“How are things with you?” asked my friend as we chatted recently. “Oh you know…OK…” I said. “But I’m finding it ever so difficult to write my blog. I’d really like to do one for February but the truth is I’m stuck.”

“Why don’t you write a blog about it being hard to write a blog?” she said. That bit of encouragement got me thinking. I played with ideas ranging from boredom to persimmons, and from a self-help treatment for insomnia to a curious conversation overheard on a cliff. But I couldn’t make any of it work. It’s hard to engage with the small topics when the news is full of weighty issues like global warming, the fall-out from the pandemic, Government incompetence, and the energy crisis. And then this week a nightmare was unleashed with Putin’s attack on Ukraine—war in Europe on a scale we have not seen for 75 years and hoped never to see again. 

My son has lived in Latvia for the past nine years and through him our family has been reminded often of how much the current Russian leadership is feared in the former Soviet Bloc states. In the past few days we’ve kept in close touch via our WhatsApp family group and he is profoundly angry. “Make no mistake,” he says, “Ukraine may not be a perfect state but this is an entirely unprovoked attack. Ukraine is fighting for the civilised world.” He is full of admiration for the bravery currently being shown in Ukraine. Yesterday morning he shared a video of the President, Prime Minister and other cabinet members staring earnestly in what looked like an amateur recording, telling their people from a city under bombardment that they were still there and would continue to fight for freedom. The direct gaze of these men facing out such horrific events brought me and no doubt millions of others to tears. Tears for their commitment and for what they and others will suffer. 

We’re only just starting to come out of a pandemic that has rocked the world and while this has been a time of turmoil and suffering, this week’s bad news stories are completely different. Covid was—give or take the important arguments about it arising from mankind’s encroachment into the animal world—an unplanned phenomenon. The invasion of Ukraine is a calculated act of human evil. There were things that we could do to feel useful in the pandemic and precautions we could take—maybe you have memories from the early days of offering help to neighbours through the many hastily-assembled community groups and of wiping supermarket delivery items with disinfectant and putting the mail into isolation for several days. With the Ukrainian violations, ordinary people can only watch as events unfold. It’s awful to feel so angry and yet so helpless. 

As it happened, we were in London yesterday following a birthday theatre trip with my younger daughter on Thursday, and a day of DIY and hall painting with my elder daughter on Friday. It was easy to get a number 88 bus from Clapham Common to Downing Street and so that’s what we did. We joined the demonstration in support of Ukraine taking place under the penetrating gaze of General Montgomery’s statue in Whitehall. 

The crowd grew rapidly from noon onwards with great splashes of blue and yellow. People wrapped themselves in Ukrainian flags and many had cheeks daubed with face paint. The colours of the Ukrainian flag represent blue skies above the yellow fields of grain, a reminder of two essentials of a good life—freedom and bread. There was no raised podium and I heard snatches of impromptu speeches in English but couldn’t make out much of what was being said. And I heard other speeches in what I assume was Ukrainian. I  understood none of the words. But the sentiments were clear. We were all there for one reason. There was sadness, outrage, desperation. 

“Save Ukraine,” shouted a man we could not see, and the crowd volleyed it back in a rally of support, over and over again. There was also plenty of “Putin Out Putin Out” and  “Cancel SWIFT Cancel SWIFT.” A police officer told me that Johnson was at work in Downing Street, just a matter of yards away. 

I saw a young woman carrying a placard that read, “I’m Russian. I’m against the war.’ She looked drawn and tense. “May I take your photo?” I asked. “Of course,” she said, standing still to pose. “I am so sorry,” she said sadly. “So sorry about Russia.”

We have to hope that Putin has miscalculated. And we have to hope that the protests of Russians at home will gather momentum. My elder daughter went on from Whitehall to see a play at the Bridge Theatre and reported that at the end, after the cast took their bow, they made an announcement, sharing the statement made by the director of the Moscow State Theatre who has resigned her post saying she can no longer take a salary from a murderer. She’s a courageous woman who will probably lose her career and possibly much more. Anyone who protests in Russia is very brave. They risk being beaten by the police to the point of brain damage or death. Many Russians of all ages are innocent victims as Keir Starmer said this week. Young conscripts are fighting. They have been lied to and if they knew the truth their reaction would be horror and bafflement. Countless young people say that their generation does not want this war. They know it is immoral and that it will ultimately harm their own country—quite simply they are not in tune with Putin’s ambitions to turn the clock back. Media organisations are being silenced but on the positive side, it is near impossible to stop social media and Putin who is famously technophobic may well have underestimated the potential that it has to undermine propaganda and promote cohesion. 

Whitehall was busy yesterday with the usual parade of buses passing through, mostly in regular London-red. But I looked up just as a couple of non-conformist buses went past. One was white with adverts all over for GoPuff which offers home deliveries of thousands of items including food, medicines, cleaning materials, electronics and baby essentials, in as little as fifteen minutes. The next bus was blue, and advertising a different company offering much the same service. We’ve become used to getting what we want, more and more quickly. We love to feel that we are in control of our lives. But one thing we cannot summon up with a phone app is peace and rational leaders. This week’s monstrous events have brought a powerful and terrifying reminder of that. 

At the demonstration Mike and I stood close to a sturdy middle-aged man who was holding a guitar. He strummed it vigorously for about five seconds, then stopped only for the Ukrainian national anthem to take over, blaring from a hidden speaker in his clothing, distorted and crackly. It was followed by We’ll Meet Again. Although the significance of the Ukrainian anthem was obvious I wasn’t so sure about Vera Lynn. But as the words boomed out, familiar and clear despite the crackling, I changed my mind. It’s about people being separated from those they love by events outside their control. Just what so many of the Ukrainian families I was standing alongside must be experiencing. Fundamentally it’s about the important things—family, love, people, hope and justice. For months now I’ve had a hand scribbled note pinned above my desk—Choose to be kind. Needless to say that’s a work in progress but now more than ever when so much else feels out of control it seems worth striving towards in all kinds of day-to-day small-scale situations. 

Being at the demonstration of support did a little to assuage my total feeling of helplessness, even though it was infinitesimally infinitesimal. It was good to stand with others, like-minded on this issue, and to remember that most people are good. Also to know that my son was in a similar demonstration hundreds of miles away outside the Russian Embassy in Riga—family, love, people, hope, justice.

This post has been outside my comfort zone. I’m much more used to writing about the boredom, persimmons, insomnia, overheard conversation kinds of things that I mentioned in the first paragraph. But I can’t ignore this and hope I’ve struck the right tone. Much more importantly, with demonstrations taking place in cities around the world I hope that news of the deluge of support reaches the Ukrainian people. They need to know they are not alone.* They need to know that we know they are fighting for the civilised world. 

*Donations are a solid way to offer support. Until this week I never expected to be donating money to an army but this website has reliable suggestions.

We learn a lot through the interests of our friends and family, and it’s in this way that I’ve developed a second-hand familiarity with the Baltic states. Ten years ago my son went to Estonia, initially as a TEFL teacher and the following year he moved to Latvia where he’s stayed ever since. During this time he’s become very fond of the region and has amassed a lot of knowledge about its history and culture. So I wasn’t surprised when he sent a message to our family WhatsApp group, to tell us that thirty-two years ago this week, the Baltic Chain was formed. This was when people from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania formed a human chain, holding hands across 420 miles and connecting the three capital cities of Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius. For fifteen emotional minutes on August 23^rd 1989, two million people joined together in a peaceful protest against the illegal Soviet occupation of their countries. It was one of the earliest and longest unbroken human chains in history and contributed to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the restoration of independence to the Baltic states.

Two years ago on the thirtieth anniversary of the Baltic Chain, Hong Kong organised its own version—a chain of 210,000 people standing in line across thirty miles, protesting against the extradition bill and demanding democratic elections. Over the years there have been a number of other chains gathering humans together and uniting them in support of a wide range of causes, and the biggest of these took place in Bangladesh in 2004. More than five million people joined hands across 652 miles to protest against the Government and to demand new polls. 

Watching an old news clip about the Baltic Chain and reading about these others, I was struck by the power of peaceful protest but I also started thinking about the individual people who were in that chain. Some would be standing next to friends or family, but many would have strangers on one or both sides of them. And I wondered about the associations between them. Perhaps as they stood there waiting for the signal to join hands, some had chatted and discovered that they knew people in common or had other points of connection. 

Like most people, I’ve stumbled into a few extraordinary coincidences in my own life—the sort of things that would sound ridiculously contrived and far-fetched if they appeared in works of fiction. And one of the strangest happened when I was waiting in a queue—a chain of sorts. It was 1977 and I was in my first term at London University. I’d spent a few weeks living in a hall of residence in Tooting but when I was offered the chance to move to one in the King’s Road, there was no competition between the locations, so I handed in my keys and skipped off to Chelsea. It didn’t take long to realise that I’d forgotten to remove my padlock key from the key-ring but although it was annoying, I figured I could get another one easily enough. A couple of days later I found myself at Euston Station on a Wednesday afternoon, in an enormous, slow queue of students, all waiting to get student railcards. For some reason that seems ridiculously inefficient now, the process of getting a railcard required you to turn up in person on a specified day and wait your turn. There must have been hundreds of us there, from all the colleges of the University. There were the well-known ones like UCL, LSE, Kings, Queen Mary, and Imperial and many more colleges that later got swallowed up in mergers—Queen Elizabeth, Bedford College, Chelsea, and Westfield—as well as a number of medical schools, art colleges and others covering specialist subjects like veterinary science, theology and pharmacy. With no smartphones to distract, people fell into conversation. I turned behind to a pleasant-looking young man, and asked where he was studying. “Chelsea,” he said which was quite a coincidence given the number of colleges represented there. “I’m at Chelsea” I said. “Where do you live?” When he replied, “Malcolm Gavin Hall,” I couldn’t stop myself from asking the inevitable but nosey question, “Which room are you in?” Somehow I knew he was going to say “335” and he didn’t disappoint. “Oh,” I said, “I’ve just moved out of there. That was my room.” Quick as a flash without missing a beat, he delved into his pocket and brought out some keys. “This must be yours,” he said, handing me my padlock key. It was as if I’d been programmed to ask the right questions, and it happened so easily and smoothly, that I thought maybe the universe intended us to work together to find a cure for cancer or at the very least produce some children. But instead we just had a nice chat. And that was it. A couple of times over the next year, we bumped into one another, and now I can’t even remember his name.  

The thing that surprises me most was that we discovered that we had this connection in common. How often do we meet people and if we only knew which questions to ask, we would uncover all kinds of ways in which our lives overlap. How often do we pass people in the street that carry all of these delicious surprises inside them. That stranger sitting opposite on the train…the woman at the supermarket checkout…the homeless man on the street corner…the refugee in the news footage. We may be closer to them than we think. The first time I remember coming across the idea of connections was when my mother used to repeat the words of a popular song from her childhood; I’ve danced with a man, who’s danced with a girl, who’s danced with the Prince of Wales. It dates from 1927 when the prince, later Edward VIII, was hugely popular. I’d get her to repeat it and was fascinated by the idea that an ordinary person could be so close to a prince. And then there’s the notion of six degrees of separation which is so well-known and somewhat murky. It was first proposed in 1929 by the Hungarian author Frigyes Karinthy in a short story called Chains. He was suggesting even then, that although there were great physical distances between people, their social distances were shrinking as people travelled and technology brought about improvements in communication. He believed that any two individuals could be connected through a network of, at most, five acquaintances. The phrase six degrees of separation became popular after John Guare’s 1990 play and the film that followed. A common criticism is that such a theory is unlikely to encompass connections to isolated groups of humans, such as those in the Amazon jungle but I don’t want to get bogged down here in the arguments for and against this proposition as they are many and complicated. However, several large-scale studies using emails and instant messaging to track connections between people have found that the average number of degrees of separation did come out at six, and according to network theories there are mathematical reasons why this should be so. 

In keeping with the theme of online connections, I was intrigued to discover that there is a website called Six Degrees of Wikipedia that will tell you what degree of separation there is between any two of the fifty-four billion Wikipedia pages. I started with the pages for Mother Theresa and Jack the Ripper and in less than two seconds it had told me that there are two degrees of separation between them and two different routes that connect them. Then I tried exploring Wikipedia connections between Abraham Lincoln and Adele and discovered that they are separated by three degrees and that there are over seven hundred routes that connect them. I could have played with this for hours trying out increasingly unlikely combinations but as I had this blog to write, I forced myself to stop. 

So far, the connections I’ve talked about here lie beneath the surface, undiscovered—but in my recent book The Interview Chain, the connections were clear to see, as each interviewee passed me on to someone that they know personally and admire. At twenty links it may have been somewhat short of the two million in the Baltic Chain but it did nonetheless travel 23,000 miles back and forth, traversing three continents and gathering up diverse experiences on its way. It started from a casual conversation on a boat on the Thames and one of the most surprising things was discovering how quickly from there, the links led me to events I had read about in the news. By Link Two I was talking to someone who had been at the Climate Change Negotiations and by Link Three my interviewee was giving me personal experiences of the Calais refugee camp. Later links led me to first-hand accounts of Kabul under the Taliban, the Rwandan genocide and the Ferguson Uprising. 

I’ll say it again—we are closer to other people than we might think. And with all the extra things that we need to understand about the modern world, that’s more important now than ever before. 

A couple of weeks ago our neighbour moved. She’d lived in her house for forty-eight years and has at last gone to live in a bungalow close to her daughter. I hope that she’s very happy—we’ll miss her. 

There’s a steadiness that comes from living in the same place for such a long time. I’ve lived in my current house for four and a half years now and am at last enjoying the novelty of some steadiness. During the time that my neighbour lived in her house I lived in sixteen different places, and most of them felt temporary as I would always have the next move in mind. For a while as the family grew it was about making incremental moves to get more space. Later when things went wrong, it was about moving to places that were affordable and more practical. Even in the house where I lived for nine years, I felt erratic—grateful for my family and friends but never quite sure what I wanted out of life. The children were young then and so nothing stayed the same for very long. There was inevitable flux with all the different demands of childhood concentrated into those few years. It was rewarding but far from steady. But now that I’m happily settled in my current house, I’ve stopped looking for the next move and I like that feeling. All things being equal—and they often aren’t—I’d like to stay here for a long time. 

During those years of chaos one of the few steadying things I did was to get my migraines under better control. Twenty years ago I was struggling with bad nausea and pain three days a week and I was desperate to find a solution. I kept trying to work out what was triggering them and tried many different treatments. Diet was an obvious place to look but I got nowhere with cutting out likely culprits such as cheese, chocolate and coffee. It was only when I went to see a migraine specialist and he put me on an elimination diet that I made progress. For two weeks I ate only from the small range of foods that are unlikely to cause a reaction—beansprouts, salmon, turnips, courgette, pears, and lamb—which made for some odd breakfasts. After a few days of this regime I had an intense withdrawal migraine but once it was over I felt clear-headed and liberated. After a fortnight I was instructed to introduce one food at a time in a particular order, and all went well until I tried potato, and this was closely followed by a migraine. Previously I’d eaten potato most days but my reaction convinced me that it was a trigger. The same thing happened when I tried cow’s milk. Avoiding those foods has made a huge difference ever since and I learned from the experience—in situations where there’s a lot going on, it’s only by systematically reducing the background noise that you can tease out individual effects. 

Something similar has happened during lockdown. With everyday life pared back to basics it’s been a chance to work out what’s really important. Like most people, I’ve missed my family and friends above all else but I’ve been surprised at how little I’ve mourned the loss of days out and holidays. Life was very pleasant before lockdown and I was grateful for it. But it wasn’t always in balance and at times it was so busy that I didn’t have space to think or develop that sense of wellbeing that positive psychology university departments are dedicated to defining. 

In the year before lockdown, I’d started trying to walk more, and keen to make best use of my time, I’d use it as an opportunity to do an errand that would otherwise involve taking the car. So I’d walk to the library or the local shops, take the long way round to buy a newspaper, or walk into town and get the bus back. I managed to do it most days because I knew it was good to get the exercise and I quite enjoyed looking at the urban streets. But I can’t say I loved it—instead it was another chore that had to be done. 

When everything shut for lockdown there were no errands to run and at first that was a relief. Then I realised that I still needed exercise so I’d have to look for an alternative. As it happens, we have woods behind our house and although I’d taken the well-trodden path to the pub many times when we had family and friends visiting, I’d never explored them properly. So I started taking a daily walk there and realised to my astonishment that they are extensive and beautiful. There are many potential routes but after a few weeks I settled into the same circuit and far from getting bored with it, I value its familiarity. There are no decisions to make. I wear the same boots, the same coat and the same gloves, and for an hour a day there is nothing that I have to think about, only the things I choose. Sometimes I listen to the birds. Other times I’m so deep in thought that I forget to listen though I usually notice the light shining through the trees. Quite often, if my head doesn’t feel too full I listen to audiobooks on my phone. I dip in and out as the fancy takes me. Favourites have included The Bee Keeper of Aleppo; Sandi Toksvig’s innovative autobiography Between the Stops: The View of My Life from the Top of the Number 12 Bus; Hallie Rubenhold’s meticulously researched The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper, and Professor Henry Marsh’s Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery. There was the unmissable Educated by Tara Westover—if you haven’t read it then order it straightaway. And Michelle Obama kept me company in the woods for hours as I listened to her reading Becoming immediately followed by her husband reading Dreams of My Father.

Day after day, month after month through the various lockdowns I’ve had my walk even when it’s been pouring and I’ve had to squelch through mud that has the consistency of chocolate mousse. I’ve never minded getting drenched as most people stay at home when it rains, and so for short periods I’ve felt like I own the world. But inevitably there came a day when I did something different. It was windy which brings with it the one variety of rain that I don’t like—the sort that blows in your face and makes me feel like a cat with its ears flattened and a miserable let me in the house expression. That day I kept thinking ‘I must go for my walk’ and immediately finding things to do that were warmer and drier. By five o’clock it was dark and too late to go out, so I quietly congratulated myself for having such good sense. But it turned out not to be such good sense after all as I spent the evening feeling completely out of sorts and irrationally grumpy. I didn’t like it at all. Nor did Mike. The next morning I had my walk. There was weak sunshine and a blue sky and by the time I got home I was in a much happier frame of mind. True, it was just one data point but I could feel a discernible difference between a day with a walk and a day without a walk. 

I’ve kept up the walking ever since. Then on Friday, Mike and I went swimming at the university pool, delighted to be able to do this again after such a long gap. With about half an hour’s walk each way and then the swim, I figured this would count as my exercise for the day. The route is along some of the urban streets where I used to walk so much—they’re quite attractive and it was good to chat as we walked along. The swim was great but later in the afternoon I had that familiar feeling of being grumpy and at odds with the world. Something was missing and although there were things I’d wanted to get done, I felt in the end that I had no alternative—almost without conscious thought I put on my boots and stepped out on my usual walk. It was chilly but sunny, and half-way round I realised that I felt a lot better. Urban streets are stimulating with lots of things to look at but they don’t provide the relaxation that nature offers. Trees and plants appear in predictable patterns that are soothing and harmonious whereas buildings and people are interesting but unpredictable—the window flapping open, groceries being delivered, someone up a ladder—creating a constant state of alertness that jars the thoughts and calls for a reaction. That’s two data points now but I think I’m starting to understand. 

Much has been said this year about the benefits of being in nature. There have been countless newspaper, radio and magazine articles about it and I think we’ve probably all got the message by now. So this post is not intended to extol the virtues of green spaces—you may have discovered something different that’s become important. Instead my point is that by removing the everyday noise, lockdown has provided near-experimental conditions in which to explore what we value. I hadn’t realised that a daily walk in nature was so important to me. Nor had I worked out a way to introduce it into my life with a rhythm and steadiness that has turned it into a habit—something you do so often that the desire for it becomes automatic. Philippa Lally and her colleagues at University College have studied how habits are formed and report that it takes on average sixty-six days for a behaviour to become a habit though for some habits and some people it can take as much as eight months. We’ve all had plenty of time this year in which to form habits both good and bad. With lockdown I’ve tasted that elusive steadiness and whatever happens next as we resume some kind of normality, I want to take this habit with me. 

Maybe you’ve found out something about yourself? I’d love to hear so do post in the comments section below.