We have arrived at an intellectual chaos.
For a spy novelist like me, the Edward J. Snowden story has everything. A man driven by ego and idealism - can anyone ever distinguish the two? - leaves his job and his beautiful girlfriend behind. He must tell the world the Panopticon has arrived. His masters vow to punish him, and he heads for Moscow in a desperate search for refuge.
When I arrived in Texas in 2001, I felt an enormous amount of pressure. I felt like I had all the weight of the world on top of me, and I needed to perform, and perform at a high level every day.
I remember when I first got into the England side, going to meet ups where you were just doing a job, you were almost looking to go back to your clubs as soon as you arrived. That changed. The Lionesses got the feel of a club; it was a place you wanted to be, a set-up you couldn't wait to join.
Elephants are not human, of course. They are something much more ancient and primordial, living on a different plane of existence. Long before we arrived on the scene, they worked out a way of being in the world that has not fundamentally changed and is sustainable, and not predatory or destructive.
When I arrived in Champ Cars, which at the time used to be called Indy Cars and then got renamed CART and then renamed Champ Cars, I was racing against Jimmy Vasser, my team-mate, but more than him, I was racing against Michael Andretti, Emerson Fittapaldi, Al Unser Jr. - guys that had big names.
I would stay two years in San Francisco, then move to New York in the summer of 1991, for the love of a man who lived there. When I arrived in New York, I had a job waiting for me, courtesy of a bookstore I'd worked at in San Francisco, A Different Light. They had a New York store as well, and arranged an employee transfer.
His huff arrived and he departed in it.
When I arrived in Milan, I found myself surrounded by many fantastic footballers.
I arrived in Milan when I was 18. But my time in Italian football helped me to mature.
