I have nothing to say today. This is me saying it.

My attempt to write every day here has come a little unstuck today. Here I am writing but with nothing to say.

The news of the attempted coup in Turkey brought back memories of my first trip to Istanbul in 1982, a couple of years into the military rule following the coup of September 1980. I wanted to write about that but lacked the confidence that I would capture the correct tone. I didn’t want to sound like something from Private Eye’s ‘Desperate Marketing’ feature, where companies make passing reference to some news of the moment to try to render their product or news relevant.

This is a lesson in itself, of course. To write is better than to not write. For me, at least. Much of the time we need to write for ourselves as much — or even more — than for any imagined audience.

I write daily here to overcome fear and to search for a voice that fails to come when I sit and think about what to write instead of writing.

My gain. Your loss, I’m afraid.

I will tell the story of my trip to Istanbul in 1982 — and the dancing bear I encountered there — another time.