I talked last year about the ‘blank slate’ approach to minimalism: instead of reducing what you have, start by imagining you have nothing, and then figure out the things you would want. Add from 0% rather than subtract from 100%.
I’m attempting to apply the same approach to how I use my time and energy, borrowing from the Descartes apple basket analogy …
Continue reading Being minimalist in time as well as spaceI still remember the pain of moving, so even although cladding work on the building means a move is likely a year or so away, my plan is to be fully prepared ahead of time. That means having everything I want for my new home, and not having anything I don’t want.
There are two fundamentally different approaches to preparing for minimalism, and I’m taking the second of these …
Continue reading MMHP #2: The two approaches to minimalism, and my early prepThere are things we want to do in life, and things we have to do. In the best of cases, these coincide. Such is the case with me and minimalism, when it comes to my next move.
In this first post, I’m going to lay out the two reasons I want to create a minimalist micro-home in the first place …
Continue reading The minimalist micro-home project part 1: Why?I said last time that I’m generally a fast learner, so I always viewed my painfully slow and limited progress with languages as a sign that I simply don’t have the language-learning gene. However, it may be that, where languages are concerned, I’m simply a normal-speed learner …
Continue reading Perhaps my issue with languages was around expectations?I’m generally a fast learner, and have picked up a fair number of skills in my life, but language learning has been one area where I appear to have pretty much zero ability to learn.
It’s a somewhat ironic deficit, given how much I’ve gotten to travel over the years (82 countries and counting). But a concerted multi-year attempt at German, with very limited results, persuaded me that languages really weren’t my thing.
However, I’m conducting one final experiment …
Continue reading Spanish: The triumph of optimism over experience, or a far more modest goalMy record of good fortune on the COVID front finally ran out on 17th December 2021.
Steph had a presumptive diagnosis way back in March 2020 (based on symptoms in those pre-test days), and it was assumed it would be impossible for me to avoid it, but it appears I did. I maintained that record for more than 18 months, and also had zero reaction to any of the three vaccinations.
I’m using this blog to record my experience of the infection. Please don’t expect entertaining writing: my exhaustion is mental as well as physical. Mostly I’m writing it as a warning against complacency on the COVID front …
Continue reading A COVID-19 diary
One of the most fundamental things needed in any competent response to the coronavirus crisis is access to testing. We need to know who has the virus now, so they can self-isolate. That’s achieved with a swab test, which only works reliably while someone is infectious – which is typically for around five days.
But we also need to know who has had the virus and since recovered …
I’ve tried a few virtual reality (VR) experiences over the years, from headsets to full-motion simulators seating a dozen people. All had struck me as fun, but none had tempted me to invest in my own kit.
But let’s face it, actual reality isn’t much cop at present, so if there ever were a time to dip a toe into the virtual variety, this has got to be it, right … ?
It feels wrong to begin any upbeat piece about the coronavirus crisis without first acknowledging the terrible tragedy of it. The lives cut short. The family and friends left grieving. The healthcare professionals working long hours in trying conditions without the support they deserve. Those who have lost their jobs or been left struggling financially.
But in any loss, there is also opportunity. An opportunity not to try to return to normal as quickly as possible, but to invent a new normal …
Continue reading The lockdown is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reinvent London
It feels like there will come a time when future generations will look back on this time and ask ‘What was it like?’. I feel like I should be keeping some kind of diary – and yet, in truth, I have little to say.
A front-line medic would. A doctor, a nurse, a paramedic, a care worker. Other key workers too; those so recently dismissed by the government as earning too little to justify their place in the UK: the shop workers, the delivery staff, the refuse collectors and all the millions of people needed to keep the country running …
Nobody who knows me needs to be told that I am not a morning person. Not even I believed me when I claimed I was going to get up at 6.45am on a Sunday morning to go cycling.
But the allure of being able to experience a London without people did, amazingly, do the trick …
Continue reading London in Lockdown at 6.45am on a Sunday morning
We thought we were living in crazy times before the coronavirus outbreak – then the gods took a look and said ‘Hold my beer’ …
Continue reading Blanket coronavirus testing is not optional
Shakespeare – and not just any Shakespeare, but King John – with a food fight. Yeah, this is not your everyday performance …
I guess you can understand the 2018 British government hopelessly casting around for some good news somewhere, but even by those standards, one particular (now-deleted) tweet seems desperate in the extreme.
Did you know? In 1833, Britain used £20 million, 40% of its national budget, to buy freedom for all slaves in the Empire. The amount of money borrowed for the Slavery Abolition Act was so large that it wasn’t paid off until 2015. Which means that living British citizens helped pay to end the slave trade
A pretty reliable guide to how much a non-fiction book impresses me is how long it takes me to read it. With Michelle Obama’s Becoming, for example, I read it in about three days. It’s taken me as many weeks to finish reading Unspeakable …
Art critics turn up their noses at this travelling immersive experience, but as someone who knew little more about Van Gogh than the bits we learned in school, I found it compelling …
We did it. Somehow, an entire nation lost its mind. Or 52% of it. Or 26% of it. But however we do the maths, 100% of the UK left the EU.
I wanted to write an upbeat post, about how this was day one of the campaign to rejoin the EU. That’s who I am. I’ve always been an optimist, and at those times I could view the world in one of two ways, I’ve always aimed to choose the more empowering one.
But I’m not there yet with Brexit …
Continue reading It’s not yet day one of the campaign to rejoin the EU; not for me
This will be a short review, because it’s difficult to say much at all about it without either giving away too much or reducing an incredibly powerful conversation to a mere description.
It’s also impossible to write anything at all about The Sunset Limited without one spoiler. It’s not much of one, because it becomes clear within the opening lines, and is quickly confirmed, but if you don’t want even that much, stop here and just go see it …
Those who know my political background will also know how big a deal this is: to align myself with one party.
Historically, I’ve been a big believer in representational democracy: the idea that we elect a representative, not a party. I started out by meeting the candidates, questioning them on the issues that were most important to me each election, and voting for the person I felt would best represent me on those issues …
I suspect hundreds of thousands of words of analysis have been written on what went so terribly wrong in the recent election, most of them by people better qualified than I to make sense of it all. But I guess we each have to come to terms with it in our own way, and my process inevitably involves writing about it …
In a word, wow!
I don’t normally go for big gigs, but felt this one had to be done. Took a deep breath before paying £200 for a ticket six rows from the stage, but it was worth every penny …
Matthew Broderick apparently played this part when it was on Broadway back in 2009 and seemingly loved it so much he came to London to play it here. And I can see why.
This is a lovely, deep portrait of an unassuming man in mid-life crisis. It’s such an utterly believable character, and played so beautifully, it feels incredibly intimate even in such a large theatre …
Light entertainment it is not! The play centres on whether or not what happened between two college students was rape. First the woman, then the college, and finally the man have to each reach their conclusions …
When I first got the email for this, it looked interesting but three hours seemed too long, so I hadn’t planned to book. But a friend, Miriam, talked me into it, and I’m so glad she did …
This is, as you’d expect, just a gloriously silly bit of fun. It’s been adapted for the stage, and given a few modern references here and there, but mostly left unchanged.
It actually starts rather slowly, and I thought could have used quite a bit of tightening in the first act. But hang in there – it really accelerates in pace …
Yes, I know. I have made very little progress in transferring the travel section of my website, and I’ve also been rubbish at keeping the theatre reviews up to date, so let’s begin filling in the blanks with Two Ladies …
The Trafalgar Studio 2 is an intimate theatre at any time. It seats 100, and is usually not full (though it was tonight). In one of the front-row bench seats, you have your feet on the non-raised stage. The sense of intimacy was heightened by Julie Hesmondhalgh greeting us with a mug of tea in her hand, and chatting with us before the performance like we’d come round to her place for tea …
Continue reading The Greatest Play in the History of the World
How a very short-lived Apple News+ trial subscription had me abandon BBB News as my primary news source, and come home to The Guardian.
There are lots of cities I love to visit, a few I could happily live in for a year or two but none that, to me, compare to London.
It’s a city that has everything. Amazing archicture, old and new. Eateries at every level, from Michelin-starred restaurants to greasy spoons. An unbelievable array of theatres, with enough fantastic performances to visit every week (or, er, more often <cough>). Shopping has everything to offer from Harrods to market stalls. There are green spaces everywhere. Cinema. Art. It’s all here …
Continue reading London: an illustrated life-long love affair
I’ve had a blog since long before the term was first coined.
benlovejoy.com began in 1997 as a few hand-coded pages. Yep, in those days you had to use a text editor to create each webpage, and you’d begin something like this:
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html; charset=iso-8859-1″>
<title>Wot I dun in my summer holidays</title>
Over the years, the site has evolved in various ways, but a combination of factors has made it harder work to update – and these days, blogging sites make it super-easy.
I did abandon plans to transfer the whole existing site over to WordPress, so am now using this for my very occasional random posts. Travel blogs will remain here on the main site, and my tango blog can be found here.
Ben Lovejoy 