Connor Gurney

Blog

  • Nyah’s ripples

    Nyah’s ripples

    A few days ago in a land far, far away, I had the fortune to visit a bench. Of course, I can now hear you asking “So what?”. “A bench?”, you might ask.

    It’s a bench dedicated to Nyah Taryn James, a 14-year-old girl from Swansea, who died on 6 February 2017.

    This is getting weirder by the minute, I know, but stay with me.

    Nyah was a close friend of my other half—the sort who, in her words, was “loud, bubbly, and optimistic”—in her formative years. She directly shaped the person I love more than anyone in this world.

    Of course, I will never meet this young girl who helped to make my partner who she’s become, so watching the world pass us by from a bench left in her memory is the next best thing that the world has to offer.

    In us doing so, the ripples that Nyah left on this world continue on their way. To paraphrase Terry Pratchett, she won’t finally be dead until those ripples stop for the final time. We won’t let that happen.

  • Imogens, are you out there?

    Just randomly dawned on me that I haven’t met anyone called Imogen in many years.

    Are any of you out there?

    Do you still exist?

  • Life lessons in the form of graffiti

    Putting aside the political angle, which I try to stay relatively neutral on whilst writing here, this graffiti in Manchester city centre provides a remarkably solid foundation for living life more generally.

  • Trust in the customer service space

    As Andy Marsh, CEO of the College of Policing, said recently about the media’s trust in policing:

    “Trust arrives on a tortoise and it leaves on a horse.”

    I’ll be thinking about that as I serve customers at my day job today.

  • AI is a paradox

    For knowledge-based questions, it seems logical to assume that you’re more likely to ask an AI tool about things that you don’t know much—if anything—about than things you do.

    That inherently means that you’re less likely to know whether what it’s telling you is correct or not, or how to check. We’ll call it the Altman Paradox.

    Check your facts, kids.

  • Why Is It Written In Pascal Case?

    I was on a Northern Rail train recently and did what every autistic train nerd does best. That’s right—I became the first human in recorded history to read the safety poster.

    My only question is “Why On Earth Is It Written In Pascal Case?”.

  • The Toilet Roll (Minimum Ply) Bill 2026

    Just stopped at a train station and used the toilet but the toilet paper was worse than the schools of the 1960s and 1970s… It should be a legal requirement that any toilet roll in public places must be a minimum of two-ply, if not more.

  • Drops of Jupiter in Hanna’s hair

    Drops of Jupiter in Hanna’s hair

    Back when I was a fresh-faced 16 year old, I was in a long-distance relationship (if I can call it that, given the benefit of a decade of hindsight!) with a girl called Hanna all the way from the United States of America. She was my first love, my first heartbreak, and my first real taste of the Yanks.

    When things went sour, as teenage relationships so often do, and I couldn’t as much as face getting out of bed for two days straight, she told me that, if I were ever sad and she couldn’t be there to soothe my stinging heart, she hoped that I’d listen to Drops of Jupiter by Train and think of her.

    After wading my way through a very turbulent decade for such a day to come, I became fortunate enough a year ago tonight to stand just metres from Pat Monahan, and to blast my heart out to one of the songs that stands out to me as one of the few reasons that I held on when I felt like I had no other reason to do so.

    So, Hanna, if you ever end up back in the atmosphere, with Drops of Jupiter in your hair, and happen to stumble on this piece, I want simply to say thank you. What we had was a fleeting moment in amongst a rather hectic lifetime, but it happened, it mattered, and it’s remembered through its ripples on my life to this day.

  • Hi, little guy!

    Hi, little guy!

    Just seen this little guy on my commute and managed to stand still long enough to photograph him. Cute, ain’t he?

  • The late David Hockney

    I watched a documentary on BBC iPlayer a few days ago, which felt poignant after the death of Mr Hockney earlier this month.

    Being a big fan of bright and bold colours, I’ve always been particularly fond of his painting of Nichols Canyon in Los Angeles.

    A rather remarkable man, by all accounts, with a talent that was clear to see. What a loss.