The world had felt too loud.
The feed was full of horror, outrage, bad news, crisis after crisis.

So I stepped away.

Out into the cold air.
Under the sky.
Away from the machine for a while.

And this thought came to me:

We were not built for constant crisis.

We were built for mostly stable lives, occasional storms, and then a return to calm.

But now it feels inverted.

Now the crisis is the baseline.

And the quiet moments are the exception.

That is so, so wrong.

Get more from Hold On, Mr.E in the Substack app

Available for iOS and Android

Get the app

People who love animals.
People tired of cruelty.
People who want to stay informed without being swallowed by noise.
People who still believe decency matters.

At the centre of this place is a simple question:

How do we stay human in a world that keeps trying to make us numb?

That is why the animals matter.
That is why the politics matter.
That is why the stories matter.
That is why this place exists.

Hold On, Mr.E is a refuge for people who still care, warm, honest, sometimes funny, sometimes furious, sometimes spooky, but always trying to keep hold of humanity.

The rooms

The Heart
Mostly in Notes. Animals, rescue, kindness, funny creatures, small acts of decency, and the moments that remind us not to go numb.

The Madness
Calm analysis of politics, power, war, corruption, cruelty, media noise, and the strange behaviour of the people running the world.

Late Night with Mr.E
The live/radio show. Longer conversations, often with Michelle, about world news, strange events, human behaviour, and the things shaping what comes next.

The Lantern
The quieter room. Voice, stories, late‑night atmosphere, and the occasional spooky tale.

Reflections
Films, memory, psychology, technology, culture, personal pieces, and thoughts that do not fit neatly anywhere else.

Free and paid

Free readers will always be welcome here.

Most of this place will remain open. The animals, the kindness, the late‑night radio, and the small reminders that we do not have to go numb — those will remain part of the public refuge.

When paid support opens, it will be for people who want to help keep the place going and step a little deeper inside.

Hold On, Mr.E takes time: finding stories, checking the details, writing, recording, going live, building the rooms, preparing The Lantern, and keeping the whole thing human instead of just another noisy feed. Your support helps make that work sustainable.

Supporters will also get more from the quieter rooms: extra pieces from Late Night, early access to Lantern stories, behind‑the‑scenes notes, occasional personal thoughts, and first looks at bigger projects as they are built.

No pressure. No guilt.

Just a way for those who can to help keep the lantern lit, the rooms open, and the work alive.

For now, come in.

Find the animals.
Find the analysis.
Find the stories.
Find the quiet room.
And hold on.

Subscribe now

Before the lantern became a ritual, there was this.

A nervous, unscripted hour under the moon.

No studio.
No plan.
No perfect lighting.
Just cold air, a restless mind, a half-dying battery, and the decision to press the button anyway.

I talked about the beautiful world we have been given, the ugliness of greed, the noise of politics, the danger of AI, and the strange need we all have to step away from the machine for a while.

But underneath it all, this was really about one small thing:

Fear.

And doing it anyway.

A first solo night walk with Mr.E — politics, kindness, fear, community, and a little bit of night air.

Get more from Mr.E: The Heart in the Madness in the Substack app

Available for iOS and Android

Get the app

I actually slept well last night, had a proper breakfast, and then somehow ended up watching a gloriously cheesy old film I’d never seen before: The Exterminator from 1980.

I’ve been meaning to get around to it for the last… ooh, 46 years?

But you know how it is. You get distracted by little things. Illegal invasions. Genocide. The collapse of Western civilisation. Trying to work out why Bobby Ewing is suddenly back in Dallas when, if memory serves, he was quite inconveniently dead last season.

Life comes at you fast.

Anyway, The Exterminator.

Steve James plays Mr Wholesome, a man so decent and likeable you immediately know the poor sod is not long for this film.

Robert Ginty, meanwhile, is an unusually charismatic plank. And I mean that with affection. He has the haunted stare of a man who has seen terrible things, done terrible things, and possibly just remembered he left the immersion heater on.

We won’t get too bogged down in the plot, partly because the plot itself appears to have got lost somewhere around the second act and wandered into traffic.

At one point, a cop meets a doctor and, with all the survival instincts of a man in a horror film basement, decides that the perfect first date is a romantic picnic in the middle of the night in some deserted gangland pasture.

And she says yes!

Stranger danger, my friends. Stranger danger.

Still, the whole thing wobbles along at an amazing pace. The gang heavies almost look scary, the dialogue sounds like it was stapled together during the lunch break, and several characters appear to be squinting at imaginary autocues just out of shot.

As… for… the… delivery…

It’s glorious.

It’s one of Samuel L. Jackson’s early uncredited appearances, apparently. I think I spotted him. Maybe. Possibly. There was a lot of squinting on my side as well. 😝

To be fair, if I were Samuel L. Jackson, I would probably want to be uncredited from this masterpiece.

But I wasn’t just watching a film.

I was watching a completely different New York. A completely different America.

Grim. Rough. Strange. Dirty. Oddly fascinating.

A world of meat-plant mafiosi, dodgy backrooms, sweaty streets, corrupt little men in bad suits, CIA guys wandering around dressed like Sherlock Holmes extras and ageing theatre luvvies, the kind of 1980s grime you can practically smell through the screen.

Everything looks damp. Everyone looks tired. Nobody appears to have seen a vegetable in months.

And yet, beneath all the dirt, sleaze and crime, there’s something wonderfully genuine about New York at that time.

It feels lived in.

Real.

Unpolished.

Not yet flattened into the same glass-and-steel version of everywhere else. Not yet smoothed over, branded, sanitised, franchised, focus-grouped, and turned into a backdrop for people holding £7 coffees while pretending to answer emails.

Older films do that, don’t they?

You put one on for the plot, the actors, the violence, the bad dialogue, the fashion crimes, or the sheer joy of watching someone solve a problem by kicking a door open.

But then something else happens.

You start looking past the film and into the world behind it.

The streets. The cars. The signs. The shops. The faces. The clothes. The strange old telephones. The ugly wallpaper. The smoke. The noise.

The texture of ordinary life accidentally captured in the background.

You start to feel the movie.

Feel the moment.

Suddenly, you’re a million miles from the world today.

Maybe that’s what I miss when I watch older films.

Not the crime.

Not the grime.

Not the misery.

The texture.

The sense that places had their own faces. Their own madness. Their own smell. Their own danger. Their own strange little soul.

A lot of the modern world looks cleaner, safer, brighter, more convenient.

But hollow.

Thinner.

Less lived-in.

Less human.

Nothing feels settled anymore. There is always another angle, another image, another perspective. Reality itself feels as if it has been given a marketing department.

Like someone took the weirdness out and replaced it with image and branding.

That’s probably why I still love old films, even the ridiculous ones.

Especially the ridiculous ones, actually.

Yes, I’ve borne witness to Ninja III: The Domination. Praise be! 🤣

They carry little pieces of the world inside them. Not just stories, but atmospheres. Lost streets. Lost moods. Lost ways of being. Most of all, they carry the memory of how we once shared the same drab, dirty, tired, lived-in reality.

It was real.

Anyway, I’m sure Charles Bronson didn’t lose any sleep over his “competitor.” 😝

I’m horribly late getting started today, but better late than never.

So, with a cup of tea clutched firmly in hand and my day creaking into life, I’ll start posting.

Hope you’re all doing okay out there.

And if you’re not quite okay, well… pull up a chair anyway.

We’ll get through the day together. 🤗

Mr.E 😇

After waiting five weeks I finally got my appointment. 12.45 booked, and there I sit waiting. 12.45 comes and goes. Eeeek. Thirty minutes later, nothing. I’m panicked and tired, thinking, am I going to have to wait another five weeks? I called and chased them up. Around 14.00 I got the call. 💖

Ok doctor, what’s going on?

I asked many questions and got honest answers. It went well. No scarring on my heart. All parts are getting enough blood. I asked, do I have pulmonary hypertension?

Seconds felt like hours.

He replied: no. There’s no sign of it yet. There were no abnormal pressures noted during either of my scans. If excess pressure had been noted, I’d be officially diagnosed. But he made it clear: I have a window here. If I don’t make considerable life changes, I will have pulmonary hypertension.

I asked about the enlarged right ventricle. He reassured me that the heart still functions, but is misshapen. He attributes this to excess weight and sleep. I have sleep apnoea, and I’ve had it all my life, mostly untreated until a few years ago. This is a big factor in the right ventricle. Let’s call it the lung ventricle, and sleep apnoea, oxygen deprivation.

I asked, am I at risk? Is my life at risk short term?

No. Not as long as I continue on my medications, monitor my weight for fluid build-up, and use water tablets as needed. Long term? Yes. Things must change.

I paused, held my breath, then asked him: is this reversible?

This is where the surprise came. A pleasant surprise.

He believes that if I can increase my fitness, lose some weight, and most importantly manage my sleep, this is reversible.

I wasn’t expecting that.

When all of this happened I kind of felt I’d been given a life sentence. Then he tells me there’s still hope. Woof!… I sat there and words failed me for a moment. It’s like he took my fate out of the hands of the grim reaper and put it into mine.

It’s a hell of a responsibility.

Am I terrified? Yeah, I am. Is it doable? Yes it is. Do I have a plan? Not yet. I have ideas, but not yet a plan.

I’m pretty certain sleep is the big issue for me. The days before the heart attack in August I was extremely sleep deprived. I’m a man who has fallen to rock bottom. Broken, betrayed, and uncertain. My road will be long and hard. I will doubt, and fear will be ever present.

But the truth of the moment is this: there’s a road before me, not a dead end. And I do so love watching broken, run-down things being brought back to life. I just never anticipated I’d be the broken-down thing. 🤣

I will need support, and genuine people around me to push me gently. I welcome such people in my life, and I’m sharing this because I know I will stumble from time to time. I may look to you to help me stand up one more time.

My Substack community has been with me during some very scary and dark nights. They are not big or loud. But they are decent, giving, and caring. The world needs more of that, and so do I tonight.

Thanks for reading.

E.

xx

I long for the safety of childhood. My mother’s hugs. Warmth. Certainty. Love. Instead there is only the cold embrace of silence and anxiety, coiled tight around me.

What am I doing?

The world is on fire. Flames skitter across everything I love. People scream. Why is no one stopping this?

I stand in the centre of the maelstrom. Time warps. People move too fast, my hands too slow. I can hear the blood in my ears.

“Douse the flames!” I scream. Why is no one listening? The danger is so blatant. Why are people running instead of helping?

“We have to stop this!”

My eyes plead for help. My voice drowns in worthless noise. People stand filming the flames. For likes. For subscribers. For attention. To monetise.

Jackals. I want to retch. Panic grips me.

The wicked inferno belches, “the likes of which nobody’s ever seen before.”

I freeze as it taunts me. The anger I feel is pure.

Is it the flames that fill me with revulsion? Or my own self-loathing for doing nothing?

Do something, E. Do something. Please.

Night passes. Sunlight thins the shadows. But the fear remains, and I stumble out of bed clutching my head, weary as the living dead.

I started a joke - Becky Hanson

We’re told this was a rescue mission. A downed airman in hostile territory. A race against time. We’ve got to find him, we’ve got to get him out, we must bring our hero home, because America protects its own. It’s a clean story. It’s a nice story. It’s a story you can be proud of. It’s a victory.

But then you look at what really happened.

It looks like a small war.

You have two MC-130s lost. These are specialist special operations aircraft. They’re worth about $114 million each, by U.S. Air Force figures. The helicopters were hit and destroyed. We have at least 100 commandos inserted on the ground, by Reuters’ reporting. They had to jam frequencies, bomb roads to stop reinforcements, and they encountered fierce resistance.

How did they run into that much resistance so quickly?

That’s not a quiet pickup. That’s a full operation.

So the obvious question is: why that much force for a rescue?

The first crew member was recovered with Black Hawk helicopters, air cover, and a small team.

The second extraction looked like a small army.

A standard C-130 carries about 90 troops, and the stretched C-130J-30 can carry up to 128. This aircraft is built for clandestine infiltration and exfiltration of special operations forces in hostile territory. So why did the mission need a force package that large in the first place?

We are told this was about recovering downed aircrew. Surely that points to something smaller. A handful of helicopters with special forces. A quick touchdown, pick them up, get them out, all done.

And then we have the mountains.

The reports say the second crew member was in mountainous terrain. AP said he climbed 7,000 feet despite being injured. Could you climb 7,000 feet while injured? Why are you climbing 7,000 feet? Why are you leaving your landing site and heading toward mountainous territory?

That raises a different question: what was in that direction, or what threat was he trying to get away from?

This was not a simple pickup. This was a major firefight involving some of the best troops America can deploy.

And in Iran, mountains matter. Mountains are where hardened tunnel systems and buried facilities are built.

And then there’s another part of the story: the Iranian nuclear complex. We know there was open talk about removing the uranium by force if necessary. We also have claims from Iran saying the Americans tried to seize enriched uranium near Isfahan, lost two C-130 Hercules and several helicopters, and then later came diplomacy through Islamabad.

So I ask again:

Was this really just a rescue?

Or is that the cleaner public story for something bigger that went horribly wrong?

If this was a grab for uranium that failed, the media and the establishment would not say, “We tried and failed.” That’s bad for morale. That’s bad for the war. They would say, “We went in and rescued a pilot at no expense spared. His life meant everything.” It sounds heroic.

But I can’t ignore the pattern.

The size of the force sent in.

The level of resistance they encountered.

Fighting around mountains.

The loss of expensive, large aircraft filled initially with special forces.

The fact that uranium is in the area, and we do not know the exact coordinates, but we do know it is in that region.

You start putting all of those things together, and this does not look like a simple rescue.

It starts looking like something bigger that failed.

Governments do not like failure. They do not admit failure. They tidy it up. They reframe it. They give you the safer version. They give you the more wholesome, patriotic version.

Maybe it really was only a rescue.

Maybe.

But when a rescue mission starts to look like a small war, people are going to ask what is really going on there.

What do we have here? A young girl in stormy seas, with tears falling from wide, expressive eyes, sending a heartfelt message to her mom and dad. Apologising for being there, for being in danger, but this is something she had to do. You must understand. This is to protect America, to serve her nation.

It’s raw, it’s heartfelt, it screams patriotism. It’s the modern day version of Top Gun. A recruiting poster for the military, only with fresh faced pretty young girls, not Tom Cruise in a slightly too-tight T-shirt.

It was shared on YouTube and it’s popular, oh yes. It’s popular. Fifteen million views, three hundred thousand likes, and the comments, oh the comments. Twenty six thousand and rising.

People write:

“May God Almighty protect you from all dangers, you will return home safe. Have faith.”

“Can’t stand seeing her cry. May the universe protect her.”

“I am Indian ... Please stop the war.. War always gives pain.. not peace..”

“Thank you for your service and it won’t be too long, you will soon return home to continue to hug them personally.”

“Her voice makes it clear that it’s a war forced upon the army and people of the US.”

“We love you and thank you for your service and for taking care of us Americans. God bless America.”

Many of the comments come from India. They all portray a similar message: please stop the war. There are almost no comments saying the war is just, or a good idea.

A small section of commenters have latched onto what the majority have missed.
This girl isn’t real. She is AI constructed. There is no girl, no tears, no duty. Just deception, and most people fell for it. People are still wishing her well as I type this.

This is the dangerous future we now face. How do we distinguish reality from manufactured reality? The technology is improving at a frenetic pace and, as with so many new technologies, regulation is not. In many ways, regulation in this area is almost non existent. What psychological terrors exist in a world where you can’t actually discern what is real? Who would have imagined that David Cronenberg’s unsettling movie Videodrome, about a man losing touch with reality, programmed by shady executives, would ever come to resemble reality?

Is this a brave new world? Or is someone whispering, “Long live the new flesh”?