Scrapbook: Week 43

October 22-28, 2022

SATURDAY 22 It’s exciting to hear that Boris is to return from his Caribbean holiday to appear in the Conservative Party leadership pantomime. Pity there won’t be enough time for him and Rishi to appear live on TV ripping into each other’s plans to steady the ship. Boris is reported to have phoned a friend in Britain and uttered the words, “I’m going to give it a go, Dudders [Sir James Duddridge]”.

📌 I think we know who “the markets” would vote for.

📌 The partying women stitchwork for Vera’s daughter is finished and, as ever, the reverse side is more interesting than the front…

📌 Marc, the son of one of our recently-departed neighbours, Joan, held a small memorial cake-eating session in honour of his mother and told us some stories about her. She tried very hard and failed to get the young Marc interested in oriental art and ballet. And when he introduced one of his girlfriends to her, Joan remarked on what “healthy gums” she had.

SUNDAY 23 In the Observer Will Hutton writes one of his irritatingly strident columns saying what he’d do if he ran the country. As annoying as these columns are in their tone, they often make some good points, the main one here being that Britain’s economic descent is not inevitable.

📌 I had a dream last night in which Oprah Winfrey ignored me. I said to her, “Are you ignoring me?” and she just carried on ignoring me.

📌 Barbican Cinema has started 11am Sunday screenings. The Banshees Of Inisherin is a beautiful piece of melancholy wrapped up in spudfarm Irish humour featuring two friends who somehow start to fight with each other on a tiny Island during the Irish Civil war. The acting is superb, the story sad verging on tragic. The set shots look like paintings and the characters, even the animals, are loveable.

MONDAY 24 As predicted Boris couldn’t muster the 100 pledges of support he needed to join the Conservative Party leadership contest. He pretended that he did, but no-one believed him and he is back out in the cold. He has hinted at a future return but his fate now looks more and more like a sad cross between Nigel Farage and Donald Trump. If he is eventually suspended for having misled Parliament, he will effectively be out of British politics for good. Can’t help thinking, though, that any Boris side-show will assist the passage of the vicious austerity clampdown Rishi has in stall for us.

📌 The super rich once again have their hands on the neck of British politics. They just look a bit different from the last lot.

📌 To become prime minister, Rishi is said to have got 191 votes of support from his fellow Conservative MPs, of whom there are a total of 357.

📌 I don’t think any of the contestants on TV’s Pointless are interested in the paltry sums of money they might or might not win. All they want is the coveted Pointless trophy.

TUESDAY 25 Rishi has started by telling us we face profound economic problems. What he seems happy to overlook on his first day in office is that he was a key player in the team that brought it about, something I’m sure his opponents will point out in the coming weeks.

📌 The Moggster has bailed out already, depriving Rishi of the pleasure of leaving his footprint on the seat of those chalk-stripe trousers.

WEDNESDAY 26 Rishi has started his new job by trying to put all of the toys back in the pram, as if Liz Truss’s reign was an interregnum of petulance from which the Conservatives can now emerge refreshed. He has reinstalled the ultra lunatic Suella Braverman in the Home Office, and Michael Gove, who appears to make his way through British politics pretending to be Billy No Mates.

Rishi also wants the party to return to the 2019 election manifesto pledges, on which they won a stonking majority. He wants his appointment as PM to be seen as the start of a new era. One headline-writer dubbed it the start of a “new error”.

📌 In her leaving speech Liz Truss pronounced the name of the ancient philosopher Seneca as “Seneeka”, not to be confused with the 80s pop singer.

📌 Been trying to name songs with big singalong ironic choruses. Neil Young’s Rockin’ In The Free World and Bruce Springsteen’s Born In The USA stand out, but it’s a struggle to find British examples.

📌 Fine viscose machine threads delivered for super-detail stitchwork. Happy days!

THURSDAY 27 A powerful hour-long radio story about dementia, The Door In The Pillow, made me stop to think harder about a subject I’ve unconsciously been avoiding for some time.

📌 Around 20% of global warming is caused by “agricultural methane”, which is shorthand for cow poo and farts. And the EU is so hooked on animal agribusiness that it is failing its pledge to reduce its methane emissions. What I wanted to know is whether animal methane can be repurposed to heat cold homes. And the answer is YES, but of course the “complex” reasons for not doing it prevail.

📌 Rishi’s rise to the top job prompts a fascinating article in the Guardian on how the Tories have beaten Labour in winning the support of wealthy Hindus.

📌 Rumours circulate that Rishi deliberately reappointed leaky Suella so that he could quickly lance the ERG boil.

📌 At Headway Alex told me she had a dream in which I was embroidering pink marshmallows. I forgot to ask if she was medicating at the time.

📌 Jennifer sent the booklet that came from the online curated collection I did of the Monash University artworks. It’s better quality than I imagined.

FRIDAY 28 A mole inspection of my upper body did not reveal anything to worry about. The test for bowel cancer was likewise reassuring.

📌 Liz Truss had asked King Charles III not to attend the Cop27 climate summit and surprisingly he agreed. Rishi will not attend either, which might in fact irritate the new King even more, given his passion for the subject and Britain’s self-exclusion from the debate.

📌 At a Headway meeting to thrash out brain-injury ideas for next year’s exhibition in the Curve Gallery at the Barbican I made myself unpopular by suggesting that the first experience visitors should have on entering the exhibition is to be blindfolded and subjected to the noise of an MRI scanner drilling through their skull.

Read all of my scrapbook diaries…