Narnia

Wednesday

Christopher Howse

An ode to lamplighting

I was growing impatient with a recent blog by Sam Altman, who runs OpenAI, promising progress, universal prosperity, ‘a space colony, and the discovery of all of physics’ through artificial intelligence. I won’t go over that ground now, because I suddenly sat up at a passing remark he made: ‘Nobody is looking back at the past, wishing they were a lamplighter.’ Stephen’s task for Paddington council was to cycle round with his ladder fixing street lamps on the blink I’m not so sure. I used to know a lamplighter and I miss his company. His name was Stephen Fothergill, and in the 1980s he was a welcome sight in the French

Tuesday

Camilla Cassidy

Work, walk, meditate: Practice, by Rosalind Brown, reviewed

Practice is a short novel set in a ‘narrow room’: one day in the life of an Oxford undergraduate writing an essay on Shakespeare’s sonnets. Annabel is trying to ‘perfect her routine, to get more out of each day’. She goes to bed early and rises at 6 a.m. She makes coffee like it’s a ritual and drinks it from the same small, brown mug. She has a plan. She will work, walk, do yoga, meditate, each at their allotted time. The restriction of the novel – a single day, a single character, discrete passages strung together like a sonnet sequence – lends itself to a delicate portrait of Annabel’s