Bentham Line

By my reckoning, during my freelancing years - 1991 to 2004 - I worked on twelve projects for nine different companies. Happily, I found people I liked in every job and often stayed in touch with at least one person when the contract ended.

What was interesting was that the people I stayed in touch over the years weren't the ones I'd have necessarily predicted. In fact, I think that's one of the really nice things about friendships; they aren't consistently with the people you'd expect.

And so to my friend, Dean, whom I first encountered on Twitter about ten years ago. Funny, smart, disrespectful, sayer of the unsayable, and RUDE, I liked him a lot but I honestly wouldn't have expected such an enduring friendship. Yet he is one of my favourite people.

I've missed him a lot over the last year: we only saw one another twice, I think: once for a walk around Stocks Reservoir and then briefly last month when the Minx dropped a loaf off for him.

Today, we met up for a circular walk that started - and thus finished - in High Bentham*. I've done this walk once before with the Minx, although we went counter-clockwise. Dean and I went the other way, today, which is the route recommended in the directions, and that was a lot easier to follow!

And we had a lovely time, as we always do. Catching up on this and that, enjoying the countryside, and talking about plans for once the lockdown has ended.

*I have included some local history in my Extra.

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I finished reading David Baddiel's excellent and rather depressing 'Jews Don't Count'. It's really an extended essay and, to be honest, if I hadn't been so busy, I could have finished it in a couple of sittings. I'd recommend it to anyone: the writing is good, as you'd expect, and Baddiel is informed and interesting. And it leaves one in no doubt about the anti-Semitism that is baked into our national discourse.