Scrapbook: Week 44

October 28-November 3, 2023

SATURDAY 28 The Guardian has a very good background explainer on the role of Qatar as a mediator in the Israel/Hamas conflict. 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. Whether Qatar is an honest broker in this is an open question.

📌 I didn’t knead the wholemeal dough enough to make bread, so what came out was a lump that looked more like a massive dog biscuit. I started again with white flour and finally got what looked like something 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 always screw up on gender and accents. I stupidly 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 – 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 confident 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 Guildhall students (The Guildhall 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.

WEDNESDAY 1 An article in the New European uses the disgraceful behaviour inside government as revealed in Baroness Hallett’s Covid-19 Inquiry to list a number of prominent people who hold power but have no shame (hello, Boris). It made me think a bit harder about the nature of shame. I also asked the worldwide web for its view.

Shame has various root causes. Sometimes shame is instilled in early childhood by the harsh words or actions of parents or other authority figures, or from bullying by peers. Shame can stem from a person’s own poor choices or harmful behaviour.

Maybe I should have asked for the root causes of shameless instead, but that would only have yielded reviews of the TV series Shameless, which has nothing to do with the amoral behaviour of renegade government officials.

📌 Our MP Nickie Aitken visited our community stitching group, The Golden Lane Stitchers, and got stuck in, stopping only to spread enough charm to prop up the meagre majority she holds, to offer her views on the Israel/Hamas conflict and to predict that she will lose her job sometime next year. Her parliamentary assistant Lucy had very cold hands but nevertheless bravely made several repeated attempts to thread a needle.

📌 At the wardmote for tomorrow’s election of a new member for common council I noticed that Natasha, who we haven’t seen for a while, is very pregnant. The overall flavour of the wardmote was as ever adherence to historical tradition, signalled right at the start of the meeting by the Ward Beadle, who in tricorn hat and elaborate robes begins with a short introductory speech.

Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! All manner of persons having to do at this Court of Wardmote for the Ward of Cripplegate holden here this day before the Worshipful Alderwoman Susan Pearson of this Ward, draw near and give your attendance. God Save The King.

THURSDAY 2 The all-day Open Space event at the Barbican posed the question “How can we use co-creation and evaluation to bring about institutional change?” We then all split into small groups to interrogate the idea. It was a nice chemistry of people and it was easy to have fun playing with the theme. My main contribution was a soundbite that stated, “All organisations need a heart attack every now and then to keep them alive.”

📌 Facebook reminds me that seven years ago I painted a picture of a World War I rifle lingering over a poppy field.

FRIDAY 3 Against all expectations our friend June’s daughter won the local election and a seat on the Council. Interesting to note that she stood as a Labour Party candidate against three others (all men) who described themselves as “Independent”.

📌 The best long read on Gaza I’ve come across is from Adam Shatz in the London Review of Books. And long it is. His conclusion – that Israel and Palestine are stuck with each other – shuffles in almost apologetically, with the only addition being a repetition of the view that politics has the answer, somewhere yet to be found, and that violence never works.

📌 I have a 1pm haircut appointment tomorrow with my wife.

📌 At Barbican Cinema 3 we saw a tantalising switch in motive during The Killer as assassin Michael Fassbender first kills for money, in a weirdly religious way, then starts killing for love, breaking all his previous commandments. SPOILER ALERT: he then tries killing for revenge but ends up deciding that killing is a bad idea. Wow! What a revelation! The saving grace in this Netflix dud is a mesmerising casual cameo performance by Tilda Swinton.

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