Things I'm enjoying - The Road to Somewhere and Patrick Willem

More things that I'm enjoying. (Or have enjoyed recently, as it's been a while since I've done one of these.)


Patrick Willem

I’ve been enjoying Patrick Willem’s YouTube videos. I’m not a natural movie critic, but I like how he analyses movies - he’s both a movie and a fan. His Paddington review is delightful, and I like his thoughts on Alien Covenant as well (he is more positive about it than I was). He also has quite a lot to say on Star Wars.



The Road to Somewhere by David Goodhart.

I read this in January, on the approach to our formal exit of the EU (and before coronavirus changed everything). The Road to Somewhere argues that Britain is now split into Somewheres (who identify strongly with where they are from) and Anywheres (who are more mobile and identify less with where they are from).

This short video explains it better than I can:



So Somewheres outnumber Anywheres, but the Anywheres have dominated politics for years. And with Brexit, the Somewheres found their voice.

I had a few thoughts on reading this:

• Somewheres and Anywheres cross party and class lines, but sometimes that doesn’t come over clearly in The Road to Somewhere and it sometimes feels a bit class-centric.
• Somewhere/Anywhere is obviously a spectrum. I’m more Anywhere than Somewhere, but I’m not an extreme Anywhere.
• Like my brother and sister, I went away to university. While I moved to Yorkshire in 1990 and pretty much stayed here, they’ve lived in various parts of the world. Right now, we’re all over 200 miles from where we grew up.
• During my first term at university, I went home for a weekend. It was very strange. Even though I had only been gone for five weeks, there seemed to be a huge gulf between me and those who had stayed. I didn’t do it again.
• You can see the Somewhere/Anywhere divide in the strangest of places. Take hot-desking. That’s a very Anywhere thing, but I much prefer to have my own home desk, surrounded by people I know.. Which is much more Somewhere. (Although I've now been working from home for eight weeks and as I expect to continue doing so even when coronavirus is past, having a home desk in the office may be a luxury that I have to give up.)

Having read The Road to Somewhere, I've started seeing the Somewhere/Anywhere divide in all sorts of places.