November 19-25, 2022
SATURDAY 19 Fesshole delivers a steady stream of confessions of all types. Mainly they aim to titillate and rarely does the confessor give the impression that dishing their dirt publicly is an act of self-reflection.
📌 Elon Musk is being dubbed the “Liz Truss of social media”.
📌 Paul Waugh in the i reports that Jeremy Hunt’s Autumn Statement included a thinly disguised admission that Boris’s “oven-ready” Brexit deal was in fact thin gruel for the UK.
The painful truth is that Brussels got the better side of the bargain: great access for their goods, protection from British competition for their services, plus a hit to UK GDP that serves as a warning to any other states thinking of quitting the bloc.
Paul Waugh, the i
He goes on to add that the EU benefited so convincingly that stitching any kind of new deal back together will be a tough task for any government, whatever its colour.
📌 To Paula’s in Sutton for Thanksgiving turkey dinner. Entranced once again by the print on the wall of Irish Girl, by Ford Maddox Brown.
SUNDAY 20 Fabulously clear analysis by Larry Elliot comparing the Thatcher/Lawson Tory economic revolution of the 1980s with the shambles of the Sunak/Hunt “two chancellors” effort to bundle Britain into an evermore insecure future.
📌 It was inevitable that post-Brexit Britain would eventually need to patch together a working trade agreement with the EU. The nation’s current desperate plight has brought the prospect closer. Common sense suggests that an arrangement similar to the ones enjoyed by Switzerland or Norway is the best first step/least worst option to start repairing the damage already done. The lunatic fringes of the Conservative Party, however, believes such a deal amounts to treason. I can’t imagine the EU is interested anyway.
📌 In an effort to look a bit more like a prime minister, Rishi Sunak made a surprise visit to Ukraine.
MONDAY 21 I’ve been told to go easy on eating eggs as there is a national shortage due to the avian flu epidemic and supply-chain problems. Supermarkets have started to ration sales, but poultry farmers say in secret that because they’ve been so badly screwed over by the all-powerful supermarkets, there’s no longer any profit in eggs and have cut production.
📌 Back in Brighton after three years. We’d let our small apartment to someone who needed a home, but now he’s moved on we will spruce it up and hopefully sell it in the new year. Empty it looks sparse and a lot like a basic holiday let, but it didn’t take long to remember why we fell in love with it all those years ago and have happy memories of fun-filled weekends at the seaside.
TUESDAY 22 Went for a walk on the seafront in search of psychogeography titbits, but all I came back with is that places can be a lot like people; they come and go, rarely stay the same as you fondly remember them and eventually become dead to you. When we arrived in Brighton yesterday I felt I was seeing it anew and I think that is where we are now. I am a visiting tourist. Brighton as I once knew it has left me and I need to find a way to leave it too and not feel bereaved.
📌 My sister WhatsApped to ask if we were watching the World Cup. I said no.
WEDNESDAY 23 In TV’s I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here the rugby player Mike Tindall is notorious for his loud snoring, so much so that the other celebrities wish for nothing more than to be kept as far away as is possible from Tindall come bedtime. They are not alone, it seems. His wife Zara, daughter of Princess Anne and 20th in line to the throne, is likewise disturbed by her husband’s night-time noise making and is pleading for our help.
📌 Someone on Twitter reported a bear hiding in the Alpine illustration on the Toblerone sleeve.
THURSDAY 24 Two of Britain’s top politicians are in a sticky spot. Yesterday the UK supreme court ruled an independence referendum in Scotland out of the question. For now. This leaves SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon waiting until the present government is replaced by one that might agree to a popular vote. That replacement is likely to be the Labour Party, which actually wants to heal the wounds between the UK nations, not sanction further separation. Labour will campaign at the next election for a better deal for Scotland, so don’t be surprised if the SNP’s grip on Scotland starts to loosen.
The other troubled politician is PM Rishi Sunak. He looks nervous about his next move. He knows the game is up with the voters, but should he spend the next 12 months setting timed booby traps for the next government (Labour) to fall into, or should he attempt to clear up the mess his party has created over the past 12 years?
📌 It looks obvious even with six contestants still in the jungle that Jill Scott will win this year’s I’m A Celebrity…
📌 Transport For London is obviously aware of the problem because the 55 bus now has the covers of its priority seats (for elderly, disabled or pregnant passengers) in a contrasting colour and pattern to all the other seats, plus big labels on each one stating “Priority Seat”.
FRIDAY 25 Talked with Michelle yesterday about the studio’s input to next year’s Headway@25 anniversary exhibition at the Barbican’s Curve gallery. We will present ideas to the steering group next week, but the key thing that emerged for me was that during the conversation I became more excited by what some of the other artists are working on rather than with my own idea (a short-short horror story stitched into gold satin).
📌 I’ve got four pictures from my art class in the community college exhibition – Eggface, Langham Place, Bordeaux Balcony and Sara’s Hand. My wife has two of the cushion covers she made in her Sewing & Textiles class.
📌 Russia is bombing Ukraine into becoming some sort of post-USSR Gaza. And like the Palestinians the citizens of Ukraine will continue to resist. Does the world really need another one of these pointless wars?
📌 The Creatives craft exhibition at our local community centre turned into an exercise in community cohesion. I introduced a councillor to an art teacher, and art student to art student.
📌 Someone called Owen on I’m A Celebrity… seems to spend all his time sunbathing or trimming his carefully sculpted beard.
Read all of my scrapbook diaries…
BillyScraps 
Fesshole , I did not know about it. 😊 My husband’s students who come back after a long time say they are happy to be back for a visit but the place is not the place where had lived foe five years. In fact my children say the same about their primary school, it is not their school because there are so many changes and most of their teachers have retired.
It is a tragedy about the war. Life must be hell in Ukraine.
And in both countries, so many young people dying or being injured for no reason.
Thank you.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi Lakshmi, I think the feeling is worse if you once felt especially attached to a place. Change is inevitable, I suppose, but the grief of loss only comes when you lose the thing you gave love to.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Came here via Quercus’s blog, and really enjoyed reading your recent post. I like how it ranged from art to politics to the personal.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you, Laurie. I try to make it as much like a real scrapbook as is possible in WordPress.
LikeLiked by 1 person
To be fair, despite the corrective surgery I suspect Mike Tindall’s nose makes quiet breathing difficult.
I said at the time we would end up with all the bad bits of EU membership and none of the good ones. Also said we should but the negotiations in the hands of a selected group of market traders not public school toffs. The EU wouldn’t have done us over if my mates Two Books Tony and Uncle Fester had been negotiating (names withheld in case any tax inspectors are reading this).
LikeLiked by 1 person