Scrapbook: Week 23

June 3-9, 2023

SATURDAY 3 An air of gloom hangs over both of us. Yesterday in the Hermitage, while enjoying a tuna sandwich with capers and a glass of rosé, we got a call to say the sale of our Brighton apartment has fallen through. It’s hard to work out who is to blame. Our “cash” buyer had claimed to have sold a property but he hadn’t. The estate agents did not verify his claims, so the lie was not detected. Either way we now have an empty apartment we must treat as little more than a settled spot on a campsite (two chairs and an inflatable bed). A new sale will happen when it happens.

📌 To the quaint Catholic almshouse enclave at Begijnhoff to see if they keep their lawns as trim as those at our London neighbours in Charterhouse Square. They do. Then to breakfast on the canal and a chance to see some pavement clog dancers doing their stuff. Then it was on to the flower market followed by an experimental tram ride way out east hoping to glimpse the lapping shores of the Zeider Zee but thwarted by Tram 26 disappearing into a tunnel beneath the waterway. We thought it might be like travelling down the Florida Keys. It wasn’t. It was a dreary ride through somewhere that looked not unlike downtown Milton Keynes.

📌 The gloom lifted with the arrival of our crab cakes at the Seafood Bar.

SUNDAY 4 An idyllic stroll around the Nine Streets and the central canal area led us to the wonderful Huis Marseille photography gallery and a superb exhibition of work by the Spanish neorealist Carlos Pérez Siquier, dominated by a collection dating from the 1950s depicting La Chanca, the working-class area of his native Almería.

MONDAY 5 Duolingo has got me confused on the difference between pièce and salle. And where does that leave the poor chambre?

📌 Yesterday for a writing project I penned a 100-word imaginary suicide note full of despair. Today a bright light on the horizon comes with the news that Universal Basic Income, a subject I have droned on about for years, is to be trialled in two areas of England. Can’t wait to say I told you so.

📌 Today’s Sensemaker from Tortoise Media rips through the naked cronyism of the lists of friends and colleagues Boris Johnson and Liz Truss have submitted for honours.

📌 On the treadmill video screen in the gym I visited the Devil’s Punchbowl trail for the last 5k. Wow!

TUESDAY 6 The Guardian has put together a fabulous photo collection dating from the 1950s of Sicily under the mafia.

📌 At a City of London gala reception for volunteers at the Guildhall last night we met sheriffs (who are permitted on occasions to carry swords), several aldermen and one alderwoman (who have large pockets in their red, ermine-trimmed gowns), and common councillors (who if they’re lucky have small pockets in their blue gowns). The Harry Potter references flowed freely. I got bored eating micro tapas and swigging wine, so I took some pictures, mainly of the different shoes worn for the occasion but also, prompted by Natasha, of William Beckford, a literary dilettante, sadist and slave trader whose statue stands in the Guildhall.

📌 One thing I never knew about my wife of 35 years until she retired is that she holds running conversations with herself. I used to think she was talking to me but soon I realised she was just telling her IPad off for not having those shoes in her size. Now I simply ignore what she says until I’m spoken to directly. This annoys her.

WEDNESDAY 7 In our youth one of the biggest social fears was something called VD. It’s not called that anymore. Venereal Disease came in two forms. The scariest was Syphilis, which could result in death (our school music teacher had a list of famous victims that included Schubert, Smetana and Delius). The bad but still shameful Gonorrhoea was difficult to spell but could be dealt with medically at a place called the “clap clinic”. The Guardian tells us today that both syphilis and gonorrhoea are running rampage in the UK. They are referred to in modern times as STDs (Sexually Transmitted Disease) and the clap clinic is now called a Sexual Health Centre.

📌 The ball games area beneath our bedroom window has found a new use…

📌 A crazy thought arrived in the middle of the night. Putin will continue to destroy Ukraine then exit abruptly, leaving behind a devastated nation for the EU and US to clear up, a burdensome and fraught task that will bog down both power blocs for decades. Then Russia will rise, pick off a few compliant eastern-European countries and become an overweight poodle to China’s obese rottweiler.

📌 In Art Class our theme for 2 weeks is Repetition. I am trying to make a crazy 3d rotating picture, which is half completed. In the meantime I played around with repetition and pattern using some cheap postcards I got in an Amsterdam photo gallery last weekend. I got 10 identical postcards of a sultry young woman staring defiantly at the viewer (€2.50 for 10). I will experiment more with this image, but made some roughs to be going on with.

And just in case the teacher thought I was slacking I dug out an old image of a cellist that uses a repetition of coloured layers in different transparencies.

📌 Congratulations West Ham United. You didn’t play that well, but you bagged the prize.

📌 More grisly food descriptions appear on p125 of my Inspector Chen Cao story, A Case Of Two Cities by Qiu Xiaolong. Chen is having a working “breakfast” with his trusty colleague Sgt Yu: “It was not exactly soup… but hot, savory liquid with a rich flavor made of crab ovary and digestive glands.”

THURSDAY 8 In Duolingo (French) I have been promoted to the Emerald League but continue to linger in the bottom three, perpetually at risk of dropping back into the Ruby League. This must be what it’s like to be Norwich.

📌 The Conversation really does have some of the finest stories of our time. This one dovetails beautifully with yesterday’s ramble around VD.

FRIDAY 9 I’m starting to think I’m maybe overworking the Repetition idea.

📌 I’ve got the horrible feeling that George Osborne is trying to make a comeback. Watch out for upcoming “reflections” that ooze contrition.

📌 The Labour Party is coming under fire in the media for “rowing back” on the idea that they are the party that plays fast and loose with the taxpayers’ money.

📌 To an awesome exhibition of American Folk Art at the Royal Academy called Souls Grown Deep Like The Rivers. In the bookshop I asked a strange woman what she thought of the exhibition. She said she thought it was strange, but seemed incapable of expanding on that.

📌 Boris has finally thrown in the towel and blames everyone else for his monumental defeat.

Read all of my scrapbook diaries…

PLEASE MESSAGE WITH ANY CORRECTIONS, BIG OR SMALL.

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