June 15-21, 2024
SATURDAY 15 The Socialist Worker has a typically robust reflection on the Labour election manifesto, pointing sharply to what is not there, including massive taxes on the rich, nationalisation, demilitarisation… in other words the usual suspects.
📌 At a Barbican workshop I learned all about what it means to be a “producer”. It sounded an awful lot like what used to be called a “project manager”, but on closer examination it turns out to be all the bits that make up a project manager with individual job titles (event producer, budget producer, etc). Or, depending on the pay rate, all of it.
📌 Paula and Seàn came over to ours and we went for lunch in the Black Olive, where me and Seàn made an AI artwork of the heap of cold chips and mayonnaise he left on his plate.
SUNDAY 16 At Barbican Cinema 2 for the 11am screening, we saw The Dead Don’t Hurt, a beautiful if sometimes oversweetened romantic reinvention of the old-school Western, in which a love story between two different but somehow kindred outsider settlers representing France and Denmark comes to tell a bigger story about America both past and present. It has the persistent feeling of a parable, the scripture being the American Dream. Outstanding performance goes to Vicky Krieps as Vivienne (France) with a hats-off to Viggo Mortensen as Olsen (Denmark) who wrote, directed, stars and composed the haunting music. I got baffled by the timeline in one moment but my wife whispered me back on track.
📌 News arrived that Liz has been appointed Alderwoman to replace Sue. She was the only one to apply for the job. At Sue’s birthday party a couple of weeks ago I drunkenly threatened to stand against her but I think she was too drunk herself to pay any attention. Anne posted on WhatsApp an article from the FT that exposes the enduring domination of City of London politics by freemasons.
MONDAY 17 An item in the Conversation, the website on which academics are deployed as journalists, claims that BBC TV’s flagship political debate show Question Time is biased towards using panel guests with right-wing views. It suggests that this is because right-wing pundits are more entertaining than left-wing commentators and therefore a more attractive proposition for the show’s bookers.
TUESDAY 18 Jonty Bloom reckons the letters page of the Daily Telegraph is full of readers writing to say they’re done with the Conservatives. But, writes Bloom, these are not the bluestocking, Austin Reed one-nation Tories. They are the ones who believe the Conservative Party has become a hotbed of socialism, the ones who believe their party has…
…not been right wing enough, hardly bigoted at all, have not tried enough to destroy the NHS or to promote the spread of rickets, and are yet to make school children learn to goose step.
📌 My Euro24 team allegiances are all over the place. On Sunday I found myself rooting for Slovenia against Denmark purely on the basis that Slovenia has a woman as President. Yesterday I got behind Slovakia against Belgium for what reason I have yet to work out. And today I’m leaning towards Czechia against Portugal.
📌 In his latest Substack on gender issues, Graham Linehan promotes a movement called the New Gay Agenda, which aims to separate LGB from TQ+ because, the NGA claims, they are separate identities and should never have been forcefully married in the first place. I think the NGA might have its work cut out because the alphabet string just got longer: LGBTQIA2S+ stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and trans, queer and questioning, intersex, asexual or agender, and two-spirit, plus more to come.
WEDNESDAY 18 I fell asleep last night last listening to the audiobook of Alasdair Gray’s Poor Things and woke up this morning to find that it includes a reading of the book’s References (called Notes), which are a delight in themselves. The References are always the part of a book I skip over, but in audiobook they can take on a life of their own and tell you a lot about the author. Gray’s Notes for Poor Things are full of wild fantasy and characteristic dry humour. When dipstick Duncan Wedderburn confesses to being “hoist by my own petard”, the Notes explains this as…
This phrase means ‘blown up by my own bomb’. Shakespeare used it.
📌 Rafael Behr has no doubt about the future ownership of the Conservative Party after the July 4 general election. Any notion that the soft centre will harden its will should be abandoned, he says. They are all too wet and cowardly to put up a fight against the rabid right…
If there were enough moderates capable of winning a struggle for the Conservative soul, it might not have been sold in the first place.
📌 The first of the two pink roses in seed stitch is finished. This project will not be finished for A LONG TIME.
THURSDAY 19 At Headway Stuart showed us the letter of rejection he received from the Chair of the board for his application to become CEO.
📌 Dodged writing group this week to spend time sorting the mountain of stitchwork I have in the studio. Michelle selected a couple of small pieces for open studio and photographed five others for my slot on the website. The story I’d written for this week’s prompt (“More Biscuits”) was in any case pretty lame.
Martin and Heidi fought over lots of things, but none more passionately than when the biscuit tin needed refilling. Heidi favoured HobNobs. Martin would be OK with HobNobs if they were chocolate HobNobs. But no, Heidi’s biscuit of choice was PLAIN HobNobs. Martin occasionally tried to slip in some luxury Jaffa Cakes from M&S but Heidi quickly intervened, removing them from the tin and shrilling about a cross-contamination of flavour. It all ended very badly one week when Martin opted out of their pretend Biscuit Treaty and started his own tin of Chocolate HobNobs mixed with Scottish shortbreads. Heidi hit back with a very decorative jar of very boring biscuits (Rich Tea and Plain HobNobs), but it wasn’t long before Martin caught her with her fingers in his tin.
📌 At the Ed Cross gallery in Garrett Street I enjoyed the clever interplay of mirrors and mise-en-scène in paintings by Eritrean artist Ermias Ekube. The trick of pulling viewers into pictures must be easier when the canvases are as big as these, but the domestic details are alluring too.
📌 At half-time in the Euro24 group game between England and Denmark (1-1) the TV commentariat seemed to be slowly pulling knives from sheaths in preparation for planting them in Gareth Southgate’s back.
FRIDAY 20 Jonty Bloom has an excellent line in his daily rant. For anyone who knows what it is about it is a strong comment. For anyone who doesn’t know what it’s about it is a nice slice of prose.
Their little greedy eyes lit up at the thought of making money, any amount of money for free, a bet that could not lose.
📌 Simon Jenkins seems to think that come July 5 Keir Starmer will face an angry army of welly-wearing yokels demanding the protection of the countryside from his plan to use titchy bits of it to revive the fortunes of Britain’s ailing economy.
📌 Denmark’s supporters have been reprimanded in the British media for singing “stick your fucking teabag up your arse” at England supporters.
Read all of my scrapbook diaries…
PLEASE MESSAGE WITH ANY CORRECTIONS, BIG OR SMALL.
Billy's Scrapbook 
I did the comment re ‘hoist by his own petard’, it has been my favourite quote since we did Hamlet for A level. Hamlet Act 3, Scene 4, last speech in that scene, by Hamlet, if you want to read the context
xx
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’hoist with his own petar(d)’ is one of my favourite quotes from Shakespeare.
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