Our host, a charming bald geezer in a striking green bathrobe, two gold sovereigns the size of cricket balls on either pinky, is setting the scene.

Our fellow sweaters, a quality street tin of varying shapes and sizes, stand in a line in complete silence. No one quite knows what to expect. That’s because - as much as our dear leader verbally plonks us down in Canning Town, we’re actually in Edinburgh.

At the Summerhall.

I’m not unaware of the irony.

Fringe tourists standing in their swimming trunks in the artiest venue around for a play centring on the rough and ready charm of East London, and the power of its nostalgia. An American - naturally - breaks the silence with a customary: “this is awesome”. Calm it sweetpea, we’re not even in the sauna yet.

We’re told by Nic, the wonderful actor of this play, Bubble Schmeisis (Remixed), that once we’re in there, we can leave whenever we like. If it gets too hot, don’t you fret, just stand up awkwardly in front of everyone and walk out the door. No chance, I tell myself. Momma never raised no quitter. I will endure whatever I must to avoid social embarrassment and anxiety.

The play itself was brilliant. I leave feeling super refreshed, my mood boosted, my headache (a result of having had 7 pints the night before) has disappeared. I feel hopeful. All is well in the world. And more than that, I’ve learnt something new and enjoyed myself. Well worth 90 minutes of my life. As artistes adorn the Summerhall courtyard chainsmoking vogues, I whack on my tatty ralph cap and swagger out.

Inside, I’m secretly very proud of myself. No really I am. I’m a self-conscious kitten. The idea that I’d even suggest going to sit in a hot room and sweat half naked in front of a group of strangers would ordinarily be lunacy. We’d been torn between several options: a sauna rave at 10am (tempting but too early for a real raving experience - is there anything less cool than “raving” at the Summerhall); a chilled out sauna music experience; and this play about getting circumcised. There was only ever really one choice. But as we leave, I celebrate this newfound confidence. Or, if not confidence, at least the ability to push myself into uncomfortable positions and come out feeling like it was worth it.

The Fringe is a unique cultural experience, and a brilliant social experiment. Growing up, it was never something that I was conscious of. We were not a particularly artsy or cultured family. Not in a bad way. It just wasn’t our world. Even today, I attribute it to successive generations of our working class town being told it wasn’t for them. The ultra masculine world of industry had no place for self-expression and creativity. Not really. Not unless you were wealthy or educated (realistically one didn’t exist without the other).

But, one summer while holidaying up in Scotland, we drove into Edinburgh for a look about. By sheer co-incidence, the festival was in full flow. I remember it very clearly. Having now been and performed there, I have two conflicting memories. In my mind, I can picture the streets we walked down when we visited as a family. I see them in exaggerated terms. Everything is much bigger, it’s wild, colourful, vibrant. It’s everything the Fringe is but as if it’s on acid. I remember how intoxicating I found it. We didn’t see any shows, but we walked down the mile and saw street performers swallowing fire, and desperate young artists giving out flyers. I felt, as twee as it sounds, at home. I felt comfortable in a way I never really had before. I had always been taught to believe that creating art, through theatre or otherwise, was just a hobby. Almost a dirty little secret. Often, being the rugby playing lad, one that attracted ridicule and confusion (or just a shallow assumption that you had to be gay). Sports teachers would mock you when you had to miss a game for a rehearsal.

No one understood, and very few even pretended to try to. Growing up, my creativity was my greatest internal gift and also the biggest struggle. It became a source of confidence, and crippling insecurity. It’s once I’ve tried to reconcile most of my life. But let’s be honest, standing on a stage, the lights focused on you, making a room full of strangers laugh? That’s magic. It’s a drug. Why else would we keep chasing it.

But in that moment, it was as if my eyes were opened. Having flyered myself on the Mile, I realise that the image I cherish from my childhood was something approaching fantasy, it was so heightened. Like Harry Potter seeing Diagon Alley for the first time. Genuinely. Even today.

It’s a special place to me.

We never returned to it after that trip. The first show I ever saw up there was my own. I remember at the end of the month, having had a brilliant month with even more brilliant people, having completed a successful run, tipsily climbing Arthur’s Seat in the pitch black to see the sunrise. The pride I felt of how far I’d come. As the sun rose, and I sat with my friends, I’d made that little kid that walked down the Mile ten years earlier proud. And even today, as we’re all over the place doing different things, we’ll always have that moment together. It’s silly, but it’s true.

I saw Krapp’s Last Tape while I was up there, and it’s what got this whole piece going. It’s absurd and whacky, as Beckett tends to be, but underneath that it’s about memory. About isolation. About the strange beauty of capturing a moment and understanding, often too late, how precious it was. That’s what the Fringe is to me.

And returning, seeing shows ranging from incredibly talented young sketch comedians, to experienced stand-ups at the top of their game, it’s just a vibrant place of comfort. Standing in a bar with a Tennent’s in hand, meeting strangers, getting that swagger back, the one that belongs to the person I actually am when nobody’s watching too closely. It makes me feel like myself in a way few places do. And showing it to people I love, sharing something that feels entirely mine, that’s the bit that makes it home. It’s the place my memories live.

If I end up like Krapp one day, the mad old sod hunched over his reel-to-reel, listening back to the man he used to be, the Fringe will be one of the most well-worn tapes on the shelf. Which is exactly why it matters that we don’t let it become something only some people can afford to remember. Prices keep climbing, and working-class artists, the ones who need somewhere like this most, are being priced straight out of it. If we don’t fight to keep it sustainable, we’re not just losing a festival. We’re losing the thing that let a kid from a town like mine believe, for the first time, that this world might actually be his too.

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There is an assumption, one we often thrust onto ourselves, that to transform is good. The caterpillar becomes the butterfly. The frog becomes the prince. But sometimes, often almost, to transform is simply to adapt, to mould to a new set of circumstances. Our anxiety to associate change with growth smites the core of human identity: our fallibility. Our vulnerability. The quirks and chinks in the armour are what define us, make us attractive, different.

There have been many times in my life where I have been transformed. Perhaps a result of my own tendency for glass-half-empty thinking, my strongest recollections of change come not from my own desire to be different, but the world around me pushing forward a conflicting philosophy.

Growing up, I knew my state of self hinged on creativity. On performing. It provided rare moments of unusual solitude and something nearing contentment. Being on stage, being in a drama class doing silly voices and creating sketches, made me feel whole. As if I was where I’d belong. I’d go to sleep excited about reading Shakespeare in class, about rehearsing for the school play. Singing, acting, messing about, it was my safe place. Amongst the academic pressure I put on myself, it was a release valve for the stress and teenage angst, the self-comparison and the awkwardness of “transforming” in a changing body. It was what I felt I was supposed to do. And when push came to shove, it was a world others determined was not for people like me. When drama school seemed appealing, they sought to undermine it, to push for a more linear future. With time, that love and confidence dissipated slightly. It remained, for sure, but it was brittle. Law School beckoned because it felt safer. Less of a struggle. Less rejection, and more space to grow.

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Trusting those around me, I was transformed into someone different. I don’t begrudge or resent their thought process. It is understandable for working-class parents to be sceptical of a kid with no money wanting to be an actor. But others, those with a more rounded view of the world, could have pushed me on more. What is life if not a constant quest to realise dreams. Perhaps that’s where I go all wrong.

At Law School, I evolved into a shell of my former self. I enjoyed the academic rigour, the reading, the debates. Debating became my only outlet in many ways. In that first year I found my new independence difficult, still bound by the conventions of a regimented school that preferred discipline and order to the waviness of adult life. I shut myself away. Retreated into a shell. Friends were hard to come by, interactions increasingly awkward. At social events, if I went, I stood apart with a pint of coke, scared of drinking alcohol and loosening up. I used to have this crazy belief that if I stood in the corner but kept a strong smile, people would somehow think I was enigmatic, cool, different. I’m sure, looking back, they saw a kid scared of his own shadow. I became averse to fun. It became a year of wasted opportunity, one that even now is tinged with sadness. Not one I’m ungrateful for. In the end it made me a better, rounder, more complicated person, but it lingers.

In one seminar, I remember it vividly. A new lecturer had chosen aggression as his method of choice. He set aside the reading we’d prepared and went round the room instead, cold, one name at a time, the random questions landing like target practice. I watched him get closer. Then it was my turn, and I had nothing. Not because I hadn’t done the work, he was shooting from the hip, looking to assert his own intelligence over a bunch of freshers. I don’t remember what I said. I remember the silence after, and him moving on to the next name as if I hadn’t spoken at all. I left when the seminar ended and didn’t go back. Not the following week, not the week after that. For an entire term.

There is a temptation to view thoughts like these as a self-aggrandising quest for pity. Or, worse, as the inner workings of a sad man. No. We all carry sadness within us. Some just suppress it more easily. But tucking it away doesn’t remove it. It is not as binary as happy or sad, settled or unsettled. It’s embracing the nuance. The complexity of our being, and accepting the warts and marks we pick up along the way. There is no single version of ourselves.

When I eventually graduated, I felt an enormous pride in myself. I had spent the second half of that degree working hard to be better, and had been doing a great job. Then covid came along, my progress halted, and I was forced to pivot again. In those years I focused on my work, studied hard, and locked in. Transformed, again, by something other than my own hand.

I’m trying to write a script at the minute that I think could evolve into an interesting short film. It’s a monologue set in an old photo booth. In my mind it’s relatively original, though I concede it’s entirely possible it’s just another done idea. But I find the concept interesting. In a fotoautomat, an analogue photobooth where what’s caught is what’s printed, we transform across four separate photographs. We feel like we have to, so as not to waste the individual prints, knowing instinctively that we don’t get the chance to do it again, or to change what’s been captured.

Andy Warhol once said something like: a picture never changes, even if the people in it do. If we change even in the space between the photos themselves, then there is an innate nostalgia to a photograph, especially one that’s analogue, black and white. A moment captured permanently. A memento of a former self. Evidentiary transformation.

I could sit and wax lyrical on the individual moments where I’ve noticed I’ve changed. I’d do so knowing full well there are a million more where I wasn’t even aware of it happening. Some done by others, some by myself. My successes, my mistakes, my shortcomings and my strength of character. Simply forging on. Trudging through the mud with the promise that an unspoiled orchard lies ahead.

I change with the seasons, too. As the green of the trees turns to copper and yellow, I prepare myself for new horizons, knowing that whatever I lose along the way will only survive as a snapshot, its permanence printed on a changing brain.

To understand that change is necessary does not mean it has to be wholly happy. We must accept it as the wormhole of living, of being. That each change brings with it a new opportunity: our constant transformation. Life is not happy or sad. It is an amalgam of emotions, fear, and excitement, that even we don’t fully understand. We must embrace the ride, openly.

The sun went down as I crossed the hill, and the town lit up, the world got still. I’m learning to fly, but I ain’t got wings. We adapt and we evolve. We’re all lost boys.

It was in Seaton Delaval where Holly and I had our Withnail & I moment.

Campaigning for the eventual winner, Emma Foody MP - and mainly motivated by a genuine enthusiasm to unseat the tory incumbent whom I had ashamedly “bullied” on facebook by fact checking his posts, Holly and I parked up on a random seat in a random sleepy community in the sodding rain. No activists in sight. No one in sight actually. The cul-de-sac was like a ghost town. We had been given very basic instructions of where the doorknocking would take place. We knew we’d be meeting near one of the adjoining entrances to the middle school that sat in the very centre of the estate. The only issue being that there were at least six entrances. We sat in the car debating whether to just sack it off and call it a day. To head to granny’s for the comfort of a cup of tea and a fish finger sandwich. But we, believing in the mission - and my own ambition to build something resembling experience to be hired by the enormous influx of Labour MPs following the landslide, decided to stick around and fight the good fight. Readers note: of all of the Labour MPs who were newly elected, none of them - not a single sausage - decided to progress my application beyond its initial toss into the bin. I’m over it…

So we whacked out our brollies, tracked down our red umbrella’d comrades and got to work, knock knock knocking on Delaval doors. It’s telling that neither Holly or I were really campaigning for Keir Starmer. Even then, Starmer felt almost amoebic in his politics; ill-defined and wet but safe enough to do what needed to be done to remove a tory government which had made a mockery of Britain. We often forget just how ridiculous those last few years of the tory government were; we suffer from political amnesia - no doubt a result of our increasingly short-form and partisan media echo system. And so together, like the twins from The Shining, Holly and I fought the good fight fielding questions from our local constituents. I say our constituents but actually this wasn’t our seat anymore. It had been. But under the new remapping, Blyth actually fell outside of it. Given there was no electoral history for this seat’s amalgam, and the fact my own seat was now going to be effortlessly won by the “Geordie McGeordie sausage roll I was a miner I love Bedlington Terriers” candidate, my time felt better spent here.

It was unbelievably wet. I remember standing on the doorstep, barbour jacket and my tatty OG Ralph Lauren bear cap on (you know the one that was black but is now three shades of brown and is frayed at the front - I really was giving man of the people), just dripping. Holly made us keyrings of the Withnail & I still, to remind us of the day we turned out for democracy.

And so as Keir Starmer prepares to exit No.10 tomorrow, and the “King of the North” ascends the throne (give me strength), it’s that moment in a council estate in North Tyneside that comes to mind. It’s the first time in my life I actually remember Labour winning an election. Sure I was alive during the Blair years, but I don’t remember anything until 2010. Since then, our record has been…disappointing.

I stayed up on Election Night, and was struck even then by the lack of enthusiasm and airtime the media gave to Labour. The story, from the moment the exit poll dropped, was about Reform and how Starmer was riding a wave of apathy to enter Downing Street. I noted at the time how strange I found that. Even today, I don’t believe they’d have done that if a Tory had been projected to win; I’m almost certain they wouldn’t actually.

When Starmer entered No.10, I was on my sofa. With the Union Jacks and waves of activists and supporters surrounding the lane into Downing Street - a nod to Blair - I was struck by how well choreographed it was. I felt the momentary pangs of hope. Maybe the grown ups were back in charge. Maybe.

I felt hope in that moment not necessarily for Keir Starmer, but for the movement - a movement I deeply care for. In times of party crisis - and boy are they frequent - friends often tell me that they’re done with the party and it’s unflinching insistence on self-destruction.

As the father of self-destruction myself, I remind them of the party’s history and the giants that paved the way, including ones I don’t politically agree with such as Tony Benn. It’s an argument they quickly dismiss. Nostalgia gets us nowhere if we’re unprepared to govern. A new party, or a new movement is required. I couldn’t disagree more.

Labour is a frustrating movement, and there is seldom any joy in being a left-leaning politico. In-fighting is common, disunity is a given, and a lack of real-world experience often drives its fringe policy units and edgy think tanks - the types who went to Oxbridge, have lived in London since graduating, and just assume they must be right. But in spite of all that, that nostalgia, the history of our party - of Attlee, Wilson, Kinnock, Keir Hardie, all of them, the miner’s strike and taking the fight to Thatcher (even if electorally unsuccessful), it means something to me.

That history is an important part of my own political identity. In fact, it’s a part of my identity writ large. We’re all products of our socio-economic surroundings, often spanning generations. That’s what the party is and its why, in spite of the enormous electoral success of the Tory party, and it’s own long but relatively twee history, Labour endures. It’s messy because of it’s history and what it stands to fight for. It’s always been a movement, and as much as it can make steam come from my ears, it’s something I do respect. It’s also why, for all of the hype of Reform and the buckets of cash they’ve got streaming into their coffers, I don’t believe they will ever truly defeat us: providing we refuse to forget who we are.

In Government, under Starmer, we forgot who we are. Not necessarily in policy terms, but in vibes.

In 2010, as a weird 11 year old, I learnt the importance of the vibe economy in politics. I believe it’s all vibes. It’s why Andy Burnham - despite having usurped the king, and having been crowned without any real legitimacy outside of the party, will become PM tomorrow.

It’s why in spite of the fact he has a history of being a failed leadership candidate and renowned people pleaser who has consistently failed to have a coherent vision supported by actual policy, he remains popular and may well be the right man for the moment.

That sounds bizarre.

I have real issues with Burnham. I don’t believe that there is such thing as Burnhamism beyond some yellow buses in Manchester. I imagine most of it is smoke and mirrors and some disciplined spin under relatively soft media scrutiny. Time will tell whether he can handle the heat. But there is a world in which the policy simply no longer matters. Does anyone in the real world actually care that he wants to raise international aid spending to 0.7% of GDP in spite of the fact we’ve got no bloody money? Honestly, probably not. People didn’t hate Starmer primarily for his policy; they hated him because he was Keir Starmer and was so vacuous that there was nothing to cling to. People don’t even really know why they dislike him so much, they just do. I wonder if we’re in the post-policy world. We’re definitely beyond the deliverism era. Trump has proven that you don’t need any substantive policy as long as you’re entertaining.

Maybe I’m high on my own supply, maybe I’ve drank the Kool-Aid, but did people ever really care about policy? When your news source is less and less from traditional sources like the news, and increasingly just tiktok and twitter, then you won’t even know what the policy is. They support Reform with a die-hard zeal, but it’s a shell without any actual substance. What if - and this reflects Britain’s genuine frailty - vibes are the only important metrics in our current landscape. Burnham is popular because he seems normal(ish). He drinks pints, likes football, and reminds us on the daily how much he loves The Smiths. He’s a shell of a man too in fairness. If he wasn’t a politician - and therefore held to ordinary standards - he’d be really, really boring. Worse than that, if Burnham is the metric of the average man, it’s telling that if you threw him into a random pub in the Red Wall, he’d probably stick out like a sore thumb. Burnham gives the sort of bloke who sits with your granddad in the corner and drinks bitter - that sort of normal, not actual pub dad normal. Maybe that’s just me. Burnham - and maybe this is harsh - is a posh person’s idea of a working-class, ordinary Northerner.

But honestly, in our political environment, that might be enough (for a little bit).

I don’t think Burnham fixes any of this. He inherits an economy with no money in it, a party that’s spent two years eating itself, and a Reform machine that isn’t going anywhere just because the guy at the top has changed. The polling bump he’ll get is a honeymoon, not a mandate, and honeymoons end fast in this country now. Ask Starmer.

The grass always looks greener when you’re stood in the mud looking at someone else’s lawn. Burnham looks appealing right now because he isn’t currently responsible for anything. Give him six months in the job and see how many people are still talking about pints and The Smiths.

But I’ll give him this. Whatever else he is, he’s spent a decade actually running something, and you can tell. He knows what a bus route costs and who it’s for, in a way most of the Cabinet never will. Maybe that’s a low bar. It’s still a bar most of them haven’t cleared. If there’s a version of this that goes well, it’s less about Burnhamism and more about someone in Downing Street who’s occasionally been in a room with people who aren’t other politicians and he’s going to have to channel that (it’s also alarming when he’s a career politician).

So yes we’re a real mess. The country is real mess. A party that can’t stop tripping over itself, a leader nobody quite trusts yet including me, and a country that’s forgotten what it wants from either of us. But we’re still here, still knocking on doors in the rain for reasons that outlast whoever’s in charge. That’s got to count for something. Maybe not much. But something.

Leaving the small talk to Michael, I dismiss pleasantries and scan my eyes across the titles: Baldwin, Graham Greene, Kafka, Camus, Woolf. A performative male’s eden. Books on Rothko, Kandinsky, Matisse. “An impressive collection”, I coolly interject, not looking at my host. A comment driven by respect, but with the knowing confidence of my own literary knowledge. “You can always tell who the best guests are depending on where they look first…if it’s bookshelf, you know you’re in for a winner”. One nil. We’ve started well.

Buzzing from my pyrrhic victory, I slide my birkenstocks across the rug and ease effortlessly into the armchair I’ve no plans to vacate.

“Tea and cake, boys?” says our gracious host. A response is not required. A quiet nod. A knowing nod. We are kin. She exits with the cool confidence of a master baker.

I place one leg over another - the only way to sit on an armchair of this stature. This moment needs meeting. I am prepared. Come what may.

Served on a wooden tray with the tiny stains of sticky teacups, our manna arrives. The tea, rich, well brewed is served in quirky ceramic mugs. I add a splash of milk and prepare myself for 20 minutes of uninterrupted bliss. The cake, Sara’s own quirky adventure, is rhubarb - grown less than twenty steps from us, naturally. With a tiny cake fork, I get to work. The main body, much like a Victoria sponge, is moist and amply sweet. The rhubarb, forming the base, is just bitter enough to form a perfect sweet-sour balance. This is the life of an adventurer; a Columbusian expedition into the heart of the culinary wild. I am at one. I have found equilibrium. I exit my body and float amongst atoms. I am everywhere. I am interplanetary. I have become celestial.

Our adventure, much like Lewis and Clark, began with a simple impulse: we need to get away. The hustle and bustle of city life (in Newcastle…) is taking its toll. I cannot cope with the corporate grind of my job in the arts. No more metro rides. No more Tesco meal deals. I must escape to the country.

And so, I booked our trip. 45 minutes from Newcastle in the Northumbrian border with Cumbria. Allendale. A village of two pubs - which are direct neighbours. One shop. At the back of a farm accessed by cattle grid, rocky uneven terrain, and sheep on the road, we reach the breathtaking cottage that will become our home. A winding path surrounded by trees leads down to the glorious cottage-cum-art-studio-cum-BnB. It’s exactly the sort of thing you imagine for a countryside retreat. It is perfect.

On the way, between ad breaks in our New Statesman podcast listening, Michael and I have a heart to heart. We discuss the unfortunate reality of post-graduate life. The dwindling job market, an opportunity vacuum, and the undeniable role that privilege and wealth continue to play in straddling them - to an extent I’m not sure we fully address. He expresses feelings of stagnation, of fatigue and a need for more. For adventure. For moments. I agree. Unequivocally. I begin proselytising. I lecture with the gusto of man with all the wisdom in the known world. I’m cooking. I take his feelings and I run with them. He should immediately turn to excitement and drama. He should immediately flee to the continent, smoke like a chimney and write the next great novel. He should move to London, instantly make friends and run off into the sunset of daring do. It is a must. An imperative. He must chase moments. His future will depend on it. He who dares win. We never finish the NS podcast, but who gives a damn. Onwards valiant soldier.

And so we reach our destination. A quiet cottage in the middle of nowhere, where our only other company is a 65 year old woman, and the nation of rabbits that jump about the joint. Adventure.

Our initial cynicism as to the enjoyment of the weekend quickly dissipates. In our host, we find a friend. Someone to talk to deeply about all manner of things. To connect as humans with different lived experiences. We relax through discussion, and challenge our own views on topics through healthy debate and cups of tea. We walk, we enjoy the fresh air and the rolling hills, and get to appreciate the beauty of my home county. We rest. We take a breath. We journal, and watch no television. We read, we write, and remember the things that make us feel happy and content and passionate.

We leave with a tinge of sadness, and a renewed vigour. That whatever the stress of day to day life may feel like, it’s important to take a breather. That creativity comes from seeing all the different corners of the country, and the world. That we are not defined by the position we find ourselves in in our mid twenties. That anything can happen, and that that is the adventure. The unknown is the excitement.

It’s a lesson for us all.

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Things Can Only Get Better.

The anthem of New Labour. 1997’s certified banger. Even now we associate it with the message of change that Blair embodied upon his ascension to power. Blair, the last Labour Prime Minister to win re-election, and perhaps more embarrassingly, the last to enjoy a full term in office.

There was, then, a certain irony in the aged D:Ream standing on a makeshift stage on the North East coastline, sound systems struggling to compete with the noise coming off the sea. The muffled chimes of their underrated classic ringing out over a crowd of voters breathtakingly apathetic towards the Labour Party, many of whom proudly declare their admiration for Farage’s one-man-band, Reform UK.

And it got me thinking. When I was a kid, and it’ll become clear quite quickly what sort of kid I was, I would lie in bed at night and think up political speeches. I’d imagine myself on the steps of Downing Street giving my first address; my final address. I’d imagine myself facing down other party leaders, or doing a Question Time debate in front of a live audience.

I’d doze off wondering what I would say, how I would connect with people. At the time it felt important. I had this inherent fascination with communication, with how best to actually land a message. As time has passed, and social media has completely fractured our political arena, I realised that what felt like a childhood habit was actually an invaluable skill. One our leaders mostly seem to lack.

I didn’t do it because twelve-year-old Jay chased high office, or had any interest in a career in professional politics. I did it because I’ve always felt an intense connection to how politics shapes our communities, and to the importance of speaking truth to power.

It sounds twee, I know. But I always felt, growing up, as though I had been given an opportunity I perhaps shouldn’t have had based solely on my background.

I knew from an early age that I was bright. I knew I’d be the first in my entire extended family to go to university. I felt I had been given the chance to break free from the obstacles my class background typically presented, and with that came a real sense of responsibility, egotistical as it might sound, to make good for my family, to make them proud, to make something of my life for them.

Politics always felt most central to that, because it was a unifier: something that touched all of us. My grandfathers were both striking miners, proud ones. When they had no money and mouths to feed, they didn’t back down. They believed in principle and decency, and in the right of everyone, whoever you are, to be given a fair shot. They believed that government didn’t care about the working class, or those outside London; that the North East was a forgotten land, left to rot by successive governments time and time again.

I’m proud that since the creation of the new North East Mayoral Combined Authority, our representative, a Labour one, has shown an unprecedented and dynamic interest in turning the region into a national powerhouse. The future looks genuinely bright here.

But for my grandparents, and my parents, opportunity was simply fictional, something for other people. I’ve written before about my granddad Terry, my very first best friend, whom I still love and miss dearly, and who drives me in everything I do. He died without ever having been on an aeroplane; without ever having been abroad; without ever having really left the region. Blyth was his kingdom, and one he never really left.

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On Friday morning, when it became clear Andy Burnham had won a handy by-election victory, it was also immediately clear that Starmer would not last the week. From the moment the results were read in Makerfield, Starmer was brown bread, and Burnham was guaranteed a coronation to the Labour leadership, and to Number 10.

Andy Burnham. Now I like Burnham. I voted for him in the 2015 leadership election, where he went from nailed-on favourite to being embarrassingly defeated by rank outsider Corbyn. Burnham is an affable, well-meaning politician. A nice bloke, I’m sure. I wish him the absolute best, and genuinely hope that he can prove the doubters wrong and enact real, lasting change in Britain. Unfortunately, in my gut, I feel a sense of impending doom. To me, Burnham is a man without a real ideology. And however much people may wish to argue that “Manchesterism” is somehow one, we need to be clear that it is not. What even is it? Beyond yellow buses, we’re just not sure. And that’s not a slight on Burnham. By all metrics, he has been a brilliant and effective Metro Mayor, but being PM in this political environment is different gravy. My fear, and it’s something I really don’t want to happen, is that the wheels come off Burnham’s government bus much quicker than we think.

This moment in our political history requires something very, very unique. It needs an anti-hero. Someone with the strength of character to cut through the media and the noise and be honest with the public. My granny put it perfectly when we last spoke: we don’t want nice leaders, we want strong ones, whether we like their personality or not. Starmer is a nice man, but an appallingly poor politician. Burnham, also a nice man whose vibe seems to lack any real bite, may well be heading for the same fate. The polo shirts and blokey dad energy is all well and good, but in my view it’s actually ineffective. If I go around Blyth looking for a blokey man who likes a pint and the football, I don’t find Andy Burnham; I see a man cosplaying as someone he isn’t. Someone who wants to be popular. And leaders like that rarely have the courage to dismantle the whole system and rebuild it in spite of all the noise. Burnham is, at most, going to have a few years to complete his mission in government. Re-election is nothing more than a fantasy. The stakes couldn’t be higher. We are not behaving like a serious country. We are digging our own graves.

And so, last night, as I sat in bed, I reverted to my childhood tradition and thought about what I would say if I were standing at a podium outside that famous black door.

Firstly, I’d say that the country is fundamentally broken.

The sooner we admit that, the better.

I’d say that no one leader is capable of solving all of our problems.

I’d make absolutely clear that the social contract is broken. That the relationship between the public and its leaders is interrupted by middlemen: the media, and other political leaders.

Standing at that podium, I’d make a promise to be honest and direct. That when asked gotcha questions by journalists, I’d answer them honestly, without fear that the media, big tech and other politicians would clip and manipulate my words to suit their own aims. We need to accept that our media no longer seeks to impart the truth; media is now money. Profit over truthtelling. We need to accept that however brilliant many of our political journalists are, their organisations are feeling the squeeze, and there is pressure to turn political news into entertainment, to maintain a readership or viewership. We need to accept that at certain outlets, pundits are deeply political and cannot be objective. We need to accept that the BBC is so terrified of a Reform government coming after it that it has become hesitant in its coverage. Fake bots on Twitter and TikTok are looking to manipulate how you think. They want chaos. They want disruption. Because from that chaos, they can profit. At your expense.

And so I’d ask the British public to enter into a new social contract, where whatever we think of each other, we try to cut out the middlemen. We talk to each other.

My flagship programme in my first hundred days would be a national tour of towns across the UK. Towns a Prime Minister has never visited before. We’d use town halls and churches to have a conversation for a couple of hours. Anyone could attend. No party bunting, no flashy lights, no spectacle. Uncomfortable chairs, tea in paper cups. We’d sit and chat. Not argue. We’d listen to each other. Everyone would have their opportunity to speak and be heard. Twee? Potentially.

I’d push back against the narrative that there’s nothing to be positive about in Britain. I’d admit that morale is low and pessimism is high, that things are far from where they should be and that we need radical change. But that amongst all of that, we remain an attractive country with unique sources of pride. Wimbledon. Test match cricket at Lord’s. The Edinburgh Fringe. The Cornish coastline. The sound of fifty thousand Welsh fans singing the anthem in the cauldron of the Millennium Stadium with the roof closed. That might sound like the Hugh Grant speech in Love Actually, but we need reminding that in Britain, there’s no shortage of national pride, actually.

I’d talk about infrastructure. Because the truth is, we have forgotten how to build things in this country. Government contracts have ballooned so far beyond any reasonable cost that we have simply accepted highway robbery as the norm. We shouldn’t. I’d make a promise, a simple one: we will actually build things. On time. To budget. Without burning through public money on consultants, overruns and managed decline dressed up as due process. Look at what China and the United States can do. Bridges erected in days. Infrastructure delivered at pace and at scale. In Britain, we can’t build a railway extension without a decade of inquiries and a bill that doubles before the first brick is laid. That has to end. Government contracts should not come at a premium. The public purse is not a trough. And I’d say that clearly, to the people who profit from that culture, as much as to the people who suffer from it.

I’d move out of Number 10. Not permanently, not symbolically, but practically. It is a beautiful, historic building and it should remain the official residence, the place to receive guests, to host, to represent the country with the dignity that deserves. But as a functioning government office, it is a relic. A rabbit warren of listed rooms and cramped corridors that no serious modern operation should be running a country from. The Prime Minister and his team need an actual, modern workspace. One built for the demands of twenty-first century government. The fact that we cling to Number 10 as an operational headquarters says something about us: that we are more interested in the theatre of power than the exercise of it.

I’d fix Parliament. Not review it, not commission another report about it, not kick the can down the road for the fifteenth consecutive year. Fix it. The Palace of Westminster is an inferno waiting to happen, and every Prime Minister who has looked the other way has gambled with a building that belongs not to politicians but to the country. I wouldn’t let my ego get in the way. I wouldn’t be precious about being the Prime Minister who never sat in the Commons chamber during restoration. So what? Parliament is Britain at its absolute best. The history, the theatre, the tradition, the weight of everything that has been decided within those walls. We cannot lose it. We will not lose it. And any leader who has prioritised their own legacy over its survival should be ashamed of themselves.

Finally, I’d make clear that I refuse to make promises I can’t keep. We’ve entered a political culture where politicians who know full well they’ll never hold power make outlandish promises precisely because they’re popular. The truth isn’t an important enough consideration anymore. I’d say I have more respect for the British people than that. That, like it or loathe it, I’d be direct, honest, and unflinching in my commitment to levelling up the nation.

And then I’d try to get some sleep.

Because the truth is, none of this is really about what I would do. It’s about what we need someone to do, and the creeping, uncomfortable feeling that nobody is coming. That we are waiting for a leader who understands that Britain doesn’t need managing; it needs rebuilding, from the foundations up, with honesty and without vanity. Someone who can stand at that door and mean it.

On a makeshift stage on the Northumberland coast, D:Ream told us things can only get better. I hope they’re right. But standing here, watching the waves, I’m not so sure we’ve hit the bottom yet.

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My earliest political memory is the 2010 general election, and especially that first leaders’ debate between Brown, Cameron, and Clegg. I sat with my grandad, working through a bag of Haribo Starmix, fixated on the three men and how differently they carried themselves. I believe, to this day, that I was among the youngest victims of Cleggmania. Not because I understood his policies. I just dug his vibe. I shrugged this off for years as childish naivety. Now I think I was actually onto something: in British politics, vibes are everything.

On the morning the results came in I was close to heartbreak that Clegg would not be our next prime minister. I ate my Special K, did up my green and white tie, and moped off for another day of Year 7.

I’ve never had much doubt about which party I felt closest to. My family had voted Labour for generations, probably since its founding. As a family of coal miners, we were working people, and the only party that ever promised to stand up for us was, apparently, the Labour Party. We stuck with them through it all. Through the 1980s and early 1990s, when Labour seemed determined to do everything it could to stay out of Number 10. That had real consequences: three election wins for Margaret Thatcher, the miners’ strike. Both of my grandads were striking miners, right to the end. Their families, their friends, their communities lived on the breadline in the name of principle. Labour was for us. The rest simply weren’t.

A hundred years ago this week the General Strike was in full swing. Workers across the country had walked out behind the miners. On Tyneside the docks went quiet as ordinary people pleaded for a fair shot. A decade later two hundred men walked from Jarrow to London asking for the right to work, to be respected, and were ignored. I think about my grandads whenever I think about those things. They came along later, 1984 not 1926, but the story was the same: working people asking for fairness, getting nothing. My family lived it. Labour was supposed to be the answer to that. For a long time, we believed it was.

On Thursday, Labour’s grip on Tyne and Wear collapsed. In Sunderland, Reform won 58 of the 75 council seats, also taking Gateshead and South Tyneside. In Newcastle, Labour was reduced to two councillors. A hundred years after the strike, ninety after Jarrow, the North East has just told the Labour Party it isn’t theirs any more.

Panic stations.

This is not uniquely British. In France, a quarter of voters aged eighteen to twenty-four backed Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in the first round of the 2024 legislative elections, more than double the figure from two years earlier. In America, Trump’s contempt for institutions, his sneering at expertise, found an audience because it mirrored what millions already felt. The message is simple: the system is broken, the people running it look down on you. It travels.

In the North East, it has a name. Reform. Speak to people in Blyth, in Ashington, and Reform comes up not with embarrassment but with enthusiasm. Not because anyone has carefully weighed its policies, but because it has mastered the art of reflecting anger back at those who feel it. In the 2024 general election, Reform came second in the vast majority of North East constituencies, with vote shares of nearly 30% in some of the region’s most deprived seats. That is not a protest vote. That is a structural shift.

The people at the top of Reform do not share the lived experience of the communities they are courting. They are not from Blyth. What they have done is identify a wound and press on it, channelling genuine anger away from the structures that caused it and toward those who are even more marginalised. It is a confidence trick. And it is working.

Labour’s response, today, was to appoint Gordon Brown as a special envoy on global finance. Brown, whose government lost the 2010 election. Brown, who has not held office in sixteen years. A former prime minister walked back through the door of Downing Street as a gesture, while Tyneside sent a message that could not be clearer. One Labour MP called it “pure gimmick vibe.” They were not wrong.

This is the problem in miniature. Labour keeps looking backwards for answers that only exist in the future. It reaches for familiar names rather than confront the uncomfortable question of why it is losing people it has always taken for granted.

The problem runs deeper than one appointment. Labour has a genuine talent deficit. The generation that should be coming through, the voices that should be defining what the party stands for in the 2030s, are largely absent from the conversation. The party is not producing them, and it is not making room for them. What it is producing is internal division, because a party that does not know what it stands for will always end up fighting with itself. That division is costing it on both flanks. On the right, to Reform, which at least offers certainty and anger. On the left, to the Greens, who at least offer a coherent idea of what they want the future to look like. Labour, caught between them, offers neither. It is being eaten from both sides by parties that know exactly what they are.

Starmer should go. Most people paying attention know it, and thirty Labour MPs have now said so publicly. The difficulty is that there is no obvious person waiting to take over. Andy Burnham’s name is being discussed, as are Angela Rayner’s and Wes Streeting’s. But the conversation itself reveals the problem. These are not new voices. They are not a generational break. They are the next tier of the same project, carrying the same uncertainties about what the party is actually for. Labour is not short of potential successors. It is short of a successor who can answer that question. And until it can answer it, Starmer stays, because removing him without knowing what comes next is a risk nobody is quite ready to take.

If it is serious about winning these places back, Labour needs to put its leaders on the ground. In Blyth, in Hartlepool, in Sunderland. Taking arguments to doorsteps, absorbing the anger, staying anyway. It needs to reclaim the spaces where community once lived: church halls, working men’s clubs, open forums where people can speak and be heard rather than managed. It needs to invest in vocational training, in apprenticeships, in clean industry. Real jobs, anchored in real communities, building the infrastructure of a future economy in the places that powered the last one. It needs to build homes. It needs a credible, visible plan on the cost of living that proves government is genuinely trying, rather than managing decline from a distance.

None of this may be enough to prevent a Reform government. That possibility is real, and anyone who dismisses it is not paying close enough attention. But the alternative, to shrug, to retreat, to decide that these communities are beyond reach, is not just a political failure. It is a moral one.

The people of Tyne and Wear are not a problem to be solved. They are people, with legitimate grievances, real talent, and lives that deserve more than they have been given. The question is whether anyone in the Labour Party is willing to listen. Not to manage these communities, not to dismiss them, but to change the conditions that made them so angry in the first place. That is the fight. And looking at the wreckage of Thursday night, and at Gordon Brown walking back into Downing Street this morning, Labour is currently losing it.

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It’s a great book, one that balances humour with his raw and razor sharp wit, unpicking his life in the kitchen and the experiences that made him.

It’s his second book, though, A Cook’s Tour, which in my view, offers a much more interesting insight into the man and his worldview. It’s a lesser book by comparison. It’s less sharp. Much more verbose, and at times meandering. And yet, by centring its themes around the food which makes - or defines - certain cultures and countries, it gives a much more cutting insight into a nation’s people, and their habits.

I took it to Lisbon - my most recent foreign excursion - for two reasons: to look cool; and to focus my own interpretation of Portugal and the people that make it. Brits abroad so often rush to whichever Irish Bar is in the tourist district, and feast on pizza irrespective of which country they’ve spent 2 hours in a passport queue to get into.

I’m no cook. My chicken pesto pasta is a thing of beauty. My Thai green curry hinges on the flavour of whichever paste I choose to lob in. I make a mean omelette, but Michael’s eggs put them to shame (they’re fantastic).

Armed with this book in the side pocket of my cream cargos, and with Patti Smith’s Just Kids (my Milan read) tucked under Michael’s arms, I’m confident we achieved our first objective - especially with my new orange lense sunglasses, and Von Dutch hat.

I’m also no foodie. My inner circle joke that if a menu does not include turkey dinosaurs, I’m heading for the door. It’s rude, untrue, and - don’t tell them I said it - quite funny.

But I made a concerted effort in Lisbon to try and assimilate and embrace the strange cuisines of my new Portuguese brothers.

I’d highly recommend Lisbon. It’s a vibrant, and warm city. It’s energy is safe, but fun, and it’s culture fizzes in its restaurants, bars and cafes.

On our first night, we went to a restaurant called O Velho Eurico. Very trendy, and with drawings and squiggles from its customers dotted insight and out. On arrival, you’re met with a queue of people from all over, but especially Lisbon locals - an important sign that you’re not in another tourist trap. Your name, if you’re lucky to make it on the list, is written in chalk on a board at the door, and you wait - oh boy do you wait - for a table to become available. While you wait, you might fancy a carafe of wine; a light, very drinkable Portuguese number. It goes down well, especially accompanied by a pack of Reds (if you’re into that sort of thing). As you chain smoke and drink, you could perch against a nearby tree, one leg over the over, aura farming for passersby. You will most likely avoid conversations with your fellow hungry brothers, not because you’re adverse to talking to them, but because American tourists have already implanted themselves into every prospective conversation, to whinge, moan and complain about the wait at a restaurant that famously takes ages to enter. Ah the yanks.

You might even have a little starter, served from the outside window to keep your strength up. Perhaps it is a piglet empanada, served in a jus which strongly resembles bisto gravy. Crispy on the outside, it’s a real sensation. Dragging it’s edges along the rich, meaty gravy, it’s a real winner. It strongly resembles a Greggs’ Sausage Roll, capturing all of the beauty of a real north east delicacy.

After two hours, you’ll finally get your table. It’s likely approaching your bedtime, and you’re flagging from wine and carcinogens. The kitchen is closing. Order in a flash. Butter beans, cod fishcake, tuna steak in a broth style sauce, beef cheek, more wine. It’s (mostly) delicious. Butter beans somewhat resemble the expensive butter beer served at Harry Potter studios in London. It’s a fabulous experience. The waiter - very friendly - sneaks you a sharpie pen to discreetly write a message on a free wall tile. You write that the piglet empanada is just a sausage roll, forever immortalised on the fabric of this fine establishment. You the pay the bill, and are handed a full bottle of aguardente to shot at your heart’s content. It burns.

On our initial walk around, we stumbled into a trendy wine bar. It made a perfect aperitif for our date with some beef cheek. The wine we ordered was out of stock. Bummer. Do you want their random replacement? Sure, why not. It’s exceptional. Potentially the best I’ve had. Vinho Verde, light, fizzing, crisp. Two more please, barkeep. We had to return. Once we’d paid the bill, we made it our mission to return and sample it’s food offering. On the second night, we did. Crispy pork (with crackling) served with jam. I raise a quizzical eyebrow. I’m a working class kid. I’m not one for these fancy woke additions. I don’t eat pork with apple sauce. I like my pork as pork, not diluted by the pretentious sweetness of a sugared apple. Again, turkey dinosaurs or bust. I take a breath. I remember Bourdain. I raise my pork and dunk it in the jam. Wow. Holy hecker. Sensational. The raspberry tang melts on my mouth and is the perfect companion to my piggy amigo. A bottle of wine deep, I become a broken cassette tape, repeating every few seconds about how great the jammy pork is. I’m a happy man, the world is at my feet. More wine, obrigado.

We head to a nearby viewing point, where you can enjoy a drink and look at the city. It’s views are immaculate. Truly. Michael goes to order some port from a nearby station - it’s not the official viewing point bar but we’re wine deep now and the world is beautifully blurry. He returns with two pints of port - surely a mistake from an inexperienced employee. For the price of 6 euros each, we sit and the beautiful blur transcends into a wave of extreme drunkenness. The staff approach tables, randomly telling women drinking from pineapples that they are not allowed to drink there. They look as if they bought them there, but are turned away all the same. He stares at our paper pints of port very much not bought there, nods and walks on. The patriarchy. We decide to call it a night.

As we head down Lisbon’s many hills to stumble our way home, I hear an unmistakable sound in my ears. A man. A singer. A lone guitar. Sting. Not the real one - though I’ve met him - singing Englishman in New York. The night lives on, bedtime can wait. Follow that music. In the bar, we slump into a free sofa and two more wines are placed in our laps. Fantastic. We’re sat next to Pamela, a 50 year old Irish lady drunk as a skunk celebrating her birthday. She immediately identifies Michael as Irish by way of Pontefract. “It’s in your eyes, the Irish is in your eyes”, apparently a dead giveaway and a nod to his Irish great grandma. We sing. I tap my foot like there’s no tomorrow, jigging in my seat to the sounds of our brilliant Brazilian singer. We sing Wonderwall. It doesn’t get much better than this.

I had wondered during our visit why so many locals were sporting red roses. They were everywhere. I haven’t forgotten Valentines’ Day again, have I? I put the thought to the back of my mind, but can’t fully rid myself of the autistic curiosity that so often drives me. All will become clear, I convince myself. Then, on the floor, I spy a discarded flower. It’s not a rose. It’s a carnation. The symbol of the carnation revolution, where the Portuguese peacefully overthrew their dictator and placed carnations in the barrels of soldiers’ rifles. I place it in the buttonhole of my French Chore Jacket and continue a happy, happy man. Once home, I put it in the pages of a copy of From Russia With Love and press it under the weight of our suitcase. I will take it home, and keep it forever as a reminder of the power of human agency and the extent to which government is never too big to completely ignore the needs of its people.

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There is an unusual comfort in the power of misremembering; in the faint blur of memories that are mostly true but which buff out the grit or noise which might otherwise breed indifference. As if there were a delicate bubble surrounding them, preserving a snapshot in time like a 35mm photo; clear but soft, colours amplified amidst the preservation of smiling faces. The power of a moment. Lost immediately, its like never to be replicated. The intangibility of what was once tangible, and a personal insistence on keeping them close. Forever. In a cacophony of noise and instability, there is a home comfort in looking inward, and reflecting on the good that has been, and the good that will be only because of it. The people met, the people lost. The permanent human effects aiding our constant evolution.

My earliest memories are of family: of the kindness of grandparents, and the innocence of youth. Of history lessons with Nana, chain smoking L&B at the kitchen table, recounting the brilliance of Field Marshal Montgomery, or the many wives of Henry VIII. The young blonde lad sitting listening, barely even blinking, overwhelmed by warmth and affection, unaware then of the importance of moments, but grateful. Definitely grateful. Of trips into town with Grandad, sitting in the town square with his pals, Raymond and Cyril. Last of the summer wine. Three pensioners and a toddler, no doubt dressed just like them; spikey blonde locks and a harrington jacket. Sitting on a park bench eating midget gems, or feeding the ducks. Then, having experienced all that the market square could offer, heading to the bookies where, thanks to the charm of my geriatric praetorian guard, I would nod to the bloke on the desk and sneak in. In time, aged 5, I would become (presumably) the youngest ever entrant to be banned. If only they’d put my cute little face, rosy red cheeks, on a board simply saying: barred. The fuzzy snapshot of a memory, detail mostly removed, but preserved by emotion, by contentment, by love. A memory retained only by its attachment to someone special. Of trips to the park with granny and my cousins in the late summer evenings. Bouncing on the way there, and trundling back. And her cooking - oh her cooking. Nothing like it. Memories.

The most vivid is the arrival of sister Holly. It’s the sharpest I have, its details much clearer than the fuzzy warmth of most. Sitting on my granny’s sofa - I’m sure it was a garish one - just next to the kitchen door. Someone came in the house, I think it was dad, but it easily may not have been, and told me I had a little sister. England had just won the Rugby World Cup. Jonny Wilkinson had, only hours before, dropped the ball onto his (weaker) right foot, a drop goal for glory in extra time against the Aussies on home turf. Beyond being given the news, I don’t really remember anything else but the clarity of that moment - surely less than a minute - is razor sharp. I remember the gifts that followed - presumably folk assumed I might not take kindly to some competition (as if). One, I’m sure, was a toy McDonald’s Drive Thru set where little hot wheels could drive to the window and pretend to order a mayo chicken. Strange. Very strange. I also received a purple Mace Windu lightsaber around this time. My brain connects it to this moment, but it’s very likely - and possible - that it came years later. Who knows. The fun with memory is the inability to fully trust them.

At school I was a contradictory mix of brash and insular. Cocky but quiet. Universally admired by staff, certainly in Primary School. When Holly was born, it also happened that I had an aversion to PE. Ever the opportunist, I would exaggerate the extent of my fatigue, and staff would set up a makeshift bed in the classroom and let me nap while the rest of reception threw bean bags and jumped through hula hoops. To this day, the charm I clearly deployed in that moment is something I am most proud of. What an achievement. Even now it still feels naughty - so keep schtum, you hear?

The seeds of my rebellion - or perhaps the overconfidence of my idleness - were sown in nursery when, in an attempt to avoid having to go and do painting (I hated the smell of the paint and the newspaper), I would sit and hide in the corner of the doll’s house convinced that no one knew where I was, which, of course, they did. My success may have been on account of the fact I used to tell our teacher - a kind older lady - that she was sexier than Kylie. Smooth even then. But it worked and fed the ego of the monster who would soon sleep while his peers exercised. Vox Populi.

The teenager arrived with all the subtlety you’d expect. Rugby had been the constant, the thread running cleanly back to dad, to Sunday mornings, to something that felt like identity before I even knew what identity meant. I broke my wrist and trained through it in a cast, desperate not to lose my place in the county squad, willing my body to cooperate through sheer stubbornness. But something else was breaking too, quieter and harder to set. The county boys were different to me, or so I told myself. Posher. More assured. At home in their skin in a way I couldn’t locate in mine. And so, with a talent I’d spent years building, I did the strangest thing - I made myself smaller. Shied away in trials. Dulled the edges. Fell, gradually and then all at once, out of love with the thing that had felt most like me. I’m not sure I’ve ever fully fallen back in.

The insecurity had other expressions. Hiding in the school library because of a bad spot or blemish. Minimising interactions so that I couldn’t be seen. Then university, the great promised reinvention, and the whiplash of arriving somewhere enormous and loud and new, nursing a diet coke in the corner of a pub, terrified, performing a version of fine that convinced no one least of all me. The only place the fear lifted was on stage. Acting, of all things. Pretending to be someone else entirely, and somehow, in doing so, finding something that was actually mine.

But the distance between that person and this one is not something to mourn - it’s something to marvel at. Those moments were necessary. The cast on the arm. The library corner. The diet coke. All of it. You don’t get from there to here without them, and here, it turns out, is somewhere brilliant.

The person who hid in the doll’s house, who sweet-talked his way past bouncers at five, who slept through PE and charmed his way through most of what followed - I barely recognise him. And yet.

There is something quietly profound in that. That the self is not fixed. That we are not born whole but made, incrementally, imperceptibly, by every room we sat in, every person who held our hand or let it go. The brash, insular boy who thought he was getting away with it. The teenager who would follow, convinced of his own invincibility in the way only teenagers can be before being struck by the weight of insecurity. The young man after that, stumbling through the gap between who he was and who he was supposed to become. Different people, almost. Strangers, in some light.

And yet.

You cannot subtract them. Pull one thread and the whole thing unravels. The cockiness that became confidence. The idleness that sharpened, eventually, into something more deliberate. The warmth learned early, at kitchen tables and park benches and bookies’ doors, quietly becoming the thing you return to most. The people who gave it to you, some still here, some not. All permanent. All cellular.

Memory asks nothing of us except honesty. It doesn’t demand accuracy - it barely offers it. What it offers instead is feeling; the emotional residue of a life accumulating, softly, like sediment. The details blur. Faces soften at the edges. You can’t be sure if the lightsaber came before or after, or whether it was dad at the door at all. It doesn’t matter. What remains is warmer and truer than fact.

So you hold it loosely. You let it be imprecise. You accept, with something approaching gratitude, that you will never fully know yourself - only approximate yourself, from the outside in, through the fragments left behind by everyone who made you.

The blonde kid on the park bench, eating midget gems, had no idea.

That’s the whole point.

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It was an unexpected call to action. A rogue email from a new friend with the subject: PLAYING JESUS (yes, all caps). Fighting with the patchy wifi of the Northern train from Newcastle, I scrambled to decipher the contents of this holiest of emails. An actor had dropped out of a showcase of a Middle English play. The role of Jesus lay sadly vacant; a saviour was required. Jaydream sprung into action.

The play itself was the Skinner’s tale detailing Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. Apparently from around 1377, the short vignette formed one of the Canterbury Tale style plays telling the Easter Story. Written - and performed - in Middle English, it presented a unique challenge for a regularly out of work actor. It’s a brilliant skill that we don’t actually get taught enough of as kids at school and actors more generally: how to understand classical texts - texts beyond Shakespeare, how to decipher their language, translate its meaning, and how to perform it effectively. Non-actors won’t care, but in an age of short-form media and dwindling attention spans, it was a nice break and a chance to fully jump into a complicated text. Nerd alert. Originally, this play would have been performed on a wagon by a band of players rolling through the city (in this case York) telling the Easter Story to ordinary folk. At a time of poor literacy, it was actually an accessible way of telling pseudo-biblical stories. This performance, however, was performed in a lovely old Church in Durham.

Now, I’m no expert on the semantics of Christianity. But the prospect of playing Jesus in an actual Church felt thrillingly blasphemous. I was quietly delighted that nobody seemed to think twice about it. As I walked between the pews and members of the viewing congregation waved palm leaves at the blonde-haired boy with the papier-mache halo, I felt a tinge of Jesus-themed rebellion.

The whole experience was brilliant. Every actor knows that the best part of any job is the costume; I only do it to play dress-up. I imagine this says quite a lot about my acting style and ability, and I am afraid to say that it is entirely correct. Nonetheless, the chance to don a big long scratchy coat, and some pointy leather shoes (apparently made in Milan by a specialist in Medieval footwear) was too great to turn down. Alongside me, in keeping with the story of Jesus entering into Jerusalem, I had a donkey. Two actually. One, a shabby but full size ass with the world’s tiniest wheels so that as soon as I jumped onto its back it refused to move, and the second, a large stick with a wicker head stuck on top - the latter being my personal favourite. It allowed me to march down the aisle with the stick motioning that I was indeed riding a donkey whilst it was also the symbol of a Shepherd’s staff; a subtle but, to my mind clever and poignant, nod to Jesus being the eternal Shepherd of our great human flock. And with that, the performance was over. Thirty-five minutes. A blind man granted his sight, a “lame” man able to jig and jive, and Zacchaeus told to stop hiding in a Sycamore tree. The summit reached, the halo returned, the donkey retired. Everything from here, one imagines, is the long walk down.

Spontaneous gigs like this, though, are often the best. It’s one of the great gifts of being a creative actually. Rocking up on the day, meeting new people, and just bonding together on a piece of work - however brief that work might be. Building relationships, sharing stories, sharing parts of yourself on stage and off. For me, those moments of sitting in the Church Hall, tiny heaters whirring in the corner, drinking a big old pot of tea and laughing together are absolutely priceless. It’s twee, sure, but it’s a refreshing reminder that there is so much good in the world and sometimes we just have to go looking for it. Actors. There’s nothing quite like ‘em.

Both of these experiences were a perfect illustration of something I’ve been chewing on lately: I need to push myself more. Embrace challenges. Embrace the unusual. And, to my initial chagrin, embrace stand-up comedy.

Folks will know that I am no stranger to playing a prat on stage. In truth, it’s something for which I possess a unique skill. I was at the Edinburgh Fringe don’t you know?! Doing sketch comedy don’t you know?! Playing a bumbling hypnotist with a sketchy (no pun intended) nondescript European accent called Dini. Who Dini? Me Dini. It writes itself. SNL UK watch out. And so when the call came to perform a brief 5 minute stand up set, I jumped at the chance. This was my bread and butter. I’d much rather tell a few cheap jokes than perform Hamlet, right? But the anxiety that gripped me in the run up to it was like nothing I’ve ever experienced. I’m a naturally anxious person. I overthink everything, and I’m rarely cool, calm and collected - contrary to what people seem to think. And it really, really came to a head. Whenever I would think about the set, my heart would start racing. It was constant, and for weeks before the actual event itself. The fear. The fear of flopping. Of standing there and having that Spongebob scene play out in real life where Spongebob is performing stand-up and one of the fish say: ‘Oh brother this guy stinks’. What if one of the fish thought I stank? The fear persisted.

On the night itself, I was a mess. Walking into the green room with all the experienced folk and the compere, I was clearly a bundle of nerves. The host was beyond kind, and even though he probably thought I’d be terrible, he was incredibly supportive. He must have been thinking: oh brother, this guy gonna stink. I sank a pint, went for a walk around the block, and I was just about ready to go. It would be worth it. I want this. I want this. Jumping at the back to hype myself up, I was on. Lights fizzing in my face. I took the microphone out of the stand (and never thought to actually move the stand, fool) and delivered my newly improvised first line: “I’m dying for a piss/anyone into piss play” (sorry older readers).

We got through it. It went well. Audience were receptive, and no fish said I stank. A success. But, as with Jesus, my takeaway was much more human. It was of the people who came to support me. Colleagues who took time out of their busy lives to come and watch me do 5 minutes, morphed into genuine and true friendships. Partners and brothers sitting cheering you on, dealing without complaint with my foibles and all of the build up. Together, celebrating. People. The unique brilliance of being with good, honest, kind people. There is, without question, simply no substitute. And I’m beyond grateful.

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I was hardly discreet. I’d impersonate teachers in the corridors, the playground — everywhere. At one point, a teacher said they didn’t know what my actual voice was because I was always using someone else’s. Looking back, that probably revealed more than I realised at the time, and its subtext would linger longer than I understood then.

My small rebellions were rewarded with warmth from classmates. Most mavericks cause trouble from the back row, admired from afar as heads crane to catch a glimpse of the rabble-rouser. Jaydream — the mostly doting pupil — sat front and centre, directly in front of the teacher’s monitor, admiration reserved for the back of his blonde crown. I’m sure my crush was impressed beyond all comparison. Years later, I popped a blister on my thumb I’d acquired from putting my hand on a lightbulb (don’t ask) and covered a different crush — Casanova — in its residue; the absurdity of adolescence. Even now, I feel bad about the whole affair. I hadn’t meant to pop it; I’d just been bored in an English lesson. She had made me a homemade Valentine’s card only a few weeks prior — far from my finest moment. I was no smooth operator.

Back then, we’d chat on MSM. I’d sit at my desk — yes, an actual computer with a monitor — sending oversized emoticons that swallowed the whole screen (emoji wasn’t really a word I remember knowing at the time). Proper English didn’t really exist there; everything became shorthand. School was Skool. Replies, whatever the subject, were some combination of lol or lmao. We’d talk for hours about a fat lot of nothing, the same three responses pinging back and forth like a lazy game of tennis. I’d sit waiting for her to appear online. “Heyy” was always the first move — smooth.

I don’t remember the specifics especially well, but the feelings are incredibly vivid. The excitement of seeing her little picture pop up, the strange warmth of it, loving the moment without really knowing why. Our conversation tennis carried on for what felt like months — probably only weeks — such was the intensity of those early, evolving feelings. Mostly, I remember the comfort of it all: a kind of closeness that felt enormous at the time, long before I understood what a more physical version of love might look like.

One day, overwhelmed by the sheer emotion of it all, I finally asked if she wanted to be my girlfriend. It felt monumental — a decision that would surely define the rest of my adult life. This was the big leagues. A wedding would follow, obviously, with a dog, a house, and a SMEG fridge to boot. We’d sit our grandchildren down and tell them how we met aged 11, bonded by MSM and shorthand expressions of computerised laughter.

Sadly, it was not to be. I remember posing the question; not the exact words, but the deafening silence that followed. A minute, maybe two, before the reply came. Looking back, I’m not sure what I expected — whether rejection was inevitable or whether I’d convinced myself our matching three-letter names would bind us together forever. She said no, and my dreams of a SMEG fridge went with them.

For a time I thought my chances of love had ended. Interestingly, all of my memories of sitting at that computer and chatting on MSM stop after her; I don’t recall ever having used it again. I must have, but it’s curious to notice the strange attachment my brain gives to that moment, and its connection to her. That period of my life feels vivid because of her — and because of that fixed spot in my bedroom.

To this day, I couldn’t tell you why my next crush entertained me. She was cool, popular, and incredibly nonchalant; I was bookish, sensible, and cautious. I spent my evenings watching BBC Parliament, waiting for the division bell to ring and voting to commence on an amendment I didn’t understand. I would dream of reading Shakespeare in my English class, hoping — praying — that I’d be chosen to read aloud and perform for my uninterested classmates. I’ve no idea what she saw in me, but I was grateful all the same.

We would look across corridors to give each other a cheeky smile, but otherwise pretend we didn’t know each other. Then, once home, we’d text all night and — again — repeat the same talking points. She had a specific text tone and, perhaps because I heard it every two minutes for around a year, it’s still ingrained in my brain. When I hear it today, I think of her and smile at how funny it all was; how important and intense it felt. And perhaps it was — it was important to me.

I remember going on a dog walk together, both of us bringing our younger siblings to break the awkward ice. I’m not sure we told each other we were doing that, but I look back and laugh that we had the same anxious thought. Her dog was adorable; I can still picture its little face. In the end, I never plucked up the courage to ask her what we were — and that’s a shame, because she’d probably have said yes, and our dog walks might have continued ad infinitum.

There is a uniqueness to young love, an intensity to it that feels different to anything we really experience as adults. It’s raw and complicated. I remember the first real feelings of heartbreak — the sleepless nights, the constant thoughts wishing things could be different — emotions so intense that putting them into writing never quite does them justice. The internal mechanics of trying desperately to put someone out of your mind, and failing at every turn. And they matter. They genuinely matter.

Perhaps I’m just overly sentimental, but I like to think that the people we give ourselves to — in whatever small, awkward or imperfect ways — leave their mark. As a young man, those moments give you permission to be open and vulnerable, to take knocks and build resilience. To give yourself without airs or graces, without performance. It strips you back to something closer to your purest self.

That version of me at 11 was full of innocence, but also deeply interested in emotional connection — prepared, even then, to be vulnerable. When I was dutifully rejected, I remember the heat of embarrassment and anxiety, sitting under my bed worrying about what people would think — that I’d had the brazen cheek to ask the question. It’s funny. No one cared, of course, but in that moment I thought my life had ended, that I really was a clown. I’m grateful for it. It kept me grounded. The last thing I need to do is believe my own hype. With the passing of time, I found a redirection; my tastes and habits changed, but the lessons continued to guide me, to shape me.

Love and friendship, I think, become collections of moments. Little flashes that crest and fall like waves across the tumult of our lives — shaping how open we are willing to be, how much of ourselves we’re prepared to give away. What love actually is remains difficult to define; perhaps it works best when it stays slightly elusive, guided by memory rather than certainty. Moments like being propositioned together in a bar by a wild Italian, pretending to nip to the toilet and running away down cobbled streets; meeting each other in a school musical, forging a friendship that became family; standing together on stage, exchanging glances when the audience refuses to react and laughing at the ridiculousness of it all; or waving goodbye as friends disappear onto new adventures. Moments, really. Always moments.

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It is rehearsed endlessly in the media, where organisations like the BBC attempt to demonstrate an awareness of the zeitgeist by dipping a toe into this social-media leadership cesspit.

The problem is not intellectual capacity. These institutions possess it in abundance. The problem is distance. Their soft-touch, privileged intellectualism struggles to reach the true nucleus of the conversation: disenfranchisement, alienation, and the rejection of established norms that have failed to deliver. The gap is structural, not stylistic.

It is admirable to try. Our institutions should absolutely attempt to diagnose the symptoms of an evolving crisis: that the projection of male strength - often narrated through sexuality, domination and financial excess - is a Ponzi scheme sold to Britain’s young and left-behind. But diagnosis alone is not treatment.

Two mismatches remain unresolved. First, those most disenfranchised are not watching the BBC; they are consuming content from the very beefcake role models these pieces attempt to critique. Second, the scale of disenfranchisement is such that a single five-minute explainer - however lucid - will never touch the sides.

What is needed is not more commentary, but a genuinely different model of leadership: one not built on spectacle, redemption arcs, or problematic men discovering Christ and dropping vague Bible verses into Instagram bios while ignoring the harder parts of the text. One that rejects both hyper-masculine bravado and institutional detachment.

Let’s be clear: the topic of masculinity is overdone, and one I have no real interest in fully jumping into. For me, the root causes of the problem are obvious: dwindling funding for, and focus on, education in less affluent areas, and a widening investment gap in places like Labour’s Red Wall over the last twenty years.

It is not just a political problem. The explosion of online media has accelerated an already present divide, amplifying grievance faster than institutions can respond. Combine that with politicians who cannot - or will not - speak plainly, and a Labour leadership still heavily shaped by London, and it is easy to see how this government has burned through its credibility at speed.

In that vacuum, figures like Farage and his band of fruitcakes are more powerful than ever. Speak like a punter and you’ll reach people. Speak like a technocrat and you’ll lose them immediately - regardless of the reality of your own social class.

So here we are. There’s nothing I can say that will meaningfully change the debate, or claim new ground on an already oversaturated topic. But I have been thinking.

My Substack community means a great deal to me. It’s something I’ve built over a couple of years and something I’m genuinely proud of. These days, when everyone and their granny has a Substack, that pride comes with a challenge. More platforms mean more noise, and more noise makes it harder to cut through.

As a result, I’ve become more deliberate in how - and when - I write. I publish less frequently. I wait to be inspired or moved by interactions, conversations, or lived experience. That, in itself, is a privilege. The solidity of my readership, and the fact that engagement remains healthy and growing, means I can afford to wait for moments rather than manufacture output.

This is a brief detour, but one that matters. Life is, ultimately, a series of moments. In a society increasingly driven by noise, the ability to sit with those moments - to cut through expectation, distraction, and criticism - is perhaps the clearest marker of maturity, and of long-term satisfaction. It isn’t easy, and it’s something that requires constant work. But that fluid mindfulness, that sense of perspective, feels like a quietly essential component of modern leadership.

If we are serious about discussing leadership at all, then we need to talk less about projection and more about perspective.

For clarity, I am not claiming to be an effective leader. Quite the opposite. I would make a shoddy - and, if I’m honest, unnecessarily angry - sports coach.

Once, while playing rugby, I berated two teammates for refusing to tackle an opposition player. Their decision to raise their arms and lurch ineffectively at a 6’6” Goliath - like they were trying to block LeBron taking a shot - prompted me to shout, “You’re not playing netball.” My language was far more colourful than that.

With my receding hair swept back by the wind of rugby’s honoured combat, it was not my finest moment. One I still, nevertheless, stand by. Tackle him.

As I write, I’m on the LNER Azuma back from London, having attended a young leaders’ event at Deutsche Bank. I’m not going to fully dive into the semantics of that sentence, but know I’m not lacking in self-awareness. I’d question the extent to which an organisation like Deutsche Bank can mould the kind of leadership we actually need today. But I will say this: I was there for a Chatham House event with a former Ambassador and career diplomat, which helped dilute the surrounding controversy. Their Frankfurt office may have been raided in a money-laundering investigation, but their wine was excellent.

It’s always interesting being at events like that. To be honest, they tend to attract a particular type of person. Without judgement, they are often wealthy, well connected, and already working in junior roles within large corporations or government institutions. On the snakes-and-ladders board, they’ve had more of one than the other. That’s partly why I make the effort to go. I like to be the bit of rough (in a cardigan).

I was the first in my family to go to university. I was twenty before I’d even visited London. I was so intimidated by the Tube and the capital’s constant buzz that I dragged my granny along for moral support. She very kindly sat in a Pret A Manger in Blackfriars while I attended a Debrett’s lecture on etiquette and leadership - there it is again - at Inner Temple. I’ve really been about.

As a thank-you, I took her to see The Phantom of the Opera that evening. The woman next to us spent the entire show sat directly behind a giant pillar. The front-of-house team gently reminded her that she had, in fact, purchased a restricted-view seat.

While the Ambassador herself was brilliant - and made a real effort to hammer home the need for greater access and social mobility into the diplomatic service - I was still struck by the lack of self awareness of some of its attendees.

One chap, 5’5 and smartly dressed in his dad’s expensive suit spent 15 minutes in the toilet staring at himself in the mirror. He then spent the entire lecture on his phone, and playing with his nose, as if the 15 minutes in the very high tech Deutsche Bank toilets, weren’t just for self-admiration and working out how to use the tap.

And look, I’m allowed to be mean because he very clearly pushed in front of me in the cloakroom queue. I’m sorry, but that’s just not cricket.

In the end, he asked one question of the Ambassador in the Q&A. It was a question lacking any substance and began: “I work in intelligence”. It’s entire purpose was to inform the room of our friend’s perceived self-importance. He very clearly doesn’t work in intelligence, but may well be lacking in it.

He was the poster boy for the “alpha” model of leadership - the type of bloke who reads How To Win Friends & Influence People, and practices it’s guide to being a charismatic leader. Co-incidentally, he wandered the room like a lost dog without speaking to anyone for much the pre and post drinks reception. From the middle of the auditorium, decked out in my cardigan, I made an effort to give him daggers. He embodied everything I hate about our societal notions of how to succeed and confidently be a leader.

If he represented one extreme - the little twerp - my experience at the National Theatre Bookshop stands as another, and one which first gave me the idea for this.

I love the National Theatre Bookshop. It sounds ridiculous, but I always leave feeling inspired and motivated. If I’m honest, I think the reasoning is a dollop of neurodiversity, and the fact that until only a couple of years ago, the National Theatre was nothing more than a concept. I had never been, and it seemed unlikely I ever would. Most at home don’t know what it is, and yet I grew up obsessively reading books on Olivier and the NT’s creation. And so when I go, it feels like I’m closer than ever before - even if I’m just there to look at the plays on the bookshelf. It makes me think that one day, I could do something there. It keeps the dream alive.

Upon arrival, and in having our bags checked, we encountered a friendly security guard. I wasn’t expecting much in the way of substantive conversation. He greeted us with: “so are you two the next generation of leaders”.

Now look, off the back of this long-form ramble, I understand the convenience of his comments. But that’s why I’m writing! And anyway, this interaction inspired me to write long before I was swanning around Moorgate.

We both sort of laughed and dismissed his comment thinking it was just light banter, but oddly, he was very serious and continued probing. “Well we’ll see”, was my initial response and the probing continued. In the end, when he queried our ambition, I told him not to worry (understatement of the year).

He was lovely and kind and emphasised the importance of human connection and kindness in being an effective modern role model. In sidelining ego and pushing humility and kindness forward: in being prepared to have a conversation with everyone, forgetting about social hierarchy and accepting that everyone is broadly on a level playing field. In short, just being nice and open.

Once I left and had sampled all of the playtexts and groovy NT hats, we headed back towards the main door. He interrupted his conversation with another customer and shouted towards us: “it that a promise? [that you’ll be leaders]”. I replied yes, we all smiled, and left. But it stuck with me, and it struck me far more once I had been at the event in the evening. I don’t see myself as a leader of the future - that’s not really what we meant - but it’s the capacity for leadership and the willingness to embrace its key tenets that really matters.

We don’t win the battle for good role models by trying to push back against already entrenched patterns of toxic masculinity and their various figureheads. We counter it with a different model of leadership. Not by reading cringe books that promise to teach you how to behave in social situations so that people will like and respect you.

I always leave social interactions worrying if I came across okay. Was I cool, charming, affable? Yes, always. But that’s normal. What matters more is learning to live in the moment and feeling less restrained when we engage with people - whatever the context.

For me, modern leadership is about kindness. About being a good and honest person. It isn’t hyper-masculine. It isn’t inherently muscular. It’s calmness. It’s perspective. It’s a lack of judgement. It’s openness.

Because people don’t follow confidence. They follow people who make them feel safe enough to be themselves.

We get by with a little help from our friends.

I’m serious. Where are my festive thinkers? My sleigh-belled existentialists? Where are the bright young things sitting under a crackling Christmas fire pining for a brighter tomorrow - using Christmas as an important moment in the calendar: a time to sit, reflect, and yearn for something - anything- that might be out of our grips.

There are limits to this of course. Don’t be the smelly, pony-tailed anti-vaxxer sitting in Caffè Nero right now, reading the Daily Mail and proselytising his cuckoo politics to a silent (clearly exhausted) woman sitting opposite him. Yes dear, yes dear she nods, as he recites the latest dross with page and line numbers to boot.

Rachel Reeves has ruined Christmas, screams the front page. David Walliams is surely innocent, says our Christmas crank; and if he’s not, our pony-tailed friend goes on, who cares. Russia doesn’t pose a genuine threat to the West - it’s all liberal spin. There is a Ministry of Truth in Whitehall.

Orwell yawns from the grave, bored by the brilliance of his work being so enthusiastically misapplied by the nation’s self-appointed “big thinkers”.

My AirPods go in. Breathe, Jay, breathe.

Beside him sits a dog so old it remembers the last time Sunderland won a major trophy. Matted black-and-white coat. Its admittedly cute little face sits, staring at the pain au chocolat in the corner. It’s owner - separate from my newfound conspiracy companion - reads her Kindle, working overtime to deprive the room of any residual sense of warmth or joy.

For the record, Kindles are woke. Buy a book. Feel the paper and watch the edges yellow and curl. A book is a personal thing. It needs to be tangible. Grow up.

Her face, unwavering, focused on the simplest of Sunday objectives: do not smile.

There is a smell. A strong, pungent odour that can only be death. Is it the dog, is it the cargo-pants conspiracist in the corner?

Merry Christmas.

If Jack Antonoff’s Christmas anthem, Merry Christmas, Please Don’t Call told us anything, it’s that sad-boy Christmas is back. Set aside those tunes of old. Happy little pop stars in ski suits singing about last Christmas. Blow the dust from your Michael Bublé Christmas album (Deluxe Version) and throw it into the sea. Watch it drift towards the horizon, safe in the knowledge that this year his dulcet tones—like a smooth, velvetised hot chocolate—won’t lure you into a false sense of contentment and Christmas cheer.

Embrace the quieter register. The Christmas of unanswered texts. Of delayed trains and your chunky little gut bulging in a tight Christmas jumper. Of conversations with relatives you love but no longer quite recognise. Remember Christmases with people who are gone, and who won’t ever come back, but for whom you’re inordinately grateful because they shaped you.

Embrace the Christmas where the fairy lights flicker just a bit too slowly, where the tree leans imperceptibly to the left, where the magic exists - but only if you look directly at it, and even then only briefly. An imperfect Christmas. An honest Christmas.

This is a Christmas for yearning. For wanting things you can’t neatly wrap or justify. For understanding that joy and melancholy are not opposites, but companions -walking home together through cold streets, collars up, pretending not to need each other. A Bob Dylan Christmas.

Sad-boy Christmas doesn’t demand happiness. It doesn’t insist on resolution. It simply asks that you sit with yourself for a moment, acknowledge the ache, and let it hum quietly beneath the tinsel.

And honestly? That feels far more honest than another sleigh bell ever could.

My Christmas traditions have always been slightly unconventional. I have always been drawn to the gothic melancholy of Christmas time. Of M. R. James and Christmas ghost stories. Sitting in bed as a kid with a book you knew you shouldn’t be reading, scared to leave your bedroom but loving the ritual, the timing, and the occasion. I’m a quirky cookie, but I love it.

Reflecting is a brilliant gift that is unique to us as humans. Christmas offers a rare cultural pause - a sanctioned stillness - to look back and reflect on the progress we’ve made not in a neat, corporate sense of achievement, but quietly and honestly, in the safe-space environment that men in red suits, mulled wine, and a celebrations tin with only bounties left gives. It’s the comfort blanket before the even greater melancholy of New Years Eve, where everyone pretends to be excited for the year ahead, whilst all collectively refusing to admit our nervousness, our anxieties, our fears. We dress uncertainty up as optimism because standing still feels worse.

Most see admitting those feelings as a failure. As being sad. I don’t see it that way: I see it as one of the rarest expressions of our human consciousness. I see it as being deeply mature and brave. To have the confidence and conviction to look at the fanfare of the festive season and say: I wonder.

Now you may be thinking: who thinks like this. Why the dark reading on Christmas. When did Jaydream become a fun-sponge (regular readers know I always have been). Well I can answer that question very easily. I can tell you with absolute certainty where the idea for this Substack came from: Charlie Brown.

Having watched another episode of Pluribus, in which I once again found myself frustrated by a lack of anything actually happening, I decided we needed something lighter and sharper to get Jaydream off his high horse. Every week, without fail, I wax lyrical on how if I wrote a script where nothing happened and the only action was Carol going to the supermarket, it would never get commissioned. No one would read it. I rail on how television is boring and how series take seven whole seasons to make a single point or give us any sense of resolution. After which, I am carefully reminded that this is precisely the point of TV drama. I sigh, with just enough angered charm to be somewhat endearing, and, this week, pressed play on A Charlie Brown Christmas (a 1965 epic).

On the surface, it’s a cute little cartoon. And I’ve got to admit, it looks brilliant. But it’s actually incredibly deep for a kids’ Christmas show. Nowadays, with our completely cooked attention spans, kids’ TV is just stick-raves and bright lights. But this - this was actually saying something. And so I took notes as Charlie Brown quietly handed out life advice.

“I think there must be something wrong with me, Christmas is coming but I’m not happy,” says our red-coated hero. “I don’t feel how I’m supposed to feel.” And so, as anyone would do, Charlie Brown heads to a makeshift lemonade stand posing as a psychiatric advice stall - and for only five cents! Having poured his heart out, and explained his feelings - real men, and Charlie Brown, aren’t afraid to spill their fears out onto the table - it’s recommended he try the perfect remedy for melancholy: directing the Christmas play.

With our penchants for melancholy and bright coloured jumpers, Jaydream and Charlie Brown, we are one. At first, his reception at the play is unwelcome: “boy you’re stupid Charlie Brown/I knew you’d goof it up”. But he doesn’t care. He finds a purpose and a vehicle for his own wider happiness: a project. Something to do. To create. As he says himself: are you going to let all this beauty go to waste.

It stuck with me because the last month has been a period of enormous change and the pressure of big decisions has weighed heavy. I too have found myself distracted, my mind wavering, unable to enjoy and embrace of a cookie-cutter Christmas. This week, like Charlie Brown, I did some theatre and took part in a rehearsed reading of a new short play for a group of brilliant, plucky students and young actors looking to build a community. In that moment, that single moment, when the nerves settled, I felt content. That, even though it was a tiny make-shift stage in the upstairs of a pub, that I belonged.

I guess we look at life searching for infinite satisfaction. For a model of perfection. One in which, in order to achieve it and succeed, we should suppress the nuance. Convince ourselves that we’re happy so that one day we might actually believe our lie.

At Christmas, I think I’m reminded that life is about moments. Fleeting, temporary moments. Ones we forget and remember years later by the presence of a scent or a location. Moments. We live for moments. And at Christmas, when we all come together, we should remember the imperfection of families, of jobs, of decisions, of life and search for the moment amongst the madness. We should feel. We should yearn. And as I enter a new phase of my life, and prepare to embrace the great unknown, I do so searching for those moments. And in a world that is increasingly tech-heavy, where creativity and dreams feel like they’re being replaced, we should embrace the uniqueness of our human condition instead of just assimilating and continuing to fool ourselves with the status quo. We should sit and dream. Believe.

Sad-boy Christmas isn’t a rejection of joy. It’s an expansion of it. It’s the understanding that happiness doesn’t always arrive loudly, or neatly, or on schedule. That it can live alongside memory, uncertainty, and longing. That reflection isn’t the opposite of celebration — it’s often where the meaning comes from.

As Charlie Brown says: it’s not all bad, maybe we just need a little love.

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I wrote this piece earlier this year for the team at Hot Source Zine - and I’m pleased to share it with you all here :)

Fragments of my grandad remain. His original Fleetwood Mac Rumours vinyl rests against my bookshelf. His watch – dainty, unassuming, broken – is always strapped to my wrist. And at his funeral, there could only be one song: Busker’s Home Newcastle.

In composition alone, it’s nothing special; its layers are simple, and its sound is whimsical—almost twee. To a non-Geordie, it might seem unserious, even a caricature. Bluntly, it probably is. And yet, in true Desert Island Discs style, it’s the one I would save from the crashing waves. Every single time.

My grandad was my best friend. Last year, I found him again—suddenly and unexpectedly—in a BBC documentary marking 40 years since the Miners’ Strike.

There’s Jeremy Paxman in a gold tie and yellow shirt—no doubt a sartorial staple of the 1980s—reporting from a County Durham mine. As the camera pans through a melee of striking miners, there he is. My grandad. Newcastle United scarf clumsily draped around his neck, “Coal Not Dole” pin proudly on his chest. He enters the frame, catches the camera, smiles, and walks off.

He was a man of the community. A striking miner in Thatcher’s Britain. One of twelve children, and quite literally at the coal face from 14, he was central casting for the working-class Geordie. His life was a simple one: full of friends, family, and with enormous pride in his north eastern identity.

In the working men’s club he loved (and from which he often stumbled home singing), a plaque still sits above the bar with one of his favourite phrases: “Just another day.”

For a long time, I struggled to marry my own identity with the community I was born into—and with the man I admired most. I’m not your conventional Geordie. My roots are firmly working-class, but I must acknowledge the enormous luck and privilege I’ve had in my life.

I was the first in my extended family to graduate from university, earning both an LLB and an MSc. My voice—neutral in timbre with just a soft Geordie lilt—meant I wasn’t dismissed like some I know, purely for their accent. With curly blonde hair and a fondness for jorts, I was oddly embraced by the privately educated, well-off circles that seem to dominate university life.

As an alumnus of both Newcastle and Durham—fully aware of each city’s cultural weight—the irony was never lost on me: town and gown at its most striking. I felt suspended between the person my background said I should be and the one I was becoming.

That disconnect, that clash of identities goes far beyond my grandad and me. I have always been proud of my home, and its own unique story. But, for a time, my pride sat in its less obvious cultural successes: the Lit & Phil Library, the spectacular Newcastle Theatre Royal, Ridley Scott and the Tyneside Cinema. Newcastle is an extraordinary city, region, and culture. It represents the very best of us; of real, humble, working people with an enormous pride in our history.

I’ll be honest, though, I never understood the appeal of the football club. Until recently. When I realised that the magic of Newcastle United wasn’t primarily the results on pitch, but of its history and what the club represents. It represents a community; it is something to believe in. Opportunity.

Football is also political to us. It’s about shared struggles. Being ignored for too long by centralised government. It’s our once bustling industries; it’s the Jarrow Crusade; our fierce refusal to be ignored. It’s a constant. For many, and I’ve seen this first hand, life in the north-east isn’t easy. Even a cursory look at the ONS’s Local Indicators for the region tells a stark story: on issues like childhood literacy, wealth inequality, poverty, and life expectancy, we fall noticeably below the national average. People feel ignored. That their voice isn’t heard. Historically, it hasn’t been. But in Newcastle United, we have one crucial thing: a constant.

That’s all many of us ask for. That’s why the club means so much. It’s why 300,000 supporters lined the streets to celebrate the team’s recent League Cup victory – our first domestic trophy in 70 years. It’s the reason my grandad wore his scarf on the picket line. A constant in and amongst the noise – a reminder of who we are, and what we stand for. I have no issue whatsoever in admitting I didn’t see that for a long time. But I certainly do now. And I feel a renewed pride in my community, my culture, and my own identity.

And so, as I graduated from Durham—beneath the grandeur of that incredible cathedral—I did so in his tie. His old National Union of Mineworkers tie. A quiet act of personal rebellion. A reminder that both worlds can exist.

Identity isn’t binary. It overlaps. It evolves. It holds firm.

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Equally, though, I think I did too. If an MP can’t spell or use the oxford comma properly, how can we expect them to be an effective Parliamentary Private Secretary in the Ministry of Defence. I do have a renewed sense of respect for my former Parliamentary representative though after having just discovered that, after leaving school at 16, he became a grave digger. It’s very possible that wikipedia is lying - as if - but I’m enjoying the Hamlet comparison. And if you’re reading this, unnamed Parliamentary representative, I’m sorry you jumped ship to a neighbouring constituency and I followed to campaign against you. We were the Gladstone and Disraeli of our times. Northumberland’s finest. Titans.

So the New Statesman (hereafter NS, thank you). Each week, the NS prints its new edition. And in it, amongst the political commentary and parliamentary gossip, it has a caption competition. A tiny lil cartoon at the bottom of Patrick Maguire’s section on which MP has been a dick to their staff.

This week, he revealed an unnamed MP made their staff take annual leave in order to attend a funeral and then work overtime to make up the hours. Similarly, last week, it revealed a new Labour MP made their parliamentary team pay for their own hotel and trains at party conference - no doubt while they themself racked up a lovely expenses bill and paid for bugger all.

While we’re on the subject, I really feel for Parliamentary Assistants in Westminster. Now look, I applied a thousand times to be one - and never heard a peep - but my frustration doesn’t stem exclusively from my own bitterness. First time for everything.

I’ve got friends who work in Westminster working ridiculous hours for demanding egotistical staff. And of course, as is the case for most entry level positions, they get paid pennies. Five magic beans in an open palm every month.

Of course, not all of them have bad experiences. I’ve met my fair share of MPs - especially new ones - and there is a lot of good out there. But we shouldn’t shy away from the fact that I know first hand some can be really unfair and demanding to their staff. And if you’re a 23 year old graduate and you’re finding your job difficult and your boss demanding, who do you turn to? Rock the boat and you’ll lose your tiny salary and be left out in the rain.

We should just remember that. It’s a small point and its anecdotal. But I read and hear a lot about stories within Parliament, and I just think we should remember that politics can be a really tough and demanding job - one made even more difficult when you’ve got no real power, and you’re being paid the price of a meal deal. Imagine the gall of asking someone who is being paid 24k to sort themselves out at Party Conference, while you’re in the complimentary bathrobe in your dreamy suite.

When I eventually run for office - and probably lose - I will promise to treat my staff with respect, dignity, and good humour!

On that, there is going to be a by-election for a seat on the Parish council in my hometown. It’s not in my ward, but it is where I spent the first couple of years of my life and an area I know reasonably well. I’d have to retire the cream ralph lauren chinos - that’s for sure (oh boy!) - but I reckon I could crack a smile and show my truest of true geordie colours. Labour look like they don’t have a candidate at the minute. I’ve debated it. It’s a race I’d almost certainly lose. But as Farage taught us time and time again, sometimes the best result a man can have is to lose and see their power and influence grow exponentially. Who would actually want to win? You’ve got to do something then…much easier to lose and shout what if from the sidelines. On an entirely unrelated note, I’m currently reading Bernie Sander’s new page turner: Fight Oligarchy. And honestly….I think you should too. We’re being taken for a ride.

I always submit a witty caption for the NS team. Last week, with Macron standing under a heavy rain cloud, I suggested: raindrops keep falling on my head (of state). It did not make the cut. In first place: this reign cannot last forever. I can live with that. I still prefer mine, but you know, that’s not half bad. In third place, however: so much for the bright, sunlit uplands of brexit….huh? Did Mr Macleod (the responsible party) think that it was Starmer pictured when it was very obviously not. Why brexit? What has brexit got to do with France’s current woes. I was disappointed in the NS team to be honest. Frankly, we can do a lot better than that. Maybe that poor judgement explains Britain’s current woes. I’m not sure.

The week earlier, where Trump stood talking to an alien, my brilliant suggestion was also rejected: wu-oh, I’m an alien, I’m a legal alien. For those of you who aren’t educated, it was an ode to Sting’s Englishman In New York - an absolute tune.

And so I turn to you. My dear friends. Help me. Together, as ever, we can do this. We can beat the machine. We can win the caption competition. And when that glory is heaped upon our shoulders, we will drink to it together. Let’s do this.

This week:

Some oldies:

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In that moment, trying desperately to bend my legs into position so that my T-Rex arms could meet my beleaguered feet, I realised my best days were behind me. In the night, as I throw off the covers and stumble for my hourly trips to the netty, I do so like the children from the rugrats; stomping flat footed and bobbing side to side. Plantar Fasciitis is not, my children, for the faint-hearted, Thankfully, the lion does not concern himself with the erosion of his tootsies. As in all things, he remains strong.

This is not my first rodeo with the old feet fascists. Many years ago, during my time as a food and wine waiter at a pretentious Newcastle restaurant (the chef had been on Masterchef…where he did not win the competition - or come remotely close. Oh goody), I was forced to muster all my strength in combating this most fatal of foes.

The building was very old you see, and the floors were a soft wood that had curved and bent with the passage of time. It meant that whenever Jaydream carried through the customer’s Bouillabaisse, he did so wobbling like a drunken sailor on the highest of the high seas.

In all of the celebrity interactions that Jaydream had there, he did so hiding a dark secret: his feet hurt. When he gave Alexander Armstrong - of Pointless fame - his afternoon tea, Xander was blissfully unaware of the burden hiding behind Jay’s Loake loafers. When Jaydream politely knocked on the door of Margaret Attwood three hours after she was supposed to wake up (we thought she’d died), he did so hobbling up to that door like John Wayne with saddle sore. And when Jaydream smiled at Cheryl Cole eating her sunday lunch, he did so hiding the true pain behind his cheekiest of grins. It was the best of the times, it was the worst of times - except for the fact it was not the best of times. Poetry.

Who knows where this journey will end but, safe to say, my Clarks Wallabees have been temporarily retired. But like all good writers, my pain and tortured soul makes for brilliant storytelling and literary conviction. Hemingway had alcoholism. Sylvia Plath had depression. Dostoyevsky had everything. Jaydream has fasciitis. Now that’s a line up.

As if my pain wasn’t bad enough, I’m sat in Caffe Nero listening to a MAGA American lecture a Scandinavian academic on “Crooked Joe Biden”. It is a chess game of political buzzwords, the sum of which is neither party saying very much about anything, all the while basking in their intellectual superiority and dominance. Boring.

Little do they know they’re sitting opposite one of the finest minds of our generation, and also Jaydream Believer. If I never had to listen to another self-indulgent conversation about two men debating the definition of a society in the backroom of a coffee shop as if they are at the UN again, it will be too soon. Listen, I subscribe to the New Statesman, I know self-indulgence. But we need a broader and more diverse set of voices. Now more than ever we need young people who are informed and opinionated to speak up, and challenge the arrogance and bluster of the so-called professionals.

So. Let’s talk about something (and oh boy is it a hard pivot from my poorly feet).

China.

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I’ve been struck recently by the coverage in the news around the collapse of the recent Spy Case over supposed Chinese agents working for top British Parliamentarians. While it remains unclear why exactly the charges were dropped by the CPS - most arguments centre around an apparent inability for Govt to label China as a threat - it is safe to say that this runs far deeper.

I’m not remotely surprised by what is happening. We should be absolutely clear that Chinese interference in our state infrastructure is common, and far more widespread than we care to admit publicly.

Jaydream wrote his dissertation on the ways in which China uses its economic dominance as a weapon to undermine sovereign states’ national security. This is no new phenomenon.

I read in The Times today that we are apparently outraged that China has been stealing and harvesting the data of British citizens. Of course they have. Boris Johnson knew this and still let Huawei build parts of our 5G network. It is not news for us to know that China has used its economic preponderance to infiltrate key levels of British society. Look no further than our Universities.

British Universities - especially our Russell Groups - regularly accept money almost directly from the Chinese military or nuclear funding programmes. The technology and blueprints for one of China’s new helicopters came from a British University. Oops. Don’t take my word for it. You can read the reports of the House of Lords Intelligence Committee and the Security Services for yourself. Both of my Alma Matres - co-incidentally a great song by Bleachers - accepted significant sums of money from the Chinese State.

The strategy from Xi is simple, and one that is being deployed across the developing word - especially South East Asia, and in its peacekeeping missions in Africa: harvest all data possible irrespective of its value, then process it later. It wants to forge a monopoly on all information, because it sees data as the greatest weapon it has in this new digital age. And they may prove to be correct. What is also clear is that the UK has ignored the advice of its intelligence community on the subject in the name of economic opportunity - one which is increasingly desperate.

The Chinese demand for a “Mega Embassy” in Central London is a perfect example of the ways in which we are being taken for a ride. For those unfamiliar, China wants to build a big daddy Embassy in the heart of Central London. It’s a whopper.

Interestingly, China will not allow the UK Government to see the unredacted plans for the floor designs of the Embassy, and huge chunks are blacked out. It remains unclear how the building would be designed, but it is clear that there are massive security concerns stemming from it.

It was revealed this week that China successfully stole swathes of the highest classification of secret intel from the UK Government. Now again, we know they’re doing this. We’ve known for years. And you know, I’m not naive, spying is spying and I’m sure we’re out there pretending to do espoignage too. But there’s a fundamental difference: China are good at it.

The Government has decided to delay the decision on whether it is going to authorise this new Chinese Monster House. It keeps on delaying the decision, no doubt in an attempt to let the heat die down so that it can approve it and have limited pushback. If they were going to say no, they would have done so by now. If it approves it, it will be one of the most consequential decisions - and mistakes - this government will make. The rest of the world are playing chess and the government is learning Checkers (or Chequers iykyk). Let’s hope sense prevails. But when the National Security Advisor has very close - and questionable - ties to China, I’m not holding out much hope. If Britain is serious about being a real player in the rise of AI and the new digital age, it may never recover from approving the embassy. Although let’s be real, the Intelligence Community make clear the Chinese State has already significantly infiltrated Britain and the amount data is has is insane - cough, cough, tiktok.

Anyway. I’m up a height and aggy. My blood pressure is through the roof. My feet hurt. I’m shaking from a mixture of caffeine, frustration at everyone and everything, and the two “academics” sitting opposite me are now discussing Hitler. I’m off to Waterstones. Have a lovely day, losers x

It’ll shock no one to hear that birthdays are a strange time for me. I’m not – it appears – a naturally glass-half-full geezer. And so, where most take birthdays as an opportunity to celebrate, I fall much more on the reflective side. I’ll never forget my 21st birthday, where all celebrations were temporarily put on hold because the director of the University Theatre Society musical had not recalled me for the role I’d wanted in Legally Blonde. For the record, I think I’d have made a brilliant Emmett. A law grad with a chip on his shoulder… we going method? In the end, all’s well that ends well, and I played Tony in Jonathan Harvey’s exceptional play Beautiful Thing. A production famous for the impeccable acting of the rest of the cast, and for my donning a silk Victoria’s Secret robe and smoking the “good stuff.”

I’ve gotten better with age. If anything, I’m more reflective than ever but have forged a healthier way of processing my emotions. It’s not born from any sense of sadness. It’s important to say that. I’ve got nothing to be sad about. It’s just that, for me at least, birthdays mark an unusual moment in your calendar. It’s the only day that is special for you, and where everyone else carries on as usual (celebrate me ffs). It’s a time when we’re led to evaluate our personal growth from the previous year. Some would argue that New Year’s Eve is actually more aligned to that, but I’m normally fast asleep by 10pm to know anything about that.

Often, we place significance on age in a way that I think is outdated. We’re past having a secure job by 22 and being ready for a family. Christ, I’m so old that if I’d taken that tack, my kids would be trekking off to Sixth Form. That’s a joke. Legalise comedy. But it speaks to a broader point: it’s natural to be a late bloomer nowadays. Achieving financial security, job satisfaction, having cars and houses and juicers is harder than it’s ever been. And so there has to be a grace period when we reflect on where we’ve come and where we’re going. And that’s not even taking into consideration the fact that sometimes, in spite of it all, some want to break from the shackles and tread the lesser-worn path.

Really, we need to give ourselves a break. Progress isn’t binary, and we shouldn’t overly attach significance to our age like some metric of success. I speak often about the fact I’m not where I wanted, or expected, to be at the ripe old age of 27 (if anyone asks I’m 23). Not by any means. There’s so much I want to achieve, and with each passing year some of those dreams feel less and less attainable and real. And that hurts. But it’s not to say that we aren’t content or happy in spite of it all. Not being in the exact position we expect doesn’t necessarily equate to unhappiness in where we actually are. That’s something I have to reconcile with, and it’s often worse on birthdays – because you’re sat looking at cards with a number on that can feel like a constant reminder of slow progress and fading dreams. But, fundamentally, that’s a choice. It’s entirely possible that I’m the only one that even remotely thinks like this. If that’s the case, good for you, buck! Sorry we can’t all be like you.

The existentialist in me – I’m currently reading Notes From The Underground – enjoys the reflection. In life, we rarely sit down to think and reflect and come to terms with our emotions. Modern society inhibits any form of free thinking or self-reflection. If you ask me – go on, ask me – our society would be a much healthier and kinder place if the reverse were true, but hey, what can you do. It isn’t always easy to ask tough questions of ourselves, but it’s a necessary evil in becoming a fully rounded, and emotionally available member of our ailing society. And so now, as I sit listening to my new Radiohead vinyl, it’s nice to take a minute to reflect; on the good, the bad, and the ugly.

My overarching feeling right now is that life is about moments and memories far more than it is about material goods or big presents. When I came home this afternoon after my obligatory flat white and performative male reading session, it meant the world to have sister Holly standing with a cake and candles waiting for me.

She’d been there a while, so I’m not sure what age the candles said I am, but they definitely started off right. With a Happy Birthday banner, and an assortment of my friends (Djungelskog and the PG Tips Monkey wearing party hats), it was a genuinely precious moment.

On the one hand sure, it is sad that I’m at the age where I’m given ornaments for presents. It’s even sadder that I’m old enough to love them! My two new fish book stoppers are a brilliant gift, and as I look at them now, they’re giving a warm embrace to AA Gill’s Pour Me, and Melvyn Bragg’s biography of Richard Burton, Rich. Just underneath sits a watercolour of my favourite pub from a special friend and University Challenge champion (Swan Supremacy. Durham iykyk).

Tonight, I’ll fill my face with tapas and drink Verdejo like it’s Ribena and I’ll drink to the brilliant people in and around my life. The ones that guide you on life’s winding journey into something resembling satisfaction. It’s a long old journey and, if you’re anything like me, one you’ll bemoan at any given opportunity. The destination might seem like the jewel in the crown, but the journey is the real prize. I’ve been reading too much Beckett lately, but it’s true. In a world of division, hate and disassociation there has never been a greater need for wider reflection and appreciation of life’s natural absurdity. And there is absolutely no better time to do that than one’s own birthday – what else are you going to do, have fun? And you know, I wanted to write something for you lot today too. It felt like an important thing to do – mainly for myself, but you could pretend and play along too.

So think of me as my newly arthritic back finally gets settled in the restaurant chair, because between nibbles of my padron peppers, I’ll think of you. Ciao besties. Granddad Jay sends his love.

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Something’s different at Jaydream Believer today. That’s right…

I’m not Jay.

Surprise! Jay’s fabulous first guest here. You may call me Lucy (or, if I’m being shameless and plugging my own Substack, @girlsotwentysomething). I was THRILLED when Jay reached out to me and requested that I put together a guest article. Now, this is very in-keeping of our friendship of four or so years. We met on a regional acting course, and through that somewhat strange and tumultuous year, he became a guiding figure for me, offering advice in the hard times, and genuinely inspirational performances and points of view. Discovering, too, that we came from similar familial backgrounds and humble towns in Northumberland, I felt like I always had a more grown-up (but not too grown-up) figure who understood me, looking out for me, even long after the course had ended, and life took us to various ends of the country and down new paths.

Likely, Jay would concur that neither of our paths have been straightforward. There have been changes of career, bumps in the road, and effectively, a few years of two young adults trying to figure out who they are. Try doing that in a social and political climate that, if you don’t mind me saying, offers absolutely fuck-all help to any unfortunate who happens to fall between the last years of the Millennial era and, the no doubt even worse-off, Gen Z. Somehow, though, I’ve always looked at Jay with a tremendous sense of admiration- if he’s making it work, on the outside at least, why can’t I? Turns out, too, that this is the impression I give to my younger friends. Following a snazzy new Instagram post just a few short days ago, and a public reveal of my little infant blog, a few very sweet younger pals of mine got in touch, telling me how cool I am and that they want to be like me. Touching, really. No, genuinely. That’s not sarcastic. I was touched. Of course, as these things often do, it got me thinking. Are they looking at me, the way I look at Jay, thinking I’m cool and have my shit together? Even if we feel like we have nothing remotely figured out, isn’t it nice that someone out there thinks we do?

And therein lies the basis of my article for you lovely lot. I don’t feel figured out, or cool. Not in the slightest. My career choice took me years to actually break into, in the most roundabout way, and now I’m stuck questioning what comes next. But do I think I’m alone in this? No. And call me soft for this too, but I also don’t think it’s our fault.

The reason, I would argue, that our generation feel behind on life, or lost in some way is the comparison of our lives to the lives our parents were leading at the same age. Take my dad and I, for example. I am now the same age that my dad was when I was born. He was married, had his own house, and a secure job. Meanwhile, I’m a penniless, houseless, childless drama school student with a sense of impending doom and fear for my future. Ask any normal young person, and the stark difference between them and their parents at their age will be much the same. The harsh reality is the world is a changed climate to the one that Gen Xs and early Millennials became accustomed to. A simple Google search about increasing house costs led me to the Savills Estate Agency page, where I discovered (much to my horror) that house prices have increased by 257% (or 92% on ‘an inflation-adjusted basis’) since the year 2000. The government agreed in a 2024 report that, indeed, ‘the cost of living crisis has had a negative impact on young people, across many aspects of their lives.’ A fascinating chapter of the report reveals that 55% of young people surveyed age 11-21 worried that they will be left unable to find a job post- leaving education, and 59% fear that they will not be able to buy their own home. They’re telling us that aged 11. Ramp it up ten or so notches as you hit your twenties. I’d imagine, by this age, the figures are closer to the 80 to 90% mark. Scary stuff, eh?

But it’s not all doom and gloom.

I promise.

‘But how do you know, Lucy?’ I hear you cry. Trust me, I urge you. I won’t sit here and pretend that the aforementioned heavy stuff isn’t frightening, or frustrating. Of course it is- it would be foolish, and quite frankly insulting to both mine, and your, intelligence for me to pretend otherwise. However, I think our generation is the first of its kind, in so many ways.

According to The Economist, in 2018, we are ‘better behaved and less hedonistic nowadays.’ High praise. The same publication did also call us ‘stressed, depressed and exam-obsessed’ a year later. But take it as a compliment- we’re more concerned with education and prioritising our own mental health. We’re breaking cycles, getting therapy, following our own creative outlets, less bound by social timelines. It leads me to the conclusion that maybe being ‘figured-out’ looks different to its predecessor. Maybe, in this generation, being figured out is getting the therapy your parents always needed themselves but never sought out, or following your dream rather than plumping for the sensible office job with the steady enough income that slowly destroys your happiness. Once you remove the massive goals- the house, the baby, the CEO position, whatever- the figuring out seems less terrifying. And less urgent! Let’s be honest, too, those massive goals are somewhat out of our hands at the moment (government help us please), out of our control. What remains totally in our control is the other stuff- the career choices, the creative outlets, the prioritising our health, the standing up for what we feel is right. Take your time to figure out who you are and what you want. Look at me. Now I dress in vintage clothing, write a blog, and the younger girls look at me like I’m the coolest person they’ve ever met. They make me feel like life may be okay, in the end. We are, in general, a supportive generation. Or so I believe. So, to the gloriously un-figured out young adults out there, I suggest you do four things.

1. Remove the big scary stuff from the equation for a second.

2. Work out what you have got figured out, and what you do know.

3. Let the un-figured out gradually make itself known (it will!)

4. Remember that someone out there thinks you’re doing a good fucking job.

And as an extension task:

Breathe.

Thank Jay for bringing you a cool first guest.

And if you enjoyed this, subscribe to @girlsotwentysomething.

Lucy x

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Something a little different this week. I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that we had some exciting things in the pipeline. As some of you know, I was commissioned to write a piece on modern communication and the Labour Party’s current reluctance to get to grips with it for North East Bylines. I was really grateful for the opportunity. I’ve spoken ad nauseam (fancy) about wanting to put myself out there more, pitching ideas left, right, and centre - with varying degrees of success.

But alongside North East Bylines, we - because we’re in this together - have a piece coming out in a cheeky little zine called Hot Source, and I’ve written a wildly provocative article on drug culture and class for the next edition of Radge Magazine. Both teams are absolute legends. So we’re getting there. As my Granddad used to say, we’re tipping along.

Of course, some places play harder to get than others. And I get it. I’m talented, I’m handsome (in an aging rugged way?) - some people don’t want to just cave in too easily. Really, I do get it. But I would say one thing to those folk: don’t. Just cave.

It’s in that spirit I’m writing today. I recently pitched an article to The Fence - big players in the magazine world - about my life and the lessons I learnt when I “au-paired” (term used shockingly loosely) in Corsica. They asked for 900 words, I delivered, but it wasn’t quite right for their next edition. They did, however, suggest I send it to the New Statesman.

Now, let’s be clear: that’s not a flex. I’d much rather The Fence had said yes. It’s kind of them to think my work might suit the New Statesman, but I was left with a slight chagrin. After all, you don’t just send pieces to the New Statesman. “Oh yeh, hey mate, I’m a working-class Geordie kid from Newcastle (Geordie deployed loosely), do you want my article?” No thanks, Robson Green, replies the New Statesman.

So there are positives, there are negatives, but we’re punching above our weight. We’re getting there. We are bloody getting there.

I’m proud of the piece, and I want it to be read. So you’ll find it below. Sure, it could be longer, but I was on a word count, baby! And fine, I won’t get the 150 quid I was hoping for, but I will get the warm, fuzzy validation of you lot reading it - and that’s priceless. On an unrelated note, donations and gifts are welcome. Mwah.

Next week, we’ve got our first guest edition in a three-part series! I’ve read it, and I’m so excited for you to hear Lucy’s voice. It’s a cracker.

But for now, sit back and enjoy A Certain Idea of France.

Like De Gaulle, I have always had a certain idea of France - one of pessimism, and cheese. So, as I held my lukewarm Heineken, and pistols jumped from the arse pocket of some tatty Levi 501s, Toto was no longer in Kansas. Having abandoned my soulless quest for corporate monotony only weeks earlier - I flunked a Bar exam - the Corsican mountains were a far cry from London’s Middle Temple.

There were five of us in the tiny bar: a presumed mafia boss, his gun-toting henchmen, a surf instructor moonlighting as my chaperone, an inebriated florist, and yours truly - offensively blonde, too short to be convincingly European, and quite obviously on the run from reality.

Camus would have recognised me immediately: his inimitable étranger - unfamiliar, underdressed, and suddenly on intimate terms with the barrel of a pistol. Under pressure to deliver, and with my skull on the line, I threw the Hail Mary: ‘Alain Delon’, I said - delivered with the confident rasp only Gauloises can give. The trigger finger quivered. ‘Oui…surely at his best in Le Cercle Rouge?’ came the reply. A test. The air, heavy, crackled as I delivered the killer blow: ‘Le Samouraï. Always Le Samouraï.’ A nod. My first step to naturalisation.

It hadn’t always been this way. Only weeks earlier, introverted and uptight, I seemed destined for the kind of respectability achieved only by surrendering ambitions of happiness in the name of “success.” To a working-class kid from England’s North East, being called to the Bar seemed the ultimate calling card: one sweep of the dusty robe, one adjustment of the horsehair wig, and the class-shaped chip on my shoulder would be gone for good.

Then I failed the exam - civil litigation, who needs it - and the whole thing began to look less like the world at my feet and more like a prison. So, I did what anyone in my position would do: found a family on Au-Pair-World, saw a photo of them at LEGOLAND looking happy-ish, and thought, that’ll do. I don’t know what possessed me, but that Damascene conversion marked the beginning of a rewrite of who I was, and what I thought life meant.

The airport at Bastia is small and quaint. On arrival, a confident “bonjour” will get you past Passport Control, and you’ll find a stray dog pissing at baggage reclaim. It was an introduction to the Corsican raison d’être: anything goes. Relax. Ça va.

Cervione, my adopted home, sits on the slopes of Monte Castellu. Here, as life winds with the mountain’s curve, it fizzes. Its cracks and crags point to an unmistakable sense of history - a time and a place so forgotten it feels charmingly implausible that it ever really existed. Worn but alive, it breathes a warmth I’ve never found since. Instantly, it was home.

Each morning, I sat en terrasse with the town elders, who immediately christened me le saumon anglais for my inability to tan. I read, journaled, and let a kind of philosophy creep in. At first, I read what I had brought: Carrère’s La Moustache; Besson’s In The Absence of Men; and John Kerry’s hit memoir, Every Day Is Extra. It was the happiest I’ve ever been.

People often asked why my days were always the same, why I wasn’t out exploring in my battered yellow Citroën. The answer was simple: Cervione was enough. It was everything.

With time, I was pulled further into village life. My coffee cup shrank with every passing day - the truest mark of respect - and my library dwindled. When I finally ran out of books, I left a note in the village’s boîte aux livres asking for anything they thought I should read. Over the next few weeks, battered copies of Camus and Sartre appeared as if by magic, as though the whole village had conspired in my naturalisation. I never found out who left them. Camus was no accident: he was their literary calling card, a piece of cultural self-respect. It taught me two things - that life is to be questioned at every turn, and that the generosity of strangers can completely rewrite you. In return, I gifted John Kerry. By the time I left Cervione, I was drinking from a thimble.

And then there was Biscotte. The family’s orange cat who slept in a hollowed-out television and adopted me the moment I arrived. She was my shadow. My co-conspirator, curling up beside me as I read and wrote, sneaking into my room when I left the door ajar. She wasn’t just a comfort; she was a friend. When she was killed by a car one afternoon, it winded me in a way I still can’t quite explain. For all the warmth of Cervione, something had gone. My journey had reached its natural end.

I’ve thought of returning, but it could never be the same. That was its gift. The truest mark of respect is to leave it as it was; to carry the memories and nothing more. And I do. In the friendships I forged, and the John Kerry book I left, I hope my imprint will always be there in Cervione. The same is true of me. It taught me that life is more than respectability, and to question everything - with one exception: the pistol clicks. Le Samouraï. Always Le Samouraï.

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Actually, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. Dangerous, I know. Yesterday, on my drive home, I was listening to Jay Shetty interview Orlando Bloom about his Buddhist journey. Best-friend-Dan texted me mid-podcast begging me not to follow suit. Fair point — I’m already performative enough without additional bells and whistles.

But honestly, he had a point. The world feels bleak right now, and we feel more divided than ever. In my hometown, we have flags flying from more lampposts than I’ve had hot dinners, and we even now have two St George Cross roundabouts. Now let’s park the stupidity and ridiculousness of it all for a second. Let’s ignore my very poetic observation that most of the flags are currently flying at the half-way mark on the lampposts. An unintentional irony sure, but there is something oddly telling about the fact my town is flying the flag at half-mast.

And so it’s had me deep in thought. And I know when I say that usually it’s some form of quip, or a segue to an off-piste point that has become our bread and butter here at Jaydream Believer. I’ve been deeper in thought recently than in my entire life. I’ve not got any answers - as frequent readers will know - but I have thoughts and a lot of feelings. Between you and me, I find the news so overwhelming at the minute that I don’t watch or follow it. I check The Times once a day, and I’m completely off twitter. Now as anyone who knows me will tell you, that’s rogue. I start twitter wars for fun. No longer!

It seems to me that there is no hope anymore. And - what’s more - very little effort to inject any. We’re in a world of extremes, where all we can talk about is the rise of populism in Britain and across the world. We’re ruled and driven by fear, and it means we are not talking about other things that are important to us. Reading rates amongst young people are massively down - an absolute tragedy. The amount of entry level jobs for graduates is decreasing at about 21% per year. The financial burden - on everyone but on young people especially - is complete madness. And in and amongst the populist bullshit around which Chinese manufactured British flag to erect on a lamppost to annoy “the wokeys”, we’re getting increasingly increasingly lost.

And, what’s more, there is nowhere for us - you and I - to actually push back. Opportunities to write down our thoughts, to reach people and deliver a message, are none. Zilch. Especially if you’re a kid from a working class background or an underrepresented group. And that’s just a fact. I feel it myself every day - and there are others far far worse off than me. So, I think we should do better.

I’ve given a lot of time recently to how best to grow this page; to make it more than just a witty blog I write on a whim, and into something more concrete, organised. To build a community. After all, communities aren’t defined by their size. I’d love to write more and to consider myself a writer. It’s what gives me that fire in my belly, and if I’m being totally honest, I’m often at my most calm and content when I have something to draft and create. It’s been a real revelation to me.

So here’s the idea - and yes it’s self-indulgent. Roll with it, it’s what we do. Once a month (ish), I’d love to feature a guest edition — we could call it Talking Heads (or Community Chest if we’re feeling Monopoly-core). If you’ve always wanted to write something but haven’t had the confidence or platform, then why not? I can’t offer much beyond my 83 subscribers (we’re growing, baby), but posts average a few hundred readers (and sometimes more) — and more importantly, it’s about community, not scale.

As I’m always saying, size doesn’t matter - behave. It’s as much about connecting, giving a voice to people who might not necessarily have it otherwise, and vibing than anything else. It might not work - and that’s fine, I’m comfortable with failure (womp womp) - but where’s the shame in putting feelers out and seeing what comes?

I remember how I felt when I started this page. I was so anxious to share my work to people who were going to judge me. But I knew I wanted to do it, and eventually the fear subsided just enough to do it. I’ve never looked back, and I hope we continue to go from strength to strength. My work was terrible at first - real bad - but they stand as a friendly reminder at how you grow and learn and develop. And I genuinely mean that.

So yeh, we’re going to see some changes happening around here. Going forward, I am going to post a Substack at the same time every week - around midday on a Sunday - and we’re going to really really try and make this thing work and grow. And I’m super excited by that. Reach out, let’s chat. Let’s see what happens!

And if you’re worried your work won’t be any good, please take confidence in the first thing I wrote. A poem called The Rehearsal Room:

Perspex walls, and bulbs hanging bright,

Paper all about and conversation light,

One on one, a tete-a-tete,

A party sitting full of fret.

Learn your f*cking lines.

Need I say more.

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And it makes me think.

Some may already know that I was in London this week, sampling the delights of West Dulwich on the hunt for some new acting headshots. And it’s a tough gig. As humans, we weren’t designed to sit and stare at a camera looking mysterious and discovering that secret little glint in the eye. Although, some of us do a damn good job of making it look like we were. Kaching.

Famously, I can’t smile. And when I do, I look like an alien that has been taught the mechanics of a grin, but without any sense of humanity or - bluntly - life. In those smiling shots, there is a dominant casting call I would meet: hostage being forced to convince those at home that they are not being held captive. Smile, we’ve got a gun to your head vibes. You know? It’s tough man! I’ve got no mystery - my edge is spherical.

And so, for the past few days, I’ve been sitting down with a flat white and picking four photographs to roll with out of about six hundred. A tall order - and I’m no man mountain.

It’s actually kind of cute. I get so invested in it. Almost lost. To the point that this morning, in my usual Jesmond caffe nero seat, I didn’t notice two girls sitting laughing at me. Firstly, rude. Secondly, you’re drinking a latte babe - only one of us is basic. Yes, I’d LOVE a thimble of coffee and a bucket of steamed milk please. Loser.

But, it seems, the two girlie girls found it really amusing that I was looking at a thousand identical pictures of myself. Sure. I was sitting with my new penguin classic of Andy Warhol’s Beauty. Sure, I now sport a lil hoop. Sure, I had my racing green Leuchtturm 1917 too - I keep it on me so that I can jot down little ideas for substacks, poems, little plays, sketches etc. Calm it fellas, I can hear the eye roll. But you never know when the genius is going to hit. And at my age, my memory ain’t what it used to be.

Once upon a time, people laughing would have really bothered me. Aged 20, Jaydream would have been crying into his ham and cheese toastie. But now, Jaydream is strong. Jaydream isn’t intimidated by sad little girlies who are old enough to know better and one is wearing a fake ralph lauren jumper (the lettering is wrong, iykyk). And we can all tell Jaydream isn’t remotely fazed, right? Right!

It did make me think though. My last stack did really well - thanks for reading folks! - and I wanted to make sure that whenever I sit down to tap tap tap, it’s for something. Because this is a collaboration. For once, this isn’t about me. It’s about us, and I feel the weight of responsibility. It can’t just be nothing. This is a time where we sit down together and we have a conversation. A lil pause to think, reflect, and laugh at Jaydream’s hubris - that sort of tiny smile that only happens on one corner of your mouth, you know? A knowing “oh Jaydream”.

And caffe-nero-headshot-gate made me think. Over the last couple of days, I’ve been struck by a distinct lack of kindness. Even walking here - I’m in Waterstones now - Jaydream and co experienced a couple of men in their 50s passing us in the street. Instead of moving so that we all fit on the path, they stormed into us. Clearly, I am sorry to say, looking for a barmy. Unfortunately for them, Jaydream has a green belt in Judo, and once famously won the Spennymoor Mini-mon (on a technicality). After some verbal tennis - do you bite your thumb at us sir (shoutout to my Romeo and Juliet stans, Act 1 Scene 1, you get it) - life moved on. They carried on walking, no doubt up a height and annoyed, and we too merrily rolled along to Waterstones’ cafe, for the safety and comfort of a cronut.

But that’s sad. What annoyed me most isn’t that there was a collision - a brief fracas if you will - it was the fact that they chose to initiate it. They wanted confrontation.

We’re seeing more of that nowadays I feel. Maybe it’s just me. Maybe, Andy Warhol in hand - I am a target for jealousy and envy. I hear that. I’m a handsome fella. But I think we’re seeing a significant decline in the level of human kindness.

Earlier this week, at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, I experienced an aggressive South African berating female members of staff at a venue for making him wait for the latecomers’ point. A big bloke at 6’5, he was vile and really unkind to the staff. Now in isolation, sure this happens. The world is imperfect. But, given this Substack has turned into a meanness listing exercise - classic Jaydream - it’s been something I’ve stumbled across frequently this week. Maybe the Black Eyed Peas were onto something when they famously asked: where is the love?

The world is hardly all sunshine and rainbows, but things seem bleaker than ever. We’re living in a world of rampant uncertainty and anxiety. Politics is as divisive as it has ever been, and instead of looking for solutions to serious problems, our elected representatives are turning to empty methods which do nothing other than drag us further apart.

As I drove out of my hometown this morning, I was struck by the St George’s Cross blazoned on lamppost to lamppost. Erected overnight, they made me feel uncomfortable. Perhaps controversially, I find something weirdly intimidating in the St George’s Cross - something unwelcome. And I’m English.

It’s probably a vibe thing, but it’s a feeling I don’t have when I see the Union Jack displayed. In my view, and many readers will disagree, I think the weaponisation of the “English flag” has made it represent a deep unkindness. A profound sense of judgement and suspicion. It’s somewhat humorous to me given that the vast majority of affordable George cross flags are manufactured in China…check amazon, folks.

Now as a side note, as the Govt weigh up whether to approve a whopping Chinese super-embassy in the heart of central London - despite the fact the security services have flagged significant national security concerns, and the actual planning documentation being heavily redacted for locations inside the embassy - it’s a perfect analogy for the hollow shell of “Britishness” we currently represent.

And I want to be clear, this isn’t as political as it might sound. Ultimately, at its core, it’s not about politics; it’s about what we are, and who we want to be. And presently, I worry we’re on a very slippery slope. I’m proud to be British, but that doesn’t mean I follow that pride blindly and without any nuance. We’re a country, not a cult.

I challenge you to walk down your local highstreet and look at the people around you. Do they look happy? Do they look content? From my recent experience, I really don’t think so. I see anxiety, stress, fear on the face of a lot of people I cross. I’m an empath. And sure, what I think isn’t gospel - could have fooled me - but I genuinely, truly believe we are seeing a real change. In the age of AI and social media especially, where human interaction is more and more a choice than a necessity, we are losing the key component of what it means to be a human.

And it is incumbent on us - young and old - to go back to basics and ask ourselves why we’re here. Politicians aren’t the answer. Politics isn’t the answer - it doesn’t truly seek to represent us at the moment. Politically, we’re lost in a storm and its eye is rapidly approaching. Things will get worse. But that doesn’t mean that we have to. We the people. Forget the world outside and focus on the inside. What it means to feel. To breathe. The human condition is about so much more than government and the fallibility of our leaders. It’s about experiences. It’s about ambition and not being scared to dream. It’s about treating others how we’d like to be treated ourselves, and calling out injustice when we see it. Warhol wrote - calm the eye roll (!) - people should fall in love with their eyes closed. Just close your eyes. Don’t look. And I couldn’t disagree more. Open your eyes people, smell the coffee and look at the beauty out there. Remove the blinkers, give yourself a shake, and see! Stop looking elsewhere for your thoughts, your feelings. Find ‘em yourself. If we don’t take it upon ourselves to spread some kindness, then who will huh? Riddle me that.

This hasn’t gone where I thought it would. I had intended to give a review of Weapons - it’s a mid film, fight me - and of Eddington, a film about growing divisions in a small New Mexico town hit by covid, but we didn’t get there. Maybe it would have made for a better substack, I don’t know. In a sign of unusual self-development, I don’t really care. How do you like those apples! Like I said earlier, when I write, I want it to be for something. And so, in the same way as Michael Jackson famously put down the end of the soldier’s gun in Earth Song (?), to those evil bratty girls who laughed at me, I say: I forgive you.

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