For your stray attention this weekend

A yearning for quiet, unless it's the screech of swifts

Briefly: Báyò Akómoláfé on How We Live Now |July’s Book Club is a collaboration with Sam Baker’s The Shift, and we’re reading Jenny Diski’s Skating to Antarctica | Edinburgh Festival appearances on 15th August with Sam Baker and 16th August with Kerri ní Dochartaigh | Enchantment/Verwondering is out now in Dutch!

Hello,

I keep intending to be less busy at the moment, but I have yet to achieve that. This week has included running a retreat (which was wonderful), a burst tyre, and a gas leak that resulted in the engineer removing the gas supply to our kitchen. This is not ideal when you have a gas cooker and a child who mainly eats pasta. Meanwhile, the microphone died on my phone, and in the time it took me to realise, I recorded a number of podcast introductions that were unlistenable. Sometimes it feels like the world is trying to tell you something, although in this case, I’m not sure what. To pipe down a bit? Frankly, the chance would be a fine thing.

Perhaps as a result of this close encounter with my own unstoppable chaos, I became