In This Issue

In This Issue.

Whether we are sticking to a set topic or simply talking as friends—catching up after a holiday, reminiscing about childhood, or even planning a magical Olympic sports tournament in a fictional world—this issue has a bit of all of it.

Yet, as we move through these conversations, we find ourselves thinking about rules and why we do things in a certain way. We are left asking: Why did nobody tell me that?

Why do I have to hear something second-hand from a friend instead of straight from the main source? Why do I have to ask the difficult questions when someone could have just spoken up and said so from the start? Why didn’t anybody tell me about that!

In this issue, you will find:

Polite Rules, Parking Lots, and Childhood Boundaries.

Janita’s lead editorial, Who Decides What’s Polite?, looks at the chaotic balance between work, children, missing shoes, and the invisible referee in her head—wondering who made the rules of good manners and deciding it might be time to write a few of my own.

Over in My Beer Is My Beer — and Other Rules of Politeness, Ralf travels from forgotten wine in Crete to barbecue exclusion zones, shared food, and punctuality, discovering that politeness has plenty of rules—though they depend heavily on whose territory you are standing on.

Around the table in The Trouble with Being Polite, Lunch explores French greetings, German handshakes, South African forms of address, unwanted kisses, and missing wedding invitations—discovering that good manners can mean very different things to different people, and that politeness isn’t always comfortable.

Alex’s best job interview began before he even reached the building in The Interview Started in the Car Park, asking what interviews are really for—and whether they can ever work both ways when one person needs the job more than the other.

Fabrice takes us back to a childhood of forests, bicycles, homemade adventures, and occasionally alarming ideas in Our World, Our Rules—reflecting on a time when children had considerably more freedom, and adults seemed to draw the boundaries very differently.

Unexpected Talks, Quince Gluts, and Anti-Handbooks.

In The Conversation We Didn’t Plan, weather leads Sylvie to films, daughters, blood donation, cancer walks, running, pizza, and everything in between—proving that sometimes the conversation you never planned is the one most worth having.

Faced with 102 quinces and very little practical knowledge, the Mayor recruits AI as a kitchen companion in 102 Quinces, Anyone?—discovering that an answer is only truly useful once a human has noticed what needs asking in the first place.

At The Swimming Club, Martin and Manfred construct an increasingly elaborate anti-handbook for knowing when a pleasant evening is over in When the Hoover Comes Out, Go Home—until they discover that the right guest may end up breaking every single rule.

In The Christmas Present That Starts in October, a surprisingly quick election makes Babette chair of the Parents’ Council for another year. Between homemade bread rolls, a child who prefers shop-bought bread, and choosing wool for Christmas presents, she already has plenty to organise.

Punctuality, Busy Summers, and Gin-Cured Salmon.

In How Late Is Too Late?, Ismar’s conversation about punctuality unexpectedly turns into a story about companionship, compromise, and whether a carefully organized life can still make room for somebody else.

Scout camps, cold showers, Mallorca, children, four competing languages, and a severe shortage of nuggets fill a summer in which sixteen-year-old Sarah is rarely still for long in The Summer I Was Almost Never at Home.

In The Problem AI Cannot Solve for Us, Bruce and the Mayor move from an AI mistake to political power, peace negotiations, and human decency—exploring a difficult question: what happens when we can identify a sensible solution but cannot persuade people to act on it?

Over in Postcards (First Impressions of Accra), after four years in Seoul, Nathalie begins a new chapter in Accra, Ghana. Her first impressions reveal a striking change in everyday life, where even travelling short distances requires a car and familiar routines must be reconsidered.

Ralf heads back to the kitchen in Ralf’s Kitchen: Gin-Cured Salmon, combining salmon, gin, and a little Noilly Prat for a practical recipe that brings some genuine appetite—and unmistakable Grillmeister personality—to the issue.

Finally, in Peeling Potatoes: Nobody Gave Us the Rules, Fruitloop invents five brand-new Olympic events and leaves the Mayor to organize them without anything resembling adequate instructions. Committees, risk assessments, and an international marshmallow scandal inevitably follow.

Sit back, relax, read, listen, and enjoy Issue 32 of The Pineapple.

Editorial

Who Decides What’s Polite?

We all have an invisible referee living inside our heads, constantly blowing a whistle at every turn.

By Janita Le Grange, Editor

You sit down to start working, and immediately the whistle blows: a phone call comes in. You handle that, sit back down, and whistle—time to cut hair, drive to school, and crawl through total traffic chaos because the road is under repair. Then this happens, then that happens, until you reach a point where you’ve lost your time, your motivation, and your sheer will to carry on like this.

Working from home sounds peaceful until you actually try to do it. Interruptions happen in a regular office, sure, but at least your colleagues don’t stand in your doorway asking, “What’s for lunch? I’m hungry and I can’t find my shoes!” on repeat.

So where do we actually draw the line and decide what is polite?

Do I lose my cool and shout, “Find your own shoes!”? Do I smile sweetly and say, “Just open the closet and you’ll see them where they belong”? Do I abandon my desk to go dig through the cupboard myself, or do I just sit there and ignore the whole scenario because I am trying to work?

Who decided that shouting wasn’t polite, anyway? Personally, I love a good shout. It silences the referee in my head and fills my lungs with fresh air. And who decided that saying please and thank you was mandatory at all times? Can’t I just nod my head and say, “Yes”—like I’ve earned it?

I don’t think good manners are about following a rigid set of written rules. It’s about being kind, being friendly, sometimes losing your mind for a second, but picking yourself back up and just being human. We learned manners from our parents, who learned them from theirs, going back so far that half of those original rules probably don’t even fit our modern lives anymore.

So today, I choose my own rulebook. I choose to shout about the shoes, tell the referee to jump off a cliff, say please and thank you when I mean it, eat my chocolate all by myself without sharing, and read Issue 32 of The Pineapple in absolute peace and quiet—hiding somewhere no one will ever find me.

Welcome to Pineapple 32, where we decide what is polite!

Feature

The Trouble with Being Polite.

From German handshakes and French formalities to South African aunties and an imaginary royal emergency, the Lunch table discovers that good manners are not always as simple as they seem.

By Monica in Adelaide, Australia, Nathalie in Accra, Ghana, Fruitloop (Janita) in South Africa and The Mayor, Uncle Frank (Frank) in Cleebourg, France. Rosii in Sao Paulo, Brazil sent her apologies.

What makes someone polite? Is it a friendly smile, a warm greeting, a firm handshake, or simply knowing when to say excuse me? And if you travel to another country, do the same rules still apply?

That was the question waiting for everyone at Lunch this week, where Fruitloop, the Mayor, Nathalie and Monica gathered from different corners of the world to explore the strange and sometimes confusing rules of politeness.

It sounded like a perfectly respectable conversation. Naturally, it wasn’t long before the Mayor was being threatened with the title Uncle Frank, someone was refusing to board a homemade aeroplane, and a king was in danger of having his dinner interrupted by an urgent visit to the toilet.

But underneath the laughter was a surprisingly interesting question. Who actually decides what is polite, and what happens when the manners we were taught no longer fit the world around us?

A Smile Is Not Always the Answer.

Fruitloop began with something simple. When we meet somebody for the first time, what makes us think they are polite?

Nathalie, who had recently moved to Ghana after living in Asia, offered an interesting perspective. She explained that we often judge politeness according to our own upbringing. When somebody behaves in a familiar way, we recognise that behaviour as polite. But familiar does not necessarily mean correct, and our personal expectations are not universal rules.

Different countries, cultures and generations have different ideas about good manners. What feels respectful to one person might seem strange, distant or even rude to another.

Nathalie had already noticed some interesting differences while shopping in Accra. She described seeing people dancing while working in shops, something that had surprised her after her experiences in Asia. She had also noticed different attitudes towards resting during quieter moments at work.

The Mayor immediately announced that he might try dancing while waiting at the supermarket checkout.

He suspected somebody might lock him up.

Yet Nathalie’s observations raised another question. She had encountered people who did not smile or greet customers as warmly as she might have expected, but she still considered them polite and well-behaved.

For the Mayor, a smile, eye contact and genuine warmth were important parts of a first impression. He spoke about the feeling of being comfortable with somebody, even when you hardly know them. He also recognised that these impressions come from our own experiences and values.

Fruitloop brought the discussion closer to everyday life in South Africa. At school, when collecting her son, she often encounters parents who politely ask to pass if somebody is standing in their way. In a supermarket, however, someone might accidentally bump into you and then look at you as though you were responsible for the collision.

And traffic, she suggested, was an entirely different story.

The Mayor knew exactly what she meant. He recalled driving to a busy restaurant on a beautiful Sunday when two women were standing in the middle of a roundabout, apparently enjoying a conversation while vehicles tried to navigate around them.

He sounded his horn.

The women, according to his account, were not particularly impressed.

From their perspective, perhaps he had interrupted a perfectly pleasant conversation. From his, they were standing in the middle of a road full of cars, motorbikes and buses.

Sometimes, he suggested, you have to be impolite.

Nathalie added another possibility. Perhaps our behaviour depends just as much on our mood as on our manners. The same person might respond kindly one day and impatiently the next, even in exactly the same situation.

The Mayor readily admitted that he had occasionally been so rude that his wife had preferred to distance herself from him.

Good manners, it seemed, could disappear remarkably quickly when somebody was having a bad day.

The Complicated Business of Saying Hello.

The conversation soon travelled to Germany, where Monica had noticed a greeting tradition that still surprised her.

People shake hands. Not necessarily because they are meeting for the first time or conducting business, but because that is simply how they greet one another.

Coming from Australia, Monica found the formality unusual, especially among people who already knew each other well.

The Mayor remembered something rather different from his Scottish country dancing days. He had spent about two years learning the dances in preparation for a wedding in Scotland. After one Christmas break, the first class of the new year became an enormous greeting ceremony.

Around twenty people had not seen each other for several weeks. Naturally, everybody needed to kiss, greet and catch up with everybody else.

The process took approximately half an hour.

Their German dance teacher, who was waiting to begin the lesson, was apparently less enthusiastic about the extended social occasion.

One person’s friendly reunion was another person’s lost dancing time.

But greetings were not merely a question of handshakes and kisses. Nathalie remembered being expected, as a child, to kiss adults she hardly knew because her parents considered it polite.

Nathalie remembered being expected, as a child, to kiss adults she hardly knew because her parents considered it polite.

Monica had similar memories. Adults would hug and kiss children whether the children wanted it or not. She particularly remembered an older relative who tickled her, something she strongly disliked.

Today, Monica approaches children differently. Rather than automatically hugging them, she gives them space and allows them to decide whether they want that physical affection.

Fruitloop recognised the same change in herself. As a child, she was expected to greet adults with kisses and hugs, including people she was meeting for the first time. These days, she prefers to stand back, offer a friendly greeting or shake hands.

The Mayor suddenly realised that meeting Fruitloop in person might require careful preparation.

What exactly was he supposed to do?

Fruitloop offered a practical solution.

“I think a handshake is safe.”

The Mayor was relieved. At least he now knew the rules.

You, “Vous”, “Du”, and the Dangerous Uncle Frank.

If greetings were complicated, the words used to address people were even more interesting.

In French and German, choosing between formal and informal ways of saying you can carry considerable social meaning.

Nathalie explained that she had grown up using the formal French “vous” when addressing strangers and older people. It was a sign of respect, something taught through childhood and reinforced by education.

Yet within some international expatriate communities, she had discovered almost the opposite expectation. Using “vous” could make people uncomfortable because it created a sense of distance.

She recalled meeting a Swedish woman and addressing her formally in French. The woman jokingly suggested that “vous” was something to reserve for royalty.

Nathalie enjoyed that idea so much that she was tempted to adopt it herself.

The Mayor had his own complicated history with the German “du” and “Sie”.

He remembered once suggesting to a younger professional acquaintance that they could use the informal “du” with each other. She preferred to remain with the formal “Sie”.

He found the refusal surprisingly painful. To him, the informal form had been an invitation to a more comfortable relationship. To her, maintaining formality was evidently preferable.

Monica had noticed that German communication was becoming more casual in some situations. Hotels had begun addressing her informally, even when she was a complete stranger. Yet she still used the formal form with relatives by marriage whom she had known for decades.

The Mayor admitted that his own preferences were changing with age. Where he might once have welcomed casual familiarity, he now sometimes preferred the respect he associated with a more formal greeting.

Then Fruitloop introduced the South African solution.

In Afrikaans, she explained, younger people often address older adults as “Oom” and “Tannie”, meaning uncle and aunt, even when they are not related.

So, technically, the Mayor could become Uncle Frank.

This suggestion was not warmly received.

The Mayor made it very clear that Fruitloop should think carefully before ever addressing him that way again.

Unfortunately for him, Fruitloop rather liked it.

“It has a nice ring to it. Uncle Frank.”

Monica was amused too, and the possibility of Uncle Mayor was soon floating around the table.

The Mayor’s dignity was under serious threat.

Meanwhile, Nathalie had discovered another interesting form of address in Ghana, where people sometimes called her Mommy, despite her not having children.

Fruitloop recognised the practice from South Africa, where she had also heard older women or mothers addressed that way. Neither was entirely certain of its origins, but both recognised it as part of the social language they had encountered.

By this stage, the table had travelled through several countries without leaving its chairs, and the simple English word “you” was beginning to look wonderfully uncomplicated.

When Being Honest Feels Impolite.

Fruitloop then presented a situation almost everybody could recognise.

Someone invites you to dinner, but you really do not want to go. Is it more polite to tell the truth or invent a beautiful excuse?

Nathalie preferred honesty, although she admitted it was not always easy.

She and her husband do not particularly enjoy large evening gatherings, especially when they involve many people they do not know. Sometimes they accept invitations out of politeness, even though the occasion is not something they are looking forward to.

They have also tried explaining their preferences honestly, but that can be delicate. Some people understand. Others may feel rejected.

Monica admired Nathalie’s approach. If somebody told her they disliked large evening gatherings, she would happily suggest lunch or another arrangement instead.

For her, honesty was not necessarily an insult. It could simply help two people find a better way to spend time together.

But then Monica remembered a situation where telling the truth was considerably more difficult.

A friend had built his own four-seater aeroplane and had repeatedly invited her to go flying.

Monica had repeatedly found reasons not to go.

The problem was not that she disliked her friend. She simply had no intention of climbing into his homemade aircraft.

“I’ve still got a lot of living I want to do,” she explained.

Her friend, unfortunately, was persistent.

The Mayor immediately offered an ingenious solution. Perhaps The Pineapple could publish the story, Monica could send the article to her friend, and he could discover her true feelings without her having to say them directly.

If he became offended, they could blame the media.

The Mayor was particularly pleased with this arrangement because, as publisher, he could distance himself from the editorial decision and leave Fruitloop to deal with the consequences.

Fruitloop had somehow become responsible for international diplomacy involving a homemade aeroplane.

It was turning into quite a morning.

The Mayor admitted that he generally relied on the familiar excuse of being busy, although even that did not always work. He recalled an encounter in a fashionable German restaurant where a woman questioned why she had never seen him there before. When he explained that he was usually busy, she promptly informed him that her son was also very busy but still found time to visit.

Some people, it seemed, were remarkably difficult to discourage.

The Invitations That Never Arrive.

The conversation about invitations led Fruitloop to a rather different experience.

She mentioned that she had not been invited to her cousin’s wedding, although several other members of her family had received invitations.

She did not know why.

At first, she had wondered whether her invitation might still arrive. But as time passed and other relatives began discussing the wedding, it became clear that she had not received one.

The Mayor was astonished. Monica tried to find a practical advantage: at least Fruitloop would not have to buy a wedding outfit.

Fruitloop agreed that she had saved herself the expense of a dress.

Nathalie wondered whether there might have been a postal problem. She remembered invitations in her own family that had never reached their destinations.

But Fruitloop explained that the invitations had been sent digitally through WhatsApp.

So the mystery remained.

Monica recalled similar experiences of being left out of family celebrations. She had learned to take such things in her stride, although the conversation made clear that an invitation can mean more than simply a place at a table.

Being included matters. So does knowing where one stands.

Fruitloop did not claim to know why the decision had been made, and the table could offer no answer. The discussion eventually returned to humour, as it so often does at Lunch.

After all, there was still one very important question waiting.

And this one involved royalty.

Excuse Me, Your Majesty, but I Really Must Go.

Fruitloop’s final question was gloriously ridiculous.

Imagine you are having dinner with a king. Unfortunately, you desperately need the toilet, and His Majesty is telling the longest story in the history of royal dining.

Do you interrupt him, quietly disappear, or risk an international incident?

Monica immediately wanted to know which king they were talking about.

Apparently, that made a difference.

The conversation briefly wandered into royal families, republics and Monica’s memories of seeing public expressions of respect for a monarch in Norway.

The Mayor then transported Nathalie to an imaginary banquet at Versailles, where a French king was delivering a magnificent speech and nature was making increasingly urgent demands.

Nathalie approached the problem diplomatically.

She thought modern monarchs might be more understanding about an unavoidable interruption than kings of earlier centuries. Nevertheless, she would try to find somebody to take her place in the conversation so that the king would not suddenly be left alone.

Even in a fictional royal emergency, Nathalie was thinking about good manners.

The Mayor had a different plan.

He would arrange to sit beside Dame Edna Everage, the famous Australian comic character created by Barry Humphries. Dame Edna, he felt certain, would understand the situation and smoothly rescue the conversation while he made his escape.

No diplomatic incident necessary.

Finally, Fruitloop gave her answer.

If the dinner involved many guests, she would quietly disappear without interrupting the king. But if it were just the two of them, she would simply explain that she needed to leave for a moment.

“Hold your story.”

And then, with the perfect dramatic timing of a woman who had spent the morning discussing manners across continents, she added:

“I’ll be back.”

The table immediately recognised Arnold Schwarzenegger’s famous line from The Terminator.

The Mayor wondered whether that was a promise or a threat.

Fruitloop assured him it was a promise, although she admitted that it might depend on what happened in the bathroom.

And with that, royal protocol had officially surrendered to Fruitloop.

Perhaps the Rules Are Still Being Written.

By the end of Lunch, nobody had produced a universal rulebook for politeness.

Nathalie had shown how much our expectations depend on culture and upbringing. Monica had reminded everyone that old customs, especially around personal space, can change for good reasons. Fruitloop had brought the conversation back to everyday encounters, where a simple apology or a thoughtful greeting can make a difference. And the Mayor had demonstrated that even a person who values good manners can become wonderfully impatient in a roundabout.

There were contradictions everywhere. A formal greeting could express respect or create distance. An honest refusal could be considerate or hurtful. A hug could feel welcoming to one person and uncomfortable to another.

Perhaps that is why the unwritten rules are so difficult. We learn them long before we begin questioning them, and then spend much of our lives discovering that other people learned something different.

The Lunch table did not settle those differences, but it certainly enjoyed exploring them.

And should Fruitloop and the Mayor finally meet face-to-face, at least one international protocol has already been agreed upon.

A handshake will do.

Whether Uncle Frank can survive the occasion remains another question entirely.

Member Stories

My Beer Is My Beer — and Other Rules of Politeness.

From Crete to a German restaurant and the forbidden zone around my barbecue, I keep coming back to the same thing: respect is usually visible in small actions.

By Ralf The Grillmeister, Germany.

When we landed in Crete, everything was easy.

That sounds like a very small thing, but sometimes the small things are exactly where you notice the difference. We had booked the flights and the hotel, arranged a rental car for the first six days and, for the final day, would need the transfer bus back to the airport.

At the airport, the people from the travel company were waiting. They told us which bus to take, and I explained that we didn’t need it that day because we had rented a car. We would need it at the end of the holiday.

“No problem.”

Later, from the hotel, I called again because I wanted to make sure nobody had forgotten us.

Again: “No problem.”

And there wasn’t a problem. On the final day the bus arrived, everything worked, the people were friendly, and that was it.

Very simple.

Sometimes I miss this in Germany.

From My Heart to You.

Years ago, on our first holiday in Crete, my wife and I were having dinner in the hotel. A waitress came to the table and asked what we wanted to drink.

“A bottle of wine.”

“No problem.”

Our food arrived and we started eating. We were talking, enjoying the evening, and perhaps half an hour later the waitress suddenly appeared again.

She had forgotten the wine.

“Oh God! Sorry, sorry, sorry!”

She ran away, returned with the bottle and brought us some little drinks as well.

“These are from me. From my heart to you.”

That stayed with me. For the rest of the holiday, every evening when we had dinner, a little drink appeared at our table. Other guests began looking across, probably wondering what we had done to deserve this special treatment.

Nothing.

She had made a mistake, noticed it and cared enough to put it right. Somehow, something human came out of it.

That is what I remember about Crete. At the airport, in the hotel, in restaurants, people were friendly and things seemed possible. When you asked a question, the first reaction was not automatically to find the problem.

Back in Germany, we recently experienced almost the exact opposite.

Waiting for the Menu.

We were travelling with our new mobile home and had hoped to stay near Büsum, but there was no place for us, so eventually we decided to drive home. On the way to the Elbe ferry we spotted an Italian restaurant with a large car park.

Perfect. We could park the mobile home and finally eat something.

We went inside. The first thing I noticed was the smell. A little musty. Not exactly the moment when you think, fantastic, this will be the best meal of my life.

We went inside. The first thing I noticed was the smell. A little musty. Not exactly the moment when you think, fantastic, this will be the best meal of my life.

The owner told us to sit down, so we did. My wife went to the toilet while I waited for the menu.

Nobody came.

Then I went to the toilet. When I returned, I asked her, “Has anybody been here?”

No.

So I went to the bar.

“Hello, could we please have some menus?”

“Yes, yes, I come.”

There was one complication. The last ferry across the Elbe was at eleven, so we did not have the whole evening to sit there admiring the furniture.

We waited.

And waited.

After about fifteen minutes I said, “No. We stand up and go.”

As we were leaving, the man came towards us. He didn’t ask where we were going. He didn’t apologise. Nothing.

So we climbed back into the mobile home and drove away, now extremely hungry. Fortunately, we had an emergency collection in the refrigerator: salami, cheese, chocolate and bread. Later, while waiting for the ferry, we opened everything.

Tack, tack, tack.

Salami. Cheese. Bread. Chocolate.

Not exactly Italian fine dining, but at least somebody at this restaurant was interested in feeding us.

It was the previous owners of our new mobile home who thought of this.

The Barbecue Constitution.

Of course, politeness works in both directions. Sometimes you are the guest.

And if you come to my house for a barbecue, there are rules.

The first is very easy.

My beer is my beer.

I don’t think this should cause any international diplomatic problems.

The second rule is more serious: do not touch my barbecue.

Do not open the lid unless I tell you. Do not put anything on the grill unless I know about it. And especially, do not take my barbecue tongs and begin helping.

I once had steaks cooking for four people. I went inside for a moment to put the potatoes in the oven and, when I came back, a friend was standing at the barbecue with my tongs in his hand.

“The steak is sticking to the grill,” he told me.

I looked at him.

“Go away.”

“What is the problem?”

“The problem is that the meat will release itself when it is ready.”

That is how grilling works. The steak knows. The grill knows. I know.

My friend did not need to know.

Please go inside, speak with the others, drink something, enjoy yourself, look at the garden. Everything is possible.

But leave the meat alone.

There is also a working area around the barbecue. I have one grill in front of me and another behind me. I turn left, I turn right, I have the tongs in my hand, and suddenly somebody is standing beside me because they want to see what is happening.

You are welcome to look.

From a distance.

Otherwise the tongs may touch your clothes, your clothes become greasy, and then please do not complain to me.

Sometimes I think I need the spray referees use in football when there is a free kick. One line on the ground and everybody knows where they are allowed to stand.

Perhaps I should spray a line around the barbecue.

Forbidden area.

Visitors can watch with binoculars.

When the food is ready, I will send a smoke signal.

Rules Can Change.

Not every unwritten rule has to stay forever.

In my previous marriage, I did not enjoy sharing food from my plate. I would ask before ordering, “Would you like this?”

“No.”

Fine. Then I ordered it.

The food arrived.

“Oh, can I try yours?”

“No.”

Why not?

“Because I asked you before!”

Perfectly logical.

At least for me.

Now, in my second marriage, I have become more relaxed. Now, if there are two dishes we both find interesting, one of us orders one and the other orders the second.

Then we share.

No problem.

So even Ralf’s rules can change.

There is one rule, though, that I still don’t particularly like: the feeling that when somebody invites you, you must immediately calculate what to bring, what it costs, or how you are going to pay them back.

A friend called me recently because we were planning a barbecue.

“We have a problem.”

“What problem?”

He thought it should really be his turn to host the barbecue.

I told him, “You have a problem. I don’t.”

If I invite you, I invite you. I am not giving you something so that you must give me something in return. I grill because I enjoy grilling and because I want you there.

Come. Sit down. Eat. Have a nice evening.

That is enough.

Four O’Clock Means Four O’Clock.

For me, respect is often very practical.

If I say, “Come to us at four o’clock,” and you arrive at four, that is good. A little earlier is fine too. If something happens and you are going to be late, call.

I had to do exactly that myself recently. An emergency case meant everything was delayed, so I called and explained that I would be late.

In the end I was only two minutes late.

That wasn’t really the point. The point was that the other person knew.

The same applies when somebody agrees to bring something or prepare something. Anybody can forget one thing. We are human. But when it becomes, “I forgot this, I forgot that, I forgot the other thing,” then, for me, it begins to say something about responsibility.

Perhaps that is why politeness is more complicated than simply knowing the rules. One person thinks it means choosing the right words. Somebody else thinks it means arriving on time, bringing a gift or never disturbing anybody. Much of it probably comes from the people around us. We grow up learning what belongs and what does not.

But then life interferes.

The waitress in Crete forgot our wine and became one of my strongest memories of good hospitality. My friend at the barbecue was only trying to help and nearly found himself sent into internal exile.

Nobody gives you the handbook.

You have to watch people. You have to notice the situation. Sometimes you discover that a rule you once considered completely obvious is not so important after all.

And sometimes you discover that it is.

Because when Ralf says, “Stay away from the grill,” this is not a cultural misunderstanding.

This one is the law.

Member Stories

The Interview Started in the Car Park.

The questions matter, but so do the things around them: who is sitting opposite you, how open the conversation feels, and whether you are brave enough to find out what the job is really like.

By Alexander, Germany.

I was about fifteen minutes early for a job interview and sitting in my car outside the company.

Then two men came out of the building. One was the CEO and the other was the sales manager for Germany. They had a short break, lit cigarettes and started walking towards my car.

I knew I would be speaking to them a few minutes later.

For a moment I sat there thinking: What is the best reaction now? Do I stay in the car? Or do I get out and introduce myself?

I got out.

“Hi, I’m Alex. I think you are the people I’m going to speak with in a few minutes.”

They told me they were going for a short walk and would see me later in the meeting room.

That small moment stayed in my mind. After the interview, they told me they had noticed it too. I was still quite young, around 24 or 25, and I had simply got out of the car, walked towards them and introduced myself. For them, it created a positive first impression.

For me, it did something else as well. Before the formal interview had even started, I had already seen the people I was going to speak with. I had an impression of how they looked, how they behaved and a little of their personality.

That is important to me. Once I have a picture of the people, I can prepare myself for the conversation.

In a way, the interview had already started in the car park.

I want to know who is sitting opposite me.

There is one part of job interviews I have never really liked: the expectation that you should know every detail about the company.

Of course I prepare. I want to understand the basics. What does the company sell? How old is it? How is it structured?

But I have never understood why an applicant sometimes seems expected to learn the company almost by heart before the interview. The company is interested in me, and I am interested in the company. For me, it should work in both directions.

What interests me more is the person I am going to meet.

I usually look on LinkedIn. I want to see who they are, how long they have been with the company and what they did before. That gives me a first picture.

Because in the end, I want to understand how the person ticks.

That is much more useful to me than remembering a long list of company facts.

The question behind the questions.

I also do not like some of the classic interview questions very much.

“What are your strengths?”

“What are your weaknesses?”

I find those questions difficult because I do not naturally like talking positively about myself. I prefer talking about what needs to improve. If I see a problem, I want to discuss the problem.

I find those questions difficult because I do not naturally like talking positively about myself.

For me, a job interview becomes much more useful when the conversation is open.

I want to understand what is really important in the job. How does the manager work? What does the company actually expect? What will my real job be when I start?

And the company should also be able to understand me.

Can I do what they need? Do we think in a similar way? Can we work together?

For me, the chemistry is extremely important.

You can prepare many questions before an interview, but sometimes the exact questions are less important than whether both sides are willing to have an honest conversation.

Can you be too polite?

I think you can.

If you are too polite, there is a danger that you forget to talk about the things that are important to you.

But there is another side to this, and I think it matters a lot: your position changes the conversation.

If you already have a job and everything is basically fine, you can enter an interview very differently. You can be relaxed. You can say what you want and what you do not want. If the new job does not fit, you can stay where you are.

I have experienced this myself. In one interview process I had the feeling that the company wanted me, rather than that I desperately wanted the company.

That changes everything.

You can be more open.

But imagine somebody who urgently needs a job. Maybe they have no work at the moment, or they really want this particular position. Suddenly the interview can become much more one-sided.

You want the job, so you answer the questions. You want to make a good impression. You probably do not want to challenge the interviewer too much.

That person may still want an open conversation, but the pressure is different.

And I think a good interviewer can feel that difference too.

What you only discover afterwards.

Even a very good interview cannot tell you everything.

In an earlier sales job, for example, part of my pay later depended on a bonus system. At the beginning I was highly motivated by it. I wanted to reach the target.

Over time, I realised that achieving the bonus regularly was much more difficult than I had expected.

Other people already understood how the system worked, but I had to discover it myself.

That experience taught me something important about interviews. There is the job you discuss before you start, and then there is the job you actually experience.

Sometimes they are the same.

Sometimes they are not.

You can ask good questions. You can research the company. You can study the people. But there are things you only understand after several months inside an organisation.

That does not mean an interview has failed. It means you should try to understand as much of the real situation as possible before you make the decision.

“What is my real job when I start?”

For me, that is much more interesting than having a perfect answer ready for “What are your weaknesses?”

AI can prepare the paper. I still have to read the room.

Today, one part of applying for jobs has actually become easier for me.

Writing applications has never been my strongest area. My strengths are in a conversation. Give me another person and I can talk, listen and react.

Now I can use AI to help with the written preparation. I can use it to learn about a company, think about the job and prepare for questions that might come.

For somebody going into a first important interview, I would certainly recommend doing that preparation.

But preparation only gets you to the door.

Once you are sitting in the interview, you still have to judge the situation yourself.

Who is sitting opposite you?

How open is the conversation?

Can you ask what really matters to you?

Are you hearing what the job is actually going to be?

And perhaps most importantly: are both sides trying to find out whether this really fits, or is one side simply trying to get the other side to say yes?

There is no perfect list of questions that can solve that.

Sometimes you simply have to read the room.

And sometimes the first important moment happens before you have even entered it.

Visual pauseThe Pineapple

Member Stories

Our World, Our Rules.

Growing up in the village meant freedom, bad ideas, a few painful lessons and plenty of learning by doing. Looking back, some of it seems almost impossible today.

By Fabrice, France

When I was very, very young, I was sensible.

That lasted until I was about seven or eight.

After that, I became adventurous. By ten or eleven, there was definitely some nonsense involved, and by eighteen I would not describe myself as sensible at all.

But I had a good childhood. A very good one.

It was a different world from the one children grow up in today. We had school on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, and on Saturday morning. Wednesday was free. After school, you did your homework and then you went outside.

That was basically it.

We went into the fields and the forests. We rode bicycles. We built wooden houses. There were children of different ages together, boys and girls, and we made our own little world.

Our world, our rules.

When you were six or seven, perhaps you came home at eight. A little older, it could be ten. As we grew, the freedom grew with us. Nobody was following us with a telephone. Nobody could send a message asking where we were every five minutes.

We were simply out.

And somehow, most of us came back.

The sensible option was not always popular.

Of course, freedom also creates opportunities for very good ideas.

Or what seem like very good ideas at the time.

We had bows and arrows. One of our games involved somebody standing against a wall while another person shot arrows around him: above the head, to the left, to the right. If the arrows were perhaps twenty or thirty centimetres away, everything was okay.

Then we changed places.

Today, when I explain this, people look at me as if I have described some kind of attempted murder.

But there were limits.

We did not put an apple on the person’s head.

That would have been too dangerous.

This was our logic.

There were plenty of other experiments. Once, when we were about twelve or thirteen, we decided to go camping. The problem was that some of the boys were smoking inside the tent. After five or ten minutes, the father of one of my friends appeared.

It turns out a tent with smoke coming out of it is not a particularly good hiding place.

Another time, in a very dry summer, we made a little fire in a field.

A little fire became a considerably less little fire.

Afterwards we went home and explained to the parents that we had made a fire and that part of the field was now destroyed.

There were consequences, of course. But this was also part of the childhood I remember: you did something, you discovered what happened, and then you dealt with what came next.

But this was also part of the childhood I remember: you did something, you discovered what happened, and then you dealt with what came next.

Please explain the rule.

There was one kind of rule I never liked.

“Don’t do this.”

Why?

No answer.

That made no sense to me.

If an adult explained why something should not be done, that was different. Finish the sentence. Tell me what can happen. Give me a reason.

But simply saying, “Don’t make this,” was almost an invitation to find out for yourself.

My grandparents could make this even more interesting. Sometimes my parents might say not to do something, and at my grandparents’ house the answer was closer to: come here, we will do it.

Grandparents have apparently been undermining parents for a very long time.

I also started smoking when I was twelve. I smoked with my grandfather and grandmother. Smoking was simply around us then. My grandfather smoked, my grandmother smoked, my father smoked.

The first time my mother discovered me smoking, she told me it was not good and that it was better not to smoke.

I disagreed with her for quite a long time.

About twenty years, in fact.

I finally stopped when I was thirty-four.

So yes, sometimes the adults did have a point. It just took me slightly longer than necessary to confirm it.

Learning by doing.

If you ask how I decided whether something was safe when I was young, the answer is very simple.

Learning by doing.

This was not always an excellent system.

I remember riding my bicycle and having one of those brilliant childhood thoughts: what happens if I put my foot into the spokes of the front wheel?

There is only one reliable way to answer a question like that.

So I tried it.

The flying was superb.

The landing was shit.

I discovered the answer immediately.

This was perhaps the method for many things in my childhood. I had a lot of ideas. They were not always good ideas, but I was lucky. Despite everything, I never broke a leg.

There was freedom, but freedom did not mean somebody else would solve everything for you. The attitude was more like: figure it out yourself. If you have a problem, it is your problem.

That sounds hard when you say it today, but I do not remember it that way. I remember having an enormous amount of freedom inside an environment that still felt protected.

We knew the village. People knew us. Children were everywhere. Adults were around, even when they were not standing beside us.

You could make mistakes.

And we certainly did.

The day I took a shotgun to school.

Perhaps the story that best shows how different that world was happened when I was about eight years old.

One day our teacher told the class that everyone should bring an object to school that afternoon — something we liked, something we played with, something important to us.

So I went to my grandparents.

I explained that I needed the shotgun because I wanted to take it to school.

For my grandfather, this was not a problem.

So I walked through the village carrying a shotgun that was almost bigger than I was.

People saw me.

Nobody stopped me.

I arrived at school and went into the classroom.

The teacher turned white.

Apparently, the object she had imagined was something slightly different.

She told me to take it home.

So I did.

Today, of course, the story sounds completely mad. An eight-year-old walking through a village carrying a shotgun into school is almost impossible to imagine.

At the time, it was different. I am not saying everybody went to school carrying guns. But the reaction around me was not the reaction it would produce now. Even my grandfather, after I explained why I needed it, saw no great problem.

That memory says something about how completely the boundaries of childhood can change from one generation to another.

A different kind of childhood.

If ten-year-old Fabrice suddenly arrived in childhood today, I think he would be surprised by almost everything.

Children have phones. They have PlayStations and other things I did not have. When I was six or seven, I remember seeing television for the first time.

But the biggest difference for me is not the technology itself.

It is the group.

When I was young, there were children together every day. Boys, girls, different ages — one group moving around the village, the fields and the forest.

You learned from the older ones. You tried things. Sometimes you discovered that something worked. Sometimes you discovered very quickly that it did not.

Sometimes an adult told you not to do something and you listened.

Sometimes you wanted the rest of the sentence.

And sometimes you put your foot into the front wheel of a bicycle and learned the rest of the sentence yourself.

I had a lot of freedom. I had grandparents who taught me things, adults I could go to when there was really a problem, and enough space to find out quite a lot on my own.

Some of the stories sound unbelievable now.

Some probably sounded stupid even then.

But it was a good childhood.

We had our world.

And, for a while at least, we had our own rules.

Member Stories

The Conversation We Didn’t Plan.

We were supposed to discuss a topic. Instead, we talked about weather, daughters, blood, running, films, pizza and whatever happened to come next. Maybe that was the better conversation.

By Sylvie. France.

We were supposed to talk about our topic.

We didn’t.

We started with the weather. It was 24 degrees where I was, but rain was coming and the temperature would soon fall. Perhaps we would need the chimney again. I like the chimney because it is cosy, but then you have to clean more. I told my husband I was happy about it, but not completely happy.

In South Africa, Janita had the opposite problem. It had suddenly become hot, and she was regretting the black skinny jeans she had chosen that morning.

From there, somehow, we moved to school holidays, the best time to visit South Africa, driving to Italy instead of flying, petrol prices in France and Germany, cigarettes and whether either of us smokes.

We had hardly begun.

One thing leads to another.

This is sometimes how ordinary conversation works. One small thing opens another.

We talked about films and books. I had recently gone to a restaurant and then to the cinema with my husband and my daughters. I like reading, and when I see the film afterwards, I notice the details that have disappeared. My husband and younger daughter do not really like reading, so they did not have the same problem. They simply enjoyed the film.

Then we compared what we watch. Janita likes some films that I would probably never choose. Harry Potter is not for me. I prefer stories with an ending.

That is important.

When a series finishes with an open ending and the next season comes years later, I hate it. By then I do not remember what happened. Janita had been watching The Gentlemen, and when we discovered there might be another season, my first reaction was exactly that: in a few years I will have forgotten everything.

Then the conversation moved again.

My younger daughter is thinking about her future studies. She has a test in November that could eventually help her enter a school for a master’s programme. I paid the €50 for the test because, if she is motivated to do it, I want to give her the best chance.

She has a test in November that could eventually help her enter a school for a master’s programme.

With my daughter, however, there is always another story.

She also wants to join a fitness centre. I suggested that she first try it for a month rather than immediately signing a contract she will have to pay whether she goes or not. Maybe she will surprise me.

That morning she already had.

A good surprise.

She called me because she wanted to know her blood type.

At first I wondered what was coming next. Then I discovered why she was asking: she wanted to donate blood.

I was positively surprised.

Janita told me she had once gone to donate without knowing her own blood type. They tested her and later told her she was O-negative.

“I’m the same,” I said.

That gave us another unexpected connection between France and South Africa. We joked that if I ever needed blood, perhaps she could send some from South Africa to France.

But for me, blood donation has another side.

After my treatments, I wanted to donate. I was motivated to give something back, but I learned that I could not. I had not known that before.

So when my daughter decided she wanted to donate, it meant something to me. I imagined perhaps some of her friends were doing it too, and that had encouraged her. Whatever the reason, I thought it was a very good thing.

Sometimes she makes good decisions.

It happens.

Five kilometres, eight kilometres, and pizza.

Cancer entered our conversation in another ordinary way. This month there are walks in France raising money for breast-cancer research, and two friends asked me to join a five-kilometre walk in a small town nearby.

Of course I said yes.

I have done one of these walks before. A few years ago, friends and I took the train early in the morning, did the walk together, went to a restaurant afterwards and then came home by train.

Janita told me about cancer fundraising in South Africa, including a run where men wear very small purple swimming costumes. She even found a photograph to show me.

This was not quite how I expected our cancer discussion to develop.

Meanwhile, I am still running. The morning before our conversation, I went out early enough that it was dark and I needed a headlamp. I had planned to run seven kilometres.

I ran eight.

Not because I had suddenly become ambitious. I was thinking, continued too far and realised too late that I had made the route longer. I was actually a little angry because eight kilometres had not been in my plan. But by then I had to continue.

My next run was planned for Friday, followed by the five-kilometre cancer walk on Saturday. Sunday was less certain. If we invited people for tarte flambée, I would not run because I would spend the day preparing everything at home.

That counts as movement too.

My health still includes regular checks. I had recently seen my oncologist and had more tests planned, including a future cardiology check because of my earlier treatment. Three years have passed since that treatment, but some things still need to be watched.

And then, almost in the same breath, we were talking about food.

I generally eat well. Vegetables, fruit, good food.

But just before our conversation I had eaten a Magnum ice cream.

Afterwards I wondered why I had done it.

Janita was not worried. I had run the day before, I was playing tennis, I would run again on Friday.

And that evening we were having pizza.

Actually, I had eaten pizza the evening before too.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I can manage that.”

The topic can wait.

By the end, we had travelled a surprisingly long way without going anywhere.

There had been weather and laundry, petrol and films, daughters and university, blood donation and cancer walks, running in the dark, medical appointments, ice cream, pizza and the cost of studying. We had compared small pieces of life in France and South Africa without deciding beforehand that this was what we were going to do.

Then, after more than an hour, I remembered something.

“Normally we needed to talk about our topic now.”

Janita laughed.

“It’s okay,” she said. “Sometimes it’s good to have a natural conversation about life.”

And perhaps that was the topic after all.

Every week, there is something new to tell.

Column

102 Quinces, Anyone?

The Human Bit, by Frank Peters.

Fabrice had too many quinces.

I had none.

Shortly afterwards I had 102.

I had never processed a quince in my life, so I did what millions of people now do when confronted with something they don’t know.

I asked AI.

Foody is my ChatGPT project folder for food. Recipes, ingredients, leftovers and the occasional kitchen emergency.

This qualified.

I explained the problem and received a perfectly sensible answer. How to store quinces. What I could make from them. Which ones to process first. Freezing. Preserving. All the usual helpful stuff.

I read it.

Then largely ignored it.

Not because it was wrong. I had remembered Lyon.

A few weeks earlier, I had walked around Lyon using AI as a sort of travelling companion. I hadn’t asked it to design my day. I simply walked until something caught my attention, took a photograph and asked:

What’s this?

Then perhaps: Why is it here? How old is it? What happened to it?

Afterwards I carried on walking until something else caught my attention.

It was very different from reading a guidebook beforehand because the important thing was that I noticed first. The machine entered afterwards.

Standing in front of 102 quinces, I wondered why I shouldn’t do the same thing.

So I took a photograph.

Here they are. What do you think?

That changed the conversation.

Foody could now see the actual fruit. Not quinces in general. Mine. Some looked good. Some were bruised. Some needed using sooner.

Could I store them in the extension?

Photograph.

Possibly.

What about the old fridge, switched off for winter?

Photograph.

Actually, quite useful. Leave the door slightly open for ventilation.

Could I stack them?

Photograph.

Use the shelves. Don’t pile the fruit directly on top of each other.

Before long, 42 quinces were sitting in an unplugged refrigerator with the door ajar. Another 28 went into the tool shed.

Seventy dealt with.

Thirty-two remained.

Now we needed knives.

I put two on the worktop, took another photograph and asked which one.

The larger chef’s knife.

Apparently quinces are hard.

True.

But there is a fairly substantial difference between being told that a quince is hard and trying to push a knife through one.

The first required concentration. The fifth, rather less.

Then I discovered that topping and tailing the wedges first made it much easier to remove the core with one diagonal cut.

I told Foody.

Apparently I had discovered the production-line method.

That amused me because Foody hadn’t discovered it.

I had.

Not through brilliance. I had simply cut enough quinces.

Then some of the flesh started turning brown.

Photograph.

Change the lemon water. Work in smaller batches.

I cut open another quince and found brown flesh already inside.

Photograph.

Different problem.

Inspect before peeling.

So the process changed again.

Halve. Look. Decide. Continue.

By now the kitchen had acquired departments. Cutting. Lemon water. Blanching. Cooling. Draining.

Then I spread the wedges onto tea towels and patted them dry.

The Patting Centre.

At this point the entire operation became slightly ridiculous.

And fun.

That seems worth mentioning because Bruce and I have spent several weeks circling around rather more serious questions about artificial intelligence. If machines can answer so much for us, what happens to learning? What happens to judgement? Do we become less curious because we no longer have to search? If we remove difficulty, do we also remove something useful?

Thirty-two quinces are not much of a research sample.

But they made the questions considerably less theoretical.

What I was doing that afternoon wasn’t actually new. Humans have always encountered things they don’t understand and asked somebody who might know.

What is this?

How do I do that?

Does this look right?

What would you do next?

We have asked parents, neighbours, craftspeople, teachers and anyone standing nearby who looked vaguely competent. Then there were books, libraries, telephone calls, the internet and search engines.

We have asked parents, neighbours, craftspeople, teachers and anyone standing nearby who looked vaguely competent.

AI hasn’t invented the question.

What has changed is the extraordinary quantity of information available, the speed with which we can reach it and, increasingly, the fact that we can show the machine what we mean.

That last part matters.

I didn’t have to describe the brown patch inside the quince particularly well. I could show it.

I didn’t have to explain the dimensions of the old fridge.

Photograph.

I didn’t have to ask a general question about kitchen knives. Here were the two knives sitting in front of me.

Which one?

The information becomes more personal because the machine has some of the same context I have.

Only some.

It cannot feel how hard the quince is. It cannot smell it. It cannot feel the knife meet the core or know that my arm is getting tired.

But it can look at something close to what I am looking at and respond to this problem rather than the average version of the problem described in a book.

That makes asking questions extraordinarily easy.

Perhaps dangerously easy.

Because the machine can also answer before I have really looked. It can tell me what to notice, design the complete process and give me a set of instructions to follow.

That would probably have worked too.

Four kilos of frozen quince at the end.

Job done.

But I think something would have been different.

In Lyon, I noticed the building first.

With the quinces, I encountered the problem first.

The machine didn’t tell me what to be curious about.

I brought the question.

That distinction increasingly matters to me.

AI is an astonishing source of information.

But information is not the experience.

Foody knew vastly more about quinces than I did that morning. By evening, I knew something it didn’t.

I knew these quinces.

I knew which ones surprised me when I cut them open. I knew how my knife behaved, which sequence of movements worked better in my kitchen and when the lemon water needed changing.

I had developed a rhythm.

The machine supplied information.

Reality supplied resistance.

Somewhere between the two, I still had to make a judgement.

All those photographs produced another, unexpected side effect. I had created a record of the day.

Not hundreds of disconnected photographs disappearing into my phone. Not quite an old-fashioned photo album either.

Something in between.

Picture.

Question.

Answer.

Another picture.

Something changed.

Another question.

What I like about that record is that it doesn’t just show what I did. It also shows what I didn’t know yet.

By the evening I could see the progression from What on earth do I do with these? to a kitchen production line complete with a Patting Centre.

Then came the Crémant.

Also human.

At the end of the day I had four kilos of prepared quince in the freezer and seventy whole quinces waiting for the next few weeks.

That no longer feels like seventy problems.

I know considerably more now.

And somewhere in this house are about two hundred cookbooks.

I can start looking through those for quince possibilities.

The books haven’t suddenly become obsolete because I have AI. Quite the opposite. I am probably better equipped to use them because I now know enough to ask better questions of them too.

So did spending most of the day with artificial intelligence make the experience more human or less human?

I don’t think the answer lies in the technology so much as where we put it.

If I let the machine notice for me, decide for me and do as much of the thinking as possible, I may surrender rather more than I realise.

But if I use it to supply information when I ask for it, to look at what I show it and to help me investigate the thing already in front of me, the old human process remains surprisingly intact.

Notice.

Wonder.

Ask.

Try.

Get it wrong.

Ask again.

Learn.

The quantity of information has changed enormously. So has our access to it. The question can now be much more personal.

But somebody still has to ask it.

And then somebody has to do something with the answer.

There are seventy quinces left.

Foody is still there.

So are the knives.

I suspect I am going to need both.

Visual pauseThe Pineapple

At The Table

When the Hoover Comes Out, Go Home.

The Swimming Club Anti-Handbook for guests who need help recognising when a perfectly pleasant evening is definitely over.

By Manfred & Martin, from the Swimming Club.

There are many complicated questions in life. When should a guest leave somebody’s house should not be one of them.

Unfortunately, it is.

The Swimming Club therefore decided to solve the problem in the traditional manner: by creating an unnecessarily elaborate system involving rules, quality control, traffic lights, white lies, takeaway coffee and, eventually, a guard dog.

Rule 1: Never announce that the evening is over.

Martin began with the only completely reliable system: the host says it is time to leave the building.

Manfred preferred a more traditional signal: yawning.

Unfortunately, neither system survives contact with an interesting conversation. The host may be halfway through the first yawn when somebody suddenly says, “Have you heard…?” Or, even more dangerous: “I just have to quickly tell you…”

A completely new subject has entered the room. The clock has been reset.

This is the first problem with guest departure rules. The evening may officially be finished, but the conversation has not received the memo.

Rule 2: Subtlety is useless.

There are many respectable ways to indicate that guests should leave. You can look at the clock. Clear the plates. Stand up. Mention tomorrow morning.

Martin suggested yawning.

Then he improved the system considerably: start hoovering.

Manfred had another unmistakable signal. The host begins putting the glasses back into the cupboard. There is nothing left to drink. Surely everybody understands what that means.

Not necessarily Manfred.

He remembered being told by his wife on the way home from an evening, “Didn’t you know they wanted to go to bed?”

Apparently not.

“I need clear instructions. Subtlety is not my thing.”

This introduces an important Anti-Handbook principle: a hint only works if the person receiving it notices that it is a hint.

Martin’s preferred solution is therefore considerably safer.

Clear orders.

“Go home!”

Alternatively, mysterious objects could begin appearing around the guest. The exact objects have not yet been standardised.

Rule 3: Coffee is dangerous.

Coffee looks innocent. It is not.

Is coffee an invitation to stay or an eviction notice?

With Martin, offering coffee could backfire badly because he likes coffee. A second cup is not a warning. It is another cup of coffee.

The solution is the one-for-the-road coffee.

This should arrive in a plastic or cardboard takeaway cup, ideally with confirmation that there is a suitable cupholder in the guest’s car.

Manfred is harder to influence. Coffee signals pass him by completely. He decides for himself how late it is and then decides whether the answer is yes or no.

Manfred is harder to influence. Coffee signals pass him by completely. He decides for himself how late it is and then decides whether the answer is yes or no.

The Anti-Handbook therefore concludes that beverages are an unreliable departure technology.

Rule 4: Domestic activity may begin.

At some point the host must be allowed to stop hosting and resume normal life.

The table can be cleared. The dishwasher can be loaded. Teeth can be brushed. Tomorrow’s breakfast can begin appearing in the kitchen.

Martin considers clearing the table while he is still eating a reasonably strong signal.

Manfred agrees that these are unmistakable signs.

At least they should be.

If he nevertheless fails to detect them, he has a backup system: his “controller”, usually sitting to his left or right, begins inflicting pain, accompanied by a hiss along the lines of: can’t you see it’s time to go?

For guests without access to such specialist equipment, visual awareness remains recommended.

Rule 5: Some offences have no appeal.

What behaviour deserves a lifetime ban?

Manfred did not immediately have a candidate, although taboo subjects can destroy both an evening and, potentially, a friendship. Politics is particularly capable of doing the job.

Martin’s position was easier to administer.

People who hate the band “Garbage.”

Is there an appeal process?

No.

Rule 6: Sensible rules are often the most dangerous.

Consider the birthday invitation that says: Don’t bring any presents.

A perfectly clear instruction.

Until another guest ignores it and arrives carrying something beautiful while you stand there proudly obeying the rules with absolutely nothing.

The same danger applies to, “Can I bring anything to eat?”

And punctuality is not necessarily safer.

Martin pointed out that if everybody arrives exactly on time, everybody arrives together.

This is good for clocks.

Possibly less good for the host.

At this point, the Anti-Handbook had accumulated enough rules to require professional regulation.

Unfortunately, it had never been tested.

The Standards Department.

Martin was appointed Head of Guest Departure Standards.

His task was simple: develop a system that allows the host to end an evening without ever saying that the evening is ending.

His proposal relied on tomorrow.

The host announces that an early start is required the next morning. Perhaps it is Sunday and there is church. The statement should then be reinforced through physical evidence: prepare for the next day, arrange the breakfast tray, organise the kitchen and, if necessary, return to the table while brushing your teeth.

The system was passed to Manfred in Testing and Certification.

He immediately found problems.

Does the host really have to get up early? Does the story fit the day? Does the story fit the person? If somebody is retired, claiming an urgent early journey to work may require further investigation.

His verdict: there was room for improvement.

A statement alone was insufficient. It needed backup.

A believable reason was essential.

A white lie, however, was acceptable.

If the guest still refused to understand, pressure could be increased gradually.

Start harmlessly.

Then hoover.

Quality Gate: Traffic Lights.

The Standards Department eventually concluded that ordinary guests could not be expected to understand such a complicated system.

Traffic lights were required.

GREEN — Stay

Opening another bottle: definitely green.

The host sitting down again: also promising.

A completely new subject beginning: definitely green.

Food reappearing is more complicated. Cake could be hospitality, or the host could be offering a slice for tomorrow morning.

Cigars and whisky, however, are difficult to interpret as an eviction notice.

Dating requires additional caution. During the first few dates, neither person necessarily understands the other well enough to read the signals correctly. The Swimming Club therefore considered whether people should simply provide instructions explaining how they work.

A personal user manual may lack romance, but it could prevent several hours of confusion.

AMBER — Prepare to leave

Amber is where civilisation begins to collapse.

The host looks at the watch.

Does this mean please leave?

Or do they merely want to know the time?

The host says, “I have a busy day tomorrow.”

A disastrous guest may respond, “Really? Lucky you. What have you got planned?”

A completely new conversation has now begun.

An even more dangerous guest might say, “I’m sorry for you. I can have a lie-in tomorrow.”

The host has been destroyed by their own signal.

Another drink can also become amber when accompanied by carefully selected background music whose lyrics contain the actual message.

A doggy bag is stronger.

The host accompanies you to the car and hands over food for tomorrow.

At this stage, further interpretation is probably unnecessary.

RED — Leave now

The glasses disappear.

The candles are blown out.

The chair you are sitting on begins to move.

Other chairs are placed upside down on tables, restaurant style.

The host points towards the door, purely for orientation purposes.

Manfred approved the traffic-light system, with one important modification: there should really only be two colours.

Green and red.

Anything amber is green.

Martin added the premium safety feature.

When red really means red, release the guard dog.

Naturally, the dog only wants to play.

When all systems fail.

There will always be a tiny percentage of guests who survive every quality gate.

The drinks have gone. The dishwasher is running. Breakfast has been prepared. The hoover is out. The chairs are on the tables. The dog is taking an increasingly professional interest in the situation.

At that point, politeness has completed its work.

The evening is over.

Pack up and go home.

And the dog may no longer merely want to play.

The rule that breaks the Anti-Handbook.

There is, however, one final problem.

What is the difference between somebody who stays too long and somebody you do not mind staying?

Suddenly the entire handbook becomes less reliable.

If the guest has been invited to stay in the spare bedroom, there is no particular reason for everybody to go to bed at the same time. Sit there. Keep talking. Go to sleep when you want.

On a date, admittedly, the same arrangement may acquire additional interpretations and should be handled with care.

But the larger problem remains: the right person can break the rules.

Sometimes the evening should have finished, but somebody suggests another bar.

Sometimes the conversation becomes unexpectedly personal or existential.

Sometimes something spontaneous happens that nobody planned.

And then the yawning, the coffee, the clock, the dishwasher and the traffic lights become temporarily irrelevant.

Which may be the only completely reliable rule in the Anti-Handbook:

The wrong guest needs a red light.

The right guest may not need a light at all.

Visual pauseThe Pineapple

Member Stories

How Late Is Too Late?

What began as a conversation about punctuality in Brazil became a much stranger question: what happens when companionship arrives after a lifetime of carefully kept routines?

By Ismar, Campo Grande, Brazil.

The question was supposed to be simple: when is it acceptable to arrive late?

For Ismar, punctuality is not a theoretical subject. If an event is scheduled to begin at a certain time, he believes the people who arrived on time deserve some respect. He particularly dislikes the familiar announcement that a meeting will wait another five or ten minutes because more people may still be coming.

To him, that rewards the latecomers and punishes the punctual ones.

Brazilian social life can be more relaxed. Arriving half an hour late for a party may attract little attention. Fifteen minutes late for a restaurant may require no explanation at all. Traffic is blamed. Something was forgotten at home. A child had to be dropped somewhere. Clothes took longer to choose than expected.

But Ismar does not naturally live that way.

His mother may be the most punctual person he has ever known. If her Pilates class begins at four in the afternoon, she can be ready an hour and a half beforehand. Ismar is not quite that extreme, but he likes plans. He likes knowing what will happen and when.

And then, recently, somebody entered his life who does not.

Two different clocks.

The woman Ismar has been seeing does not particularly like planning several days ahead. Ask on Monday what they might do on Friday and her instinct may be that Friday is still much too far away to discuss.

Sometimes she changes plans at short notice. Sometimes she decides not to attend their dance class only an hour or two before it begins.

This disturbed him enough that, during the first weeks of their relationship, he spoke to her about it.

He explained that planning matters to him. Keeping an appointment matters. Repeated cancellations matter.

And something interesting happened.

She listened.

“Now she’s much better,” Ismar said.

The Mayor stopped there for a moment. Perhaps this was not really a story about bad attitudes towards punctuality after all. Perhaps it was about two people discovering that something insignificant to one person can be important to another.

Perhaps it was about two people discovering that something insignificant to one person can be important to another.

Ismar could see another side too. Her approach to life has something he does not naturally possess.

“She has a way of living without preoccupation that is better than my way,” he said. “She doesn’t get upset with many things that I become upset.”

That difference had already begun to work on him.

“Maybe I can become more unstressed.”

For a man discussing punctuality, that was quite a development.

The dance class.

Their dance lessons became a small laboratory for the relationship.

One Saturday, on the way there, she decided she did not want to go. Ismar did.

He had paid for the lessons. He wanted the practice. In his opinion, she already danced better than he did, which gave him even more reason to attend.

So he told her he was going.

She asked him to leave her at a shopping mall while he took the class. Afterwards they would meet again.

And that is exactly what happened.

The Mayor teased him. Perhaps she had originally gone to dancing classes to meet somebody, had now met Ismar, and therefore no longer saw quite the same urgency in the dancing.

Ismar conceded that this was possible.

The Mayor pushed the joke further. Perhaps Ismar was being just a little too dutiful: the course had been purchased, therefore the course must be completed.

But Ismar had evidence for the defence. The previous week he had already skipped a class because she was moving and needed help organising her things.

So this was not simply a battle between a rigid man and a spontaneous woman. They were already negotiating.

Sometimes he followed her rhythm. Sometimes he kept his own.

That may be the more interesting rule.

A life arranged for one.

The conversation slowly wandered away from Brazilian punctuality.

Ismar has spent much of his life organising himself around work, study, his own routines and, at different times, caring for his mother. Sharing life at the same level with another person is less familiar territory.

He enjoys being alone for part of the time. He does not currently imagine immediately sharing a home with somebody else.

The relationship is still new.

“I think it’s too early to think about it,” he said.

That gave the Mayor exactly the opening he needed.

How early is too early?

And how late is too late?

Suddenly the clock they were discussing was no longer the one on the wall.

Ismar was challenged to think not about arriving fifteen minutes late for dinner, but about whether opportunities themselves can arrive late in life.

The Mayor became increasingly enthusiastic. Ismar became increasingly cautious.

There was talk of companionship, compromise, habits, independence and whether experience makes people more flexible or simply more set in their ways.

Ismar would not be hurried.

He did, however, say something that captured how his thinking has changed over the years.

“When I was young, I used to say, ‘I will never do this. I always do this.’ Today, about the future, I don’t use never, neither always.”

The Mayor immediately told him that it had taken him 65 years to find the right woman.

Ismar, being Ismar, did not allow such a romantic statement to pass unexamined.

“Does a right woman exist?”

The Mayor nearly despaired.

“This is not philosophy,” he told him. “This is companionship.”

Ismar persisted. He did not think a perfect “right woman” or “right man” existed.

Then he noticed what had happened to the conversation.

“We’re having a funny conversation, yeah?”

They were.

Never and always.

The Mayor encouraged him to stop analysing everything quite so relentlessly and allow somebody else to lead the dance occasionally.

Ismar did not suddenly become a romantic hero.

His response was more recognisably his own.

“Let’s see what happens.”

That is a remarkably open sentence from someone who likes schedules.

It does not promise marriage, cohabitation or forever. It does not even pretend certainty is possible.

It simply leaves the door open.

The original discussion about punctuality returned briefly. When, exactly, is late too late?

Ismar’s answer changed the scale completely.

Late is too late when life has finished.

Or, as the conversation developed, when the opportunity no longer exists.

That still did not satisfy him completely.

“How long should we wait for something or for someone?” he asked.

There was no answer.

“We don’t know,” he said. “We don’t know.”

And perhaps that uncertainty is the whole point.

Somebody else’s time.

There is another complication.

Ismar knows that living with another person is not easy. He has enough experience to say that without romance or illusion.

He also worries about what sharing a life demands from him.

“Maybe I’m very selfish to share my life with someone else,” he said.

For most of his life, he explained, he has worked, studied and largely organised his world around himself, apart from periods when his mother needed him. He does not believe loving somebody should mean cancelling one’s own way of looking at life.

The Mayor challenged him again, suggesting that perhaps accepting care from another person could be just as difficult as giving it.

Ismar was unconvinced.

He was not sure he needed — or even wanted — somebody to take care of him.

But the important part was not that they resolved the disagreement. They did not.

The important part was that a man who began by complaining about other people not respecting the clock was now discussing whether two very different people could respect each other’s way of living.

One likes plans.

One is happier changing them.

One worries about the schedule.

The other may decide that the dance lesson can wait.

And already each has moved slightly.

She has become more attentive to what matters to him.

He has begun wondering whether some of the things that upset him really deserve so much worry.

He even admits that her sense of humour is better than his.

The Mayor offered one final piece of unsolicited relationship coaching: live, enjoy it, have fun, worry less.

Ismar’s answer contained exactly the mixture of amusement and caution that had carried the whole conversation.

He said he would tell his partner that he now had somebody trying to convince him to marry her.

Then, as ever, there was the clock.

Another meeting was waiting.

They said goodbye.

On time.

Essay

The Problem AI Cannot Solve for Us.

Frank Peters and Bruce Lloyd begin with a question about the future in 2050. They end up somewhere rather more familiar: human nature, political power, ordinary decency and why having a sensible answer is not the same as getting anybody to act on it.

By Bruce Lloyd, London.

“Morning, Frank.”

“Good morning, Bruce. How are you?”

“Well, I’m still here.”

“For the moment.”

It was a fairly typical beginning to a conversation with Frank. A little humour, an acknowledgement of mortality, and then, before we knew it, we were discussing artificial intelligence and the future of civilisation.

Frank had been having some difficult nights: four hours of sleep, followed by thinking, working and generally trying to keep up with everything he had going on.

I wondered whether there was an aspect of AI that we had not sufficiently recognised. The technology gives us so many more choices, so much more to think about, so many additional possibilities.

Which sounds wonderful. But every additional possibility is also a potential distraction.

The challenge is to remain focused rather than being pulled in every direction by everything that has suddenly become possible.

Frank recognised the problem immediately. He had been thinking about the value of switching off completely, even imagining the peace of sitting quietly in a magnificent church with a little music and the possibility that there might be something bigger than ourselves.

We were approaching the same difficulty from different directions.

AI had made it easier to do almost anything. Perhaps it was also making it harder to decide what was worth doing.

Looking towards 2050.

Frank wanted to know about an experiment I had been conducting.

I had taken several books dealing with humanity and the future, asked different AI systems to identify their principal arguments, and then invited them to examine those ideas from the perspective of 2050.

I was interested in their conclusions, but equally interested in how the different systems approached the exercise.

“What made you go down that road?” Frank asked.

Partly curiosity. I had come across the books and wanted to explore the relationships between their arguments. Rather than read or listen to every one in full, I wanted to see what AI could extract from them, and then ask what those ideas might mean when projected forward to 2050.

Frank went further.

We had both lived through a period of astonishing technological change. In the 1950s, the moon was still an almost unimaginably distant destination. By 1969, human beings had walked on it. Now we were asking computers to make predictions about the next quarter-century.

“Is the line between 1950 and 2050 broadly consistent?”

Yes and no.

Science has changed enormously. Our capabilities have changed. The framework within which we live has changed.

But human behaviour?

I am far less certain.

Go back to the Greeks or Shakespeare and you find remarkably sophisticated accounts of ambition, jealousy, greed, loyalty, power and responsibility. In many respects, Shakespeare understood human beings as well as we do today.

“A lot of people would argue that we haven’t really come up with any new wisdom,” I said.

The important elements have existed for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years. What we have become particularly good at is recycling them without necessarily learning from them.

And if that is true, what exactly are we expecting artificial intelligence to change?

The machine that got it wrong.

Frank had a practical example.

He had been developing a system involving two software plugins. Information needed to pass from one to the other, and he suspected that both would need to be modified.

He asked AI.

The system told him that only the first plugin needed updating. It explained why and assured him that the second could be left alone.

So he followed its advice.

“It didn’t work.”

When he returned to the problem, AI acknowledged that Frank had been right. The second plugin needed updating after all.

What struck him was not simply that AI had made a mistake. He had spotted a relationship between the two parts of the system that the machine had missed.

“I could see something AI couldn’t see.”

And he was doing this with almost no previous coding experience beyond what he had learned during the preceding six months.

That raised two questions for me. If he ran the exercise again, would the AI have learned from its mistake? And why had it made the mistake in the first place?

“I often ask AI, ‘Why didn’t you get it right the first time?’”

The explanations can be fascinating. Sometimes useful. Sometimes rather like excuses.

I have noticed that certain systems, particularly DeepSeek in my experience, can be extraordinarily apologetic. Once they have apologised, there is almost a sense that they have brought the exchange to a conclusion. You feel slightly reluctant to continue interrogating them.

Frank laughed.

“We’re trying to humanise a system that runs on ones and zeros.”

He had a point.

We talk about what AI thinks, understands, remembers and learns. We give it human voices. We produce artificial conversations in which one simulated person debates another.

But the more important question is whether it can genuinely improve its performance following an error.

Learning from mistakes is one of the foundations of human development.

How well will AI manage it?

And, perhaps more importantly, how well do we?

Has human nature really changed?

Frank returned to the question of continuity.

“What has been consistent in human behaviour over the last seventy-odd years?”

I came back to something we had discussed before: the relationship between the individual and the community.

Human beings continually try to find a balance between their own interests and those of others. There is no single correct balance.

In a small community, your wellbeing and the wellbeing of the community may be closely connected. You know the people around you. You can see the consequences of your behaviour.

As communities become larger and more global, those relationships become less obvious. At the same time, competitive pressure increases. Individuals, businesses and organisations are encouraged to pursue their own success, often without giving sufficient thought to the effects on everybody else.

Individuals, businesses and organisations are encouraged to pursue their own success, often without giving sufficient thought to the effects on everybody else.

Frank then introduced a story he had heard that morning.

A British man had spent decades attempting to travel home on foot from the southern tip of South America. He had crossed extraordinary distances and met enormous numbers of people.

What interested Frank was the traveller’s reported observation that almost everybody he encountered had been decent and helpful.

Yet public conversation, particularly the news, seemed to concentrate on the small minority who were not.

That contradiction stayed with me.

If most people are fundamentally decent, why do our political and institutional systems so often appear to operate on the assumption that they are not?

Frank took the thought elsewhere.

Human wisdom, he suggested, sits in individuals. It moves between people, sometimes within small communities, often through ordinary interaction. You cannot simply assume it will be available. You have to ask. Somebody has to be willing to share it.

And what you receive depends on the relationship, the circumstances and the person.

AI can make information available on an astonishing scale.

Human wisdom is not quite the same thing.

Politics and the problem of power.

From there, inevitably, we arrived at politics.

Frank had been following protests by students in France over the condition of their schools: complaints about inadequate facilities, overcrowded classrooms and shortages of teachers, with some teachers joining the demonstrations.

He was also watching the increasingly polarised political atmosphere ahead of the French presidential election.

I wondered whether some familiar political patterns were simply repeating themselves. People become dissatisfied with those in power and vote for an alternative without always thinking carefully about what that alternative will actually do.

The incoming politicians interpret victory as an endorsement of their programme, although many voters may simply have wanted to remove their predecessors.

Then the new government discovers that governing is considerably more complicated than campaigning.

Frank thought politics was becoming less about solving problems and more about ideology.

I had a theory of my own.

“The more ideological the policy, the worse it tends to work in practice.”

Perhaps that is too sweeping. But if you begin with an ideological conclusion, you risk giving too little attention to the practical difficulties of implementation.

And practical difficulties have an unfortunate habit of asserting themselves.

Frank wondered whether AI might eventually offer people a route around some of these frustrations. If technology allowed people to solve more of their own problems, perhaps they would become less concerned with the political environment around them.

He mentioned people who choose to live in cities where they find communities of like-minded individuals even when they disagree with the politics of the wider country.

“Maybe we’re creating AI-driven bubbles.”

Possibly.

But there is a danger in that too.

The more we surround ourselves with people, information and systems that reinforce what we already believe, the less often we encounter arguments that challenge us.

And whenever somebody presents an attractive explanation, I like to ask another question:

Whose interests does it serve?

That includes AI.

A sensible answer nobody wants.

I told Frank about another experiment.

I had asked an AI system to develop a possible approach to resolving the conflict in Ukraine, taking account of the different stakeholders and producing a practical roadmap.

The response struck me as thoughtful. It explored stopping the fighting, freezing the immediate situation, exchanging prisoners and beginning reconstruction. It also distinguished between two matters often treated as identical: territorial control and legal sovereignty.

The suggestion was that these might be handled separately, at least temporarily, as part of a longer process.

I was not suggesting this amounted to a definitive peace agreement, or that the parties would accept it.

But the exercise demonstrated that the system could identify possibilities that might form the basis of negotiation.

Frank saw the problem immediately.

Political leaders have ambitions, pressures, obligations and constituencies. Something that appears sensible in theory may be completely unacceptable in practice.

There are also vested interests surrounding the continuation of conflict, including the extraordinary financial and technological resources committed to defence.

Which raised another question.

What if countries could reduce military spending substantially and redirect those resources towards education?

I suggested that if everybody could cut their defence budgets in half over five years and spend the difference on education, the world might become a considerably better place.

“But how the hell do you get there?”

Frank had the answer.

“You ask AI.”

Quite.

“But will anybody listen?”

That was the difficulty in miniature.

We may have a system capable of identifying sensible alternatives. That does not mean the people with the authority to implement them have any interest in doing so.

Why the words matter.

Our conversation moved towards language.

Frank was becoming increasingly conscious of the importance of precision, not only in ordinary human exchanges but when working with AI, making decisions or conducting international negotiations.

At major diplomatic meetings, leaders and officials can spend hours debating the precise wording of a communiqué.

I thought implementation could be more difficult than wording. But Frank’s broader point remained: language can change outcomes.

He recalled the press conference in East Berlin on 9 November 1989, when an ambiguous announcement about travel restrictions helped trigger events that led to the opening of the Berlin Wall.

A few words, delivered in a particular way at a particular moment, had enormous consequences.

Which brought us to unintended consequences more generally.

We can often predict that one event will influence another. Forecasting the precise result of those interactions is much harder. Two or three apparently insignificant factors coincide, and something extraordinary happens.

Looking backwards, the sequence can appear obvious.

Looking forwards, anything but.

That is one reason I remain suspicious of the desire for absolute answers. We are dealing with interconnected systems whose behaviour cannot always be predicted, however sophisticated our technology becomes.

Frank had one final example.

He had been preparing to contact businesses in Denmark and had used AI to investigate the rules governing unsolicited business emails.

The system warned him that permission might be required before sending an introductory message.

He questioned the advice. He understood restrictions on unsolicited consumer marketing, but wondered why the same approach should apply to correspondence between businesses.

AI then supplied what it described as the legal basis for its answer.

Frank extended the question to other European countries and found, according to the system’s responses, considerable variation in the rules.

The practical consequence, as he understood the advice, was that he might have to telephone a business and ask permission to send an email introducing himself.

It seemed rather absurd.

Perhaps, I suggested, this was another unintended consequence. We create rules to prevent abuse, then discover that those rules also affect perfectly ordinary activities that were never their original target.

Frank drew a distinction between somebody sending ten thousand unwanted messages with one click and somebody genuinely wishing to introduce himself, listen to another person’s story and explore whether there might be a useful business relationship.

Technology has changed what is possible. Regulation has tried to keep up.

But the old question remains.

How do we deal with the minority who abuse a system without making life unnecessarily difficult for everybody else?

And there we were again, back at human decency.

The conversation had begun with AI in 2050. Now we were confronting a problem as old as organised society.

There are no perfect answers.

I have become increasingly convinced that our obsession with absolute solutions can get in the way of finding sensible processes.

There is a difference between solving a problem once and creating a system capable of dealing with the problems that will inevitably follow.

The latter may be considerably more useful.

We need ways of managing the edges, the exceptions and the circumstances nobody foresaw. That applies to regulation, politics, organisations and certainly the governance of artificial intelligence.

Frank agreed, but returned to his original concern about language.

Were we really talking about human behaviour? Human nature? The capacity for decency?

We did not quite resolve it.

By now he had another appointment.

“I really have to move on.”

There was still time for one more disagreement about lawyers, legislators and the increasing complexity of regulation, followed by some rather unflattering comparisons between political personalities.

Eventually Frank asked whether we had made any progress.

“We haven’t solved all the problems yet,” I said.

“No. We’re getting there.”

I suspect we both knew that was optimistic.

But it was an appropriate way to end.

We had travelled from AI and 2050 to Shakespeare, political conflict, mistakes, language, regulation and human decency. The subjects appeared very different, yet one question kept connecting them.

How much of our difficulty comes from not knowing what to do, and how much comes from being unwilling or unable to do it?

Artificial intelligence may give us extraordinary tools for understanding problems. It can help us compare alternatives, recognise contradictions, simplify complexity and develop more sensible processes.

But it cannot guarantee wisdom, goodwill or the willingness to compromise.

Those remain human responsibilities.

Perhaps that is the question worth carrying towards 2050.

Not simply how intelligent our machines will become.

But whether we will become any better at using the wisdom we already have.

Member Stories

The Christmas Present That Starts in October.

Between school meetings, homemade bread rolls and a new responsibility, Babette is already thinking about wool, colours and Christmas.

By Babette. Germany.

Sometimes I think a school parents’ evening should be a quick meeting. You go there, listen to the teachers, hear what is happening in the class, and then you go home.

But that is not always how it works.

This week, I went to a parents’ evening and arrived home at about quarter to ten. My husband had also been to a school meeting, but he had finished much earlier. When we spoke, he wanted to know why I was still at school.

I told him I had been talking to the teachers. After all, that is why we go to these meetings.

There was something else I had not told him yet.

I had become the chair of the Parents’ Council.

A Very Quick Election.

Normally, choosing the parent representative involves a secret ballot. The teacher leaves the room, the parents discuss who should take the position, and everybody votes.

This time, things happened much faster.

The class teachers had asked whether I would take the position for another year. I was happy to do it, and another father had already offered to be my deputy.

So, when it was time for the election, I told the teachers they could stay. There was no need to make everything complicated. I would continue for another year, and we already had someone willing to help.

That was that. A very short election!

I have experience with this kind of responsibility, and I think some parts of the job are quite easy. Often, I receive information from the class teacher and pass it on to the other parents. If the school is planning an event and needs help, I ask in our class group who can volunteer or bake a cake.

Of course, not every school or class works in exactly the same way. Some responsibilities are more complicated than others. But I know what I need to do, and I am comfortable continuing.

My husband, however, still needed to discover that I had agreed to another year.

For the first two years, I was the only one of us in the parents’ group. After the meeting, I added him to it. I had already sent some messages that morning, so I thought he might discover my new responsibility when he read them.

I had already sent some messages that morning, so I thought he might discover my new responsibility when he read them.

Perhaps that would save me another explanation!

Thinking About Christmas Already.

One of the things I can now start organising is the Christmas presents for the teachers.

Yes, Christmas presents. In October.

It sounds early, but when you want to make something yourself, you cannot leave everything until December.

I have made a soul warmer for a teacher before. It is a lovely handmade item, something warm that you can wear around your shoulders. This year, I am thinking about making them again.

Before I start, though, I need to make some decisions.

First, the colours.

One teacher likes green, which makes things quite easy because I already have an idea of what might suit her.

The other teacher is a little more interesting. She told me that she normally likes black, especially with beige decorations, and sometimes a bright, juicy yellow.

But when I mentioned the soul warmer, she said it could be very colourful.

That gives me many possibilities.

I will have to look at the wool I have at home and see what colours I can put together. I also need to decide which pattern to use and how I want to make it.

There is still plenty to think about before I begin.

The Ring Is Easier for Me.

I enjoy making things with wool, and I have different tools I can use.

I could work with knitting needles, but I prefer using a knitting loom. For me, the ring is easier, and I can make something beautiful without having to use two needles.

I also have a larger loom, although I am still thinking about which one will be best for this project.

When I need ideas, I like watching videos from a woman whose work I follow online. I enjoy her patterns and the way she explains things. I have watched her videos before, and I know I can find inspiration there.

Sometimes it is nice to discover something completely new. Other times, when you find somebody whose instructions work well for you, there is no reason to change.

I can look at the different patterns, choose something I like, and then decide how to make it my own.

And, of course, I must remember to buy the right wool.

A Christmas present can begin with a very small decision, but there are quite a few more decisions before it is finished.

Fresh Bread at Half Past Five.

Making things at home is something we do quite often, although it is not always me doing the baking.

Normally, I bake our bread and bread rolls myself. But this week, my husband prepared the dough.

He had made it the evening before, and when he came home early in the morning, sometime between quarter past five and half past five, he took it out of the fridge, shaped the bread rolls and put them in the oven.

My alarm goes off at half past five.

A few minutes after I woke up, he came to tell me that the bread rolls were already baking.

That was quite a nice surprise, especially after getting home so late from the parents’ evening.

Not everybody in the family is equally enthusiastic about my homemade bread, though.

One of my children has decided that she does not like it.

So yesterday, I bought bread for her instead. It cost €1.99.

At that price, I certainly hope she enjoys it!

I still like baking our own bread and rolls. It is something useful we can make at home, and it is especially nice when somebody else has already done the early-morning work.

Another Project Waiting at Home.

There always seems to be something happening. A school meeting, a message to send to the parents, bread to prepare, or something that needs organising.

And now I have Christmas presents to think about as well.

When I get home, I want to look through my wool and see what I already have. I need green, perhaps some black, maybe yellow, and possibly several other colours if I decide to make the second soul warmer bright and colourful.

Then I can look for a pattern.

I have not decided exactly what I will make yet, and that is part of the fun. I can watch a few videos, look at the different possibilities and choose the one I like best.

There is still time before Christmas, but I know how quickly the weeks can pass when there are so many other things to do.

At least the election is finished, and I know who will help me with the Parents’ Council this year.

Now I can start thinking about the wool.

And perhaps, by Christmas, the teachers will each have something warm, colourful and handmade.

That is the plan, anyway.

Member Stories

The Summer I Was Almost Never at Home.

Two camps, a catamaran, cold forest showers, tuna with mango, a permanent problem with being late, and a Spanish exchange student waiting at home: my summer was not exactly made for resting.

By Sarah, France

My holidays were really, really cool. Actually, they were very big holidays because I had so many things to do that I was almost never at home. I think that is what I loved about them. There was always another camp, another place, another activity, another person to see.

First there was my Scout camp for two weeks in Alsace. Then I helped at another camp with children. I went to Mallorca with my mother and joined my grandmother, cousins and the rest of the family. I stayed at my grandmother’s house for a few days, went swimming and spent time with friends.

So yes. I had holidays. But I am not sure I had much sitting down.

Two Weeks in the Woods.

The Scout camp was probably the biggest adventure. We stayed in tents, with the girls and boys from each team sleeping separately, and we had our own part of the forest.

And when I say camp, I mean camp.

We had to build things ourselves from wood and cord. Each team could make its own tables and the things we needed for eating and living. Because we were in a new place that summer, we had to start the construction from zero.

The Scouts’ chief—the adults who supervise us—were there, but we did a lot ourselves. They checked that we had not forgotten anything, helped with important things behind the scenes, drove us to the shops and made sure somebody could deal with injuries. This is important when you are doing things with wood and not always thinking enough about hand protection.

There were also activities all the time: afternoon activities, night activities and big games. During the year, we help plan these things ourselves. That is one thing I really like about Scouts. You don’t only arrive and wait for somebody to entertain you. You participate in making the camp happen.

The same was true for cooking. Sometimes everyone ate together and a small group prepared the meal. Other times we cooked in teams of about eight people. At the beginning of the week, we planned recipes, made ingredient lists and went shopping.

Then came the cooking competition.

Our camp had a theme based on the elements, and my team got water. This meant our meal had to connect somehow with water and fish. We made a little tuna-and-mango salad for the starter, salmon pasta for the main course, and for dessert we attempted île flottante—floating island.

In the woods.

By hand.

Normally you would make part of this dessert with an electric mixer. We did not exactly have a beautiful professional kitchen hidden behind a tree, so we had to do it ourselves.

We did not win.

Not because the food was necessarily terrible, but because we were thirty minutes late.

This was completely normal for my team. During the whole camp, we were basically known as the team that was always late. Of course, when there was finally a competition with a deadline, we were late for that too.

At least we were consistent.

There was also a presentation for the competition, with choreography and costumes. I had to wear fake hair, and somewhere in the middle of all this there was even a photo montage of me with McDonald’s nuggets.

I had to wear fake hair, and somewhere in the middle of all this there was even a photo montage of me with McDonald’s nuggets.

The nuggets had become a Scout joke. On another occasion we had passed two McDonald’s restaurants, and I was basically begging, “I want nuggets. Please, just give me nuggets!”

The answer was no.

So naturally somebody later sent me a picture with a nugget, and eventually I ended up in a ridiculous montage with nuggets.

Finally. My nuggets.

The Luxury of a Real Shower.

Living in the forest also changes your definition of luxury.

The toilets were very basic. Each team had a toilet in its section of the woods, and there were a couple of more private ones for situations when somebody was ill or needed them.

The showers were also homemade. We had a big tent, plastic pallets to stand on and something a little like the equipment you use to water plants in a garden. If we were lucky, the sun warmed the water.

If we were not lucky, the water was cold.

Actually, because the weather was warm, the cold water could feel quite good before going to bed. The problem comes after two weeks, when you realise you do not really feel clean anymore.

Then you see a real shower again.

Very beautiful. Very exciting. Possibly one of humanity’s greatest inventions.

Going Back to Camp, but on the Other Side.

My second camp was different because this time I was helping to take care of children and organise activities for them. It was especially funny for me because it was a camp I had attended when I was younger. Now I was coming back on the other side.

There were around 45 or 50 children, with a team of adults and young people looking after them. We played games, including a giant version of Mikado, had a cinema party, sang, danced and did a big walk in the mountains. We visited a First World War memorial site and had a bonfire too.

I really like children, so I loved being part of the animation team. They were sweet, the other people working there were funny, and there was always something happening.

It also made me think about doing the BAFA, the French qualification that allows young people to work with and supervise children at camps and holiday programmes. Now that I am 16, I can do it.

I think I probably will.

For me, it sounds like a very good combination: you can work, travel, organise activities and still have an interesting holiday. And if my English becomes good enough, maybe one day I could even work at an international camp.

That would be really cool.

Then Mallorca Happened.

After all the forest life, Mallorca was something completely different.

I went with my mother and joined more of my family there, including my grandmother and cousins. One of the best parts was going out on a catamaran. I had never done that before, and it had been one of my little dreams.

The colour of the sea surprised me. It was this incredible blue, the kind of blue I imagined somewhere like Hawaii, and I remember looking at it and thinking, “Oh my God!”

We swam in the sea and saw lots of fish. The weather was beautiful, and after tents, forest toilets and cold showers, being on a catamaran in that blue water was a very different version of summer.

I also spent four days at my grandmother’s house, and the rest of the holidays disappeared into friends, swimming pools and other little things.

That was basically my summer: one thing after another.

And Then I Came Home to Spanish.

By the time school started again, life had not exactly become quiet.

I now have a Spanish exchange student staying with my family for a month. I am really happy about the exchange because I want to improve my Spanish. I can understand quite a lot, but when I speak, sometimes the past, present and future all arrive together in one sentence.

People can understand me. But I want to speak Spanish the way I can speak English: maybe not perfectly, but enough that I can really express myself.

At the moment, my brain sometimes has other plans. I can start with Spanish, accidentally move into English or German and suddenly produce something like, “Hola, hello, yeah, no, sí, por favor!”

Very professional.

Hosting somebody for a month is also teaching me something else. I am very social and I really like talking, while my exchange student is much quieter and shyer. Sometimes I try to start a conversation with questions like, “Where do you want to travel?” or “What food do you like?” and the answer is simply, “I don’t know.”

Then I am there thinking: But how can I practise my Spanish if you don’t reply to me?

She is kind and really nice, and I know being on an exchange can be difficult. So I am going slowly. But I have also discovered that being with somebody 24 hours a day makes me appreciate the moments when I can be alone, do my homework, call my friends and just have a little space.

Soon it will be my turn. I am going to Spain for a month, and then I will be the exchange student trying to find the right words.

I just have one small hope.

Please.

Let me have my own room.

After this summer, I think I have proved that I can survive tents, forest toilets, cold showers, children, mountains, cooking without an electric mixer, a team that is permanently thirty minutes late, four languages fighting inside my brain and a serious shortage of McDonald’s nuggets.

But one month without my own room?

That might be the real adventure.

Postcards

First Impressions of Accra.

In June, we said farewell to Seoul, after four years of an interesting and wonderful life. My husband’s work takes us to Accra, the capital of the West African country, Ghana. And the contrast couldn’t be greater. Moving around is not easy. Even the shortest distances require a car.

By Nathalie, Accra, Ghana

The avenues are paved.

The streets are not.

A street restaurant.

By the roadside.

The beach, which was completely demolished one week after this photo was taken (too dilapidated, unfit for bar/restaurant)

A shop.

Accra is undergoing extensive construction everywhere.

Recipe

Ralf’s Gin-Cured Salmon.

Salmon, gin, dill and a little patience — two days in the fridge and you have something rather special.

For me, salmon is the best fish for this, although you can also use trout or mackerel. I make it around Christmas and New Year, and it has become one of those recipes people actually ask me to make again. That is normally a good sign.

Ingredients

Serves about 6

1 large side of salmon, skin on
Gin, enough to marinate the salmon
30 g sugar
50 g salt
2–3 tbsp olive oil
1 large bunch of fresh dill, or frozen dill
Extra dill for finishing, optional

Method

First, run your fingers carefully over the flesh of the salmon. You will feel if there are any pin bones left inside. Pull them out with fish tweezers. I actually have special fish tweezers for exactly this job.

Cut the side of salmon into two equal pieces and place them in a dish. Pour over enough gin to let the salmon sit in it and leave it for about two hours. The gin is there to give flavour to the fish.

Take the salmon out of the gin and pat it thoroughly dry.

Mix the salt and sugar together and spread the mixture over the flesh side of both pieces of salmon. Add plenty of dill.

Lay out a large piece of cling film. Put the two pieces of salmon together with the flesh sides facing each other, then wrap them really tightly. You want some pressure on the fish so the two pieces are held firmly together.

Put the wrapped salmon into a zip bag or, even better, vacuum-seal it.

Now it goes into the refrigerator for 48 hours. Turn the package approximately every 12 hours so the cure works evenly through the fish: left, right, left, right.

After two days, unwrap the salmon and remove the remaining salt, sugar and dill. The fish will now feel noticeably firmer.

Add a little fresh or dried dill on top if you want it to look especially nice, then slice the salmon very thinly with a sharp knife.

For me, this is very, very good — especially at Christmas.

The Mayor’s Noilly Prat Question

While I was explaining the gin, the Mayor immediately thought: could you use Noilly Prat instead?

I explained that the alcohol is there for the taste, not to clean or disinfect the fish. That made the idea even more interesting to him. Gin gives it its particular botanical flavour, but Noilly Prat would take it in another direction altogether.

The Mayor hasn’t tested my version yet, so this is not part of my original recipe.

But I think somebody needs to.

And the Mayor has a bottle of Noilly Prat.

Peeling Potatoes

Peeling Potatoes, Episode 67: Nobody Gave Us the Rules.

Created by the President of Fruitloop University, Pineapple Editor, Fruitloop, also known as Janita and improvised by the Vice President of Fruitloop University, Pineapple Publisher, Mayor and occasionally referred to as Frank, when he did something normal . So, yes, this is absurd nonsense…until….

Fruitloop planned five simple Olympic events. The Mayor responded by inventing committees, legal departments, anti-snuff and a constitutional crisis over marshmallows. Somewhere between the clouds and the flying carpets, we discovered what happens when nobody tells you how things actually work.

I had a very simple idea.

The Mayor was going to host the first Fruitloop University Olympic Games.

Five events. Dragons. Clouds. Flying carpets. An invisible obstacle course. A mountain made entirely of marshmallows.

Fun.

That was important, because the day before we had agreed that this was not work.

“This is fun,” I reminded him.

“I remember fun.”

He was tired. He had been awake far too late, his brain had started whirring again, there were approximately sixty kilos of quinces waiting for him, things were crashing upstairs, cats were prowling around, his computer was full of rubbish and an upload button on the Pineapple website had apparently escaped.

So naturally I decided this was the perfect moment to put him in charge of the Olympics.

“You have a job to do today.”

Something in his face suggested that he already regretted coming to university.

The President Will Be Watching.

The arrangement was straightforward. I am President of Fruit Loop University. He is Vice President.

Therefore, he does everything.

“What are you doing in all of this?” he asked.

“I’m watching. I’m a spectator.”

Within seconds I was accused of sitting in a sun lounger drinking champagne while he did all the donkey work.

“I’m not drinking champagne. I’m drinking coffee.”

“Same principle, different drink.”

He threatened to join every trade union in South Africa and go on strike. I ignored him and explained the real problem.

He would arrive at the Olympic Games expecting athletes, medals, spectators and perhaps a small opening ceremony. What he would not receive were any rules.

“Of my life,” he said.

Exactly.

There were five events, and I was not going to tell him what they were in advance. His job was simply to make them work.

This is where my plan began to go wrong.

Or possibly right.

First, He Invented a University.

Before we could even begin the first event, he wanted to know what he was supposed to say in his opening speech.

I explained that Fruit Loop University was a magical place where everyone was welcome: dragons, Vikings, mermaids, aliens and monsters, whatever size, shape or colour they happened to be.

He immediately wanted to know about the academic programme.

I had not expected an accreditation inspection.

So I explained that we teach languages, because obviously the aliens need to communicate with the mermaids and the mermaids with the Vikings. There is history, problem-solving, AI, technology, potions.

And broom flying.

That was a mistake.

The moment I said “broom flying”, the Mayor became Vice Chancellor for Infrastructure.

What happens if the broom breaks? We need broom repair. Therefore we need a Faculty of Broom Engineering.

What happens if somebody falls off? We need medical training. But ordinary medicine would not be enough because the doctors would need to treat dragons, monsters, Vikings and mermaids.

Soon we had hospitality, counselling, clubs, relationship guidance and something approaching an entire Department of Creationity.

He had been given five sporting events.

He was building a civilisation.

Eventually I managed to get him back to the Olympics.

The Clouds Have Feelings.

Event One was competitive cloud jumping.

There were no rules. Nobody knew how high the clouds were, where the start was, where the finish was or exactly how the competitors were supposed to get up there.

My suggestion was that we bring the clouds down.

He objected.

Apparently, bringing clouds down could damage their morale.

So we agreed to lower them. This was more respectful.

Then he reconsidered, because a happy cloud should clearly be allowed to float at a reasonable altitude. His solution was to use the broom-flying students to carry competitors up to the clouds while the medical team hovered nearby in case anyone fell off. The Faculty of Sorcery could manufacture additional clouds if required.

Then he reconsidered, because a happy cloud should clearly be allowed to float at a reasonable altitude.

“Not sauce,” he clarified. “Not the sauce you put on your steak.”

I was beginning to understand that this was going to take a while.

We also had forty-seven creatures wearing swimming goggles. I had included them because forty-seven creatures wearing swimming goggles seemed exactly the sort of thing an Olympic opening ceremony required.

The Mayor decided the goggles should be multipurpose.

Swimming. Flying. Possibly other duties yet to be identified.

“We have to be budget conscious.”

Then he became concerned that the clouds might have been sponsored by Amazon or another large technology company and could therefore contain somebody’s personal data.

The clouds would have to be certified data-free before anybody jumped on them.

This was not in my original plan.

Neither was the enormous floating buffet and jazz band at the finish line, but by then he had decided that hungry creatures would jump faster if they could see food ten clouds away.

I let him have that one.

Never Assume a Dragon Is Competing.

Event Two was the Dragon Sneeze Distance.

“This is easy,” I said, “because you assume that dragons are competing.”

He stopped me immediately.

“Do you realise the danger hidden in the word assume?”

I did.

Unfortunately, I could also see that I had just handed him a weapon.

There were two rows: competitors on one side, dragons on the other.

“And who’s sneezing?”

“Who do you think?”

He refused to think. Thinking might lead to assumptions.

Eventually I explained that the competitor sneezes and tries to blow the dragon as far as possible.

There was silence.

Had the dragons agreed to this?

Yes.

Had they volunteered?

Yes.

Were they the strongest dragons?

Yes.

Fine.

He then converted the competitors into Big Bad Wolves, because of course he did, wandered briefly into a discussion about Reacher, forgot my original question and returned several minutes later proudly announcing that he had understood the event.

Almost.

The problem was that most people cannot sneeze on command. We tested the theory by asking my husband.

He cannot.

His face when I asked him was worth the entire experiment.

The Mayor decided the Faculty of Sorcery could distribute carefully measured quantities of snuff to produce the sneeze.

Then I asked the obvious question.

What if the dragon sneezes?

Because dragons breathe fire.

Another silence.

“Anti-snuff.”

Of course.

The competitors would receive snuff. The dragons would receive anti-snuff. The fire department would remain nearby in case a dragon happened to be allergic to anti-snuff and incinerated somebody anyway.

An event involving sneezing had acquired a medical team, fire brigade, pharmacological protocol and risk-management structure.

I began to suspect that nobody had told me the rules either.

My Carpet Has Better Social Skills.

Event Three was the flying carpet race.

There were no steering wheels. No brakes.

Just carpets.

The Mayor thought you probably controlled them a bit like skateboards. I explained that you could also talk to them.

“Please go faster. Please stop. Turn left. Turn right.”

He immediately wanted to know whether I was speaking from experience and whether a flying carpet was my normal way of getting to work.

“That or a broom.”

This required investigation.

Apparently I choose the broom for the scenic route and the carpet for the highway.

“No chauffeur?”

“No. I fly myself.”

He decided this was unacceptable for a university president. I pointed out that a chauffeur was not in the budget.

He proposed another fundraiser.

Then came the actual problem.

His carpet refused to listen to him.

“How would you get this carpet to trust you?”

For the first time that morning, he became serious.

Maybe, he said, the problem was not the carpet. Maybe there were qualities in him that the carpet did not trust.

“Conversely, there must be some qualities in your personality that exude trust to the carpet.”

“That’s deep.”

I told him I had made friends with mine. I washed it, looked after it and gave it somewhere warm to sleep.

He admitted he might have been negligent on the carpet-care front.

Somewhere between discussing carpet maintenance and whether my carpet could have a quiet word with his carpet over drinks, we landed on something neither of us had planned.

Trust is not built by announcing that you are trustworthy. You look after the thing you depend on. You build the relationship.

And if you are only as good as the team supporting you, occasionally the team may include a carpet.

Fruit Loop University is very broad-minded about these things.

Then He Started Fighting Back.

The fourth event was the invisible obstacle course.

You walk into an empty field. You cannot see anything. Then you bump into something. Nobody knows how many obstacles there are.

“How do you complete an obstacle course you can’t see?”

The Mayor thought for a moment.

“You wing it.”

Exactly.

Except he did not stop there.

You keep your eyes open even though you cannot see the obstacles. You process what happens. You learn. You think on your feet.

“It’s basically life, isn’t it?”

And there it was.

No grand announcement. No management slide. No inspirational music.

Just an invisible obstacle course at a university containing dragons.

We arrive without knowing exactly what is coming. There are rules, institutions, friends, enemies, bits of guidance, things somebody probably should have mentioned and quite a few things nobody knew in the first place.

You move. You hit something. You learn. You move again.

I should probably have left it there.

Instead, I asked whether anybody might cheat.

“How do you interpret cheat?”

I suggested that perhaps the swimming goggles could allow somebody to see the invisible obstacles.

He stared at me.

This, he pointed out, had been my idea. He had not even considered cheating.

I had.

“Are you really qualified to be the President of Fruit Loop University?”

I suggested that perhaps a competitor could bring a friend who sees invisible things.

This did not improve my position.

The Mayor wanted a committee.

I reminded him there were no rules.

“So is it really cheating if there are no rules?”

He looked genuinely perturbed.

Good.

Because something had changed. Earlier, I had been asking the questions and watching him struggle with them. Now he was pushing back. Every loophole I created became evidence against the administration. Every question returned with another one attached.

I was no longer simply setting the exercise.

I was in it.

Nobody Studied the Marshmallows.

The final event was Marshmallow Mountain Climbing.

A huge mountain made entirely from marshmallows had been imported from Candyland. The first competitors began climbing.

The mountain collapsed.

Nobody had known marshmallows were unstable.

The Mayor could not get past this.

“Nobody knew?”

Nobody.

We had medical teams. We had the fire department. Nobody was hurt because marshmallows are soft and squishy.

He did not care.

“How could this be?”

“Nobody studied marshmallows.”

“They come from Candyland,” I explained.

This made matters worse.

Where were the quality controls? Where was the inspection? What due diligence had been carried out?

“It’s marshmallows!”

I had finally reached my limit.

He had finally found his opening.

Fruit Loop University, he informed me, appeared to have imported structurally unstable marshmallows from a lawless foreign jurisdiction without adequate quality assurance.

Candyland has no laws.

This did not reassure him.

Before long we had travelled from marshmallow climbing to procurement standards, legal liability, university governance and whether his original job interview had been conducted properly.

I had failed to disclose certain operational idiosyncrasies of Fruit Loop University.

He had failed to ask the right questions.

And underneath all the ridiculousness was the thing we had actually been talking about all morning.

Nobody told me that at work.

Sometimes nobody tells you because they forgot. Sometimes everybody assumes you already know. Sometimes the person showing you the job does not know either.

And sometimes the rule does not exist until something collapses and everybody stands around asking who approved the marshmallows.

“You failed to disclose information,” the Mayor told me, “and I failed to ask the right questions at the right time.”

“Yes,” I said. “Nobody told me that.”

The Games Were Already Open.

After all that, he asked whether I thought we were ready for the opening ceremony.

I said yes. We would make a few last-minute changes and go ahead.

Since I carried ultimate responsibility, he graciously agreed to second the decision.

Then he asked me to declare the Olympic Games open.

So I did.

“The Olympic Games are now open. You may proceed. You may start.”

He congratulated me.

“Well done, you!”

There was only one problem.

“That wasn’t exactly my plan.”

“Why not?”

“Because the idea was that the Olympic Games had already started.”

“You never told me that.”

“I know.”

Considering the subject of the entire exercise, it seemed rather appropriate.

What I had planned as a set of questions had become something else. He had pushed back. I had pushed back harder. He had taken my logic apart, I had defended the indefensible and somewhere along the way the Vice President had started cross-examining the President about marshmallow procurement.

“It was this fantastic tug of war between the two of us,” he said afterwards.

He was right.

That was the fun.

At first, you wait for somebody to tell you how things work.

Eventually, you start asking why they work that way.

And, if you are very lucky, there is somebody on the other side of the table willing to push back.

Even if you are the President.

Especially then.

In The Next Issue

The Rules of Work Nobody Writes Down.

Have you ever wondered where rules actually come from?

We have sacred guidelines at home, unwritten etiquette when we go out in public, and invisible standards for how we treat other people and stay polite. But then there is the workplace—a whole universe of its own, running on secret, unspoken codes that you won’t find in any employee handbook or contract.

Nobody ever explicitly tells you how long to wait before sending a follow-up email, which mug you definitely shouldn’t use in the breakroom, or the exact art of nodding along in a video call. Yet somehow, we just know we have to follow them.

Where were these workplace traditions born, who decided they were mandatory, and what happens when someone decides to ignore them entirely?

Join us next week as we explore the unwritten rules of work—and life—that nobody ever bothers to write down.

Join us next week:

Monday
With Frank & Ralf – 8:00 CEST
With Frank, Ismar & Ritesh – 15:00 CEST
With Janita, Frank & Fabrice – 17:00 CEST

Wednesday
With Frank, Martin & Manfred – 7:30 CEST
With Janita & Sylvie – 15:00 CEST

Thursday
With Frank and Bruce 10 CEST
With Janita, Rosii & Frank, perhaps Monika & Nathalie – 11:30 CEST
With Janita & Babette – 13:00 CEST

Visual pauseThe Pineapple

Inside this issue

Polite Rules, Parking Lots, and Childhood Boundaries.

Unexpected Talks, Quince Gluts, and Anti-Handbooks.

Punctuality, Busy Summers, and Gin-Cured Salmon.

A Smile Is Not Always the Answer.

The Complicated Business of Saying Hello.

You, “Vous”, “Du”, and the Dangerous Uncle Frank.

When Being Honest Feels Impolite.

The Invitations That Never Arrive.

Excuse Me, Your Majesty, but I Really Must Go.

Perhaps the Rules Are Still Being Written.

From My Heart to You.

Waiting for the Menu.

The Barbecue Constitution.

Rules Can Change.

Four O’Clock Means Four O’Clock.

I want to know who is sitting opposite me.

The question behind the questions.

Can you be too polite?

What you only discover afterwards.

AI can prepare the paper. I still have to read the room.

The sensible option was not always popular.

Please explain the rule.

Learning by doing.

The day I took a shotgun to school.

A different kind of childhood.

One thing leads to another.

A good surprise.

Five kilometres, eight kilometres, and pizza.

The topic can wait.

Rule 1: Never announce that the evening is over.

Rule 2: Subtlety is useless.

Rule 3: Coffee is dangerous.

Rule 4: Domestic activity may begin.

Rule 5: Some offences have no appeal.

Rule 6: Sensible rules are often the most dangerous.

The Standards Department.

Quality Gate: Traffic Lights.

GREEN — Stay

AMBER — Prepare to leave

RED — Leave now

When all systems fail.

The rule that breaks the Anti-Handbook.

Two different clocks.

The dance class.

A life arranged for one.

Never and always.

Somebody else’s time.

Looking towards 2050.

The machine that got it wrong.

Has human nature really changed?

Politics and the problem of power.

A sensible answer nobody wants.

Why the words matter.

There are no perfect answers.

A Very Quick Election.

Thinking About Christmas Already.

The Ring Is Easier for Me.

Fresh Bread at Half Past Five.

Another Project Waiting at Home.

Two Weeks in the Woods.

The Luxury of a Real Shower.

Going Back to Camp, but on the Other Side.

Then Mallorca Happened.

And Then I Came Home to Spanish.

Ingredients

Method

The Mayor’s Noilly Prat Question

The President Will Be Watching.

First, He Invented a University.

The Clouds Have Feelings.

Never Assume a Dragon Is Competing.

My Carpet Has Better Social Skills.

Then He Started Fighting Back.

Nobody Studied the Marshmallows.

The Games Were Already Open.

Join us next week:

See what the next issue brings.