Scrapbook: Week 26

June 22-28, 2024

SATURDAY 22 Lots of engrossing conversations about inclusion and accessibility at a Barbican workshop. One of the attendees, Paul, who is wheelchair bound and profoundly disabled with cerebral palsy, used to volunteer in a hospital as “Satnav Paul”, scooting around in his electric chair guiding visitors to where they need to be, with full commentary on the inner workings of the hospital.

📌 In the TV show Madam Secretary, Bess became Potus for about 2 hours when Kwai-Chang Caine’s son went missing on Air Force One.

SUNDAY 23 One of the Tories guilty of betting on Rishi’s “surprise” July 4 election date was given a price of 5-1, which suggests the date was not such a surprise after all for BetFred, PaddyPower, William Hill, et al.

📌 Reading about the NFP political collaboration in France reminded me of one Saturday many years ago when me and my cousin Kate joined a coach party from Liverpool to London for a rally organised by the Anti Nazi League. Back then there was a popular partnership of music and politics. Today I struggle to find any similar alliance, although young professional footballers seem to have an appetite for making a stand.

📌 I was quite impressed by the rapid arm manoeuvres I employed this afternoon preventing a wasp from coming through the balcony door.

📌 At the cinema we saw The Bikeriders, which I think was meant to be about the death of primitive masculinity. The problem with trying to make a new biker movie is that ultimately you are trying to reinvent the wheel, and this one despite its best efforts too often looked like an excuse to choreograph physical violence and catwalk a lot of stereotypes through an alleged love story between biker Benny and biker’s moll Cathy, who at least manages to pull off an occasional act of oneupgirlship.

MONDAY 23 The Guardian’s evening political newsletter has a word I never knew. It describes Nigel Farage “edgelording” his way through an interview. I looked it up…

An edgelord is someone on an internet forum who deliberately talks about controversial, offensive, taboo, or nihilistic subjects in order to shock other users in an effort to appear cool, or edgy.

Another new word cropped up this afternoon when I was interviewed by Oliver about my experience on the Barbican’s Imagine Fund panel. He used the word “lacunae”, the plural of lacuna. Lacuna is one of my least favourite words and doesn’t improve in the plural. Oliver quickly realised how pretentious he sounded using such a word as “lacunae” and laughed out loud, at himself.

TUESDAY 24 A well-pointed essay on the James O’Malley Substack Odds & Ends of History first points to a correlation over the past 10 years between the TV trope of the “Asshole Genius” (eg, Sherlock) and the consequent emergence of real-life asshole geniuses (eg, Elon Musk).

The notion that to truly excel as a detective, doctor or manager, one must not only possess genius-level abilities but also have an important personality flaw.

The essay then moves to the more recent emergence of the super-nice TV genius (eg, Ted Lasso). The thesis seems to be that TV characters such as Lasso will give birth to a society of goodies rather than baddies.

WEDNESDAY 25 On top of their major geopolitical differences North and South Korea are engaged in what sounds like a petty squabble between unhappy neighbours who end up chucking their rubbish back and forth over the garden fence. To prove what it believes to be its societal superiority, the South has been sending balloons filled with food, medicine and money across the border. The North has now retaliated by sending south balloons filled with landfill, garden waste and raw sewage, the latest volley of which caused airplanes to be grounded at Seoul airport, where Marge’s son Steve and his Korean wife were waiting to travel to London.

📌 Vera is chuffed. Waitrose has Jack Daniel’s on special offer.

📌 The woman with the incredible shelf-like chest (whose name I’ve forgotten) popped into Stitchers. She said she was just killing time before the food bank opened. Karen was talking gibberish about tennis again and I tried and failed to look interested.

📌 Ukraine got eliminated from the group stage of the Euro24 tournament with 4 points, the same as the three other teams in their group – Belgium, Slovakia and Romania. They came 4th on goal difference.

📌 I think my wife’s enthusiasm for the TV show Madam Secretary is wearing thin. We are into Series 2 (of 6) and the conflict in Ukraine has arrived, with all the paraphernalia of the propaganda movie.

THURSDAY 26 Today’s Sensemaker from Tortoise contains a warning, that the twisting of facts and context by real people is a worse contributor to misinformation than anything drummed up by AI. It quotes words by Keir Starmer talking about illegal immigration that have been made to claim he advocates the forced repatriation of British Bangladeshis.

📌 And as if on cue, the story prompt I chose for the Headway writing group Babyshoes was True, Not True.

Jane Austen wrote, “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” Unfortunately for Martin, Heidi had the irritating habit of applying “It is a truth universally acknowledged” to anything she simply agreed with, as if her viewpoint would somehow carry more weight by having a bit of Jane Austen in it. This angered Martin, especially when Heidi casually dismissed his assertion that in the opening sentence of Pride & Prejudice (1813) Jane Austen was not only wrong, but very wrong – about Truth, about men, about rich men and about marriage. Truth, he argued, was merely fact plus human intelligence. He went on…

“Fictional Fact 1: Mr Darcy dived fully clothed into his own lake. 

“Fictional Fact 2: Miss Eliza Bennet saw him do it.

“Truth 1: Miss Eliza felt an ardent love for Darcy explode within her.

“Truth 2: Miss Eliza thought, WHAT A KNOBHEAD!”

📌 Also at the Headway writing group I explained that poetry was never my thing. I just didn’t get it, but lately I have revisited the idea and realised that I got my poetry through songs. As an example, I read one by Paul Simon…

The last train is nearly due
The underground is closing soon
And in the dark deserted station
Restless in anticipation
A man waits in the shadows

His restless eyes leap and scratch
At all that they can touch or catch
And hidden deep within his pocket
Safe within its silent socket
He holds a coloured crayon

Now from the tunnel’s stony womb
The carriage rides to meet the groom
And opens wide its welcome doors
But he hesitates, then withdraws
Deeper in the shadows

And the train is gone suddenly
On wheels clicking silently
Like a gently tapping litany
And he holds his crayon rosary
Tighter in his hand

Now from his pocket quick he flashes
The crayon on the wall he slashes
Deep upon the advertisement
A single-worded poem comprised of four letters

And his heart is laughing, screaming, pounding
The poem across the tracks rebounding
Shadowed by the exit light
His legs take their ascending flight
To seek the breast of darkness and be suckled by the night

📌 To Kiss Me Kate at the Barbican. Still can’t quite shake off the feeling that musicals are simple and sometimes funny stories ruined by the bad plastic surgery of song insertion. NB, Adrian Dunbar can sing.

📌 Outside the studio, some newly created clay people lay peacefully in the sun.

FRIDAY 27 The statistical prophet Nate Silver thinks Joe Biden should step aside for a younger person immediately. Then he rambles on endlessly about statistical models, quoting his work in the field of sport, which is fascinating but sadly not quite at the right end of the age spectrum for any political analogy..

Major athletes improve rapidly through roughly age 22, improve more slowly from age 23 to 25, peak from about age 26 to age 28, and then enter a decline phase.

📌 Oh how I love Cyndi Lauper’s accent.

Read all of my scrapbook diaries…

PLEASE MESSAGE WITH ANY CORRECTIONS, BIG OR SMALL.

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