A week of three — maybe four — halves.
Monday was a write-off. After a weekend of small disasters, culminating in a panicked and fruitless search for my AirPods (and facing the horrifying prospect of having to listen to other people breathe), the news landed that a piece of work we thought was in the bag… wasn’t. I got that email while enduring a terrible pedicure: someone badly applying nail polish while I sat there, too British to object, knowing full well I’d be coughing up for another within days. A perfect metaphor, frankly.
That evening I took myself off to Malta. A few days of ancient streets, gelato, wine and reading by the sea did the trick. Somewhere between the waves and the wine, I made some plans. Started a couple of things. Ditched a couple more.
The AirPods turned up, inside a shoe in my suitcase. My fears about the pedi proved correct, mind; it was chipped by Tuesday afternoon.
By Friday I was back delivering good work and talking to a potential new client. I know it sounds mad given how much I travel, but a few days out really can be the reset you didn’t know you needed. Like turning it off and on again, but for your entire personality.
This week at work
We’ve submitted the first three chapters of the book. Suddenly it all feels very real. The next four are underway and — surprisingly — I’m feeling pretty good about it.
This first section is all about discovery, which has turned out to be… discovery about our own discovery. A chance to properly review, analyse, synthesise and test what we actually do — not just what we tell ourselves we do.
It’s been a good moment to reflect. Jon and I have worked together for a decade, honing our methods and toolkits. Writing the book’s been part codifying that, part stress-testing it against research, and against the perspectives of others in the field.
We’ve been lucky to talk to some brilliant comms consultants. Let’s be honest: they’re also competition. But this is a small industry, and there’s no space for giant egos. We’ve all read the same books, combined that with experience, and built our own ways of working. When people let us in on theirs, it’s a privilege.
Less cheerfully, a client who’d been all set to extend a contract had a change of mind. Budget pressures, shifting priorities — nothing we could have done differently, but disappointing all the same. Now to find something to fill that gap. (Shout if you’ve got a Sharon-shaped project in mind.)
In the meantime, cracked on with other client work in an unremarkable, steady-as-she-goes kind of way — until Friday, when something new and promising landed in my inbox. Funny how these things even out.
Also this week
Malta, then. Visited because it’s somewhere I’d not yet been, and I had a Ryanair flight credit burning a hole in my inbox that would take me there for just thirty pounds. Hardly a considered travel strategy, but it worked.
And what a delight. Six thousand years of history crammed onto a handful of rocky outcrops, layered like a very hot mille-feuille of temples, fortresses, baroque excess and British leftovers. Plus cheap wine, reliable sun, and the deeply satisfying pastime of pootling around ancient harbour walls dodging a religious parade to the sound of canonballs being fired into the sea.
By Wednesday I was diving off a boat into the southern Mediterranean. I’m not a beach person — fuck sand — but there’s something about a boat, a cove, the wind in my increasingly feral hair, and the slap of sea water after jumping off the side. Sheer, unadulterated, child-like joy.
More than that, it was the reset I didn’t know I needed. The past couple of months have been relentless, and it turns out that a change of scene, sea air, and an inadvisable number of pastizzi will, temporarily at least, unbreak your brain.
Consuming
👩🏻💻 Internetting
Mark Wilson has written a cracking piece on the slow, grinding enshittification of the app economy. He tried to book a taxi via Bolt while on holiday — it never showed. Uber? Same. Slick interface, utterly useless service.
He describes the familiar tech trajectory: prioritise growth, then profit, then slash costs until the customer is left holding the bag, doing all the work themselves. Like some kind of gig economy but for basic competence.
If you’ve tried getting to the airport lately, you’ll know the drill: the app promises a car in two minutes, then as soon as you order it’s fifteen, then the driver cancels because Mercury is in retrograde or whatever. What began as a convenience is now a con — higher prices, worse service, and no humans in sight when it inevitably goes wrong. Also no alternatives, because the platforms nuked the competition for LOLs.
📺 Watching
Absolutely nothing. Haven’t even turned my TV on all week. And I’ve enjoyed that.
📚 Reading
My break gave me the chance to read Paris 44, a brilliantly told account of the city under occupation — and the joy, chaos and reckoning that came with liberation. Easily one of the best things I’ve read this year.
It made me think a lot about my grandmother, who lived in Paris at the time. She rarely talked about the war. Like many of her generation, the past was something you carried, quietly. But there’s something both moving and faintly surreal about reading history that runs so close to your own family’s untold stories.
Every mention of battles in the streets of the 16e arrondissement made me wonder what she’d seen or heard from the balcony of the family apartment on Rue Leconte de Lisle. The jostling for power between the Gaullists and the Communists — my family were firmly in the latter camp. It makes me wish I’d asked more, though I suspect she wouldn’t have said much.
It kept bringing me back to A Certain Idea of France, Julian Jackson’s brilliant de Gaulle biography I read last year. That book described how de Gaulle memed his way into the top tier of Allied leaders, despite Churchill and Roosevelt doing everything short of changing the locks to keep him out. He wasn’t even invited to Yalta, but by the time Paris was liberated, he’d made himself unavoidable.
Jackson gives you the sweeping, statesman’s-eye view; Paris 44 keeps you at street level — the hunger, reprisals, infighting, and the sudden visibility of women in public life. I remembered the handful of stories my Nan told me of the treatment of women who’d practiced horizontal collaboration with the enemy. It shows just how close France came to civil war as factions jostled for power. De Gaulle’s real genius wasn’t just getting France a seat at the top table — it was imposing order at home, consolidating power and quickly rewriting the official story as one of unity and resistance.
History always looks tidy from a distance. Up close, it’s a lot messier.
🎧 Listening
My friend Lauren introduced me to Spotify’s Blend feature — a daily playlist stitched together from the shared tastes of you and whichever poor souls you’ve roped in. Like Discover Weekly, but with the added jeopardy of other people’s terrible taste. And yet it’s weirdly brilliant. The algorithm can take a ragtag bunch of us from Iran, Sweden, the UK, the Netherlands and Thailand, and somehow find the musical Venn diagram we can all tolerate.
Big Tech may be broadly malevolent, but Spotify remains the one service where surrendering your data feels like a fair — if Faustian — trade.
Travel
I got home on Thursday evening, and now face the exciting prospect of spending over a fortnight at home. I’m giddy with joy.
This week in photos
Sharon O'Dea 