Sunday That Harry Styles song about watermelons is now firmly on my nerves. It makes no sense and is stupidly repetitive. It’s only got three lines: the one about strawberries that starts the verse, the one at the end of the verse about not being able to go without something, and the chorus line about watermelons.
The message describes being hit in the mouth by a fast-food projectile
📌 I’ve been trying to imagine the future and what it might look like. Despite Brexit and the exodus of many foreign nationals, my lived experience of being British is living in London, England. The past (without foreign ‘others’) is somewhere else. The question What do you dislike the most about England? came up today on Quora and I thought the answer, from someone called Steve Black, 45, whose profile tells us he is “uneducated, uncouth and getting grumpy”, was worth quoting in full: “I dislike hardly anything about England. I have travelled the world and lived in the US and believe me England is a paradise compared to most countries. Corruption is here, but nowhere near as blatant and obvious as the rest of the world. Our police on the whole is still a service and not a near military force as other countries are turning to. The National Health is superb, it has problems and will always need more money and better management, but once again on the whole it works great. As for students and the loan systems, fuck ’em, why should my tax money pay for you to go and learn something that is really only a benefit to you in future earnings. If you don’t make the extra money, you don’t pay it back.” Black goes on to say the main thing he dislikes about England is the whingeing, and “any TV programme with the word celebrity in it, and Arsenal football club. The rest I can happily put up with.” Is Black the new Briton?
📌 More from Quora.
📌 Stitchwork project 5 is stuttering along, but using some leftover darning wool from my mother-in-law’s old sewing box was not such a good idea. There’s black fluff everywhere.
📌 There’s a neighbourhood busy-body group active online that uncovers all the wrongdoings and sends out urgent pleas to locate lost cats. This is the latest entry…
The above message describes the experience of being hit in the mouth by the fast-food projectile and tasting the burger. It adds that YouTube is probably to blame.
📌 My wife went off on one when a Coronavirus advert came on Spotify telling us to stay at home and resist the urge to pop out for a packet of crisps. She ruined her rage by using the lazy catch-all ‘They’. Paraphrased, it goes like this: They tell us to go out into a world where the virus is still rampant, to go to work, to get the economy going. They tell us to get back into the pubs and the parks (but keep off the beaches). They tell us we’ve pulled together to crack the problem. But don’t you dare eat a bag of fucking crisps.
📌 We watched the latest in the ‘A House Through Time’ series – 10 Guinea Steet, Bristol – and noticed how the show has become paced with the urgency of a detective story and packed with heavy drama.
Monday I wake up early most mornings thinking poetic thoughts, but not able to put them into words.
📌 Xenophobic stereotyping is behind the under-reporting of Covid successes in central European countries such as Slovakia, Croatia and the Czech Republic. So says an article in ‘The Conversation’.
📌 A contrasting couple from Twitter.
Later, Mark Steel was inundated with tweets from people pointing out that “cock-blocking” was an old term.
📌 The Prime Minister has said that parents who don’t send their children back to school in September will be fined. He has also performed another shameless raid on Labour Party policies with the announcement of a huge social infrastructural programme to get post-Covid Britain back on its feet, among which is a mass refurbish and investment in schools. Expect some New Model Army of low-wage apprentice slavies in your neighbourhood soon.
📌 Stuart is back in action with news that the Sinner before the Gates of Heaven in the Meat Loaf song was a sadistic groupie called “Lumpen Linda”.
Tuesday Someone posted a message on Twitter saying that when the government declares a count of PPE equipment it has supplied to NHS staff, every single item counts as 1. The example quoted states that “200 pieces” of PPE is a box of gloves.
📌 Another Twitter correspondent writes to tell the world that the collective noun for a group of ladybirds is a “loveliness”, and helpfully includes a picture of loveliness on top of a wooden post.
📌 For my exercise walk I hit the canal basin at Angel Islington and noticed two women of a certain age – possibly fans of Virginia Woolf, if crass stereotyping permits – slipping in for a swim. Another woman, on the west side of the basin, was happily immersed in both a swim and a canal side chat with a passer-by. All in a light drizzle.
📌 The stitchwork projects are a new path to line drawing, especially when you look at the reverse side.
📌 He can cook, he can sing, he can paint and he tells good jokes. Four reasons to hate Pip.
📌 Leicester has been put on extended Lockdown. My wife says it’s because they all ran out too soon to buy crisps.
📌 In ‘Schitt’s’ Alexis and Ted agreed to go their separate ways over Twyla’s 4-Cheese lasagne and a nice bottle of Chianti.
BillyScraps 