I'm an opinion writer — but I'm not even sure of my own opinions

Times

22-07-2025

Recently my dad's friend saw me on the BBC's Debate Night. 'Your daughter was on TV,' he told him. 'What now?' my dad asked, probably wincing. 'She was complaining about something again,' came the reply.
It goes with the territory. The role of a columnist is to grasp an idea, shake it and see what comes loose, then catch the pieces and arrange them in a new order. You could call them complaints, but I prefer opinions — little thought babies escaped from their mother.
Sometimes I'm asked if it's tiring coming up with so many new opinions. It would be if I was a different kind of commentator. My more combative colleagues will argue the opposite line just to be contrarian, a skill I admire and fear equally. It sounds terribly earnest, but I can only write it if I believe it. The truth is I haven't made up my mind about most things.
Instead of charging head on into a topic I prefer to dance around the edges. It often leads to having to get creative. This is a ploy, you understand. If the truth were known I'd be out of a job. Help! I'm an opinion writer who isn't sure of their opinions.
It isn't the natural order of things. Surety is the hero of the critic. I know this when I read my favourites, whose recommendations I co-opt for the sake of time and ease. Gloriosa is our best Glasgow restaurant. We agree The Driver's Seat is the most readable novel of Muriel Spark's. For a decade my go-to coffee order was a cappuccino because it was what my mum ordered from Costa when I was growing up. I don't even like cappuccinos and yet there I was at the front of the queue, size medium and hold the chocolate sprinkles please.
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Commentating isn't criticism but it lurks in its margins, demanding the same clarity of thought and elegant argument. I had bags of those in my twenties, or at least I thought I did. Your twenties are a decade of being convinced you're always right. The past is black and white not only in photos. Now every passing year is a reminder of everything I do not know.
The alternative is to be a sure person. I have worked under a few over the years. They make decisions before you've even finished talking, kneejerking into action as if it's the most obvious choice in the world. Every one of them turned out to be a fool.
Look, I'm a fool too. It's how I stumbled into this problem in the first place. We're just different kinds of fools, living in opposite houses on the same foolish street. The opinion-adjacent opinion writer feels around gaps in the conversation, trying to place her hands on what's been left unsaid. The sure person is out there making confident pronouncements, watching as the sea opens up to them like Moses.
In being a sure person — a Moses type of doing person — you preclude all the fun stuff, the fray of don't know fixed into a tight knot. The brain-firing part lies in meandering towards a conclusion, my resolve dressed and undressed a thousand times until I've gathered all the evidence. It's a neat parable for life, although I'm wary — and this won't surprise you — of neatness.
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Too many times I've wandered down a neat highway only to realise it's a dead end. On the neat highways I feel backed into a corner, out of options, with my back against the wall. I don't recognise them in real life. My driving is too messy, full of ten-point turns along the scenic route.
Maybe you prefer them over these roaming efforts. I suspect it comes down to your definition of a column. There are several, but I've found mine as a subject, a reader of other people's.
There is something magical in finding my thoughts buried in someone else's. The moment of this is what it feels like for me too. A shared experience turns into an intimate act. Sometimes it is as small as a fragment. Sometimes it is sprawling as a moral code.
I have no easy answers on thorny subjects. I can offer you no wisdom if you want it packaged tidily. But I'm certain someone else might feel uncertain. That — maybe only that — is my one absolute. @palebackwriter
One of my favourite journalist/authors has a new novel out. John Niven's The Fathers (Canongate £18.99) promises intrigue and plot twists through the lives of two young dads. Buy from timesbookshop.co.uk. Discount for Times+ members.