October 14-20, 2023
SATURDAY 14 In a week full of atrocity and mayhem, the weekly email from Positive News is more welcome than ever. Today I learn that post-Soviet states are at the vanguard of the green revolution. Vilnius in Lithuania has become the green capital of Europe, inheriting the crown from last year’s winner Tallinn, Estonia.
📌 Chris McGreal delivers another beautifully lucid explainer. How did Hamas come to power in Gaza? What happened to the PLO? Has the idea of a two-state solution been lost forever? All the answers are here. Two very determined Israeli men – Ariel Sharon and Bibi Netanyahu – emerge as the desperate drivers of this seemingly intractable conflict.
📌 At Marge’s in the Barbican for a congratulatory meal for the sale of our Brighton apartment we learned that Labour leader John Smith died in his bath in Cromwell Tower.
📌 I have been sworn to secrecy by my wife’s actor-cousin, who is staying with us while he rehearses a play he’s appearing in with a very famous actor. I cannot reveal anything about the famous actor’s private life, especially things to do with sex. I cannot reveal the actor’s vast wealth comfortable finances. And I cannot say anything whatsoever about the egg salad breakfasts from Mark’s & Spencer he has a passion for.
SUNDAY 15 In London the shards of glass on the pavement from a smashed shop window are said to be called “Hackney diamonds”. The expression joins “Peckham Rolex” (police surveillance tag) and “Croydon facelift” (scraped-back, tightly-tied ponytail hairstyle) in the dictionary of geographic social stigma.
📌 Reading Andrew Rawnsley sermonising on Starmer and Labour’s prospects of winning office after a successful performance at party conference, I wondered what was said at the same time prior to Labour’s victory in 1997. The author back then was Rawnsley’s predecessor Mike White, but it is almost hilarious how alike the two articles resemble one another, as does the vibe around the Labour leader – Blair then, Starmer now.
📌 My cousin Kate said she hadn’t gone to see Ken Loach’s The Old Oak because she felt that Loach was now so predictable that she’d “seen them all before”. The Old Oak would not confound that view – the politics, the romanticising of working-class culture, the heartstrings. But outside of that, the film’s theme – grieving – is heightened by some good cameo acting.
MONDAY 16 A message arrives from Lucy, the parliamentary assistant to our MP Nickie Aitken, who wants to visit the Golden Lane Stitchers, a community group I helped set up last year. Nickie will be pleased to join us on November 1, says Lucy. All I need to do now is decide whether on the day I should quiz Nickie about the £7,520 gift she accepted from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Qatar, in 2021, prior to the Gulf state hosting the 2022 World Cup.
📌 The printer won’t talk to the wi-fi so I’ve set aside a day to see if that can be remedied. I think my wife would secretly like to buy a new printer, and the one we have is, admittedly, old and rubbish. But I don’t like to be defeated by machines and modern technology, so let the battle commence. YouTube here I come.
📌 One of the contestants on Pointless is a canine massage therapist.
📌 The printer is talking to the wi-fi and wireless printing has resumed, thanks to YouTube.
TUESDAY 17 A new day and a new favourite podcast. Today’s NFP is British Scandal, in which the humorist Matt Ford and radio host Alice Levene deliver background narratives of past scandals such as the ascendency of Liz Truss, and the Sunday Times publication of the fake Hitler Diaries. All the stories are delivered intact factually but with sly sarcastic references and comments along the way.
📌 Two stitchworks finished in one morning. Marge’s grandson Max and his incontinent pooch has forced me to seek help to stretch it on to a frame, and the map of London’s hidden rivers is destined for the washing machine to remove an ugly accidental tomato stain.
WEDNESDAY 18 On their The Rest Is Politics podcast Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell interview Husam Zomlot, the Palestinian Ambassador to the UK, who continually repeats the assertion that the Israel/Palestine conflict is a political and not a religious one.
📌 The Guardian’s First Edition newsletter outlines the high drama we can expect in the coming weeks from the independent public inquiry into the Covid-19 pandemic, which has just opened with the description of a “toxic atmosphere” within government.
📌 Powerful and very personal piece by comedian Rob Delaney on his life lessons in dealing with death. No
If someone killed my child in front of me, I suspect I’d do my best to kill them right back.
📌 In the Oscar Wilde story I’m reading, the main character was told by a palm reader at a cocktail party that he is destined to commit murder. Thinking it’s best to get such a pre-ordained chore out of the way asap he attempts to poison someone but by chance fails. Now he is in search of explosives.
📌 To the Barbican for the 50th anniversary re-release of Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets, which still holds up as a storytelling landmark where toxic masculinity meets religious obsession.
THURSDAY 19 The word of the day is misinformation as the arguments over whose weapons hit the hospital in Gaza killing around 500 people. The BBC is under the cosh for its initial reporting of the event. On the world wide web I checked the difference between misinformation and disinformation. Misinformation is plain old bad information; disinformation is DELIBERATE bad information, which I thought was just plain old lies.
FRIDAY 20 The Prayer For The Day on the radio was delivered by some hippy who urged us to get in touch with our inner tree. Amen.
📌 Rishi’s mob took one hell of a beating in two by-elections. Our City of London ward elects a new councillor in two weeks, so it will be interesting to see if Labour’s triumph stretches to the ancient corridors of old power. The Labour candidate in our ward is the only woman in a field of four candidates.
📌 In an attempt to give scale to Labour’s by-election victory in Mid Bedfordshire one political commentator remarked (about the Mid Bedfordshire constituency) that “even the place names around here have double-barrelled names”.
📌 With the chaos that has overtaken the US House of Representatives’ election of a new Speaker I can’t imagine it being long before America can no longer be thought of as a democracy.
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Billy's Scrapbook 
Your wife’s actor cousin would have something to say if he read your post 🙂 Your stitchworks are wonderful. I read about the hidden rivers of London. It was fascinating. Thank you.
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