that glorifies the grind, giving your full attention to one thing has become a rebellious act. It’s not indulgent. It’s powerful.

Read the book without glancing at your phone. Make a coffee and taste it. Speak to someone and really listen—not just nod while composing a reply in your head.

When we tune in—fully, wholeheartedly—we unlock something bigger than productivity: presence. And presence is the gateway to clarity, creativity, connection... and occasionally remembering where you left your glasses.

A Life Rewired

Here’s the thing: you don’t have to abandon your ambitions to live more fully. You don’t have to choose between “achieving” and “being”. The real magic is in learning how to weave the two together.

The dream is still there, glinting at the edge of your day. A better rhythm. A calmer mind. A life that feels more lived. And it doesn’t arrive in one grand, cinematic gesture. It arrives in the doing—one task, one moment, one focused breath at a time.

So yes, answer your emails. Walk the dog. Get the job done. But now and then—just now and then—pause. And do something simple with your whole self.

Because in a world wired for noise, tuning in might just be the quiet revolution we need.

Fit-ish: Rewiring Your Relationship with Fitness at Any Age No Lycra cults. Just movement that feels like freedom.

I always enjoyed sports, as a child of the ‘70s, exercise was something that happened to you, it was part of the day to day. From summers on the track and field to winters on the frozen rugby pitch it was challenging, tough but normal.

Somewhere along the way, exercise became a numbers game — reps, steps, BPM, VO2 max, and other abbreviations, we are sold the idea that if you’re not pounding protein shakes and spinning like a possessed washing machine, you’re essentially crumbling into dust. But real movement — joyful, sustainable movement — doesn’t live in data.

It lives in mood.

Have you noticed how even ten minutes of motion — a brisk walk, a few stretches, a dance around the kitchen while the kettle boils — can reset your entire day?

That’s because movement isn’t just physical. It’s psychological, emotional, even spiritual. It’s momentum in a world that so often wants to freeze us in place.

And here’s the truth most influencers won’t tell you: movement isn’t just for the young, the lean, or the Lycra-clad. Movement is for you. And it doesn’t have to be punishment. In fact, it shouldn't be.

Being fit-ish isn’t a half-hearted compromise. It’s a full-bodied choice to move toward a version of yourself who sees possibility instead of pain, curiosity instead of decline, and progress instead of punishment.

It’s about outlook. About rewiring the story you tell yourself every time you look in the mirror and think: “Maybe I’ve still got more in me than I thought.”

Why Move? Because Standing Still Feels Worse

Let’s not pretend: your joints click like castanets and your back now has opinions. You’ve tried the gym. You’ve flirted with yoga. You own a resistance band you last saw tangled in the vacuum cleaner.

And yet, for all the barriers, here’s what’s quietly true — the days you move, even just a bit, are the days your mind feels clearer. Your energy sharper. Your inner monologue slightly less hostile.

That’s no accident. Movement is the oldest therapy we have. It rewires the body and the brain. It fuels the chemicals that make you hopeful, makes your heart work better at loving you back, and brings you back into contact with the you that still dreams of walking further, living longer, laughing louder.

It’s Never Too Late (and You’re Not Too Far Gone)

Here’s the good news: you don’t need to run a marathon, take cold plunges at dawn, or become fluent in kettlebell. You just need to begin. Not from where you wish you were — but from where you are.

Even the most modest fitness journey — the dog walk you usually skip, the ten squats during the ad break, the stairs you choose over the lift — can build a quieter strength. And that strength slowly shapes how you respond to life’s nonsense. A fitter body doesn’t solve everything, but it often gives you more resilience to deal with what it can’t.

A fitter you isn’t just stronger — you’re more patient, more curious, more alive.

The Myth of the Perfect Body (and Other Lies That Age Badly)

Our culture likes to peddle ideals. Shredded abs, sculpted delts, and a life lived entirely on grilled chicken and regret. For the average human — particularly one who’s balancing jobs, families, bad knees and a mortgage — this is not so much aspirational as it is mildly offensive.

Fitness, as it turns out, doesn’t need to come with a side of existential shame. It can begin with standing a little taller, breathing a little deeper, and walking a little further than yesterday. It might be gardening with the fury of a 17th-century peasant, dancing in your kitchen to Taylor Swift, or doing squats while brushing your teeth because you forgot to go to the gym for the fifth year in a row.

You don’t need a six-pack. You need your back to stop hurting when you unload the dishwasher. That, my friends, is a noble goal.

Rewired, Not Remade

We are the ordinary adventurers. The people who are still busy living, not just logging.

It’s a mindset: less pressure, more presence. Less "transform your body in 6 weeks," more "remember you have one, and be grateful it still works."

You may need to warm up like a vintage car and rest like an Edwardian duchess, but that doesn't make you any less an athlete in the quiet theatre of daily life. You are training for something far greater than a beach body: you are training to still be able to lift your suitcase, chase a grandchild, climb that hill to the best view. You are training for life.

At A Life Rewired, we believe movement isn’t just about muscles — it’s about momentum. It's how you keep the light on in your soul. It’s how you find the breath to laugh harder, love longer, and carry your bags without grunting in front of strangers.

Final Thought: Fit-ish is Hopeful

There’s something quietly heroic about moving when no one is watching. When the world says “why bother?” and your body says “not today,” and you move anyway — for your mind, your mood, your future self.

That’s not vanity. That’s hope. And hope, as it turns out, has a surprisingly good resting heart rate.

So be fit-ish. Move freely. And keep rewiring.

The journey is still yours.

Los Angeles and the Californian Coast: An Affair of Light, Landscape, and the Ludicrous

When I was young, I listened to California Dreamin’ the way one might stare at a postcard — curious, longing, and entirely oblivious to the smell of jet fuel or the cost of a green juice. The song played like an incantation, a warm breeze from a place where winter didn’t belong and nobody wore socks unless they were tie-dyed. I imagined Southern California as a sun-drenched, slow-motion utopia filled with gentle surf, open roads, and people too relaxed to finish a sentence. In my mind, the entire region looked like the final third of a Beatles documentary — all soft focus and barefoot idealism.

Of course, reality has a way of adjusting the lens. It wasn’t until I visited Los Angeles in 2024 that the lyrics finally made sense — not because it was exactly as the Mamas and the Papas promised, but because it was so much more ridiculous. Yes, the sun was shining. Yes, the sky was blue. But so was the billboard for a cosmetic dentist hovering above a vegan strip mall. The dream, it turned out, wasn’t dead — it had just been given a minor facelift and a social media strategy.

And still, I was hooked.

If you ever find yourself standing on the edge of the Californian coast at sunset — and if fate, flights, or foolish impulse allow it, I highly suggest you do — you may encounter a curious kind of clarity. Not the spiritual epiphany type, but something more cinematic, as though the sun, in its final descent, has just been told it's up for Best Supporting Actor.

This is not light that simply falls. It enters stage left. In California, even the daylight has an agent.

Now, Los Angeles — or as it's often known in travel guides and therapy sessions, The City of Angels — is less a metropolis and more an open-air fever dream in soft focus. One part aspiration, two parts perspiration. The hills are alive, not with the sound of music, but with the hum of Teslas, the whisper of screenplays being edited in cafés, and the unmistakable echo of yet another motivational podcast.

And yet, under the botoxed brow of the entertainment industry and its billboarded ego, lies something much older and quietly poetic for the city’s origins are far richer than the Hollywood montage would have you believe.

Consider this: the full name of Los Angeles is El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles de Porciúncula, which translates loosely to “Good luck fitting this on your luggage tag.” And yet, beneath the gloss of this glittering illusion machine, there’s a kind of weathered grace. It was founded in 1781 by a group of settlers so diverse (mixed African, Native American, and European descent) that it would put most diversity quotas to shame, L.A. was multicultural before it was fashionable!

The myth of Los Angeles is built on aspiration, yes, but the foundation was always one of diversity and reinvention.

But venture west, dear reader — to the coast. Oh, the coast...

California’s coastline stretches like it’s modelling for a lifestyle catalogue no one can afford. From the brooding cliffs of Big Sur to the hair-tossed charm of Malibu, the land doesn’t just sit there — it poses. Surfers don’t just ride waves; they perform aquatic theatre. The ocean doesn't crash; it delivers a monologue. And if you’re wondering where everyone’s gone, they’re probably within a yoga mat’s distance of a juice bar, reinventing themselves again.

There’s a lot of that here: reinvention. Some might call it delusion; others call it ambition in Ray-Bans. But either way, the state thrives on the belief that transformation is not only possible — it's probably overdue and currently trending.

And yet, amid the Instagram reels and existential retreats, there is substance. Deep substance. East L.A. hums with Mexican soul — murals that speak louder than any influencer, and tortillas that could stop a man mid-crisis. Leimert Park still sways gently to the ghost of jazz, and Koreatown - if you play your cards right, might serve you a meal that makes you believe in the divine power of fermented cabbage.

There is absurdity here, of course. There always is when dreams gather in bulk. Artists, dropouts, ex-bankers turned raw food evangelists — all drawn here like moths to a flame. A dry, hot Santa Ana wind–blown flame that periodically turns the surrounding hills into scenes from an apocalyptic barbecue.

And still, they stay. Still we stay. Because if you squint just right — through the haze of wildfire smoke or the steam rising from your overpriced oat-milk cortado — you might glimpse it. A faint outline of the person you were meant to become. Not necessarily richer or thinner or more Instagrammable, but truer. A version of you unbothered by what came before, and only mildly worried about what comes next.

And for a place built on facades and fantasy, that’s no small thing.

Backpacks & Broom Cupboards: How to Explore Without Leaving Home

Travel, curiosity and wonder from the comfort of your chaos.

In the days when a backpack meant freedom and the open road was a rite of passage rather than a feature of Google Street View, the idea of travelling was intimately tied to the act of going somewhere. Preferably somewhere dusty, sun-blasted, and marginally dangerous. But then something revolutionary happened. The world, in all its eccentric, exotic, and occasionally exasperating detail, came to us.

It’s not that we stopped moving. Flights got cheaper. Instagram filtered the Sahara into something familiar but slowly, almost imperceptibly, the idea of what it meant to travel shifted from geography to curiosity. And for those of us currently sitting in what could generously be described as a “multi-use storage nook”—less Indiana Jones, more Ipswich B&Q—the home office has become the new frontier.

I say this as someone who recently did travel. Back from Taiwan, no less. Two long-haul flights totalling just under 18 hours, held together by three curious hours of wandering around Dubai Duty Free—an environment that smells of every perfume you’ve never bought and every snack you didn’t know you didn’t need. The entire journey was an exhausting blur of airplane “food” (a word I now put in quotes for legal reasons), smiling and nodding at people I couldn’t escape quickly enough, and a kind of limping walk that suggested either athletic injury or ancient curse.

My legs gave up somewhere over the Caspian Sea. My patience somewhere around Gate A12.

But here’s the kicker: after all that, after the turbulence, the tray-table indignities, and the vague despair of someone eating tuna next to me mid-flight, I sat at home in my kitchen and felt—oddly—more at peace. It was here, not 30,000 feet up or 3,000 miles away, that I found myself once again travelling.

The act of exploration—true, giddy, open-mouthed exploration—has always been less about the visa stamps and more about the vision. And in this age of streaming documentaries, 3D museum tours, and the gloriously democratic rabbit hole of YouTube, curiosity has found itself uncaged.

Take, for example, Tuesday evening last week. I had no intention of leaving the house. Dinner was an uninspired plate of beige carbohydrates. But within 20 minutes of clicking around the internet with the distracted precision of a man avoiding spreadsheets, I was deep in the Carpathian Mountains, watching a Romanian shepherd sing to his dogs. Half an hour later, I was learning about the mythological origins of Mongolian throat singing from a man named Sergei, who filmed the whole thing on a Nokia circa 2003. It was, in short, marvellous.

And no queue. No jet lag. No overpriced airport sandwiches with the molecular integrity of tapioca pudding. Just wonder—unfussy, unfiltered, and unrelenting.

There is, of course, a type of romantic who insists that unless you’ve physically been somewhere, you haven’t really been there. These are the people who hike with sticks made of carbon fibre and speak of Wi-Fi blackspots as though they were religious epiphanies. I admire them. I do. But there is something equally noble—if less photogenic—about finding awe in the everyday.

Because the truth is, travel has always been more about the traveller than the terrain. We take our preoccupations with us. The man sulking in Venice about a late train is the same man sulking in Croydon about a missed bus. Likewise, the person who finds beauty in the curl of steam from a chipped teacup is also the one who gasps at the light over the Andes.

This is not a manifesto against travel. By all means, go. Pack the bag, board the plane, lose your luggage in Geneva and your temper in Naples. But don’t imagine for a moment that the act of travelling is a prerequisite for the state of wonder. That, my friend, is portable. And free.

All you need is curiosity. And maybe a decent Wi-Fi connection.

So here’s to the home office broom cupboards, the bedsits, the cramped flats with views of brick walls and possibilities. To the restless minds who wander without moving. To those who, stuck in traffic on the A1, are secretly navigating the spice markets of Marrakesh in their minds.

Exploration isn’t an itinerary—it’s an instinct.

And in this chaos, in this glorious domestic sprawl of mismatched socks and unpaid bills, we can still travel. With our minds, our screens, and the occasional daydream that smells of jet fuel and grilled halloumi.

Backpacks are optional. Curiosity is not.

Start Where You Trip: The Case for Failing Gloriously

Why your first attempt might be awful—and why that’s perfect.

There is a special kind of horror reserved for watching yourself try something for the first time. It is the kind of horror that grips you when you hear a recording of your own voice, or worse, see your own dance moves captured in the unforgiving retina of a smartphone. That’s not me, you think. Surely that’s a computer-generated parody. And yet, there you are: uncoordinated, uncertain, half-drenched in sweat, fully immersed in delusion. It's an exquisite kind of humiliation. And, let me tell you, it’s glorious.

I tripped—metaphorically and very nearly literally—into my first photography vlog not long ago. Armed with a camera I barely knew how to turn on and the sort of optimism normally reserved for cult leaders and toddlers in capes, I hit record. What followed was an assault on cinematic tradition and coherent narration alike. I was out of breath, out of frame, and halfway through my monologue when I realised I’d been speaking to a lens cap.

And yet, something beautiful emerged in the edit: not competence, no, but defiant evidence of a beginning. The kind that reminds you not that you're not there yet, but that you've left somewhere behind.

The notion that failure is something to be avoided is a relatively recent one. In the ancient world, people failed constantly. The Greek gods, who were essentially a reality TV cast with lightning powers, spent most of their time failing—at love, at war, at parenting. And they were worshipped for it. Somewhere along the way, modern culture decided that our first attempts must be dazzling, or else quietly buried beneath a blanket of self-imposed shame and a Google search for “how to fake expertise convincingly.”

This is nonsense, of course. You wouldn’t expect to play Chopin your first time at a piano. You’d expect to sound like a walrus stepping on a cat—and rightly so. The mess is the music. The trip is the start. If you skip the fall, you rob the rise of its story.

What we fear is not the failure itself, but the witness. We imagine a chorus of onlookers, arms crossed, eyebrows raised, ready to call us out as the imposters we already suspect we are. But let me offer a gentle correction: no one is watching. And if they are, they’re mostly relieved it’s not them under the spotlight.

We’ve grown up in a digital age that edits out the awkward beginning. We scroll through curated confidence—people baking flawless loaves of sourdough, running marathons at dawn, speaking Italian while doing their taxes. What we don’t see are the burnt loaves, the shin splints, or the “Ciao, your tax return is overdue.” We see only the polished product, and mistake it for a starting point.

This creates a dangerous mirage. We begin to think the first draft should be good. That the first YouTube video should go viral. That the first run should feel like a montage scene in a sports movie instead of a slow shuffle with frequent gasps and a face like an overheated tomato. The truth, naturally, is the opposite. Your first attempt will likely be bad—cringingly, stomach-turningly bad. And that’s perfect.

There’s a term in aviation called “flying dirty.” It refers to flying with landing gear down, flaps extended—maximum drag, minimal elegance. It’s how planes fly when they’re close to the ground, where precision matters more than performance. It’s not pretty, but it’s how you land.

Starting anything new means flying dirty. It means giving up on the illusion of grace and embracing the grinding, grunting, elbow-bumping effort of learning. It’s the kid on a bike with stabilisers. The amateur guitarist mangling “Wonderwall.” The first pancake that looks like a failed reconstruction of the Moon.

These are sacred rites, and they deserve not mockery but celebration. Because if you’re willing to fail in front of your own ego, you’re halfway to something better than competence—you’re on your way to authenticity. And if you do it gloriously enough, with conviction and just a touch of mad joy, you might even stumble into brilliance by mistake.

My own catalogue of glorious failures now forms a kind of museum of human endeavour gone slightly wrong. There are videos where I look like I’ve just been chased through a hedge. Photos taken with the lens cap still on. Blog posts with titles more promising than the content below them. Each one makes me wince—and smile—because each one is proof that I had the guts to try before I was ready.

So here’s my proposal: fail big. Trip on stage. Stumble in public. Make a noise so utterly daft and off-key that someone looks up and thinks, “At least I’m not that person.” And then, just when the ego is licking its wounds, get up and do it again. Because somewhere in that mess, that wobble, that undeniable humanity, is the start of something genuinely brilliant.

The only real mistake is to sit on the runway, engines off, wondering if you’ll look foolish in flight.

Fly dirty. Start where you trip. Fail gloriously.

And then? Keep going.