What I read,
what I play

I read history because I love patterns, and because I am about as curious and adventurous as people come. It is the best way I know to understand social behaviour and the human mind: the same patterns return across centuries and empires, and underneath them runs the slow evolution of what people are.

Linguistics I read for the same reason: language is another long record of those patterns, and of how the human mind has changed. Philosophy I read for a different one — to understand what it all means, to think more logically, and to have my own intuitions, and my own logic, challenged.

Psychology comes from the same curiosity, turned inward as well as outward. I read it to understand myself and other people better, and, ultimately, to understand the human brain well enough to improve it.

Chess is where I am reliably humbled. I play badly enough to still be learning and often enough to keep noticing the same weakness: I like plans more than positions, and the board does not care what I like.

Dancing is the exact inverse and I think that is why I need it. Nothing is decided in advance, there is no plan to execute, and the whole thing runs on a signal being read and answered in real time by someone who cannot see your intentions, only your hands.

Archery, the sabre and horse riding reward the same discipline, which is why I suspect I was drawn to all three. Each is a long, quiet preparation followed by a commitment you cannot take back — and each punishes the same fault, which is tensing at the moment you most need to be still.

Badminton is the one I actually play every week, for no better reason than that it is the best game there is. Football, volleyball and table tennis round out the list — all of them, in the end, excuses to be in a room with other people, moving.