Why have I never been to Exmouth?

And Brits on Threads

Byron and Nelson

The heart will break, but broken live on

I’ve just spent a day and a night a place where you could park up your camper van and never leave.

Exmouth, where the estuary wind haunts like an ancient ghost and the sea laps at the edges of forgotten dreams. It’s a place where reality seems to bend just a little, where time gets slippery. I spent a night in the Royal Beacon, a grand old Regency hotel clinging to its former glory with stubborn pride. The walls speak in whispers, the floors creak with secrets. You can almost see Agatha Christie herself materialising in the lobby, her arm hooked with the local vicar as they plot their next mystery.

This town is a refuge for the broken, the scandalised, the ones who needed to disappear from the harshness of society’s gaze. The street where I stayed is lined with blue plaques, marking the spots where history’s disenchanted took their last stand. Among them, Lady Byron and Lady Nelson, two women who, by some cosmic twist, ended up living just a few doors apart. Lady Byron, who fled the chaotic orbit of Lord Byron, a man with an appetite for sin, leaving destruction in his wake, sought sanctuary here. She brought her daughter, Ada Lovelace, and buried herself in work, in charity, and shaping young Ada to be the future’s great, great, great grandmother of modern computing.

Just down the street, Lady Frances Nelson found her sanctuary. After enduring the public and very scandalous affair between her husband, Lord Nelson, and Emma Hamilton, she retreated to Exmouth, away from the relentless scrutiny of London. Nelson, the nation’s greatest hero, whose personal life was as tempestuous as the battles he fought, left a legacy of victory and betrayal. Lady Nelson needed a place where she could escape the noise, and Exmouth became her retreat.

There’s no evidence that these two women ever met, but in the strange, dreamlike logic of this place, I like to think they did. Picture them, two Regency ladies, quaffing gin in a parlour that exists in a time outside of time, sharing stories of their infamous husbands. They’d laugh, not out of bitterness, but out of common understanding. Byron and Nelson might have been titans in the eyes of the world, but here, in this moment, they’re just weak men, flawed and reckless compared to the women who survived them.

If I had a camper van, I really would consider spending an extended period in Exmouth. It’s a lonely writer’s paradise.

Brits on Threads

I decided to make a grand return to Twitter for the general election. What a mistake that was. What was once a tool for stumbling upon useful information and interesting folk has transformed into a chaotic circus of misery under the stewardship of Elon Musk, the billionaire plutocrat and far-right defender. It’s like watching a James Bond villain with too much time on his hands fiddle with the controls of a social experiment.

Musk, with all the subtlety of a lumphammer, has taken it upon himself to stoke the flames of British unrest, firing off comments about “civil war” as if it’s all just a little bit of fun. He’s a modern-day Nero, fiddling while Rome, or rather, Rotherham, burns, except instead of a fiddle, he’s got a smartphone.

The fact that this is the same man who’s been reinstating banned far-right figures and playing fast and loose with misinformation, makes it clear that he’s less interested in promoting free speech and more interested in political power.

Naturally, my brief re-immersion into this madness has reminded me why I left in the first place. Twitter (I refuse to call it "X" with a straight face) is no longer the place for reasonable discourse.

This is why I’m making a concerted effort to use Threads more. Threads actually seems like a space where people are interested in engaging in meaningful conversation without the constant threat of Musk’s latest bit of digital arson. If you’re as fed up as I am, I strongly encourage you to give Threads a try. It’s like switching from a pub brawl to a friendly chat over tea—much more civilised, and far less likely to end with you questioning whether the very fabric of society is being ripped apart by communists like, er, Kamal Harris.

In the meantime, I’ll also be over on Instagram, pretending that the world is just cats, coffee, and carefully curated content.