Easter was spent divided towards two parties: first, dinner with an old friend which was lovely, but which involved me digging in to a conversation with another guest who was a ‘private security consultant’ in Africa (freelance mercenary) which threatened to derail the pleasant evening entirely.

The other guests wandered from the room as another guest who is a relief worker and I attempted to have a conversation about it without shouting at him. Though he was my first private security consultant, I find more often than not when I’m in a situation where I encounter someone whose political views are diametrically opposed to my own that I too often hold back from expressing myself properly while they cheerfully chat about their right-wing views, perhaps with the confidence that no one will be rude enough to counter them, and the confidence that their conservative logic will always trump illiberal ones. I managed, in this case, to offer a counterpoint, to have a debate, but I still felt disappointed in myself for not trying hard enough.

So then I went to the Dalston Jazz Bar with some other friends and we danced crazily to an amazing blend of Sinatras (Nancy and Frank) and swing standards and reggae and tracks by the DJ’s dad. And then I still felt like a bit of a political failure, but an sort of happy one.