SUNDAY 1 Shirley took us on a day out to Brighton in her new-fangled electric car so we could collect some belongings from the Brighton apartment to bring back to London. We lunched in The Regency after a seafront stroll and spotted the comedian Mark Steel doing likewise.
MONDAY 2 The stitchwork of London’s hidden rivers got slightly spoiled when I put it into my jacket pocket, not realising that still in the pocket was one of the leftover baby tomatoes I had harvested from our allotment earlier in the week. I will try to wash out the tomato stain but part of me thinks I should leave it there, especially as it is barely visible.
📌 From Friday’s Newscast podcast on the decrepitude of the British economy I learned that Milton Keynes is a ray of hope and has become a hub for high-performing robotics.
📌 At the Barbican Conservatory I joined a group meeting to devise self-guided tours, activities and workshops to make this botanical wonderland more accessible to everyday users. Then on my way home I spotted a dead magpie. Nature can be both beautiful and cruel.
📌 A political podcaster speculated that Rishi will make fools of us all by announcing in his big speech on Wednesday that the HS2 extension from Birmingham to Manchester will in fact go ahead after all and not be axed as has been leaked.
TUESDAY 3 On TV last night the impressionist Jan Ravens did a fabulous version of Liz Truss as a Daddy’s Girl. Ravens uses the stereotype to build a character for her impression, which ultimately casts impressionists as simply another type of actor. Or is this just what all actors do, pretend convincingly (dramatically or humourously) to be someone else?
📌 In the New Statesman Freddie Hayward neatly sums up Rishi’s predicament…
Rishi Sunak has become the absentee landlord of the Conservative Party.
📌 The short-short story in pink is very nearly nearly finished. You really have to be committed to the story to complete this amount of text in stitch, and I’m not sure I’ll just be glad to be rid of it.
📢 Liz Truss is the human equivalent of honking out a joke about a terrorist attack while they’re still pulling bodies out of the rubble.Marina Hyde, the Guardian
WEDNESDAY 4 Rafael Behr paints a Hogarthian portrait of our ruling party at its Manchester “conference” as a lurid circus of performing animals, pseudo-magic and sideshows of freaks and dancers.
The spectacle that has unfolded in Manchester this week is not just the endgame of a tired government. It is the late stages of moral and intellectual putrefaction.
📌 Rishi got his daughter to introduce him on stage for a big speech. He started by calling his wife a “long-term decision for a brighter future”. He went on to describe delivering “prescriptions” for the family pharmacy business. I pictured young Rishi cruising around on his bike in a hoodie, dropping off brown packages to grim people with dark rings under their eyes.
📌 After a tip-off from Jennifer I am starting to like Darren’s London Art Round Up a lot (and not just because I’ve been in it). He always manages to find some exciting hidden exhibitions to visit. Soon we will go to see Paula Rego’s fun-time floor drawings in a gallery we can walk to from home.
📌 Vera told us Yvonne had suffered a broken heart. We all commiserated, but none of us actually knew Yvonne had a romance on the go. Then Vera clarified that Yvonne’s broken heart was a medical rather than a romantic condition. She said it was a failure of the muscles surrounding the heart.
THURSDAY 5 It’s widely reported that Rishi fluffed his last chance to behave like a prime minister. Speculation is rife as to who will be the next leader of the Conservatives. Penny Mordaunt is channelling her inner desire to look regal.
📌 I said I sort of felt sorry for Rishi and my wife looked at me with horror.
📷 A hidden church just off Shepherdess Walk.
📌 For the Babyshoes writing group at Headway (exactly 100 words) I selected the title “Cider Socialist” for a scene that continues the Heidi & Martin him-n-her thread.
When Martin told Heidi that Peggy Jay was “the doyen of champagne socialism”, she hadn’t a clue what he meant. They were in Burgh House, the historic manor and museum that screams the leafy lefty north-London politics that Peggy Jay was famous for. They’d heard the café was worth a visit. Martin tried to explain champagne socialism but got way out of his depth. “Are we champagne socialists?” Heidi asked. Martin said he’d like to think they were prosecco socialists, “but in truth we’re probably cider socialists”. Heidi nodded as if she understood and took another bite from her scone.
📌 The air-dry miniature prototype for a ceramic globe featuring the ancient supercontinent of Pangaea has survived intact despite some hairy moments when I was convinced it would shatter during construction.
📌 At Headway I learned that when he once visited the Timber Wharf HQ on a open day Russell Brand unsuccessfully “tried it on” with one of the staff.
FRIDAY 6 It feels like the day after a general election, like a new phase has just started. When Labour stops talking about its victory at the Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election in Scotland as “seismic” maybe it can start to talk about the realities of rebuilding an exhausted and decrepit nation. Michael Shanks, the triumphant new MPi in R&HW made a good point in his victory speech. He said his win was a rejection of two failed governments, the one in Scotland and the one in Westminster. Labour should try to remember that. The “not them” vote is the most powerful constituency, but it is also a shifty thing that needs to be reassured that another disaster is not in the nature of the political cycle, the merry-go-round of enchantment from one party to the other. If Labour doesn’t continually remind voters what an utter mess the Conservatives made of their time in power, and make a real difference to people’s lives, they will end up in the same place.
📌 Rishi is selling off all the land and properties he bought to build HS2 between Birmingham and Manchester.
SATURDAY 7 The New Statesman has a taste of the grief Labour will inherit from the present government should it win next year’s general election. Water charges are deviously triggered to escalate by 60% in December next year.
📌 A casual browsing of the “People You May Know” gallery on Facebook yielded a character I don’t know called Sybella Luxuria.
📌 Centre-ground Conservatives refuse to roll over to make way for the Suella’s bulldozer from the Rabid Right. Former Justice Secretary David Gauke has already established himself as a regular voice at the lefty New Statesman and today in the Guardian ex Education Secretary Justine Greening is offering friendly advice to Keir Starmer.
📷 Headline from the Guardian.
📌 Fools, Frauds and Firebrands is an essay of startling clarity and telling detail by Will Lloyd on hapless Rishi and what we can expect from the Conservatives once he’s shuffled off to hedge-fund utopia.
📌 I asked my wife to remind me why we don’t like a contestant on Strictly Come Dancing expecting her to say something about dancing. She replied: “He’s boring and charmless.”
SUNDAY 8 Sam’s Legs was always a beautifully crazy drawing. Translating it into stitch is a tricky proposition made all the more worthwhile by the sight of the reverse side, where a multitude of stitchwork sins are laid bare.
📌 The key safe to our allotments has been attacked by vandals and the key stolen. Frantic exchanges on WhatsApp followed. Who did it? What shall we do about it?
MONDAY 9 Great news! Thanks to a flood of public donations, London’s Vagina Museum, “the world’s first bricks-and-mortar museum dedicated to vaginas, vulvas and the gynaecological anatomy”, is open again after an enforced closure.
📌 Sam sent an epic portrait of Andy Warhol that makes him look almost normal.
📌 When last week I posted a picture I papped of the comedian Mark Steel at a restaurant in Brighton, one of my fellow bloggers commented, “Blimey! Mark Steel’s let himself go”. The reason could be that Steel has recently been diagnosed with cancer and is soon to begin treatment.
TUESDAY 10 Max’s dog’s face looks like it’s had the stitchwork equivalent of bad plastic surgery.
📌 As the Supreme Court prepares to hand down its verdict on the government’s claim that Rwanda is a “safe country” to which Rishi and Suella can bundle off stubborn asylum seekers, Tortoise declares it anything but in a lengthy dispatch with compelling evidence.
📌 When at the start of his big speech Keir Starmer was attacked by a protestor armed with a tub of glitter he looked rattled. The protestor was dragged away on the floor by two women who clearly didn’t get the irony of it. Sir Starmer then gathered himself enough to make a patronising remark about the beauty of his wife’s dress.
WEDNESDAY 11 There’s a general liberal media agreement that Starmer smashed it. His big speech at the Labour conference in Liverpool both nailed his authority over the party and made him look like a prime minister waiting to happen. On the New Agents podcast Lewis Goodall said Starmer and would-be Chancellor Rachel Reeves both have the ability to be radical without sounding radical. They also referenced Starmer’s tactic of using his working-class backstory to distinguish himself and Labour from billionaire Rishi and his party of the privileged.
📌 At St Luke’s for a Men’s Shed cookery session (spagbol, foccacia, carrot salad) Graham told me that his girlfriend used to be in Hagar The Womb, a band name I recognised from the 1980s. He said they split up in an argument over door receipts with The Three Johns when they were the support act. Graham also said they recently re-formed as The Hags.
📌 Keir Starmer has rebranded Conservatism, it says in the New Statesman.
📌 My wife’s cousin Mike arrived to stay with us for a month while he rehearses his part as a murderer in an upcoming production of Macbeth starring Ralph Fiennes. The weird thing (or maybe it’s a new trend) is that the play will not be performed in conventional theatres but in big out-of-town warehouses that look more like film stages or rave venues. My wife checked the website and nearly all of the tickets are already sold out. At the end of the first day of rehearsal Mike said one of the producers flounced in wearing a black cloak and a Chanel brooch.
THURSDAY 12 Israel is being seriously questioned about the kind of war it has decided to fight with Hamas.
📷 In the grounds of St Monica’s school in Hoxton a remarkable colour combination has been left to grow with the changing weather.
FRIDAY 13 Fabulous level-headed analysis in the Guardian of Keir Starmer’s freshly minted articulacy about class. It is, says Aditya Chakrabortty, skin-deep posturing on a subject that has as much relevance now as it ever did.
📌 My new favourite podcast is Media Confidential from Prospect magazine, which is now edited by former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger. In this episode the Israel/Hamas conflict is explored through those who are trying to report it and the methods they use to bring balance and context. If it has a fault it is that Rusbridger and fellow presenter Lionel Barber (ex Financial Times editor) are boringly fair minded and it is only through the people they interview that any real punch is felt.
📌 In the stitchwork of Marge’s grandson Max in his school play he is now wearing the most lurid golden suit seen since Elton John had a bad day in the costume department.
📌 In the Inspector Singh story I’m reading, The Singapore School of Villainy, a young lawyer in kills himself when he is outed as homosexual. This seemed odd given that for years Singapore was under British rule. And yet as recent as one year ago, homosexuality was still illegal in the former province. It has now been decriminalised, but same-sex marriage is still illegal. In the story the Singapore police show a lot of leniency and prosecutions not given much priority. Even so, stigma it seems was able to issue its own death sentence.
📌 A remastered version of the Jonathan Demme Talking Heads film Stop Making Sense at the Barbican was a great reminder of the weird genius of David Byrne. His performance trance only looked suspect once, when he took off the fat jacket of his fat suit to reveal the fat waistband of his fat trousers. Otherwise, it was a gig (or three) you wished you’d been at.
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.
SATURDAY 21 I began last week’s scrapbook with some good stories from Positive News to offset the horrors of events in the Holy Land. This week Positive News has uplifting stories right from the heart of that conflict.
📌 The swollen left ankle is stubbornly refusing to mend itself.
📌 Never was a great fan of Bobby Charlton as a player, though I did like the dignified way he conducted himself in public as he got older.
📌 Michelle got quite excited by a picture I sent her of the reverse side of the first in a series of stitchworks I’m doing as a support act to a future exhibition of Sam’s drawings and the drawings that have been made in her mark-making workshops.
📌 We finished TV’s The Reckoning, a fact-based serial drama about the evil paedophile entertainer Jimmy Savile, or “Sav” to the people he liked to call his friends. Savile is played by the comedian Steve Coogan, who skilfully never allows comedy to creep into his performance. He is convincing in his portrayal because he mixes his great talent as an impressionist with a desire to interrogate the psychology of the character seriously, with growing menace throughout. The ending is especially powerful.
SUNDAY 22 Last night I woke up from a dream in which I was trapped in a dull grey police interview room where a friend was having a horribly personal row with her adult son. I woke up when the son stormed out in anger and his mother sat quietly for 30 seconds then left the room gracefully, without expression. Before that I was aware that the atmosphere in the room, and possibly the entire room itself, had become electrically charged. After waking from the dream I listened to Poetry Extra on the radio and it was about using your dreams to write poetry. The trick, said the dream-poet featured, was to not try to interpret the dream but to re-enter it in your imagination and just let it be, describe it and feel your way around it (“let the purple horse eat the cloud”). I found that impossible, largely because for me my dream was in no way surreal and just a plain old metaphor for the Israel/Palestine conflict.
📌 As we sat in the cinema watching Martin Scorsese’s Killers Of The Flower Moon I wondered whether every single Scorsese film has a good/evil/confession/redemption theme running through it. Or was it just that we saw it so soon after the 50th anniversary screening last week of Mean Streets. The theme is much better developed and much more sophisticated in the current film than it was 50 years ago, but it was still the same theme.
MONDAY 23 I’m reading another hilarious Oscar Wilde story. In this one a wealthy American family move into an old English stately home despite knowing it to be occupied by a 300-year-old ghost. When on first encounter the new owner arrogantly insults the ghost a farcical power struggle begins.
📌 RIP John Vidal, 74. He was strangely witty for such a serious man.
📌 It’s worth seeing documentaries on the big screen and the film on spy writer John le Carré, The Pigeon Tunnel, was special for its artistic photography and music but dull as ditchwater for learning anything interesting about its subject other than his lifelong commitment to the construction of mystery and enigma, in this case about himself. It was intriguing to note the number of executives attached to the project with the surname Cornwell. John le Carré’s real name was David Cornwell.
TUESDAY 24 If Labour is still looking for a “quick win” to cement a healthy majority it might (or might not) win at next year’s general election, EV charging could be it. If Labour were to instal Ministry of Transport rapid vehicle chargers in all motorway service stations, it would 1 Put state-owned, revenue-fertile businesses back on the political agenda; 2 Score massively with the green lobby; 3 Put a big smile on the face of the Electric Vehicle manufacturing industry; 4 Create jobs.
📌 I sometimes like to frame an essay question in my head and then attempt to answer it (in my head. I’m too lazy to write it down). Today the question was…
Has the past 13 years of Tory rule in Britain made its voters think more seriously about politics?
The answer I came up with (in my head) boiled down to…
I hope so.
📌 Nicola Sturgeon is up and running on life outside the fast lane of Scottish politics. She’s passed her driving test and got a job at the New Statesman as a book reviewer.
📌 My wife’s actor cousin Mike tells us his job tomorrow is to visit a butcher’s shop in Marylebone to stab a dead pig’s head with a sharp knife. He is rehearsing the part of a killer in the William Shakespeare play Macbeth and it is important, says the play’s director, for Mike to feel the steel puncturing the flesh.
📌 Marge sent over her finished Art Class project drawing. The theme was the NHS and she said some of her fellow classmates did not quite get the politics of a quarter-brain Boris holding a bedpan begging bowl with not very much in it.
WEDNESDAY 25 The TV journalist Gavin Esler is fed up with hearing stories about the deterioration of life in Britain, so he’s written a book about it. And in the Guardian he tells us that it’s not Boris, or Liz, or Rishi who’s to blame for the great nosedive in our quality of life. It’s OUR OWN fault for putting up with a system that allows it to happen. At one point reading the article I expected him to recommend a full-blown people’s revolution. But no, he chickens out and whispers something has to change, being ever so careful not to wake anyone up.
📌 Absolutely fabulous summary of Rishi Sunak’s predicament by Will Lloyd in the New Statesman.
Sunak is a studious mute in an era defined by splenetic, work-shy demagogues.
THURSDAY 26 A rare full day out on a group visit (9 old friends) first to the David Hockney exhibition/production at Lightroom in King’s Cross, then on to the Welcome Collection for a new exhibition titled The Cult of Beauty.
FRIDAY 27 We’re on the fourth episode (of 6) in the “true” crime drama Love & Death and we’re still waiting to see if anyone’s dead, though the title suggests someone is.
📌 Mashing up news stories in snide ways is often what NewsThump does best.
📌 The New European has a very cutting but funny list of 50 people Britain could do without. Laurence Fox (number 35) is described as “the cretin’s cretin”. Nigel Farage is at number 18, Jacob Rees-Mogg at 12 and, it says, “younger than Kylie Minogue”. Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters is at number 9 and the top spot goes to, mmm, Suella.
📌 My wife has a unique way of filing her boots. It’s a top-down bottom-up palindromic formulation that goes UGG/Chelsea/Chelsea/Ugg, which sounds like a tribal chant.
SATURDAY 28 The Guardian has a very good background explainer on the role of Qatar as a mediator in the Israel/Hamas conflict. In what from a distance looks like an impossible problem to solve is revealed as thorny in the extreme, yes, but nevertheless open to possibilities of progress via numerous back-channel negotiations.
📌 I didn’t knead the wholemeal dough enough to make bread, so what came out was something that looked more like a massive dog biscuit. I started again with white flour and finally got something that looked like you could put cheese on.
📌 The Shakshuka in Black Olive was far superior to the one they serve in Mola.
SUNDAY 29 In the New European, philosopher Nigel Warburton picks through the Israel/Hamas conflict in terms of the classic dilemma in which a runaway train is heading towards six people tied to a railway track. You can save one and sacrifice five, or you can let them all perish. It’s YOUR CHOICE.
📌 The Nile Rodgers/Chic tribute band at Pizza Express Live in Holborn were surprisingly good, though they did run out of songs towards the end and drifted into a generalised disco/funk routine featuring songs from Diana Ross, Chaka Khan and Gloria Gaynor. Top marks went to trumpet player Karen in her sequinned mini-dress and to Sandra for kicking off the dancefloor action.
MONDAY 30 My Duolingo language studies reveal me to be a consistent failure in two areas. In both French and Spanish I serially screw up on gender and accents. I always attempt a guess (adíos or adiós?) and usually get it wrong.
📌 The Guardian reports that the arms dealers are rubbing their hands with glee over the Israel/Hamas conflict.
📌 Went for a coffee with Neherun and she produced a gift – her own handmade ceramic herb tags for our allotment.
📌 Rebel motorists in New Zealand have started a competition to cause maximum disturbance to sleeping citizens by playing Celine Dion songs on their car horns.
📌 It is hard reading today’s Sensemaker from Tortoise to conclude that if the Palestinian Authority were to have a stronger and more imaginative leader than Mahmood Abbas, Hamas might not have felt so emboldened and so many lives lost.
📌 The first of the stitchworks from Sam‘s Fantasy Detail workshops is finished. Workshop guests are asked to put an imaginary head and body on a pair of the famous Legs Sam created in ink about seven years ago.
TUESDAY 31 On Farming Today we learned that as farmers start to move their cattle indoors for winter, the dung they deposit therein, once covered with fresh hay acts as an underfloor heating system. This allows the animals to either lounge around in the warm or take fresh-air strolls to suit their state of mind.
📌 The live streaming of the Covid 19 inquiry jumped up a gear today with witness appearances from Boris’s chief henchmen Lee Cain (communications) and special adviser Dominic Cummings. Both gave very assured accounts of their actions in government during the pandemic, but the overall impression from both testimonies was of a government and a prime minister not in charge of anything. Dubious unelected advisers and bullied civil servants made all the key decisions. It will be fun when Boris appears to give his evidence because he was universally referred to during testimonies as “Trolley” (veering, out-of-control shopping trolley) and ridiculed widely for his incompetence. It all makes Britain’s then prime minister look foolish and weak, which some will obviously see as excusable but others as very dangerous, or worse, tragic.
📌 I needed a birthday card for my niece so I did a wonky digital paint job on a photo of my latest stitchwork.
📌 At Milton Court we were surprised to be entranced by a bunch of Guild Hall students (The Guild Hall Big Band) playing the music of jazz legend Tadd Dameron. The only disappointment was to see no black faces on stage, and only a handful in the audience. My wife noticed that the conductor couldn’t remember the band members’ names. All of this seems to signal some sort of cultural smugness, though the music was nevertheless enjoyable.
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