Heroes

I wish people wouldn't use the word hero so casually, not just for those who've done something genuinely heroic and life-threatening but for anyone who's done something a little bit daring.

Firefighters rescuing someone from a burning building, or a person fighting back against an armed mugger, yes, that's genuinely heroic, but someone who brings down a cat stuck up a tree - no, that's not heroic, that's just helpful.

Patrick Hutchinson, a black man who carried another man to safety at a far-right protest rally in London on Saturday, has been described by the media as a hero. Well no, not really, because he was shielded by his friends as he did his "heroic" act.

Likewise all those health workers who've been hailed as "heroic" for months. Most of them dislike the word and say they're just doing their job, treating illness and saving lives just as they did before the virus outbreak.

Likewise people delivering food to the housebound are described as heroes, when all they're doing is looking after the vulnerable and making sure people don't starve. That's not heroism, simply altruism and kindness.

The word heroism is always applied to something physical, but to my mind it can also mean something mental or emotional.

Someone who overcomes crippling fear and self-doubt to make a big change in their life they've always shied away from - that's heroic. Or someone who overcomes the memory of a horrific sexual assault to start dating again. Or those who're always true to themselves despite others trying to push them along a different path.

Like Professor Gail Dines, the American anti-porn campaigner, who has been heavily criticised by other academics but carries on regardless.

And then of course there's refusing a second slice of chocolate cake or a second helping of ice cream - how heroic is that?

Playing with fire

The just-published report on the fire at Grenfell Tower makes me even more certain I couldn't live at the top of a tower block. I would always feel nervous that a sudden fire might reach my flat and I couldn't escape from it.

It may sound irrational, because fires in high-rise blocks are very rare, but the fact is that you're totally reliant on adequate fire-control measures that may or may not have been installed and may not be working when the need arises. You're also reliant on firefighters who may have no detailed, well-rehearsed plan for dealing with a high-rise fire (as was the case at Grenfell Tower).

At Grenfell the fire alarms weren't working properly, there were no sprinklers in the building, there weren't enough firebreaks to contain the fire, there was only one staircase, and of course there was highly inflammable cladding on the outside. Many high-rise blocks still have inflammable cladding that hasn't yet been replaced.

We've never had a flat above the first floor (second floor if you're American). I'd happily live on the second or third floor, which would be fairly easy to escape from, but any higher and I'd feel distinctly unsafe.

I'm not worried though about high-level hotel rooms. A huge fire in a hotel would ruin their reputation so I assume they have very strict fire-control measures, closely monitored by the authorities. In which case I'm happy to be on, say, the fifteenth floor a long way from street level. Also, I'm only in a hotel for a few days and it isn't my permanent residence.

If you live in a high-rise flat, you may have fantastic views, you may have exceptional privacy, you may be well insulated from the hurly burly of the city, but that wouldn't be enough if it might also be a death trap.