Quality-of-life rankings are all the rage these days – in part spurred by Monocle’s own annual list – but sometimes it’s worth introducing an indefinite article and considering the quality of a life. Because as the general gist of years proceeds into decades, you start to realise that quality is not a constant – what constitutes a good life at 25 rarely resembles one at 45 or 65. 

But in the three Australian cities that made Monocle’s latest Quality of Life Survey – Sydney, Melbourne and Perth – we see that it’s possible to have a national quality-of-life ecosystem; a sort of countrywide relay in which each city takes the baton for life’s various stages. 

Sydney
Sydney’s central playground is its harbour, which divides the city but unites Sydneysiders. As a deckhand in my teenage years, I came to know the harbour better than most. But I’ve never ceased to be astonished by its big blue belly, the bottle-green coves that shallow into little blond beaches and mangrove creeks rusting in the setting sun.

Like all paradises, Sydney is a great place to grow up and grow old. It’s a diurnal city: locals rise at dawn and settle at dusk. Children enjoy a playing-outside-until-dark childhood, the loss of which elsewhere in the world is the lament of many parents. It’s safe, sun-drenched and – given that sport is as central to Australian life as SPF50+ and going barefoot – there’s no shortage of activities to keep the ankle-biters occupied. This means that it’s also the sort of place where, if you ask about the nightlife, they will tell you about the possums, bandicoots and flying foxes (none of which, sadly, are names of bars). 

The water dictates almost every aspect of metropolitan life: where we socialise, how we get around and, above all, what we aspire to. The local religion is real estate; nirvana a mere matter of “water views”. But this property obsession does not make for easy living when you’re a young adult. 

Melbourne
The Victorian capital doesn’t have all that bother of panoramic beauty – and without the pressure to live a perfect life, you can have an interesting one instead. While Sydney encourages early risers, Melbourne convinces you to stay out late, to order that post-dinner espresso and find the next bar on Smith Street. 

Hence the city’s embrace of a shabby-chic aesthetic and why, once my twenties were in full swing, the grungier and more open-minded Melbourne seemed like the place to be. The city enabled me to live in diverse inner-city suburbs, where you didn’t have to be a ring-tailed possum to go out at night. There’s always something to do, with vibrant music and art scenes, perpetual sporting action and excellent dining options (don’t be dismayed by the lack of Michelin stars, because Australia has its own system using hats). And Melbourne’s well-earned reputation as a coffee capital means that you’re never far away from a perky piccolo. 

Perth
In this national relay, Perth is the curve runner. Melbourne’s possibilities make it an ideal setting to explore yourself but when middle age creeps up on you in a pair of orthopaedic sandals, you might want more space and less clatter. The consistency and stability of Perth means that it’s the Western Australian capital’s time to shine.  

Now, I might not have lived in Perth but the more time that I spend in said sandals, the more I realise the subtle attraction of a smaller city that has its act together. To settle down, spread out and make a laid-back lifestyle your own, Perth is hard to beat. After all, on the city’s riverine foreshores you can enjoy more hours of sunlight than any other Australian city. What is more, multiple recent infrastructure projects have smoothed links between the city, the airport and the suburbs. Sometimes you need to go to the world’s most isolated major city just to get away from it all. 

Timing is everything 
But at the end of all our urban exploring, the baton returns to Sydney for life’s final straight. We prize balance once again, we want ready access to both the slow road and the fast lane. We want to start the day with an early-morning swim, a cappuccino at the surf club, and finish it with a harbour cruise to a show at the Opera House. 

One city cannot be expected to meet your quality of life needs forever. Our priorities shift as we grow into different versions of ourselves. Australia’s cities are not only highly liveable but also meet us where we live, decade after decade. When it comes to the quality of a life, Australia has it all.

For more on what makes some cities deliver a better quality of life, join us at The Monocle Quality of Life Conference in Lisbon from 3 to 5 September.

Stroll across Singapore’s historic Anderson Bridge, minutes away from the Central Business District, and the skyline gives way to something improbable: a vast, open stretch of grass. Known as the Padang (Malay for “field”), this ground has been at the heart of some of the country’s most significant events. It hosted post-Second World War victory parades, National Day marches and – since British colonisers set aside space in the 1830s to listen to the nostalgic thwack of leather on willow – cricket matches. 

The Singapore Cricket Club (SCC) was founded in 1852 by 28 members of the British mercantile community and military officers. Spectators watched on from the sidelines until a simple wooden pavilion was built as its clubhouse in the 1860s, followed by a larger structure in 1877 as membership grew. The preserved iron-structures and brick extensions of today’s clubhouse, built in 1884, contrast elegantly with the built-up skyline behind it.  

Within the club’s membership base – for which fees start from S$4,000 (€2,690) a year – are generations of the same families that made up the club’s earliest years. Today, nearly 5,000 Singaporeans and expats gather under the same colonial-era roof to play cricket or rugby – but also to discuss business deals while sipping a cool Tiger beer. “We protect a sense of belonging by engaging across age categories,” says club president Martin Goerojo, an avid sportsman and long-time member. “Junior, open and masters competitions are all interlaced with social events.”

After a match, players and members alike spill into the clubhouse to fraternise and feast on dishes of chicken congee, seared Hokkaido scallop and lobster risotto. Beyond the table, members mingle through games of chess or mahjong, or take part in wine tastings. The institution’s staff – from the car-park attendant to the barman in the underground Men’s Bar – make a point of recalling members by name. 

While the clubhouse itself is a listed building, the SCC is open to change. The Main Lounge, recently refurbished by local firm Studio HP, turned to the tones and textures of art deco for inspiration. Under the guidance of the practice’s founder, Rashi Tulshyan, dark reds and burgundies blend with the original wood panelling of the central bar. Hints of tropical modernism are referenced in the bespoke carpet, which features fan-shaped motifs inspired by the ubiquitous traveller’s palm. 

As the club prepares to celebrate its 175th anniversary next year, Goerojo reflects on what lies ahead. “The club has become an integral part of the surrounding ecosystem, and we are always asking ourselves how we can add value,” he says. “Ultimately, it is about being guardians of the Padang.” 
scc.org.sg 

Monocle’s annual Quality of Life Conference is back. After more than a decade of globetrotting, we’re returning to Lisbon, the city that first hosted our flagship event. For three days, Monocle comes to life as readers, speakers, and editors gather to exchange ideas and explore how we might live a little better.

Part conference, part urban retreat, it is designed to create a space for meaningful conversations and fresh perspectives, a chance to step away from the everyday, spend time with interesting people, and leave with new ideas and useful connections.

In October 2024 every Swedish household – more than five million – was sent a bracing pamphlet entitled “In Case Of Crisis Or War”. Prepared by the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency, it offered counsel on household preparedness – which foods to stash, how much water to store – and how to respond if the balloon, of one sort or another, went up.

It wasn’t the first time that Sweden’s government published such a thing – the tradition dates back to 1943, as the country sat out the war then consuming the rest of Europe. But the latest edition acknowledges lessons learned from the coronavirus pandemic and the fact that Sweden is no longer a neutral country but instead a member of Nato committed by treaty to the defence of 31 other countries. The most sobering injunction reads “If Sweden is attacked, we will never surrender. Any suggestion to the contrary is false.”

Sweden has taken another step towards making flesh this spirit of resilience with the announcement of its first national strategy for psychological defence. Launching the strategy, Sweden’s minister of civil defence, Carl-Oskar Bohlin, spoke of a need to strengthen Sweden’s “resilience in the cognitive domain”. The country has grasped that there are – especially now – many more ways to threaten, unnerve or undermine a country than pointing missiles at its capital or arraying troops along its borders. The first of the four pillars of the new strategy for psychological defence is “work against undue influence of information”.
     
Sweden has – like pretty much every other western country, whether those countries understand it or believe it or not – been a regular target of Russian disinformation campaigns. This goes back years: from 2015 to 2016, state-owned Russian news outlet Sputnik operated a Swedish language service, in which, according to Sweden’s Institute of International Affairs, it published roughly 4,000 articles, many of them negative stories about the EU and/or Nato. Not coincidentally, in 2022, Sweden’s Ministry of Defence established a Psychological Defence Agency, tasked with resisting foreign-influence operations.
    
The Russian threat to Sweden has since grown somewhat more sophisticated and aggressive. In the past couple of years Russian hackers have targeted Swedish digital services and energy infrastructure but disinformation campaigns are ongoing. They’re cheap, easy, deniable – and, so long as people remain eager to consume whatever nonsense reinforces their prejudices, effective. Earlier this year, Russian media floated the false and, you would hope, obviously absurd story that King Carl XVI Gustaf, having taken the trouble to visit Ukraine, refused to shake the hand of Volodymyr Zelensky in order to express some obscure grudge over the 1709 Battle of Poltava, in which the army of Carl XVI Gustaf’s predecessor Charles XII got clobbered by the legions of Peter the Great. The director-general of the Psychological Defence Agency, Magnus Hjort, responded with admirable clarity: “Absolutely nobody cares about this in Sweden.”
     
The national strategy for psychological defence is part of a minor blizzard of related initiatives from Sweden in recent weeks. Stockholm has also announced the creation of a new foreign-intelligence service to be known as the UND, its first national strategy for ensuring security of supply, and its intention to increase access to civilian shooting ranges. The Nordic nation’s European neighbours and allies might chafe at any suggestion that they take lessons in this sort of stuff from a country that hasn’t fought a war since a minor scuffle with Norway in 1814 but they – we – should. Sweden is taking seriously one of the most basic principles of resilience, military and otherwise: better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it.
 
Andrew Mueller is a regular Monocle contributor and host of ‘The Foreign Desk’ on Monocle Radio. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe today.

Curious about how the US-Israel war with Iran is affecting air travel? Take a look at Flightradar24. The flight-tracking website shows where airborne planes are at any given time – and there is next to nothing above Iran. Flight traffic is also diminished over Iraq, where existing aircraft consist almost entirely of Iraqi carriers or those flying between the Middle East, Armenia and Azerbaijan. On the other hand, Saudi airspace is as busy as ever, and a narrow corridor across the Caucasus between Iran and Russia is now used by many Europe-to-Asia flights.

The conflict in Iran is putting immense pressure on route planning, operating costs and reliability, and negotiating turbulent geopolitical tensions and daily airstrikes have once again become the norm for the aviation sector. But the industry has shown that it is one built on adaptability, whether in response to airspace closures, fuel sourcing or other crises.

Even so, recent developments are putting that adaptability to the test. In July, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) reinstated its warning to avoid Gulf airspace, though a number of flights are still travelling to and from the region. Some carriers have extended cancellations to services while others, such as Finnair, have announced that they are suspending their flights to Dubai – a busy and profitable route – until October of this year at the earliest. Gulf carriers, on the other hand, have little choice but to use this difficult airspace if they want to fly at all, and most are doing everything they can to maintain a regular schedule.

A number of air carriers recently reported their second-quarter financials, showing that while higher airfare and increased consumer demand have helped to absorb a portion of operation costs, long-term projections remain uncertain. Still, the overall system is continuing to function: oil is flowing at major airports and some airlines are making profit. But even as flight planners and air-traffic control systems work to find viable routes, the rising cost and fuel shortages could send reverberations through the industry for months or years. 

As the crisis in the Gulf drags on, Europe has managed to find new ways to source oil and keep things moving, including importing from the US. Ironically, this has positioned the North American nation, which now exports more oil than any other country in the world – 10.5 million barrels per day at its recent peak – as something of a stabilising influence. Meanwhile, willing Asian nations have imported record levels of oil from Russia and countries including Japan have diversified imports by drawing from the US, as well as African and Latin American states. However, the reduction of Persian Gulf supply remains a significant loss, which means we will likely see spikes in price and renewed fears of supply issues in coming months.

And yet, as we saw at the Farnborough International Airshow, which wrapped on 24 July, the industry continues to move forward with what could only be described as stubborn optimism. Companies are placing orders for aircraft and pursuing new innovations, including incremental gains in efficiency as well as entirely new technologies. Any day now, Heart Aerospace’s X1, the largest battery-electric aircraft to ever fly, is due to take its maiden flight. 

While most of these developments won’t solve the pressing headaches of today, it’s a reminder that aviation plays a long game, with its eyes on the horizon. The industry has seen it all before, in one form or another.

When we’re asked if there’s a morality to air conditioning, let’s focus on the smaller scale and ask instead: what keeps you cool? What is cool? What’s really cool? There are things that say they’re cool, offering a nod and a wink and a promise of refreshment. But many are lacking; many are operating under false pretences.

Such as? Well, denouncing ice cream in high summer might seem like madness but bear with me. No one is saying that gelato is not magnifico – but is it cooling? Does the speedy absorption of 600 calories of sweet milky goodness wick the beads of perspiration from your brow? It doesn’t, does it? Ice cream, a cone of plenty in a world of slight returns, is a marvel that cheers on the cheap. However, buy it, lick it, love it – but don’t expect to get a degree cooler thanks to it, my friends.

Instead? Pour a double espresso over a big ice cube in a tumbler, add enough full-cream milk to fool yourself that it could have come in a cone and feel the mercury drop with every sip. Coffee, with its kick of jittery caffeine, keeps you cool. Do it with ice-cold brown tea from the fridge, too, (no milk, though, are you mad?) and feel the depthless pleasure of your hot body zooming down toward the temperate zone quicker than you can wonder, “Would this be nice with some gin in it?”

Aha, we’ve raised the spectre of the proper drink. Can booze be cooling? A frosty beer, a pale and flinty rosé, an ice-cold martini, surely? Well, it saddens me to break the habit of a lifetime in recommending a short, sharp shock of something meaningful but you might end up with a hotter collar, a moister clavicle, a wetter lip than when the garçon popped your cork in the first place. Wait until you’re in the shade, though, and enjoy an everything-out-the-freezer martini, the vodka (better in the heat) viscous as the mercury that you’re hellbent on besting.

Of course, a Japanese konbini or a Don Quijote are predictably awash with excellent accoutrements for getting, staying – but sadly not looking – cool. Lion Brand cooling sheets are excellent for the puffy calves and feet of heat (and have been known to be used on the forehead). I’d like to say that I’d attempted the more sensitive areas of the anatomy but the pads’ robust adhesion means that even ripping them from a slightly hairy calf is a take-a-deep-breath moment. The thought of conducting this operation on more delicate areas makes the mouth dry at the very thought. 

The frozen eyemask, a Japanese summer favourite that has spread sporadically westward, is a complete joy on a hot night in bed. Again, start with your brow and see where you go. I’ve found that almost everywhere likes being cool. Make sure this is a private affair, though: few others will want to see you trussed up in a turquoise eyemask at the best of times.

Finally? Fans. There are many battery-powered hand-fans about and I don’t want to begrudge a hot face a cold solution but they’re not a great look, are they? However, the concertina fan – the Penguin Classic to its rivals’ Kindle – is an elegant solution to any number of hot onslaughts and coquettish to boot. Fluttering a fan is a good look: it’s honest and it’s for everyone. It’s eco-conscious and it’s stylish. 

It turns out that there are plenty of ways to keep cool. But bear in mind that your office might benefit from some proper air conditioning by Daikin, Midea or Mitsubishi – nobody needs to see the accounts team tearing into a pack of those cooling sheets.

Robert Bound is a contributing editor at Monocle. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.

Before being elected president of Colombia last month, Abelardo de la Espriella, a 48-year-old criminal defence lawyer, had been living amid Miami’s splendours with his wife and four children. He became a US citizen, donated enough to the Republican Party to be invited to Mar-a-Lago, and then returned to Colombia’s Caribbean coast, from where he hails, to announce his presidential candidacy. On Friday 7 August, he will be sworn in. 
 
His victory reflects more than just the appeal of an extravagant personality. Colombians voted against the continuation of Gustavo Petro’s presidency and the growing insecurity associated with his tenure. Faced with a staunchly socialist senator, they chose De la Espriella, the lawyer of choice for dodgy Colombians seeking plea bargains with the US. Colombians preferred a political novice with a lavish Florida lifestyle to a seasoned figure of the left.

The choice further contorts the political balance of the Americas. De la Espriella’s programme is firmly on the radical right, recalling Donald Trump, Javier Milei and El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele. He speaks of cutting state spending, abandoning the 2016 peace accords with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and restoring relations with Israel. He disparages the UN and promotes religion and traditional family values. At last week’s inauguration of Peru’s new right-wing president, Keiko Fujimori, De la Espriella’s vice-president shook hands with Argentina’s Milei, who confirmed that he would attend Friday’s ceremony. This is not a pack that has any plans to work with the left. Cuba and Nicaragua will be cut further adrift from the region while the White House has earned another friendly neighbour. 

True to what he calls “De la Espriella Style”, the president-elect’s campaign wardrobe boasted slim-fitting suits, linen shirts, football jerseys and dark sunglasses. Travelling by private jet, he promised with considerable fanfare and effective right-wing showmanship to wrest power from the political establishment and the capital of Bogotá. 
 
Wherever De la Espriella campaigned, he voiced a powerful national grievance: that Colombia is governed by a distant capital that neglects its regions. He has said that he will not move into the presidential palace, instead taking the presidency around the country (a move we’re also seeing from new UK prime minister Andy Burnham). Foreign affairs and international travel, he says, will largely be handled by his vice-president.

He has also made clear that his victory enjoyed the approval of Trump and US secretary of state Marco Rubio. To demonstrate his closeness to Washington, De la Espriella sent his veep to the White House in mid-July with a pledge to fight organised crime and drug trafficking, while presenting Colombia as an attractive destination for foreign investment. Under his rule, Colombia will become the “country of miracles” – at least that’s what he keeps repeating. 
 
But much remains uncertain. Only last week, De la Espriella announced that he will take his oath in the city of Cali. He has not visited Bogotá since the election, and said that he will convert the presidential palace into a museum. Barranquilla, a northern city where he lives with his family, will now become an alternative capital. 
 
De la Espriella is taking devolution to an entirely new level. But the Caribbean disruptor-in-chief personifies a genuine national sentiment. With theatrical effectiveness, he voices one of Colombia’s most persistent complaints: that it is ruled by a snobbish clique that cares little for the rest of the country. De la Espriella presented himself as a prodigal son, promising each region the attention that it has long been denied.
 
His fiercest opponent is the outgoing president, Petro, who is urging his well-organised supporters to mobilise if his government’s achievements are reversed. Petro even raised the prospect of hunger strikes and national protests that could paralyse the country. 
 
It is still too early to know how De la Espriella will handle the more concrete challenges. Colombia’s debt and deficit are at unprecedented levels, and he might need to find about $30bn (€26bn) to cover the fiscal shortfall. Some 30,000 members of armed groups linked to drug trafficking and organised crime control large stretches of the countryside. An unusually severe El Niño effect on the climate could also strain the power system and threaten blackouts. And, from Friday, Colombia will have a right-wing president, but also, for the first time, a highly organised left-wing opposition.
 
Wherever De la Espriella chooses to govern from, he will confront a central fact of Colombian democracy: the country has institutions capable of frustrating a leader’s wishes. Neither his impulses nor his supporters’ expectations have the force of law. That restraint will matter. He will succeed only if he delivers something concrete without weakening the institutions that stand between presidential power and presidential whim – and without leaving Colombia, literally or politically, in the dark.

Silvana Paternostro is a Colombian-American journalist and Monocle contributor. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.
 
Further reading:
– One drug-smuggling scandal shouldn’t bring down brand Thailand

– Trump’s new Air Force One plane is bringing the president down to earth 

– Who is Andy Burnham? From Manchester mayor to the UK’s seventh prime minister in 10 years

You’re going to have to help me with this one. Whatever did we do before the arrival of the LED table lamp? How did we read restaurant menus before it was possible for a swooping waiter to, with a dramatic three taps atop a spindly downlighter, lower the glare to something mimicking candlelight? The table lamp has become so essential to the global dining experience that it is near impossible to walk into a cosy bar, neighbourhood bistro or sprawling hotel dining room without encountering a little forest of lamps. 

The arrival of the breadbasket used to mark the start of lunch or dinner but with F&B types now bored of their truffle butter, nut spreads and long olive oil pours, the table lamp has become the hospitality industry’s obsession. I believe the original idea was to create small pools of light at a time when there was little in the way of overhead illumination. Over time, as tastes changed, the table lamp was a punctuation point in a dimly lit lounge or clandestine bar. 

Long before anyone had the notion of mass USB-C charging stations powering enough lamps for a 300-strong wedding, there were candles and glass oil vessels dedicated to the strength and warmth of a single flame. The light was bronzy, food looked tasty, drinks elegant and inviting. And the diners, drinkers and canoodlers? Gorgeous and yummy. The outstretched hand was golden, a Patek would dazzle, a Cartier bangle would glisten and the bouncing glow would forgive wrinkles, eye luggage and the odd, stray whisker. 

Today, the table lamp often just sits there, simply throwing more light onto our already overlit world. Why do you need them in a restaurant that is already so bright that it could double as a paint shop for airliners? On a recent trip to the Gulf, I was in a Lebanese joint that insisted on table lamps despite the heavy overhead array of spotlights and LED strips. Were these backups in case a drone took out the power grid, plunging us into a darkness and rendering us unable to find the fattoush salad? Or just added clutter and future landfill?

Restaurants make much of their sommeliers but instead of a lapel pin with a bunch of gold grapes, what about an elaborate glowing flame and a little light bulb. “Good evening, I’m Thierry, your chef d’ambience, and I’m here to oversee all of your lighting needs. I thought that we would start off with everything cosy and low and then we’ll see how the evening progresses.” In a sector that has been upsold lighting systems that are too complex for most staff to use – especially if they have to touch a screen with greasy fingers (most people in hospitality) – it’s time to get back to the original source, to candles and the flicker of real flames on tables. 

Lighting technology has certainly improved but a hotel lobby or resort spa filled with hurricane-like lamps lit by plastic LED candles is a complete mood, brand and “experience” killer. Best to not bother with a candlelit moment if you can’t go with the real thing. It’s a bit like all those moments (take your pick of national holidays, the arrival of a new year, a fancy Indian wedding) that used to be marked by fireworks, now it’s a clinical, numbing, dull drone display. 

There’s a good chance you’ll be entertaining this Sunday eve, this second day of August, so why not pull out your best brass from Skultuna and glass from Svenskt Tenn, find that box of matches and permanently park the LEDs. You and your guests will look much better for it.

Enjoying life in ‘The Faster Lane’? Click here to browse all of Tyler’s past columns. 

Colombian filmmaker Laura Mora spent the past four years “touching the untouchable”, steering Netflix’s adaptation of One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez’s 1967 literary classic that gave birth to magical realism. The saga follows seven generations of one family – the Buendías – and their crazy, incestuous, delightful and sad lifestyle in the fictional town of Macondo on the Colombian Caribbean.  

Mora directed three of the eight episodes in the first season, which was released in 2024 to much fanfare. It was the streamer’s most ambitious production in the region. This month, Netflix will drop season two in the form of seven episodes on 5 August and then a two-hour long finale on 26 August. This time, Mora is the showrunner. Here she speaks to Monocle about her experience working on the programme and her intentions to tone down the novel’s magical realism and dial up the politics.

How does it feel at the helm this time around?
The first season was good but it was clear that we needed to push the show into a more complex cinematic, poetic and political narrative. To give you an example, readers remember the yellow butterflies [a striking scene in the novel involving the character Mauricio Babilonia, a car mechanic]. They remember the beauty of this image but they don’t remember that the butterflies belong to a character that is a black worker from the banana company. That he is a poor man that falls in love with the wrong girl because she is from the high class. I needed to give that image the political weight of that relationship.

You’ve emphasised more of the historical references, such as the Colombian military’s massacre of the banana workers in 1928, which history books swept under the rug and García Márquez helped bring to light. Why?
We are so attached to magic realism that we look away from the political side of the book. I told Netflix that if I was going to be involved, I had to direct the arrival of the banana company, the Americans and the massacre of the workers. Also, I wanted to show that the rain that lasts for seven years right after was meant to erase the memory of that violence, as we Colombians have always done.

Why was that so important for you?
We haven’t really talked about this part of our history. There has been a lot of denial in what’s true and what’s part of the fiction that García Márquez created. For this season, I made sure that we all took history lessons. I studied the massacre a lot, so I had the intellectual background to approach these episodes. I’m so proud of them.

You shot some of the series in situ. Was that a difference maker? 
I was very lucky. When I told Netflix that I wanted to shoot the scenes of the banana company, the country club and where the Americans lived in their real locations, they accepted. We created the heaviness and the beauty of what he was saying in that novel.

Did you have a specific mission for season two?
It became apparent that the relationship to the novel in Latin America is very different to that of European or Anglo-Saxon audiences. They really have this relationship to the fantastic. Yes, Macondo is a fantastic world – and it is not. I wanted to defend that idea this time around. It’s about much more. Those yellow butterflies come with a character that goes through a very tragic social event. This is not only about a fantastic world. This is a beautiful and poetic way of telling something that is hard and that happens to us here.

[Right-wing politician] Abelardo de la Espriella will become the Colombian president two days after the second season drops. What do you make of the timing?
We are entering a new right-wing government and we hope that this second part gives some enlightenment to our political future. We are going back to the language of violence with our opponents. And we already know what happens. I hope this season will open a conversation. I’m always ready for those conversations to happen. If there is something that art can do – cinema, a show like this, a book such as One Hundred Years of Solitude – it’s that.

I live in a mews in central London. These are the places where the owners of grand houses would have once kept their horses and carriages – two-floored buildings at the backs of posh residences with space upstairs for a groom or a stableboy to live.

Over the years these petite properties were converted into garages, workshops and then homes. Extra floors were added. In our mews there are 30 such houses and many still offer hints of their former lives – doorways with tall, bricked arches to allow for a big old horse to be manoeuvred inside for the night.

Many mews in London are dead ends. Ours finishes in a passageway wide enough for bicycles and pedestrians to cut through but not cars. It means that the road is quiet and residing behind those big old grand houses can make you feel as though you are tucked away in a secret valley. Yet I could walk to a bar in Soho in 20 minutes. Though, seeing as I’m writing this at 06.30, that might be a little unwise. I’ve got stuff to do.

Free of traffic, the street has evolved over the time that I’ve lived here. For a start, it has become quite shaggy. A few years ago, people started putting pot plants outside their homes, hoping that their charges wouldn’t get nicked – and, yes, a few have been unwillingly rehoused, usually by a tipsy youth, nothing sinister. Then the pots got bigger, banana plants with leaves like flapping elephant ears took up residence and handsome silver birches stretched ever taller.

I love plants and gardening – an inherited trait – so when a neighbour asked whether I would help them sort the front of their house, I jumped at the chance. I have now aided – colonised – five properties on the street. And with a hosepipe ban in parched London in play, that’s a lot of watering cans. But each night, as I quench the plants’ thirst, I wave to neighbours doing the same and chat to people passing by. Some soil, some shrubs, that’s all. But it’s time off screen and with no real deadlines and, certainly, no crap AI-generated emails demanding answers.

I sense that we are at an inflection point where more and more people are wanting to find something – anything – where they can use their hands and shelter from the blandishments of technology. This week I had dinner with a successful PR who has just completed his first tailoring course. He showed me a picture of the calico shirt that he made and smiled the smile of a man who might have found his calling. I also caught up with a banking friend who told me that he had thrown it all in and was becoming a gardener (he’s a skilled plantsman). Breakfast with another PR who, after his summer holiday, said that he would be taking a day off each week to do a landscaping course. People finding an antidote to our times, some with a pair of scissors, others with secateurs.

But if you are unsure of where to find your tonic, let me recommend adding a plant or two to your life. In these small acts of nurturing, of aiding and cajoling, you can find all you need to reset your day.

For more of Andrew’s columns, click here.