Joy and I love talent shows like Britain’s Got Talent.
Not ironically. Genuinely.
The music swelling behind an eight-year-old singing Whitney Houston.
The dramatic cutaways to audience members already crying somehow before the chorus has even started.
The backstage whispering:
“oh my god…”
The entire production exists to manufacture wonder at industrial scale.
And honestly?
I respect that enormously.
Like Simon Cowell, I believe in magic.
As a child I looked forward to visiting my gran in Milford Haven partly because the toy shop had an enormous magic section.
Every visit she would quietly slip £5 into my hand like we were conducting a covert operation, and I would inevitably spend it on the latest Paul Daniels trick.
Plastic thumb tips.
Invisible thread.
Tiny miracles mass-produced in Taiwan.
I was never particularly good at the tricks themselves.
The thing I loved was the feeling immediately beforehand.
The tiny suspension of reality.
The possibility that for a few seconds somebody might experience genuine astonishment.
And I truly think adulthood is mostly just a search for more sophisticated versions of exactly the same feeling.
Not grand gestures. Tiny ones.
The bartender who remembers you like a coaster under your Hazy IPA.
The street vendor who knows you’re late and quietly adds a couple of extra bagels for the office.
The shop assistant who understands you are not simply buying an object, but trying to create a feeling around an object.
Nathan and Reece arrived at a fully booked restaurant in Sydney recently.
Forty-five minute wait. No tables available.
The sort of interaction that normally ends with:
“sorry guys.”
Instead, the maître d said:
“I can get you into one of our other restaurants.”
Which turned out to be upstairs in the same building.
He escorted them there personally.
Talked to them in the elevator about the specials.
Introduced them to the new restaurant.
Their waiter arrived saying:
“I hear you’re interested in the duck tonight.”
Then the sommelier:
“The host tells me you enjoy a nice prosecco.”
And suddenly completely ordinary hospitality became magic.
Not because the food was extraordinary.
Nathan later said that it was probably the most average food all trip, “but the best night.”
Which feels exactly right.
Because people rarely remember the technically best experience.
They remember how an experience made them feel.
How frictionless it felt.
How welcomed they felt.
Whether somebody met their enthusiasm with warmth or with procedure.
I discovered the exact opposite of this recently while trying to discuss paper stock.
Which may be a ridiculous sentence now that I see it written down. In fact no. It is. Objectively it is a ridiculous sentence.
I arrived at a print shop carrying what can only be described as artisanal emotional energy.
Not specifications. Not measurements.
Just an oddly specific aesthetic object in my head.
Unfortunately I had wandered into an environment operating on an entirely different plane.
After my cheerful:
“good morning”
I received a response carrying the unmistakable energy of:
“state your business quickly, citizen.”
And instantly — instantly — I emotionally evaporated.
Not angrily.
Not dramatically.
I simply recognised that I had arrived looking for fairy dust into an environment stocked with toner.
So I said:
“Nope, don’t worry about it, you seem busy.”
and left.
But perhaps that is what happens once you spend enough time doing sincere things somewhat publicly.
Writing.
Painting.
Music.
Therapy.
Acting, teaching, hairdressing, dancing, caring.
Anything that involves repeatedly offering small vulnerable pieces of yourself into the world.
Over time, you become oddly tender in adjacent areas too.
Apparently even paper stock.
Because once sincerity becomes a habit, dismissiveness starts landing differently.
It’s what the kids call a vibe check.
What hippies probably described as “negative energy.”
What the rest of us notice as:
“something’s off.”
Which perhaps explains why good hospitality feels almost supernatural when you encounter it.
Not because it is extravagant.
Because somebody looked at your oddly specific enthusiasm and chose to participate in it rather than flatten it.
It’s the reason I live in hope that somewhere in Christchurch there is somebody who understands the importance of how the right paper feels.
Anyway.
Believe.