Death is not “unfortunate”

Meet Siri – more on her below.

Writing about something that’s both intensely personal and universally shared should be a gift, right?

So today’s topic is bereavement.

Not so simple, huh?

Phil Adams is worth reading. His wife Rachel died. There’s an excerpt below, but you should definitely click on the title and go to the full piece, which is called…

My wife’s death was not unfortunate.

Time hasn’t healed but it has enabled me to put a lid on things around other people.

The struggle, bizarrely, has been telling it straight to a bunch of complete strangers. Resisting the temptation to sugar the pill with vacuous, inappropriate platitudes.

Hello, my name is Philip Adams. My wife and I have a joint policy with you. Unfortunately she died at the end of March…

Unfortunately?

Where did that come from?

What possessed me to say that?

Unfortunately is what I say to a client when I can’t make a meeting.

It has no place in a conversation about the death of my wife.

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No smoke without fire

Not dead. (At time of writing.)

Here’s a little insight into how easy it is difficult it is to subvert international news organisations.

Somebody created a twitter account that looked very much like an official Sky News account. It had the Sky News logo as a picture. (I’m not linking to it.) Then they tweeted that Margaret Thatcher had died.

Oh dear.

Cue big excitement behind the scenes of news organisations.

It’s a prime example of how much more important it is to be right than to be first. (Sky News has had ascribed to it the motto “Never wrong for long” i.e. might not be dead now, but will be sometime. Or wrong news now, but we can correct it and then it’ll be fine. To be clear though, Sky wasn’t the culprit in this case. The twitter account was fake.)

Was the incorrect news of Margaret Thatcher’s death broadcast on the BBC

It’s raining rabbits

Weird weather we’re having at the moment.

Raining cats and dogs? Cloudy with meatballs?

It’s been raining rabbits here.

We found