Field Notes

I’ve been watching some of Black Doves on Netflix. I don’t watch much telly but this series has caught me. There’s murder, and death, guilt and conscience. And then there’s the wire brush of unease that’s been scraping its quiet, sinister tune since the assisted dying bill was passed.  ‘Don’t get sentimental,’ says a seasoned assassin to a novice spy, discouraging her from going ‘back in’ to retrieve a lighter that once belonged to her mother. She goes back anyway. She’s got a hard heart, but not that hard.  It has been clawing away at me, that line - ‘Don't get sentimental’ - because contract killing is in the news, isn’t it. Can we commission some adequately unsentimental people to do some killing? Apparently the answer is yes.  I have read the narratives, the intimate accounts of pain and anguish. I have read the personal tales seeking to persuade us that it is rational, in this day and age, for us to be able to make a choice for ourselves, about when we die. We have ...