Tuesday, 7th October 2025

I was just introduced to this use of the word 'palaver' to mean (in Africa) a way of bringing together a local community to creating social links and sometimes for conflict resolution.  The notable characteristic of it being a meeting where everyone has a voice but is not obliged to tie their contribution up neatly with references to all of the other speakers.  It starts out as the Portuguese for 'words' or 'speaking', gets attached to this, presumably traditional, way of holding town or village meetings, and then, with a classic colonial twist, comes back to Europe with the meaning of pointless talk that goes on without hope of resolution. We look at a process that works and can't see beyond what we would call the inefficiency or lack of sufficient intellectual rigour and so it passes into common usage as a derogatory exclamation – "What a palaver!"

I think the reason it caught my attention is that this reflects my attitude to my own blogging – I'm happy that it's rare for me to write something that is structured as anything more than a note, maybe a bunch of ideas that hold together but not necessarily with any explicit explanation.  Every now and then you might see something that looks more like an essay, but regardless, my own internal community nods and accepts that what's been said today is relevant and of value, even if it's not immediately obvious, or if it is actually totally obvious and doesn't need explaining or pulling out in this way over and over again.  It's OK, it's a palaver, and that's a good thing. 

"If these spaces are important to extremists, shouldn’t they be important to you?" – Dan Slee's long read on what public sector people need to know about Facebook groups.  It's a clear and useful read for anyone who's not in the public sector too.

Have I posted a link to Leave Substack lately? I'm still working out how and whether I want to participate in the getting people to pay you to email them business and how to offer that to the people who've signed up to me in Substack on the basis of recommendations from others (nice problem to have!)

Spent the day yesterday talking and thinking about shame, especially in the context of activism.  It was a lot. I was grateful for the opportunity to sit quietly and do something with my hands for part of the session instead of being in constant conversation.  My headlines were – everyone's carrying an awful lot of stuff, all the time, no wonder there's so much rage and conflict  – most of that stuff is the same as everyone else's, but it's hard to feel safe sharing it – and it can be hard to accept that other people really are carrying the same stuff as you, surely my stuff is unique!

We did an exercise where everyone wrote something they were ashamed of on a piece of paper, folded it up in the same way and put it in a box, then we each pulled one out and read it out loud.  So there was a small chance that you'd read you're own out, or something very similar, but mostly you'd be reading something from someone else.  I found it interesting that many people put more than one shame into the box because we almost went round the circle twice.  Anyway it felt good to witness everyone else's feelings and to hear them coming out of your own mouth.  It's tempting to think "I don't have that one!" but when you hear it in your voice, perhaps you do, just a little bit less than you thought, maybe.