I'm interested in the first things people do on any given day, when the brain is still waking up, working its way into the world.

Today, one of the first things I do is forward my partner a news article about a museum exhibition opening in Norfolk - the exhibition is called 'Woof: A Celebration of Dogs'. It tracks our relationship with dogs over the centuries - as hunting companions, pets, working animals - via a series of oil paintings, coins, and other items. Apparently, there is an overcoat made entirely from dog hair.

My partner and I are both the other side of the world, in different places. We are unlikely to ever see the exhibition in person.

The article is one of many that I skim through. It is the only one I forward. Elsewhere, Israel has launched a ground offensive in Lebanon. A group of Thai schoolchildren have burned to death in a bus crash. The Conservative Party Conference is described by several left-wing journalists as being 'surprisingly upbeat'. North Carolina is underwater.

Whenever there is tragedy, names of the deceased are often published, somewhere, whether in the news or in some form of memorial marking the event. But lists of names can fail to capture people's attention. I recently read Svetlana Alexievich's Zinky Boys, drawn from interviews with people who, physically at least, survived the Soviet-Afghan war. The only part I skimmed was a two page section early on in which she lists the names of the people she spoke with.

A name is, in theory, one of the few ways we have of identifying a specific person in the world. Our names differentiate us from one another in crowds of the living or dead. Regardless, lists of names rarely interest me. The context doesn't matter. Whether or not the names deserve respect doesn't matter.

Our names is, arguably, of all our attributes, the one that is most 'us', the letters that tell us who we are and who we are not. But our name can never compete with the harsh life that surrounds it, the swirl of human doing that eclipses whatever we happen to be called.