SUNDAY, LONDON My wife tells me I’m about two weeks late on this story, but it has only just come to my attention. The saga of two celebrities making a show of their hate for one another didn’t interest me until the word “Poo” plopped into the headline. This is childish in the extreme and something I should be ashamed of. Should be.
📌 Liverpool beat Newcastle 3-1. The brilliant simplicity of their football hangs on the letter P: possession, position, passing, patience, persistence. The 5Ps.
📌 We went round to Anne’s for an “end of term” drink. She’s off to Ireland on Tuesday. She told us the hilarious story of her pedalling urgently to the pet undertaker in Islington with a dead and rigid Lulu in her pannier, shrouded in a white quilted pillowcase. She’s convinced Lulu died because of her diet of cheese and chocolate. I told the story of Priss Fotheringham and her blue plaque in Whitecross Street. That brought on fits of laughter, especially when Sarah read out the Wikipedia section on “chucking”.
📌 Anne told us there were a lot of young sex workers lurking in the City. And that employers with home workers are devising more and more sophisticated ways to spy on them.
MONDAY, LONDON The Morning Star has been doing a series on leftist and anti-fascist (“antifa“) footie clubs around the world. They included Clapton CFC, the most famous one here in London.
📌 The blogger My Life As A Piece Of String (aka, “String”) is getting up steam on the drift “back to normal”. I especially liked the use of the phrase “leaky cliches” in reference to Brexit. String also predicts that “face masks will become the new socks”, which I like, too. Here on Golden Lane, City of London (weird), our chief councillor, aka Alderman, is also resisting the drift back to normal by refusing to hand in his “letter of surrender” (resignation), which signals the end of his natural term in office. He claims he is not “refusing” but “deferring” until the pandemic has passed.
📌 My latest stitchwork project has progressed in fits and starts, but a breakthrough moment came when today I actually felt like I was drawing and painting with thread, as pretentious as that might sound.
TUESDAY, LONDON Lockdown Catch-up. Malcolm was at it again last night in Spooks (Series 7). He fired up his computer, ran a few of his wizard programs and Hey Presto, Connie is outed as the Russian spy in MI5. Unfortunately, she’d already slit Ben’s throat with a razor wire she’d cunningly hidden in her bra strap.
📌 There’s an article in The Conversation saying that most of the funding to invent a Covid vaccine quickly has come from the public purse, whereas the distribution of it is in the hands of the private sector.
📌 I posted the Story of Twiggy and for some reason immediately began to regret it.
📌 I now suspect the Labour Party is keeping quiet about government screw-ups because it would most likely have done pretty much the same. It will be telling when the tsunami of mass unemployment (and maybe a second or third virus spike) hits. Will the government, which has already stolen an awful lot of Old Labour policies (nationalisation, state intervention), continue on that path to Blue Socialism? If it does, all Labour can then argue is that “we could do it better”, which isn’t much of a rallying cry.
📌 My wife’s birthday present arrived while she was out, which was a relief.
📌 Our new fold-down balcony table arrived, too.
📌 My wife visited a department store and returned to say all the mask refuseniks were men. She also did an offline, real-world yoga session. She was in a class of 3.
📌 Spoke to Margaret, Jan and Philippa. Jan has been out in the new campervan, which has all the trimmings inc toilet, shower, microwave, comfy bed. Later sent Margaret a message to put in Mena’s card as she goes off to have her baby. I have missed the Big Event entirely.
📌 Sam sent me her picture of Kat’s lizard. Sam’s niece named it Lenny. Kat told us it was a boy.
BillyScraps 