The Human Bit, by Frank Peters It is a wonderful question. Especially when it appears on page 19 of a 32-page form. The form belongs to my mother-in-law. She is 85. It is the British government’s AA1 claim form for Attendance Allowance, intended for people of State Pension age or over. Question 37 asks whether…
The most normal thing I have learned over time is that no matter where you go across the globe, every home has its own sacred household rules. Don’t leave your shoes lying around. Take your shoes off before entering the house. Leave them on the balcony. And then, of course, there are the drawers. We…
By Babette, Germany. Babette went to Egypt hoping for a wonderful family holiday. She came home with a wobbly bed, an improvised cocktail, a stingray she couldn’t photograph, four massages and a firm belief that Egypt deserves another chance — just somewhere else. Coming home from holiday is difficult enough. Coming home to three weeks…
By Bruce Lloyd in London & Frank Peters in Cleebourg. We worry about whether artificial intelligence will escape our control. But perhaps the deeper question is older and more ordinary: how much of modern life already depends on trusting people we will never meet? Frank told Bruce a story from his days as a receptionist…
Lunch with Rosii, (Brazil), Janita (Fruitloop, South Africa), Frank, (The Mayor, France) We use them, lose them, complain when they stop working and almost never wonder who invented them. Then Fruitloop suggested replacing the doorbell with a mousetrap, and ordinary life became considerably less ordinary. Some inventions arrive with fanfare. Others quietly enter our lives,…
By Sylvie, France. From tennis nerves and supermarket calculations to concert crowds, safari nightmares and the quiet art of letting someone go first, an ordinary conversation about waiting kept finding somewhere else to go. Sylvie lost her tennis match 6–2, 6–1, which did not particularly surprise her. What mattered more was that the score did…
By Janita Le Grange, South Africa We left early on Friday morning for the 380 km drive to Thabazimbi to visit my grandparents and attend their annual festival. We planned a few stops along the way, starting with Hartbeespoort Dam. General Hendrik Schoeman had a vision, a pocket full of ambition, and a pile of…
By Manfred & Martin, aka The Swimming Club, both in Germany. At Swimming Club, a conversation about useless objects became an experiment in 1995 technology — and a question about what disappears when everything becomes easier. Painful object divorces. Martin does not need long to think about the things he owns but never uses. There…
By Fabrice, France Janita asked me to explain two local traditions she had never heard of: a wild boar dinner among old military vehicles, and a 12-kilometre Marche Gourmande built around food, wine, music and friends. Janita looked at the photographs and said, “I know absolutely nothing about the wild boar dinner. Start at the…
If you are married or have kids, you have undoubtedly heard the frantic call: “I can’t find it!” or “I don’t know where it is!” So you patiently get up, walk over to the cupboard or the fridge, reach past nothing at all, and pull out the exact item they were looking for. It wasn’t…
