I'm desperately trying to stay hopeful about society, but I'm really feeling discouraged and disheartened. Society seems so fractious and divided, and the threads holding the tapestry of daily life together seems so badly frayed that it feels like it will all unravel. And that's tragic.

And there's been an increasing number of manipulative con artists trying to get people to buy them food, using the same tactics that you typically see in Paris. And they sometimes aren't particularly thrilled when you say no. Only a matter of time before the aggression there sees an uptick.

Town has definitely started to feel really weird of late. Like, I've noticed more and more aggression between people, and a few weeks ago, teens tried to scare an elderly man by screaming right into his ear. Other teens have been harassing girls and spraying them with water guns.

It was just so disheartening, especially as I was with my family at time. My toddler later asked if I'd tried to make them be nice. I've never felt unsafe in Liverpool, but I still feel just so, so weird now. It sounds so silly to say given I wasn't physically assaulted, but there ya go.

Is it any wonder that an antisemite like Roald Dahl pushed a mendacious claim to have never seen Jewish people on the front line. Sure, his bigotry likely wouldn't have been influenced by films, but it is emblematic of a glaring ignorance about the broader British experience of the two world wars.

Jewish people served in countless thousands alongside other communities, including Anglo Italians and Germans who fought and died in both wars (sometimes with relatives detained as enemy aliens). Yet UK war films largely erase that, not even having something as superficial as a surname like Cohen.

In saying that, it has helped me reconnect with books. My reading habit had long-lapsed due to free time becoming ever more elusive alongside a corresponding desire to switch off at day's end with some feel-good (& repetitious) MMOs. Almost finished the LOTR trilogy after years of wanting to!

Lol! My 3yo went through a phase where he dropped the torp in torpedo and would yell that when we visited a maritime museum. He's very attached to that torpedo, btw. This week, he told it how much he missed it and that it was his best friend (but he also revealed the torpedo has bomb best friends).

As a Briton, I wholeheartedly share the vibe.

This is so outmoded, patronising, and downright wrong. Hopefully tongue in cheek, but Margaret Thatcher, Isabel Peron, Indira Gandhi, Sheikh Hasina, and Tansu Ciller all caused suffering to varying degrees. The chaos in this world can be abhored without veering into Fallout-style sexism.