July 22-28, 2023
SATURDAY 22 Farming Today has recently featured three big stories about farmers joining cooperatives (beef, milk, fertiliser).
📌 My wife has been sacked as a spy for the Post Office. Her cover was blown when one of the “mystery” parcels she receives as part of her undercover mission to test the Post Office deliveries system had already been opened and its contents seen. This means that the postie who delivered it knew she was a spy. She was paid in stamps and has such a vast surplus that she’d taken to selling them to neighbours at a knockdown price. All that ends now she’s been compromised.
📌 To the BBC for a radio interview with Robert Elms about the upcoming Headway exhibition at the Barbican. All very relaxed and we got to say everything that needed saying.
SUNDAY 23 Glad to have caught the last half hour of Colm Tóibín reading extracts from his book Mad, Bad, Dangerous To Know, which was all about JB Yeats, WB’s dad. Tóibín reads beautifully, with a storyteller’s awareness of pace and drama.
📌 Simon Tisdall has made it his mission to find more and more extravagant ways to insult Vladimir Putin.
Putin embodies Russia’s international isolation and growing spiritual degradation. Like a daemon, hobgoblin or kraken of ancient folklore, he’s metamorphosed into global bogeyman or bugaboo – a monstrous, nightmarish figure personifying evil.
Simon Tisdall, the Guardian
📌 Andrew Rawnsley knows why Labour failed to take Boris’s old seat from the Conservatives. They did not sell to the voters of Uxbridge and Ruislip the benefits of getting rid of high-polluting vehicles from the roads and they didn’t punch back when the Conservatives sold lies about the London Mayor’s clean-air drive to the same voters.
📌 My wife is out for lunch with friends and I was so proud of the lunch I cooked for myself that I sent her a picture.
MONDAY 24 I was asked to come up with some wall text to go with the upcoming exhibition at Burgh House in Hampstead, which features drawings by Cecil and a few stitchworks by me. I said in the text that I enjoyed making stitch versions of Cecil’s drawings because their depiction “opens up the imagined life stories” of the characters portrayed. I went on to say something about feeling like an actor while I’m doing it.
📌 And then came the awful discovery that there was a spelling mistake in my latest stitchwork, a short story about my childhood. Corrections in stitchwork are tedious and time-consuming.
TUESDAY 25 Doing faces in stitchwork is my new challenge. Stopping them from looking like cartoons is a big part of that challenge, but it’s one I’m enjoying so far. This one started as a very quick wax monoprint several years ago, from a picture in a newspaper. I can’t even remember who it’s meant to be.
📌 The River Seine has been cleaned up beyond recognition in preparation for the Paris 2024 Olympics. It was all made possible by building a massive underground reservoir to hold the storm water that follows heavy rain. Previously the filthy water simply gushed into the river.
📌 My favourite performance in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a cameo by Gary Oldman of Harry S Truman. Other standouts include a pudgy Matt Damon as a military big-mouth and Robert Downey JR as an evil Lewis Strauss. Emily Blunt’s Mrs Oppenheimer is the only meaty female role in this powerful, male-dominated film that will probably end up becoming the most remembered account of the Oppenheimer story. Marge says Karen won’t watch it because she thinks Nolan plays fast and loose with facts.
WEDNESDAY 26 Michelle read the biographical wall text I wrote for the upcoming exhibition with Cecil at Burgh House. She suggested one small change to remove a reference to Cecil’s unscrupulous boss back in 1950s British Guyana (as was), from where Cecil stowed away. Then she hinted that there was still time for me to do one more stitch version of a Cecil drawing. I’ve already done 6, so I wasn’t initially tempted. Then I recalled our visit to the Burgh House gallery last week and remembered what a fabulous space it is and how good Cecil’s drawings and my stitchworks will look when installed. This ended with me selecting yet another of Cecil’s drawings to stitch.
📌 Another very disappointing outcome from the City of London Corporation’s repairs team. We still have a leaky roof and crumbling brickwork. The attempted paint job was a horror.
📌 There’s a story in today’s news saying beware the phone call from your wayward child asking for money because it could be an AI scam. Maybe AI fakery will signal the resurrection of snail mail. Agree a secret code word with your wayward child by post and only send them money if they include it somewhere in their written request.
📌 To Barbican Cinema 1 for Barbie, a film that is hilarious and serious in equal measure, if occasionally a bit preachy. Best line goes to Ryan Gosling as Ken, who in a late moment of self-awareness utters to Barbie, “Once I realised The Patriarchy wasn’t about horses, I kinda lost interest.” I will enjoy listening to what viewers have to say about the transformation in the character of Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt).
📌 RIP Sinéad O’Connor, 56.
THURSDAY 27 I always look for a single sentence to sum up a situation. In the case of Nigel Farage’s bank account, the sentence in a Guardian editorial does the job…
Purging corporate bosses in the middle of the night to appease the fury of a maverick populist is not the behaviour of a mature government.
Guardian editorial
📌 Michelle sent me a photo of my five Stroke paintings next to a big cut-out by Jason from the Curve gallery, where the installation of differently various is nearing completion. Later I was interviewed in the Curve by Jane from Channel 4 News but imagine my contribution for Saturday broadcast will end up on the cutting-room floor. The Guardian correspondent Cathy ignored me but was apparently horrified to learn that the ramp was a temporary addition to the Curve for this exhibition only. Visitors to the exhibition are in for a rich experience. The look of pride on Michelle’s face was a joy.
FRIDAY 28 The Socialist Worker is outraged by the hypocrisy of some of the glowing tributes to Sinéad O’Connor, who has sadly died aged 56. The Sun newspaper is one of the chief culprits.
📌 The England women’s football team should be the automatic owners of the World Cup of Cool Names. Special awards to Alessia Russo and Lucy Bronze.
📌 And finally… The differently various exhibition opened at the Barbican. My favourite exhibit is Terry’s Neural Reef ceramics. Saw lots of old faces with good memories, but was disappointed that Frankie was a no-show until we got home and saw her on Newsnight saying Starmer is a wimp, in a roundabout way, much to the irritation of Peter Hain.
Read all of my scrapbook diaries…
PLEASE MESSAGE WITH ANY CORRECTIONS, BIG OR SMALL.
Billy's Scrapbook 
Week 30 already? Where does the time go?
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