November 4-10, 2023
SATURDAY 4 I tripped up last week, accidentally referring to someone as “she” rather than their preferred pronoun “they”. The gender debate is a minefield. In my Duolingo language studies I get very steamed up on the seeming absurdity of gendered nouns in both French and Spanish, and as a copy editor I grew to despise gendered pronouns full stop. Frustrating as all this is, it’s nice to learn that other countries are grappling with the same issue and in characteristically different ways.
📌 Facebook reminds me that eight years ago I was making Christmas cards in readiness.
📌 My wife’s actor cousin Mike came home today in pain. The overweight youth-theatre actors from Liverpool (“the twin tubs”) he was rehearsing with had duffed him up badly in a fight scene in Macbeth.
SUNDAY 5 A neighbour’s young children were excited to find me on the Archive Jukebox in Barbican library babbling about the history of the Golden Lane Estate.
📌 Interesting to note from a Guardian Opinion piece about class and political allegiance that social scientists have yet to find a useful definition of class that stretches beyond classification by occupation and education. The article briefly cites the case of Angela Rayner, the deputy leader of the Labour Party, but goes no further than to label Rayner (working-class in power) as some kind of outlier. I once told a friend asking about class that I am economically middle class but historically and culturally working class. She told me she was the reverse. Her job is psychology counselling.
📌 Liverpool desperately scraped a 1-1 draw against Luton Town with a late goal from Luis Díaz, whose father is still being held captive by kidnappers somewhere in Colombia.
📌 When we were younger my wife never seemed that keen on dancing in hold, so over the years I got used to watching her dance by herself, lost in music. Now I get the same remote pleasure watching her sing in her community choir. And it’s more thrilling for her to perform songs she really likes in big-choir performances at big-time venues such as the Barbican, as she did tonight (alongside 250 others), conducted by the King of Gospel André J Thomas.
MONDAY 6 That awful moment when I need to accept I may be out of your depth is getting closer.
📌 Every stitchwork rendition of Sam’s famous Legs drawing is different but still in essence the same. The current one has many faults but still easily identified in the mind as being what it’s meant to be.
📌 On Radio 4’s Battle Grounds the rural journalist Anna Jones met a militant vegan who became a dairy farmer.
TUESDAY 7 In the King’s Speech Rishi laid out his big plan to win next year’s election. It’s a phased total ban on smoking.
📌 Maybe I should forget about the show side of my stitchworks because the reverse side is always the best thing about them.
📌 Destination City, a sales pitch at St Giles Church to flog the idea of the City of London as a place of leisure, included a collection of corporates with limited presentation skills and a PowerPoint projection made for a different audience. They hadn’t bargained for a bunch of difficult residents demanding to know dull things like why there were so few public toilets in the Square Mile. As I watched the hapless sales people walk away with fleas in their ears an apt look could be seen in the face of one of Father Jack’s new modern sculptures.
WEDNESDAY 8 At the state opening of Parliament and the King’s Speech yesterday, Rishi and Keir Starmer marched in side by side laughing together. It’s hard to imagine what they were laughing at given the plight of both leaders with unruly members of their own parties. Starmer is losing support over his “diplomatic” stance on the Israel/Hamas conflict and his muddled view of the difference between a ceasefire and a humanitarian pause; Rishi has Suella openly plotting to grab his job asap with speeches designed to excite the looniest parts of the Loony Party (she wants police officers to confiscate tents from homeless people sleeping rough). The commentariat agrees that Suella is angling to be sacked, but Rishi seems reluctant to do that for reasons that everyone says are complex.
📌 I wasn’t expecting to be impressed by a film called How To Have Sex about three randy young women on a clubbing holiday in Crete. But as a coming-of-age story with hidden depths you only glimpse when least expecting to, it is hard to beat. Mia McKenna-Bruce as Tara is the stand-out performer in a debut role that proves she has a long career ahead of her. Her predicament in the film expands the issue of consent to include the agreements we make with ourselves about our own behaviour, and their consequences. Tara is the embodiment of this hard and painful struggle.
THURSDAY 9 Once again I hadn’t written a story for Headway’s Babyshoes writing group, so I asked Chat GPT to do it for me. My chosen title was My Imaginary Friend and I requested a Whodunnit.
In the quaint town of Willowbrook, the mysterious death of renowned artist Victoria Harper sent shockwaves through the community. The peculiar twist? Victoria’s closest confidante was her imaginary friend, Emily. Struggling to believe the unbelievable, detective Alex Reynolds delved into the artist’s enigmatic world. As secrets unravelled, it became apparent that Emily wasn’t imaginary at all. She was a long-lost twin, seeking revenge for a stolen life. With chilling precision, she orchestrated Victoria’s demise, leaving behind a masterpiece of deception. The canvas cleared, the town breathed a sigh of relief, unaware of the dark tale hidden behind the facade of an imaginary friend.
📌 Liverpool slipped up against Toulouse in the Europa League, losing 3-2. In a weird way I was happy for the Toulouse fans. They were beaten horribly at Anfield in October but came back with strength in tonight’s home leg.
FRIDAY 10 Suella is deviously sucking out any last vestiges of credibility Rishi might have had, says Simon Jenkins.
She is acting as Fool to Sunak’s increasingly tragic Lear.
📌 I’m starting to like the idea that Rishi is playing a canny game with Suella. The current government probably still has a year’s life left in it, so Suella has started her sprint for the finish line very early. She wants to be the next leader of the party and is laying out her politics for all to see. The Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has today refused to back her position in her fight with the Metropolitan Police. If more Conservatives start to distance themselves from her provocations and incendiary remarks, she could end up looking like a spent force very quickly. If enough of them publicly suggest she resigns if she is so unhappy with Rishi’s regime, maybe she will and Rishi will regain some authority. Having said all that, I’m not sure Rishi has the political intelligence or skill to make it happen. The New Statesman thinks he’s in a very bad place.
There’s a situation in chess known as a “zugzwang”: when one player finds themselves facing a state of play where every possible move will weaken their position.
📌 Finally got my copies of the latest Art et al project book, which collected all of the work Jen and Lisa did with the Indonesia-based art collective Ketemu. Aside from the fab visuals featured, the book is notable for being two translations (Indonesian/English) in an upside-down back-to-front format, which we had discussed beforehand but knew was risky, not least in the cost of printing. But it all worked well in the end, I think. And it looks great.
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Billy's Scrapbook 