Seven years ago, having been sacked (yeah - I didn't admit that at the time and nor did my employers who dressed it up as redundancy and glossed over my gross insubordination - on behalf of clients against management - so efficiently that it took me a while to realise how they'd manoeuvred me out), I acquired five part-time jobs in about as many weeks. I had an exhausting six months until I whittled them down to one.

Today was my first first-day-in a-new-job since then. They'd organised a very good induction for me, had thought to set me up on their computer network before I arrived, had organised an email address for me, and were understanding of the time it'll take me to absorb a lot of new things. My first couple of weeks will be training. I am impressed and tired.

This evening I decided to go to my local XR meeting just in case I might acquire the confidence to own up to feeling very dispirited. I did. It turned out I wasn't alone and we had a really useful conversation about supporting each other when we're feeling bleak. I said that watching other people's hypocrisies had made me turn the light on myself and look for my own: most of us are complicit when we live in a system that makes it very hard not to be. But none of us could understand the people who complain about suffering the heat in the UK who then fly for a holiday to places that are just as hot. Explanations welcome.