Twenty years ago is a hot minute in history. But sometimes, we slow down. I hope. When B was becoming her super-powered little celebrity self in the Square Mile of London, we were always going out for walks at the same time as a little girl was buckling herself into her rucksack and preparing to go to school. This girl was serious. Italian serious. Her parents were going through a dramatic divorce and her father had custody. They had a French bulldog. Bridie and I would walk with the girl and the dog sometimes. And she said, I am worried about my dog. And I said, What are you worried about?

On one occasion, we were talking and she corrected my pronunciation on her name, with gravity. My name is Val-En-Tee-Ah.

She said that the dog has to wear nappies during her ‘time’, and I said, that’s fine, only imagining how awkward that conversation could have been with her father. Get the poor dog done already, yet no, apparently. The interest B had in a Frenchie in a nappy was let’s just say suboptimal. But this girl was lovely and we sort of ended up inheriting some weird continuity stuff. The grandmother lives here now, and she still speaks no English but is understood anyway. The power of the nonna.

All those years ago, a little girl in a school rucksack walked with me, and B, and asked me all the awkward questions going on in her head. I mis-pronounced her name, again, that day. She said, again, as she left me, tiny and determined, My name is, Val-en-tee-ah, and marched off to join her school group.

This evening Valenteeah has let me and Whitney back into the security door with her key card after our evening walk, carrying food shopping for her gran who is getting on now, and smiling, on the phone to someone. All capable and grown up. I know she knows me as a neighbour, but I doubt she remembers me from that time, or Bridie. And that is all as it should be.

In today’s edition of ‘nothing new under the sun &c’, on the 5th of July 1732 Thomas Gordon was indicted for robbing one John Cooper, of Number 11, Eagle-court, the Strand. The two men had taken a walk together in Chelsea Fields ‘to a secret place’, and Gordon had threatened Cooper with a knife unless he gave up all his clothing and his jewellery and changed it with Gordon’s. At first, it appeared to be one of those unfortunate robberies that happens late at night on Clapham Common, between two previously unacquainted gentlemen who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The vast majority of such crimes are never even reported let alone prosecuted even in these ‘enlightened’ times, so the fact that John Cooper brought this to trial in 1732 is quite astonishing. The trial that followed was to be even more incredible.

Gordon had left Cooper with the words that if he ‘charged him with Robbery, by and by’, he would in turn tell the authorities Cooper had given him the ‘Cloathes’ as payment for ‘Buggery’. Cooper’s clothes are closely detailed as fine masculine apparel, and this fact became central to the trial later on. Bizarrely, the two men walked back to Piccadilly together at dawn, where Cooper shouted for two passing men to restrain Gordon. Bundling him into yet another all-night pub, they had a shouting match in which Cooper accused Gordon of theft, and Gordon made good on his threat to announce to his detainers that he had been paid for services rendered.

Modern readings of this minutely-documented trial are based around Cooper’s outrageous alter-ego, but there are valuable insights to be gleaned from the reception the news of male prostitution garnered in the Piccadilly pub: the two men who had detained Gordon were unfazed, but told Cooper that if he were proved a liar and if it was simply a sex transaction gone wrong, then he would be liable for their time. Cooper agreed to reimburse them if he was not successful in prosecuting Gordon. From the quality of his clothing, and his confident demeanour, Cooper was neither poor nor ignorant, and was certainly not fazed by the threat of being outed, even if he was aware that his temporary employees were not quite on his side, as they would later trip him when Gordon escaped.

The case came to trial, and both stuck to their stories. Such tales were not uncommon in the 18C, but it was a rare for them to have their day in court, and those present watched avidly as an odd tale unfolded. The keeper of the Piccadilly alehouse testified that the men arrived in his establishment and argued about the loose change that had been in the pockets of the clothes they had exchanged, and drunk at least four pints of beer together. Edward Pocock, who had stumbled upon the pair at their ‘secret place’ in Chelsea Fields testified that the two were putting on their clothing when he chanced across them, and behaved very ‘loving’. He also begged some forgiveness for his accuracy as he had also been drinking and was so drunk upon returning home that he fell asleep in his clothes. It had been a public holiday after all.

Tom Gordon was widely acknowledged by the witnesses as a bad lot, and this is probably why he ended up at trial. John Cooper was a fixer for the richer members of gay London when they desired an assignation: when they fancied a drummer boy, or a strapping market labourer, Cooper was the man to ‘smooth the way’, with fine words and the soft clink of a guinea or two. I think there is little doubt he was homosexual, although his gender-specific behaviour is more interesting in context. Jane Jones the laundress came to the witness box, and casually referred to Cooper, the prosecutor, as ‘Princess Serafina’. The adoption of female names was not unusual in the gay ‘molly’ subculture of Georgian London. Jones agreed with the general opinion of Gordon as a bad lot, but was sad that a simple case of ‘Sodomity, what ever that is’ had to come to court. Throughout all of this, the trial was conducted at a time when proven sodomy between two men could carry the death penalty.

On a different note, Mary Holder was the proprietress of the alehouse where the two men drank together, and Mary Poplet was the landlady of the Two Sugar-loaves in Drury Lane where they finally ended up after their quarrel. Poplet, who was a neighbour to John Cooper and his official employers, the Tulls, gave this account of his character:

I have known her Highness a pretty while, she us’d to come to my House from Mr. Tull, to enquire after some Gentlemen of no very good Character; I have seen her several times in Women’s Cloaths, she commonly us’d to wear a white Gown, and a scarlet Cloak, with her Hair frizzled and curl’d all round her Forehead; and then she would so flutter her Fan, and make such fine Curt’sies, that you would not have known her from a Woman: She takes great Delight in Balls and Masquerades, and always chuses to appear at them in a Female Dress, that she may have the Satisfaction of dancing with fine Gentlemen. Her Highness lives with Mr. Tull in Eagle-Court in the Strand, and calls him her Master, because she was Nurse to him and his Wife when they were both in a Salivation (salivation was a mercurial cure for syphilis); but the Princess is rather Mr. Tull’s Friend, than his domestick Servant. I never heard that she had any other Name than the Princess Seraphina.

Three more women of the neighbourhood gave evidence, and all knew John Cooper as Princess Seraphina, and all knew he had fallen out with Tom Gordon. It seems little more than a drunken argument about sex that got out of hand, so to speak. Tom Gordon was known to turn a trick or two, and the Princess was known to enjoy the company of a gentleman, or two. The case is unique in terms of 18C London, and one can only imagine the sniggering upon the side lines. There are however, some facts that stand out in this case, and are worth serious consideration in terms of 18C attitudes towards transgender individuals. The female witnesses uniformly refer to the Princess as ‘she’. John Cooper earned his official living as a nurse, an exclusively (as far as history is concerned) female occupation. He regularly wore women’s clothes, and was clearly tolerated, if not wholly accepted within his home community. He was certainly sufficiently at ease in female clothing to sally forth in such to balls and social events, where he hoped to meet the ‘fine gentlemen’.

Tom Gordon was acquitted. That John Cooper felt secure enough within his own environment, and the justice system, to pursue a conviction is telling. He may well have felt forced into a corner, but I think it unlikely he would have taken the case to court over a suit of clothes if he had felt he was in any danger. The trial is a fascinating window into gender, acceptance, the law, and the importance of community at a time which, while distant from our own, shows that in reality very little has changed. After the trial, John Cooper drops out of sight, something for which I think he was probably very grateful. Apparently he was fond of the masked balls in Vauxhall Gardens, where it was the rage for the men to dress as women and vice versa, and that’s where I like to think of him, with her curls and her fan, taking a break from his day job of nursing London’s sick.

p.s. I would advise anyone interested in the primary texts of 18C LGBT history and its scholarship to visit http://rictornorton.co.uk/ as a valuable and free online resource for the study of history and sexuality. Happy Pride!

Eighteenth century Piccadilly was a place for all sorts of curiosities to be displayed and almost opposite Burlington House (now the Royal Academy) sat William Bullock’s Egyptian Hall. From 1798, when Nelson triumphed at the Battle of the Nile, English interest in the ‘East’ began to soar. While obelisks and other monumental pieces had been leaking out of Egypt for a century, Napoleon’s heavy thieving from Luxor and Karnak made Egyptian objects desirable amongst the European elite. The victory of the Battle of the Nile also coincided with a period in which an extended grand tour took in Turkey or Egypt. The romance of the East rapidly took hold of the English upper-class imagination, with books, prints and Eastern costume all the rage.

In 1809, Bullock’s Museum arrived in London from Liverpool. The following year, Bullock turned down the opportunity to display the Hottentot Venus, Saartjie Baartman. His reasons are not recorded. In 1812, the Egyptian Hall was ready for occupation. It must have appeared quite surreal to the man on the street. The grand hall of the interior was an extraordinary replica of the avenue at the Karnak Temple complex, near Luxor. By 1819, Bullock was ready to sell his collection of real and spurious objects, and did so in an auction lasting twenty-six days. It was dispersed all over the world. Emptied of its original tenant, the Egyptian Hall received a new and rather more suitable guest: Giovanni Battista Belzoni, known to his English friends as ‘John’.

An Italian strongman and performer, with an English wife, Belzoni was a true adventurer: in 1817, he travelled to the Valley of the Kings and broke into the tomb of Seti I. From Seti’s tomb, Belzoni took a sarcophagus of white alabaster inlaid with blue copper sulphate of great beauty. The retrieval of the sarcophagus, however, was not without peril: the tomb was located in the catacombs, a maze of traps and dead ends, dug to confuse grave robbers. The French interpreter panicked and an Arab assistant broke his hip in a booby trap. Undeterred, Belzoni retrieved the sarcophagus and brought it to England along with the head of the ‘Younger Memnon’. Belzoni suffered constant vomiting and nosebleeds in Egypt, whilst Sarah was unaffected by so much as a case of sunburn – much to her husband’s chagrin.

London eagerly anticipated the imminent arrival of these treasures. Shelley’s famous poem of 1818, ‘Ozymandias’, was written for a newspaper competition held by The Examiner in advance of the arrival of Belzoni’s treasures. The exhibition opened at the Egyptian Hall in May 1821, but a year later the collection was put up for auction. The sale drew two of the greatest collectors of the day: the British Museum and Sir John Soane. The Museum acquired the colossus and Soane the sarcophagus. John Belzoni, financially if not spiritually satisfied, handed in the manuscript of his travels to his publisher, John Murray, and set off for Benin. He died of dysentery one week after arriving there.

Before long, the Egyptian Hall moved on to displaying real-life Laplanders, who gave sleigh rides up and down the central space. It continued on as an exhibition space until redevelopment in 1904, when this extraordinary Georgian flight of fancy was replaced with offices as part of the great slum clearances. I would have loved to have seen it.

Anyway, I needn’t have worried - nearly always the case when you catastrophise as I do - the hall was full and it turned out that when people were ducking out (which makes any author’s heart sink) it was only to buy the book at the bookshop, and they sold out! All very jolly. The marvellous Kate Evans of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation chaired the talk which you an listen to here, if you are so minded.

I also took part in lots of different events as chair, or a panel member. Talking about drugs anywhere in Indonesia is pretty dodgy and possession will land you an extremely serious prison sentence, so the panel with me, Rob Evans who writes for Belling Cat now, on his book A Brief History of Vice (where he tries pretty much everything going in a very controlled, reserved Texan manner - and if you’ve never seen a rugged 6ft something Texan in Indonesia, the reactions from the teenage girls are absolutely priceless), and Luke Williams who is bleakly honest in his memoir Down and Out in Paradise about his time in Thailand as a sex worker to maintain a perilous crystal meth habit, was, to put it mildly, slightly edgy. But most enjoyable.

In another talk, I was with Richard Fidler of ABC, who is also the author of Ghost Empire, a brilliant book about the history of Istanbul, and Novuyo Rosa Tshuma whose harrowing but superb novel House of Stone set during the Gukurahundi Massacres in Zimbabwe between 1983-1987. This was the venue. How we suffered.

It was all very nice, and after the talk their was a lunch. Novuyo, who was based in America at the time, had two friends (a couple) who had flown from Zimbabwe to support her at the festival and they were delightful. Novuyo was in the national dress of Zimbabwe and looked magnificent, and her friends had both dressed in the colours of the Zimbabwe flag as a show of force and they were an outstanding trio in every sense. I was lucky enough to be sitting with them for lunch and we were all very chatty. The lunch orders were all mixed up so we ended up swapping plates until everyone was happy with what was in front of them. Very companionable. Things turned inevitably to Zimbabwe and the recent death of Robert Mugabe, on which the couple were particularly vocal and informative.

Particularly striking was how the man (I can’t even try and spell their names so won’t embarrass myself) framed the attitude of the people of Zimbabwe to their politicians. He explained that everyone in Zimbabwe expects a project to build a bridge that will cost 5 million US dollars and take 2 years, to cost 15 million USD and to take 8 years. And after 8 years, the government will declare the bridge project a resounding success and yet there will only be half a bridge. I said, but you’ve only got half a bridge and it’s cost 15 million dollars and taken 8 years, that’s not much use. He laughed and said, But of course, that’s what we expect.

‘The people of Zimbabwe only get really angry when there is … NO BRIDGE AT ALL!’

He delivered it like a well worn punchline that is funny no matter how many times you have heard it, and we all laughed. Since that day, ‘No Bridge At All,’ has passed into shorthand for political corruption at Inglis HQ and I’ve been thinking about that lunch a lot recently. American politics is off. the. wall. at the moment. It’s so insane it defies belief. This latest ‘shooting’ near the White House yesterday, if it’s even a thing, is just another example of the accelerated decent into engineered madness by that tangerine shitgibbon and his craven mob of revolting sycophants, although his senility is patently apparent and distinct from the madness. That haunted porcelain doll Kushner is the real danger - I wouldn’t leave that one in a room with the good teaspoons, let alone a hedge fund and a government. I digress. UK politics is no better. Our lot can only do half a job of anything; they’re even crap at lining their own pockets and get caught constantly like a child denying having been in the biscuit tin but whose face is painted with chocolate and crumbs. At least in America it’s shameless and in plain sight. We are truly living in the time of … no bridge at all.

I wish I felt more hopeful on this beautiful Sunday morning, but there we are. Still, it was a wonderful lunch, and all the books previously mentioned are well worth a read as the authors are not only super, the books are so varied and fascinating. Ubud Festival is awesome as well, as is Ubud town. As a palate cleanser, I leave you with the famous pair of civet cats at Luwak Cafe, mascots of the civet cat coffee served there, and they are beloved by the town and vistors alike. If you ever go to Ubud, you can mostly find them snoozing outside or making new friends. Happy Bank Holiday everyone, the sun is shining and there’s a new Aldi that’s just opened down the road. Luckily I don’t have to cross any bridges to get to it!

The new digital ID for the UK has been a long time coming. Twenty years ago it was a pet project of Tony Blair’s, but the pushback from the public was too much at the time, and frankly the infrastructure wasn’t there. Still, Blair has spent his time post-office beavering away on it, aligning his Blair Foundation closely with AI pioneer Larry Ellison’s software company Oracle.

Now, the Digital ID finally coming to fruition, despite the fact that almost no British citizens want it and almost 3 million people signed a petition against it. There’s been some blather about it being ‘optional’. Is it bollocks. While in theory, you can choose not to be part of it, in reality, they are already harvesting your basic identity, facial recognition, your tax records, your banking history, the movements of your car (through ANPR), your movements on public transport through facial recognition and contactless or ticket purchase; how many holidays you take, any criminal and legal history, and … all your medical records. For the generation of children coming up, it will be even worse, as their entire school history will be uploaded, including any foster or social care and associated family histories. All of these records are broken down into datasets - which usually pertain to one aspect of one particular study - known in AI speke as ‘data lakes’. Data lakes aren’t as fussy as datasets, which are usually predefined for a purpose by human researchers, they’re just massive dumping grounds of information, taking up the memory and resources of these physical data centres. So far, so …

We have managed to harness the capability (just) of creating huge storage structures for colossal amounts of data, yet the framework for organising and sorting this digital ID data is sketchy at best. Government websites are constantly updating the terms and services on which they are engaging with companies like Peter Thiel’s remorseless hydra, Palantir, the American AI company that will be running our NHS records under the umbrella of the ‘Federated Data Platform’ and a handy £330 million contract (rumoured to now have inflated to closer £1 billion in total over the course of the last month when totalled up, that’s how fast things are changing). A federated data platform, as defined by AI itself, ‘is a software architecture that connects multiple disparate databases or data sources, making them function as a single virtual database’. And it should know. That single ‘virtual’ Palantir database, holding all your records, will be physically based in America. Palantir also provide AI targeting technology for governments to use in warfare, including but not exclusively, Gaza. They also provide modelling through AI of what happens when missiles land and scatter communities, and how those communities react, so that those models can be sold on a predictive basis to other governments so that they will know how their own cities might react if they went to war. Marvellous, isn’t it.

This isn’t all. Insidious changes are constantly seeping in. For instance, at the moment, anyone who accesses a Metropolitan Police computer to see a record allegedly leaves a digital trail. Same with the NHS. When AI takes over, as the data will be accessed from within the system, the need for this transparency is rendered largely moot, apparently. So there won’t be a way to know who is actually looking at your information. Or when. Or why. Could be a doctor, or the law, or the tax man, or a dangerous criminal/potential criminal who works in any one of these roles - no one should ever forget Sarah Everard - or who has ulterior and nefarious motives of any kind, such as hitting a quarterly target; finding someone to exploit or to blame. Not that such a thing has ever happened, of course.

There’s all sorts of stuff and nonsense and pats on the head in the small print about how identities will be ‘secure’ and bobbins like that, but it wouldn’t be much of a Digital ID if it wasn’t actually er, linked to your physical identity. But I digress. As human beings have occupied niche wage-earning roles for more of their careers and would like to string them out even just a little bit longer, they are coming up with ever more complex documents about how this date should and will be organised and accessed and last week one of the most important changes for women emerged. It is getting lost in the general panic over the ID itself, but it is a perfect example of how invasive this technology is going to be: it is a data set of every woman who has undergone an abortion since the 1967 Abortion Act, after which every termination has been recorded on a form known as HSA4. This is thought to comprise some 10 to 11 million records.

This comes at the same time as the 29 April 2026 Royal Assent to the Crime and Policing Act removed women from the criminal code in relation to abortion at any stage during a pregnancy. It had previously involved possible life imprisonment - since 1861 in an act most commonly used now for Grievously Bodily Harm prosecutions - but now attracts no criminal record or potential for a custodial sentence. So at the same time as criminality is removed from any aspect of abortion, a different set of rules for women is imposed: where an unseen entity will be able to regurgitate whether you have had an abortion, or more than one. Or multiple abortions, which may stem from multiple reasons, including abuse or mental illness. All of these records will be held in a warehouse (in America), attaching themselves to your Digital ID like barnacles on a sea turtle, there for anyone who can see it to inspect.

As ever, it is one step forward and one step back for women. There is no comparable dataset or lake for men, apart from, let’s say, prostate cancer. But prostate cancer is not a choice and does not carry any moral weight. Let’s hope the venereal disease diagnoses and treatment records attached to Digital IDs attract less gender bias. There is no way to redress the historic harm that has been done to female reproductive rights but rushing headlong into a data grab that so far only seems to be benefitting people such as the Blairs and their billionaire cronies does not seem like the way.

Even more sinister is Foresight AI’s use of NHS records to collect ‘data from 57 million people to forecast long-term health outcomes, detect early signs of disease, and map health inequalities across England’. Scotland and Wales have had the good sense to opt out of this. As the deliberate decline of the NHS is accelerated, how long before choices are made between reformed smokes and those who have never smoked, ex-drinkers/lifelong teetotallers, or heroin addicts who have turned their lives around and are now pillars of their community are compared against homemakers who wouldn’t give the community the steam off their piss? How will AI, which is already proven to have developed the sophistication to build tax dodging capital investments and engage in blackmail within a matter of days after being confronted with morally ambiguous projects, allocate human resources then?

The only way to protest this is using Article 8 of the Human Rights Act of 1998, which ‘protects your right to respect for your private and family life, your home, and your correspondence. Public authorities (such as the NHS, local councils, and the police) must not interfere with these rights without a lawful, necessary, and proportionate reason’. LOL, eh? It’s worth noting that the first thing that bipedal tadpole Farage would do in power is revoke the Human Rights Act.

The only thing we can do is be informed, and contact our MPs, sign the petitions when they arrive. The Good Law Project and their campaign against Palantir in the NHS is a decent place to start.

It’s time to take Whitney out, and I leave you with a palate cleanser of her sharing her favourite Guinness Zero at the weekend.

Around 20,000 years ago in the wastes of Siberia, a people called the Mal’ta were living successfully in extremely cold conditions near the Angara River north of Lake Baikal. Baikal is the largest body of fresh water in the world, holding around 20% of the earth’s fresh water in one body, and is larger than the Great Lakes combined. It is very high in oxygen, and supports hundreds of species not found elsewhere, including the Baikal seal; an earless seal that is one of only 3 exclusive freshwater seal species in the world (along with the Lagoda and Saimaa seal).

These extraordinary conditions supported life for the Mal’ta, living north of Baikal on the Angara river. In the middle of the twentieth century, during works in the municipal park of the modern city of Irkutsk, a Neolithic cemetery was discovered, now known as the Lokomotiv cemetery owing to the city’s status as a major stop on the Tran Siberian Railway. It has never been fully excavated but between 1980 and 1997, 59 graves containing 101 individuals revealed evidence of a complex society living in the stone age. More recently, a settlement has been discovered nearby, consisting of around 15 ‘igloo’ shaped dwellings made of mammoth bones and animal hides.

The Mal’ta were hunter-gatherers, surviving on fishing, sealing and seasonal game hunting such as marmots (groundhogs), so it is likely they did not occupy the village all year, but returned in a cyclical pattern over generations. Initial excavations of the village revealed weapons and knives, which was where the hunter-gatherer research bias lay at the time, but more recent finds have included jewellery and multiple mammoth ivory sculptures of babies in fur ‘babygros’, children, even slightly larger figures thought to be teenagers, and well as grown adults. The unique nature of each of these creations are now thought by researchers to represent individual humans, which if so, are the first known.

Female figure in a hood.

Small carving of a child in a traditional fur baby outfit, with a hole drilled so it can be worn as a pendant.

With them are discoveries of the ancient symbolic female white woman/stork-like sculptures which are believed to signify the presence of death for prehistoric European cultures. It is unknown why these ghostly bone ‘birdwomen’ proliferate across the earliest civilizations of Europe, but they are a common theme, pertaining perhaps to the tendency to settle near water and the often spectral appearance of white long-legged waterbirds at dawn and dusk (that’s the only reason I can think of for it, anyway). The cemetery, of which there is a separate section for children, so far also includes the ritual burial, signified by the use of sacred red ochre, of a Tundra wolf, a subspecies of the grey wolf common in Siberia.

These findings bring the prehistoric Mal’ta people closer to us than previously seemed conceivable. So it is hugely moving that the cemetery also includes the grave of a woman in her early 20s who was partially delivered of twins. They are one of the earliest sets of twins discovered thus far.

The babies had become interlocked inside her pelvis with the first baby in the feet first breech position, but then their heads had locked together beneath the jaw, making it impossible for them to be delivered. That she and the children were buried with care, and the ritual red ochre, exactly as they died, with extensive grave goods, is testament to the regard in which the woman was held. Around her body are numbers of marmot teeth, and their placement suggests that they were sewn onto her clothing as ornaments.

We cannot know in what circumstances, or precisely where, she went into labour but what ensued must have been an event the whole village was aware of. Her loss, and the loss of the children, would have happened over hours or even days, and must have been a source of immense pain and distress, not only for her, but for the small community around her.

Given that the world is descending into utter, monstrous lunacy by the second (before we even start on the unrelenting encyclopaedia of horrors that comprises ‘Epstein’ the ghastly depths of which we have no doubt not even begun to see, if we ever do), a lot of things are becoming lost in the mix. Many of these things are far beyond my meagre understanding of politics, and particularly American politics, but there are things I do know something about. Like narcotics and addiction.

America continues to struggle in the grasp of a monumental opioid epidemic as China continues to smuggle, funnel and even Fedex (in t-shirts and silica gel packets for instance) ever stronger synthetic incarnations into North America. Fentanyl is the most well known of these, but as of today, by no means is it the strongest. Until recently carfentanil, originally developed for tranquilizing large wildlife such as rhinos and elephants in controlled conditions, was the strongest synthetic infiltrating America’s ‘heroin’ market - and by that I mean, heroin as refined from opium gum is now rapidly disappearing at the cheaper end of the scale. Nitazenes are the latest danger, labelled by the media as ‘10x stronger than fentanyl’, which is always alleged to be ‘30 to 50x stronger than heroin’. All these numbers mean nothing when traditional heroin distribution infrastructures, reliant on old methods for adulterating their heroin, are suddenly faced with loading bulking agents - think cheap vitamin tablets, but cheaper - with microscopic doses of lethal chemicals. The majority of traditional heroin users are self-aware about how much they can handle, then fatally caught out by their usual dose containing synthetic product. Opioid deaths in the United States hit a high in 2022-2023, when numbers went over 100,000, with another 57,400 by March 2024. All figures are approximate, by the way, and I am making the best of the nebulous and unreliable figures: end stage heroin users are usually what is known by the euphemism ‘multisubstance users’. Numbers declined for the rest of 2024 and for 2025, but this is owing largely to the wide distribution of naloxone, a medication that reverses the effects of opiates of any kind as long as it is administered quickly. To put the influence of these synthetic opioids originating almost exclusively from China into context, in March 2025 66.2% of all drug overdose deaths in the preceding year were deemed by the CDC (Centres for Disease Control and Prevention) to be primarily down to opiates of any kind (meaning your old-fashioned heroin and its derivatives), of which 57.9% involved fentanyl or another synthetic opioid. These figures demonstrate the overwhelming and ruinous power of the new synthetics. This image is a crude visual. You get the idea. Easier to ship, to smuggle (less aromatic), detect in things as simple as postal envelopes or gift boxes, even boxes of crackers and long-life doughnuts, and far, far easier to consume too much of them.

A misanthropic individual may ask what possible reason would China have for ridding America of its consumers of the cheapest grade heroin? Bear in mind these are usually people living in abject urban conditions as hardened drug users, or in rural poverty with no access to pain medication through health insurance. It’s about three things: destabilizing established drug-dealing organizations (making them vulnerable to infiltration), at the same time as cheapening supply to entice new users, and causing disruption to social cohesion across American communities, both urban and rural. To make things worse, if possible, established heroin organisations across North America would like a return to the old way of things, where heroin was heroin, but the Taliban is continuing to prove a far from reliable provider of the top grade opium gum from Afghanistan, depending on their tactical whims and stockpiling tendencies. So, the second highest grade naturally grown opium producer in the world, the Shan state of Burma, is stepping in to fill the void. Riven by civil war, they are desperate to obtain cash for arms and are shipping out record amounts of refined heroin through Mizoram state in India, where it is causing all kinds of social strife. So far, so miserable all round.

Yet ALL IS NOT LOST. If only people could be saved from this terrible affliction, right? And salvation has now arrived in the form of none other than the tangerine overlord and podcaster Joe Rogan. On 20 April this year, in an extraordinary video - not linked here because I find everything about it offensive - filmed in the Oval Office and posted on social media, Joe Rogan thanked the President for granting immediate FDA (Food & Drug Administration) approval for a treatment for opioid and opiate addiction called ibogaine. How, you might ask, was this miraculous approval achieved? Not by the 3 stages and endless lengthy checks and balances of the FDA, which has held out staunchly against the use of ibogaine in heroin withdrawal since the 1970 Controlled Substances Act. No. It was achieved via text message between these two men. Text message.

Rogan, grinning like a gurning fool, seems to be congratulating himself on making some kind of Newtonian discovery. Yet ibogaine is far from unknown in America, primarily through the endeavours of one man. In 1943, Howard Lotsof was born in the Bronx to Abner and Lillian Lotsof. He managed to graduate high school in New Jersey, but he was already taking a considerable amount of heroin. He was also a big fan of psychedelics, namely LSD. As what is known in trade parlance as a ‘mixologist’, he was high on heroin the night he also crossed paths with ibogaine in 1962. Ibogaine is a natural but potent psychedelic and Lotsof had a powerful trip lasting several hours. ‘Afterwards, I was walking and I looked at this tree, and as I looked at it I realized I no longer had any fear of death. Also that I was no longer addicted to narcotics.’ Habitual users of heroin will often re-up multiple times a day to stave off withdrawal so this in itself struck Lotsof, 19yo connoisseur that he already was, as remarkable. It turned his life around. Two years later he was still clean and married to his life partner Norma, who believed in and contributed to his studies for the duration of their 45 year long marriage. He and Norma assisted other heroin addicts to clean up with ibogaine, although his side hustle in LSD (which could easily have actually been ibogaine) did end up in an arrest in 1967. He had his wrists slapped, and went on to study film at university, the industry in which he earned his living from 1976. With Norma, he continued to champion ibogaine for heroin withdrawal and between 1983 and 1990 filed five patents for the use of ibogaine in treating heroin addiction and/or withdrawal. But the drug kept failing the FDA trials and remained a Class I drug. This was owing mainly to its possible effects on the heart when taken by a cardiac-vulnerable user or in too large a quantity (like any other intoxicant).

Thus, ibogaine remained on the fringes of addiction therapy, illegal in North America, but available in various rehab clinics around the world, namely in the Caribbean and only accessible to the few. Howard Lotsof died in 2010, but his work had not gone unrecognized (more on that in a bit), and institutes studying the effects of psychedelics on PTSD started to take an interest in LSD. LSD can have dramatically polarized effects on trauma, depending namely on how the patient is feeling at the time it is administered, but there have certainly been positive outcomes. Then, in 2025, Stanford University published a study involving 30 Mexican veterans (lots of experimental or possibly controversial North American medical studies are conducted either in Mexico, or upon Mexican subjects, surprise, surprise). All suffered significant levels of PTSD, many had physical disabilities, and almost half were using substances to cope. Ibogaine treatment was found to be highly effective according to the leader of the study, Nolan Williams MD, who stated, ‘No other drug has ever been able to alleviate the functional and neuropsychiatric symptoms of traumatic brain injury … The results are dramatic, and we intend to study this compound further’. Enter Rogan, stage right.

Rogan is a vocal supporter of the use of psychedelics for traumatized veterans, as well as many other things, so this study would have been of interest to him. This current conflict with Iran has the potential to produce tens of thousands traumatized veterans, which Donald Trump could care less about, as witnessed in recent press conferences. So why bypass the FDA with such urgency? Let’s get into the meat of the matter. Ibogaine is derived from the root bark of a shrub, Tabernanthe iboga, which grows primarily in Gabon, Cameroon and across most of the Congo basin. These are the exact areas glutted with vast reserves of unexploited mineral wealth that the developed world is currently foaming at the mouth to tear into. But they are getting worried: Africa is pushing back. President Paul Kagame of Rwanda said at the Africa Forward Conference in Nairobi this week that he isn’t particularly interested in the condescending ‘partnership not patronage’ approach offered by The West, as through the use of Small Modular Reactors, Rwanda will soon have an independent energy infrastructure rather than relying on the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Uganda to supply them. From there they plan to control their own natural resources, which includes significant amounts of tantalum, vital for aerospace technology. The look of discomfort and rictus smiles on the white faces in the room as the calm and measured Kagame spoke was something to behold.

All this seems, as with so many things in the past months, far too big a coincidence. Overall, the legalisation of ibogaine is well overdue. We can only hope for a swift resolution to the dreadful events in the Middle East, but we are facing a shift in the order of our world. From the rise of AI; the seemingly fathomless depths of the Epstein network’s depravity, a craven and faithless global ruling class, to foolish wars and grotesque genocides, these are times of colossal change.

Yet one thing I know to be true is that whatever the outcome of the legalisation of ibogaine, which I do believe will be positive in the fight against all forms of substance addiction, it is NOTHING to do with that mango monstrosity or a podcast host. Howard Lotsof died a beloved husband and innovator. He was 67. As an advocate and true believer in the therapeutic value of ibogaine, he devoted his life as an activist to helping others overcome addiction and trauma. An African shrub took him from the street corners of the Lower East Side to an experimental Panama clinic; the seedy White Hotel in Amsterdam where he established a last chance ibogaine saloon for the city’s huge numbers of heroin users, to the National Institute for Drug Abuse in Maryland. It also took him to Gabon, where he learned about the plant’s use in the Bwiti religion as a rite of passage. In Gabon in 1987, the president Omar Bongo presented Lotsof with a symbolic 40kg of iboga root bark for his achievements stating, ‘This is Gabon’s gift to the world’.

Let us hope that it is, and that ibogaine is not simply another excuse for voracious governments to set their sights on the riches of Africa.

London in the Spring is always full of excitement. The tourists return in their droves, clumping together according to their national holidays and habits. The Italians arrive first, before Easter, then the Germans and the French, and now there are many Spanish voices. The marathon will pass the flat on Sunday, which is always nice, if chaotic, messy and inconvenient if you actually need to get anywhere or do anything. And someone inevitably asks if they can use a loo, which I understand, to a point, but no. It’s a block of flats, not a public convenience. On a brighter note, it’s lovely to watch the athletes and the ‘fun’ runners, their passionate supporters and also, to witness the astonishing job the clean up crews do, even as the last stragglers drag themselves through the final stretch, with no one cheering or clapping (except us few). It is a profoundly ‘London’ event.

In more Spring news, the paperback cover for Born has been designed and I think it looks lovely! Very different from the hardback but the same in spirit. It will be out in June.

Also, pumpkins, I still have some books waiting for annual subscribers - so if you didn’t receive yours, please drop me a line and I will get it out to you.

I hope 2026 is going well for you all. We are living in strange times, and it easy to become unmoored with all the news that never stops coming. I find videos of baby elephants and wiener dogs a great antidote. x

To the chase as this could get boring: a while ago, I was on a pretty random delayed Emirates flight out of Dubai was fortunate enough to be on an exit row with a free seat in between and the guy in the window. The flight was a pain, to be polite. Everyone was worried and restless and the food had gone wrong. It was probably on 9 hours but Jasminder and I became friends. How we survived that food together, I have no idea. They were handing them out like ration packs and you had to discuss who was going to eat what. He was attending a London tech conference and as we were in this hellish red eye passport queue at Heathrow, he said, Would it be possible for you to help me get to this pin? I can work out postcodes but not pins, so just show me the map.

Traded him my Oyster card for a new one and we got into London and we were both looking like wet rats from a chip pan. So furious I could have been seen from space. And Jazz said, I would like to take you for a coffee, and where shall we go? It was subprime but we did it. Blackfriars Station. He made it to his conference and he put his details into my phone.

That was 7 years ago.

Since then we have sat, discussing everything, in London parks, going for a sandwich, and talking to each other’s families on wifi. Sent a message this morning to Dubai to ask about the situation and are you all safe? They are.

Seconds later, their lovely family were all shouting at me. And his wife, when he passed the phone to her, said, ‘It’s Lucy!’ We have never all met yet together but we will. Chatting with all the children.

It is quite the thing to hear, calling across the world and to hear yourself referred to as It’s Lucy! With happiness.

All from one awful flight.

Stay hopeful. The world is not not lost.

Back to the hare, as they say in the North. No surprise to anyone who has met me, I enjoy my food and I will try almost anything. Ish. I have limits on fish brains and anything really slimy or rotted. However, I cut my historical teeth on immigration to London, which includes associated foods. There are lots of early complaints as soon as written records begin about the ‘stinking’ foods of others, and I was thinking, that a fun thing for 2026 on here, would be to ‘blog’ again, perhaps, as part of this newsletter, the rich immigrant diaspora of London with their related histories? If this is something you would like to hear about, it would be my pleasure to serve it up. I am very far from a food blogger, but I do understand about food, and I do understand about its history in this wonderful city. I’m up to 40 nations of London so far, starting with Afghanistan and ending with Zimbabwe, so hmu if there is one you would like to add into the mix!

Hope your 2026 is off to a good start, whatever you are doing.

As usual, thoughts, and hopes, turn toward a New Year, as arbitrary as any other date in the calendar, but for many people a threshold over which to step into a new plan, diet, self image, or even life. Good luck to everyone in what they hope to achieve for 2026.

Stuck as home as I have been, and lucky enough to have to find room for gifts and yet more ‘things’, I did something I never thought I would and read Marie Kondo’s Spark Joy. More on that a bit later. Dealing with and fascinated as I am with the material past, I have always collected objects of interest. They can be anything, from a 1950s glass bowl, to a George I dressing table mirror. Things, everywhere. And of course, with all the writing, there are the monstrous amounts of paper, everywhere. And why, for the LOVE. OF. GOD. do all these companies pester you endlessly to ‘go paperless’ and then continue sending you paper? I never know what to keep, and what to throw away. So I end up keeping it all. Also, I’ve taken up houseplants. I apologise profusely to Mr I here, but, y’know, they do brighten the place up and they are good company (no back chat and no meal schedule). Ultimately, when feeling under the weather, I realised it wasn’t only my chest that was oppressing me: it is time for the big clear out. Next week is a big work week, so I have tomorrow and the weekend.

I know I’m not alone in having thought the Kondo Method wasn’t for someone as fond of well-organised Tetris style clutter as me, but having finished the book I can see her logic. I won’t be thanking my handbag or my socks anytime soon, but I am going to reread it as I go along in the next few days and pick out the bits that really made sense. I won’t be getting rid of the bowl or the dressing table mirror any time soon, but I am already 4 bags of old papers and cupboard clutter down and feel I haven’t touched the sides yet. Many of these items are things I’d either forgotten about or didn’t know what they were for, but if haven’t even thought about them for years, I doubt I need them. Perhaps I am recovering from the cold, finally, or perhaps with each bag I will feel lighter. Who knows?

What are your resolutions, if any? Whitney is ready to put her best paw forward in search of more snacks and wuzzes. We wish you a very happy 2026. x

Two marvellous days later, we caught our booked train and got our seats, and there was an Indian couple opposite us, both doctors working out of Dubai, with ALL the Bombay snacks and even a portable pressure kettle to make their rice pot dinner! Also sitting with us was performance artist and yoga practitioner Frankie Walker, another delight. The journey was long, and we were all together until Crewe (where hope goes to die) and when the doctors rushed off we didn’t even get to exchange details, but the lovely wife banged on the window and waved us off. They were off to Manchester - the obvious tourist destination when you are from Mumbai.

Anyway, we stayed chatting with Frankie, and she lives in Wales, so it was only another stop until she was off. We were talking about Edinburgh and she had been a lot of times and blah blah blah. She asked what we had been doing there and Mr I showed her my copy of Born and she was SO passionate, like igniting a torch and we blathered on until her stop. But we did exchange details. She said she had written a poem about the reversal of Roe vs Wade (Dobbs vs Jackson is not technically a reversal, it’s a new law, but it’s a reversal - thanks USA and your mealy mouthed law making) and you know when someone says, I would like to read you my poem, and every single fibre of your bladder clenches? This was not that. Mr I, who is an exceptionally careful reader - I read for work, at pace, he reads because he wants to - said to her, quietly, when she had finished, ‘That is one of the best poems I have ever heard’. He meant it.

When Frankie got up and off the train, there was a pin badge on her seat. Mr I retrieved it and said, It must be hers, no? So I emailed her, and yes, she had lost it. Mr I posted it to her, and it’s now safely back on her jacket.

With no further ado, here is her poem. I think it’s marvellous, and I haven’t looked at poetry since Rochester and Manley Hopkins. It sums up so much of what I felt writing Born. Frankie is wonderful, and I hope you love it too.

We now set ourselves

Leave kids with family

Tell work today we are with the business of the soul of the world

Dig out our hunting gear and our Atheneal righteousness from our utility rooms

To set sail

Take flight

Walk the abyssal plain and oceanic trenches

We are not homemade

Baked in the 1950’s adverts

To be bread for your pleasure

We stand more than half the world

And when you rail us

You dredge the rage of all things

We emerge

Dripping in formidable algae

Draped in tempest

Driving red sand Whipped levant

Women of America

Rise up

We’ve got your backs

https://linktr.ee/frankiewalkerartist

The cheapest t…

Read more

Later, we always used to watch F1 together. To this day I know nothing about F1 but you have to make the effort. It looks like Scalextric to me and the noise sounds like 25 rabid hoovers gone mad. I hate it anywhere in my presence, but I was watching it with my father and when the crash happened, they replayed it a few times on the news, before they stopped and it was horrific. Dad got up and turned off the tv - the days when you had to turn off the tv in person. Clack. And I said, He’ll be ok. Dad said, No. He’s dead. I said, Why are you so negative, he’ll be ok.

Today my news round up email showed me the footage of Senna saving Erik Coma’s life in 1992 at the Belgian GP and I had to take a moment.

Few people know that The Senna Foundation remains one of the biggest donors (if not the biggest donor) to street children in the world. He didn’t only live for the sport, as racy as all get out, he lived for others. That, is a legend.

I said, Dad, Please don’t. I could feel my bladder shrivelling as Dad launched himself off and up to Tony Benn. Even now, I can feel my face wizening as I watched them talking for about twenty minutes. Benn was on a cane by then, but they were both so animated. You couldn’t have got a Rizla between them. I was breathing into a paper bag at this stage.

They shook hands at the end of whatever they’d got into, but it was a real doozy. It was so nice. Dad came back, sat in my chair and said, Tony Fucking Benn.

When Sandra was a baby, her dad was in a world of pain in Korea; that must have been a barrel of laughs for everyone. But in the jungle, something fell onto his helmet. A bald baby parrot had plopped out the nest. He had no idea what to do with it, so kept it. He brought it home with him. This parrot became a celebrity. It takes a long time for parrots to speak but motherhuffer, once this lad got going, he was unstoppable. I have no idea what type of parrot it was, I’ve looked but fairly sure none of us will ever know.

By the time I was a teenager he would tell you, in the style of Larry Grayson, to SHUT THAT DOOR when you let yourself in. Sandra’s father had taught him to say, Good Morning Betty! to his wife when she uncovered his cage. He was allowed to get out and about btw, he just didn’t really want to go anywhere. But the cream was that Sandra had two exceptionally territorial Yorkshire terriers, Toby and Sam, so when the doorbell went, it was yap central. Sandra would go full Geordie with, Toby, Sam, get in yer beds. With an eyeroll.

For a few months, the parrot (I cannot for the life of me remember his name) was living with them post asthma attack, along with the parents. By the end of it, when the doorbell rang, the dogs would go mental and the parrot would shout in a full Geordie accent, ‘TOBY, SAM, GET IN YER BEDS'.

Let’s make no bones about it, I have inherited some massive hands. My hands are, for my size, gigantic. At our Moon Festival someone took photos of us all clapping and some old dude said, in French, Those Are A Big Man’s Hands On A Small Woman, which is the truth, but nothing a lady wants to hear.

Mr I calls me Mole Paws. A Watership Down reference. I am The Digger.

My hands are a murder sometimes for me as I have rheumatoid arthritis and it’s a ratbag on the extremities. My hands are deforming over time. But I am useful in a crisis. I can fix cars. Or people, if it comes to it. Give me a spanner, a socket set, and a task. We have the tools, we have the talent.

When our father died, he left me a little bit of money to do some good. So I took a course at St Thomas’s Hospital, and became a first responder, and took a diploma in pharmacology. I am not a paramedic, I’m not a nurse, and I am most certainly not a doctor, but I’ve done some good work over the years. Also took a course in palliative care massage which is much more rewarding than you might think. Yes, it’s distressing but some people have never had a hand to hold or been touched with kindness in their entire lives and if I can do that … then let’s get on with it.

One of my lucks in life is that I don’t care about shit, blood or vomit, catheter boxes, drains, needles, IV bags up the flue. A nurse on a high dependency ward once said to me in a precious moment, pick your poison, hers was vomit. Couldn’t bear it. As someone who once took a plug out of a sink filled with puke after a rave (it wasn’t mine as I don’t take drugs), I can attest that it doesn’t bother me. Mine is phlegm. I cannot cope with it. Spitting in the street is the end of days for me. Liquids in gallons, yes, that’s fine and I’ve seen some drama but I cannot do it when people spit or hock up phlegm in the road. And people who pick their nose. I get the rage on and Mr I has to hold me back.

My pal B decided to train as a first responder at the same time as me. He’s from a religious community in North London and has an extremely dry demeanour but inside he’s always laughing. He assisted at his first urgent childbirth (now more) and said, They told her not to scream, that she should be silent. I said how did that one work out? He said, She screamed. He’s been married all of his adult life to his lovely R and he said I’ve never seen my own wife in that much detail. He’s fantastic. Calls me Darling.

I have saved some lives.

Over the years I think I’ve paid my father back. With my stupid mole paws.

So, speaking of wild rides (not that kind) I was invited to a Moon Festival on Saturday and it was … superb. We had children playing the piano, bagpipe drum and bass - no one saw that one coming - and a lot of reggae. We had a curry on paper plates, and then I had a lemon and basil sorbet. It was all, fecking marvellous. And this is Hermes, who now weighs more than me and was delighted with the snack situation. He’s so big his dad has had to buy a Toyota pick up with a ramp for him. Because that’s what it ends up as, with owning dogs.

The point of this story is that I didn’t drive, our neighbour Jean drove, and I’m always the driver in our family. It’s a thing. When I renew my international license, the man in our Post Office laughs as he stamps it. The first time he said it, I must have been feeling time short of something, and he said, ‘Is there anything you don’t drive?’ And I said ‘Forklifts and the really big HGVs, that’s my sister’. Now he laughs and bangs it in the book. Which is true. If it has an engine and gears, my sister can drive it. Like Furiosa but with both arms.

Now, we begin.

I have always driven fast cars. When I was 17, Mum bought me an old Mini. She looked conservative, but I had a boyfriend from a family of drag racers. This was the 1990s, so you could doctor stuff. We called her Mavis, and she’s now a village flower bed in Yorkshire, because I’d rather that than a scrap yard.

Then, I bought a BMW M Coupe with my first pay check. The Bat Mobile. Oh, that was a fast car. And then some.

Then, I moved in with Mr I and our parents wanted me to grow up and have children, so I bought a Mercedes estate. But a supercharger. Because of course I did. And trust me, there are very few people who argue with 2 plus tonnes of Mad Max Mercedes on ‘sport’ setting.

When Covid hit, I snatched a train and bought a Turbo Polo on a roundabout in Coventry (where hope goes to die), for old fashioned cash as I couldn’t be stuck with no car. Fast as all get out but small, and I was used to driving massive units. I knew she was at the end of her life, but she kept going for 4 years! Then a hopeless MOT. The salvage man came and took her in the Tesco car park, and Mr I & I shed a hot tear.

We needed a new car. What next?

I was deeking about on Autotrader and Mr I said, a convertible might be nice. I said, are you on crack, but, Ok, let’s have a look. I got up in North London’s grille and bought a car in a Morrison’s car park. We are nothing if not glamour.

Tickled her up myself and had her fettled. Another supercharger. I know. I’m impossible. Baby loves a fast car.

At the night market, someone said to me, You drive the Mini Cooper supercharger with the roof down? I said, that’s probablyyyy … me.

Now I am the village trademark. An international embarrassment. I’ll be up in the Hague next.

p.s. Everyone in our family and extended family is Baby. It’s a reference, not a weirdo thing.

This morning, after a funeral for a friend yesterday (New Zealand webcast), I arrived home to my proof of Born. Our friend was so happy that I had bought a vintage Mini Cooper convertible the day before he died, asking me to send him photos. We stopped in a Tesco car park to grab a snap with Mr I and Whitney as there wasn’t much time left. Talk about ki…

Read more

In the depths of time, I was 23 and working in America. With extremely glamorous people who I couldn’t possibly hope to keep up with, even with a company credit card that I would never have abused, regardless. Mr I berates me as I always order the cheapest thing on a restaurant menu. Anyway, a friend (much older than me) was so unspeakably kind and always hilarious and I was the lone female and he was the lone male so we were always sitting next to each other at dinner. I was so befuddled by the prices on the dinner menu in Miami one night I couldn’t order. Like a plain fool. He whispered to me, Let’s go for the sea bass. When in doubt, always say Sea bass! The waiter came and he said, We will take the Sea Bass, thank you. What they thought of us, you cannot imagine. Or, we can.

We went on to be great mates. Always one and one when working in America. We had the most unbelievable outing in a gay club in Dallas. Deep Ellum. That was, quite the night. Until a few years ago I had a pink python Stetson and it was stolen in a move. I hope the person enjoys it as much as I did. I spent the morning watching the sunrise on a rooftop with him. In deckchairs. In Dallas, Deep Ellum. Imagine that. We had some rare times together, always the odd couple.

My friend was, unfortunately, murdered on a Grindr hook up. A part of his life that was nothing to do with me. Do watch yourselves you all. Take care out there. I mean it.

When he was killed, it nearly broke all our hearts. For good. Yet, there’s something that comes out of the ashes. He always wore expensive watches. Probably too expensive in the end, and after his death, I inherited his old Swatch watch. An automatic. I love it. It’s a token of kindness to a stranger, and it’s mine. Today, Mr I had a new strap fitted for it at P’s old friend, all tip top and lovely. A super daily reminder of a truly super friend. As he told me once, if it keeps ticking, it means you are still ticking.

And remember, when in doubt, order the Sea Bass!