Jake Wallis Simons

Last week, Jeremy Vine shared a video of a motorist being abusive to a cyclist. Nothing new there, I hear you say. After all, the light-footed BBC presenter is famous for cruising around London with a sophisticated camera rig on his head. But on this occasion, it was very much the cyclist who was at fault. The cyclist in question, Michael van Erp – who likewise records his journeys on a body camera and uploads them regularly to his CyclingMikey YouTube channel – had spotted a driver using his phone while stuck in traffic. London is the cyclist’s playground What’s the big deal, you might ask? The cars weren’t going anywhere.

My kids have a new friend. If you have teenagers, chances are yours do, too. And it is a friend that, by its own admission, may offer 'biased, incorrect, harmful, or misleading content'. In other words, not a friend at all. The first I heard of this being was when I logged onto Snapchat, a generally mystifying app that I, as a grown man, use solely to contact my children, who use it as their main tool of communication. Flashing on the screen was an 'add request' from a green-faced avatar called 'My AI'. Unlike other approaches, I was unable to delete it. The weird pseudo-lifeform remains at the very top of my list of communications, drawing attention to itself and inviting me to 'say hi'. I have ignored it. My kids, not so much.

Social distancing. Test and trace. Face-masks (what was wrong with just 'masks'? Nobody could ever tell me). Clapping. Substantial meals. Scotch eggs. I think I speak for the majority when I say that those terms evoke both profound relief that it’s all behind us and a sense of unreality.  I confess I’m flirting with the ultimate commuter cliché and browsing daily for deals on a Brompton Did the pandemic really happen? From one point of view, we see the effects all around us in the form of NHS waiting lists, 'ghost' children absent from school and the parlous state of the economy. On a personal level, however, it feels like we’ve awoken from a long, bad dream to a world that is basically unchanged, only grimmer than it was before.  Which brings me to cycling.

In modern society, we live with a conundrum: there’s no need to endure physical discomfort of any kind, but unless you embrace it via exercise, it comes for you in the form of chronic illness. Good exercise can be very painful, however. In the case of the sport of cycling, agonisingly and unnecessarily so. Put it this way, the news today didn't surprise me. Sales of bicycles have dropped to their lowest level in 20 years, apparently, as the pandemic boom in cycling has turned to bust. Or to put it another way, as tens of thousands of people come to their senses. I speak, of course, as a cyclist myself. Here's how I got the bug. When I turned 40, I had a health-check. When I look at pictures of myself from that time, I appear like a different person.

On a normal morning in Winchester, the streets are crowded with sullen teenagers mooching in sleepy phalanxes to school, scruffy in their school uniforms, a hormonal march of the penguins. My three teenagers are usually among them. Today, however, the city was treated to a different spectacle: hoards of adolescents in hoodies. That’s right, it’s a non-school uniform day, on account of charity. They were supposed to wear bright colours, but – have you noticed? – no teenager dares wear bright colours these days. So uncool. They were supposed to bring 50p for Red Nose Day, but this is 2023 and nobody carries cash. So off they went to join their generation on the move, two in black hoodies, one in grey.

At the heart of marking the Holocaust lies a conundrum. On the one hand, genocides happen all over the world, from Cambodia to Darfur. Each life lost is an equal horror; there can be no hierarchy of death. On the other, the attempted liquidation of world Jewry during the second world war was an entirely specific atrocity. It was an expression of mankind’s oldest hatred by the most advanced civilisation on Earth, using the most sophisticated science, technology, logistics and propaganda at its disposal. It was unique. It was about the Jews. Clearly, balance is required. But it seems in short supply. Today is Holocaust Memorial Day. My teenage children have been learning about it all week at their school, a comprehensive in Winchester.

H and M – no, the other brand – are causing trouble again. ‘Sussexes send out Happy Woke-mas card to friends’, griped the Mail on Sunday. Their crime? Wishing friends a ‘Joyful Holiday Season’ rather than a more traditional Merry Christmas. Given recent controversies, this might seem like a minor offence. But count your blessings. Last year, the Sussexes’ cards proffered a ‘Happy Holidays’ slogan, which was even more irritating to those of a sensitive cultural disposition.  “From our family to yours, and on behalf of our teams at The Archewell Foundation, Archewell Audio, and Archewell Productions, we wish you health, peace, and a very happy new year!,” write Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex for their paper-free 2022 Christmas card. pic.twitter.

One of the more bizarre stories to have hit the headlines in recent days was the unsuccessful attempt by police to arrest 20 members of a radical Jewish sect in Mexico. Where to start with a story like this? We could talk about how their jungle base, 11 miles north of Tapachula in Chiapas state, was raided last Friday and two members were detained on suspicion of human trafficking and serious sexual offences. We could talk about how the raid took place after an investigation and surveillance operation lasting months, carried out by Mexican and Guatemalan authorities with the assistance of a four-man team of former Israeli spooks. We could talk about how, after about a week in captivity, the sect's members managed to overpower the guards and vanished into the jungle.

My children have never felt the need to hide their Jewishness. That’s the heart of it, I suppose. A few months ago, a boy picked up his books and declared, 'I’m not sitting next to the Jewish girl', before moving to another seat. When she told me about it, my daughter, who is 14, said the kid had just been seeking attention. It was a one-off, she said. She didn’t want me to contact the school. So I decided to let it go; the lesson for her, perhaps, was that this stuff happens in life. Thinking about it, it had happened once before, a few years ago. It was Chanukah, and my son had decided to wear his kippah to school. He was only seven or eight at the time. In the playground, a kid had said: 'You’re a Jew. I hate Jews.' It was alarming at the time.