During lockdown, like many people, I watched a lot of unhealthy tele. One late-night programme, for example, purported to be an investigation into people’s sexual behaviour during the crisis.   Steve Latham   It was actually an excuse for titillating tales of sexual kinkiness, enjoying what new quirks people had […]

While discussing contemporary sexual mores, ‘consent’ seems to be the only moral absolute, the only taboo still worth defending.   Steve Latham   J.G. Ballard, interviewed during the 1970s, predicted that in the future, there would no moral strictures on sexual activity. “Moral perversion” and “psychopathology” would be outmoded terms. […]

Shopping in the local supermarket, wearing my face mask, I feel like a criminal or spy, undercover, lurking around the shelves, trying to stay socially-distanced, out of people’s personal space.   Steve Latham   This is the future-present. Even with restrictions being eased, we have been marked, permanently, or at […]

When I was a boy, we played the game ‘Tiplatch’. This involved kids knocking on the door of someone’s house, and then running away from the irate owner, without getting caught.   Steve Latham   However, I often seemed to be the one captured and slapped. Nevertheless, under many different […]

The River Thames is empty. Tour boats lie moored in the centre of the estuary. The only moving vessels are police launches patrolling for transgressors against lockdown, and the drug smugglers.   Steve Latham   In our “splendid isolation” (a term coined to describe Britain’s diplomatic policy of avoiding entangling […]