Plain Talk Matters

Show Notes — The Ideas I Sat On for Years For years I had more ideas than I could ever get into the world. The barrier was rarely the idea itself. It was the cost, the risk, and the wait of getting anything built. In this episode I talk about what changed when AI entered my working life, and why, on balance, it has made me more creative rather than less. I get specific: the £17,000 quote to build...

When you stay quiet to protect someone you love, is it care — or fear in better clothes? Two tests for telling them apart, the shame that hides underneath, and a man who couldn't tell his wife what he was really missing.  Part two of two. Care or Fear? — Show Notes Episode summary I ended the last episode with a question I couldn't answer for most of my adult life: when you stay quiet to protect s...

The Cape Didn't Fit — Show Notes Episode summary We never actually decided who would look after the children. We decided and un-decided in the same breath — because admitting the truth meant admitting we couldn't have it all, and neither of us was brave enough to say so out loud. In this episode I read my essay The Cape Didn't Fit and tell the story of the truth I couldn't bring myself to share wi...

The Alarm Next Door — Show Notes Episode summary A snooze alarm through a hotel wall. Roughly every ten minutes, on holiday, surrounded by friends half my age. By any reasonable measure, a small thing. So why was I lying there rigid with a fifty-year-old feeling? In this episode I read my essay The Alarm Next Door and follow a single morning's irritation all the way down — past the woman next door...