The numbers tell a quiet but sobering story. Today, the average man in the UK can expect to live 81 years. Not so long ago, until 2011, that man could claim his state pension at 65. On average, that meant 16 years of life without work — years to spend however he wished before the inevitable closing of the book.
By 2030, the figures shift. Life expectancy nudges upward to 82 years, but the pension age rises faster, to 68. The gain in years is outpaced by the gain in labour, leaving the average man with just 14 years to call his own after a lifetime of work. A quiet recalibration of the equation: more time alive, but less time free.
And this is not the whole picture. Look closely at what’s been done to women’s pensions since 2011, and the story becomes even sharper, even more unsettling.
We were once told — and believed — that we worked not just for ourselves but for something larger: that our children would inherit a life better than the one we knew. That each generation would stand a little taller, see a little further. But the arithmetic of modern life suggests a different legacy: more years spent earning, fewer years living.
It is worth asking, as the days pass and the calendar turns — what are we working toward? And when the work is done, how much of ourselves will be left to enjoy what remains?
Some books slip into our lives almost by accident. A glimpse of a cover on a dusty shelf, a fleeting mention in the footnote of another work, or a casual reference in conversation — and suddenly they are there, claiming space in our thoughts. I’m not entirely sure how Héctor Abad’s memoir Oblivion found me, but I am certain I will not forget it.
Before opening its pages, I knew neither the author nor his father, whose life — and death — form the beating heart of this 261-page work. Abad’s father, Dr. Héctor Abad Gómez, was a renowned medical doctor, university professor, and fearless human rights advocate in Colombia. In 1987, he was murdered — silenced by those aligned with the country’s wealthy elites, government, and military.
Yet Oblivion is far more than a political testament or an account of injustice. It is a luminous exploration of the knotty, tender, and often unspoken dynamics between father and son. Abad writes with grace and intimacy, weaving the personal and the political into something achingly human. The result is a book that is not merely about loss, but about the enduring presence of love and the stubborn beauty of those who choose to stand against darkness.
This is a memoir to be read slowly, to be savoured — a work that affirms the world would indeed be a poorer, dimmer place without people like Héctor Abad Gómez.
Some books do more than recount history — they revive the pulse of an era. Daniel Rachel’s Walls Come Tumbling Down is one such work: a sprawling 500-page testament to the intertwined music and politics of Rock Against Racism, 2 Tone, and Red Wedge, charting a turbulent but transformative period from the mid-1970s to the early 1990s.
For me, these were not just historical movements. They formed the soundtrack to my own coming of age, shaping me from child to adult, both musically and professionally. Rock Against Racism sparked my political awareness; Red Wedge made me an active participant. Rachel captures this journey in a meticulously structured, linear timeline — part oral history, part cultural encyclopedia — that documents the key figures and pivotal events with the weight they deserve.
Reading it in today’s context, I could not help but draw parallels to the energy and urgency of Black Lives Matter. While much has changed since the overtly racist culture of the 1970s — a time when prejudice was not only tolerated but celebrated — the persistence of hate, both on the streets and in the shadows of social media, reminds us that progress is fragile.
Rachel’s book lands at a time when cities still reel from racially-motivated violence, when online platforms amplify ignorance, and when political leaders rely on fear and slogans to paper over complex truths. Walls Come Tumbling Down is not just a chronicle of past activism; it is a mirror held to the present, asking uncomfortable but necessary questions about who we are and what we stand for.
In the end, Rachel reminds us that while good intentions can inspire, only action changes the world. The music may have been the rallying cry, but it was — and remains — the movement behind it that matters most.
The late 1960s was an era of kaleidoscopic shifts — psychedelia in full bloom, garage rock breaking through, and bands pushing the limits of sound as the world outside roiled with political unrest. It’s a period that’s been mythologised in countless films and books. But some stories remain in the margins, whispered rather than sung. One such tale belongs to Public Nuisance.
Formed in 1964, Public Nuisance began as a pop outfit, riding the same wave as countless garage hopefuls. By the decade’s close, they had sharpened their sound into a heavier, more psychedelic edge, sharing stages with the likes of Buffalo Springfield, The Doors, and the Grateful Dead. In late ’68 and early ’69, the band cut an album’s worth of material with heavyweight producer Terry Melcher.
Then history intervened. Melcher, having sub-let his Los Angeles home to Roman Polanski and Dennis Wilson of The Beach Boys, was caught in the dark aftershocks of the Manson Family murders. Polanski’s wife, Sharon Tate, was among the victims; Wilson had been socialising with Manson’s followers. The trauma drove Melcher into seclusion, shuttering his label and leaving Public Nuisance without a lifeline.
By 1970, the band was gone, their recordings shelved and unheard except by a handful of survivors from that drug-fuelled, free-falling era. It would take 35 years before their music finally surfaced — resurrected as Gotta Survive, a double-CD anthology that stands as both a time capsule and a testament to a band that might have been.
Public Nuisance never got their moment in the sun, but their belated debut still burns with the strange, vivid light of 1969 — a ghostly reminder that some of rock’s greatest stories are the ones that almost slipped away.
Irregular Frequencies 