October 12-18, 2020
MONDAY My wife is on her way to Homerton hospital for a dermo appointment. Fingers crossed the PM doesn’t get a sudden attack of the tyrannicals and leave her quarantined there for two weeks.
# Scientists have discovered the longest ancient human footpath, and have unearthed from it a dramatic human-interest story about a mother and child struggling for survival in a hostile area of New Mexico.
# Sophie Ellis-Bextor, best known for her hit record Murder on the Dancefloor, has a new one out called Crying at the Discotheque.
# The baby fig tree is looking healthy, but I’m not sure the oak will survive the Winter.
# The TV adaptation of Us finished last night, and although the ending was a bit corny, it was nice to see Tom Hollander reunited with the nice woman from the Uffizi. Or was it the Prado?
# There’s a cracking piece in It’s Nice That about caricature and satire, pinned on the return of Spitting Image.
# Hackney Council have an £80 fine for drivers sat parked in idling vehicles.
# Some dickhead brigadier Labour Lord has said asylum-seekers arriving in Britain should be put in concentration camps.
# Donald Trump has started a “masks are for wimps” culture in the White House.
TUESDAY We finished Giri/Haji last night. It ended in a gripping chase and shoot-out sequence, which was concluded, surprisingly, by a beautiful Japanese ensemble ballet dance on the roof of a London warehouse.
# An article in the Conversation by a boffin at Lancaster University says Boris’s 3-tier system will only work if the 3 tiers are very different and that regulation is independent and non-political.
# Simon Jenkins’s tenacity in stating clearly the powers of localism and heritage is one of the few bright lights in otherwise dark times.
# Shawn wrote a funny story about a fella being held up in a bank robbery who recognises the two masked robbers as former school classmates.
# We’ve managed to decipher the complexities of the 3-tier system (now dubbed “tiers of a clown”) and it looks as if our weekend in Winchester could be a goer.
WEDNESDAY I never expected to still be alive this morning. My supper last night was a eclectic stew of four portions of leftovers from previous days. It comprised soy-sauce quinoa, plus vegetable curry, plus tinned tomato soup with chorizo and stale-bread croutons. To this I added two chopped pork sausages (cooked) and a squirt of chipotle sauce.
# Every morning we exchange a subtle touching of the arms that tells us two things. One is that we are both officially awake, and the other is an implied question: whose turn is it to make the coffee?
# Earworm Radio2 song of the moment is Space, by someone called Biffy Clyro.
# I made an illustration from a Marina Hyde quote in the Guardian at the weekend. It left me trying to remember which of King Lear’s three daughters refused to suck up to him. It was Cordelia.
# The Magnum Photos emails always point to a gem. Today it is a collection called Tar Beach from a book by the photographer Susan Meiselas.
# Great news! The Wildlife Photographer of the Year show opens at the Natural History Museum on Friday.
THURSDAY Our postie Eric hasn’t worn trousers for 15 years. Always in shorts, rain or shine, his leg tattoos on proud display. He does have one pair of dress trousers, for weddings, funerals and rare outings to restaurants with his wife, who refuses to be accompanied by a “silly-looking” man in shorts.
# In one of the passages at Quaker Court there is a fabulous display of Whitecross Street residents dressed in historical costume. They all apparently depict real people from a block of flats that was razed in the Blitz bombing of 1941.
# Dear Boris, have you seen the big sign outside the Spoons on Old Street?
# I’d not thought about it much recently, but I do remember at the time thinking the same as the Quora correspondent who asked…
# At Headway I demonstrated the wax monoprinting method to Stuart and a new volunteer. The Nik Kershaw image is by Stuart, the one that looks like Maggie Thatcher on a bad day is by me.
# I fumed in silence when a man with no mask sat right next to me on the bus and started shouting to someone on his phone about getting evicted. I fumed even more when a uniformed police officer got on and walked straight past him.
# In the first Cormoran Strike book, the author says a dead model’s “extreme beauty was on the very edge of absurdity”.
FRIDAY The Lockdown Diaries art project we did with Madhumita has appeared on the Barbican Library website. The best one IMO is by Barbican resident Bella.
# Sam sent her finished picture from Brian’s recent Zoom Studio session on his collection of cacti and succulents.
Then today Alex talked us through her fascination with weird chickens (think cartoon characters and bizarre fashion styles) and we all had a go at drawing some.
# We were worried that my Covid Compromise situation yesterday would scupper our trip to Winchester. But our hosts were still happy to have us.
# Our new best-friend trading partner (aka, William Shatner) is not happy.
# In one of his late-night messages, Stuart mentioned Loch Lomond, to which I replied, “Me and my sister once went swimming in Loch Lomond. We joked about possibly standing on one of Donald Campbell’s eyeballs.” I think he actually blew up somewhere in the Lake District. Stuart replied to my message by saying he once had a morbid fascination with the TV film of Campbell’s death.
SATURDAY, WINCHESTER According to someone on change.org MPs are planning to give themselves pay rise of £3,000 a year. And they reckon we should stop them, the greedy bunglers (my words), by signing a petition NOW.
# My wife tells me that if Boris steams ahead with his no-deal Brexit prank, there will be chaos. The example she cited was a company making wooden toys being unable to get the wood to make them. We speculated on whether they could use MDF from China instead, but concluded that China will eventually close the door to Britain along with the rest of the world. It will become a cold and gloomy place like those pictures of Russia during the purges. People with rotting teeth will stand shivering in long queues waiting to buy stale bread and tins of pressed rat-meat.
# Some people buy houses just to practise their interior-design fetishes, then sit there, alone, looking a how lovely everything is. Then they move a chair 3 inches to the left.
# We got some AAA batteries in Poundland then I headed back to Winnall Moors. I don’t think I’ve even scratched the surface of this vast open space of wild beauty. And right in the heart of Winchester! One minute you’re in Poundland, the next you’re in a staring match with a toad.
# The Everton v Liverpool game finished 2-2 after another controversial VAR decision.
# The new card game came in useful as darkness set in…
# Spotting a massive spider in your cookpot is the stuff of nightmares.
Except it’s just a reflection from this mid-century masterpiece.
# The costumes on Strictly are still brilliant, and Tess’s dress is awesome.
# Turns out Bill knows Dirk Maggs.
# Liz’s school pottery reminded me that children are the neglected masters of British Folk Art.
SUNDAY, WINCHESTER Our host Liz has two shelves in the “entertainment alcove” on which an assortment of knick-knacks collected over the years sit alongside the TV, turntable, amp and speakers.
# If life these days seems like one long experiment in human endurance, any hope of a happy outcome should be quickly dismissed, if this Nick Cohen story is anything to go by.
# Stuart just brought up the subject of Peter Frampton’s hose pipe.
BillyScraps 