Off to Wales at the weekend to give a talk at the How The Light Gets In festival in Hay. This involves getting a train to Hereford and then apparently being driven to a location nestled between the Brecon Beacons and the Black Mountains. I expect this to mean that I will be cut off from data, signal and any other sign of the 21st Century while Welsh people hiss at me for being an alien.

I’d like this to be the last talk I give for a few months. Each one requires me to generate a few thousand words — a half-hour bit translates to around 2500 of them, at a mid-tempo cadence, because I’m from the Thames Estuary and don’t have great diction. But, more to the point, I’m starting to be that guy who shows up and pretty much says the same things as last time. Sometimes by request, to be sure, but sometimes because I don’t have a lot of time and I’m still stuck on the same themes and I just end up talking about the same stuff.

The themes of HTLGI this time around are mostly around the future, and that’s what I’ve been asked to talk about. One more run, at request, about how to see the future and the end of prediction and the stormfronts of tomorrow. And then it’s time to sit by the water and look at what else the weather is telling me, before I become a ghost of myself.