What should we talk about today?
The world according to Kirkey
iankirkebc 
We’ve built a culture where generosity waits for a spectacle, as if suffering must be performed before compassion can be released. Are you a sucker for the spectacle? There’s a particular British ritual that plays out with the reliability of rain on a bank holiday weekend. Someone linked to your social structure who inevitably engages … Read more
Luck is the unreliable strike partner we never asked for but can’t drop. From philosophers to psychologists, everyone’s been trying to explain why some people seem to ride its wave while others get flattened by it. There’s a moment every football fan recognises. You’re in the away end, rain slicing sideways, the pitch looking like … Read more
Keir Starmer is, by all reasonable measures, a decent man — someone who has consistently chosen steadiness over spectacle. His supposed “crime” is not malice but naivety: trusting an individual mired in scandal, appointed as a representative of a US administration already drowning in it. Perhaps the infamous “dark arts” of Mandleson would have been … Read more
Valentine’s Day has always been a date that mocks me with the precision of a well timed counterattack. While the rest of the nation drapes itself in roses, chocolates, and the sort of performative affection that would make even Casanova roll his eyes, I find myself preparing for a very different kind of emotional ordeal: … Read more
An exploration of sunk costs, stubborn loyalty, and the psychology of sticking with things long after they’ve stopped serving us. There’s a moment – usually around episode three – when I know. I instinctively grasp that the Netflix series I’ve committed my evening to is going nowhere. The plot is staggering around like a Notts … Read more
I was a late entrant into the cyber world of social media. Like a reluctant guest at a party who ends up hogging the karaoke machine, once I was in, I was hooked. I became a cheerleader, pom poms aloft, shouting into the digital void. But let’s be clear: my online persona – save one … Read more
I still fill up when Notts County emerge from the players’ tunnel. That moment, the roar of the crowd, the ritual of anticipation — it should be shared with the man who was always beside me. My best friend. My dad. But he isn’t there anymore. The void he left never truly goes away. In … Read more
Is it just me, or have a few formerly rotund comrades undergone such jaw-dropping transformations that you half expect them to be cast in the next Marvel reboot? One minute they’re waddling toward the buffet like it’s an Olympic qualifier, the next they’re gliding past you in Lycra with the smug serenity of someone who’s … Read more
When I joined the police in 1982, we were issued a truncheon – a lump of wood so archaic it felt like a relic from the Crimean War. As a tool of personal protection, it was about as useful as an ashtray on a motorcycle. The version handed to my female colleagues was even more … Read more
Since the dawn of consciousness, humanity has wrestled with one question more than any other: What is the meaning of life? Philosophers have pondered it, poets have wept over it, and pub philosophers have debated it between sips of lukewarm lager. From Plato’s cave to Camus’ absurdity, from Nietzsche’s will to power to Sartre’s existential … Read more