November 18-24, 2023
SATURDAY 18 At Luke’s 50th birthday celebration in London Bridge, his partner Aron described Austin, Texas, their home city, as “the blueberries in the tomato soup”. This was a reference to the Democrat/Republican mix and much as I like the imagery, the probable taste of this exotic combo sounds disgusting.
📌 A bar worker in a London Bridge pub stood stock still, seemingly tranquilized by indifference.
📌 The young contestants on Strictly Come Dancing adopt a fake upbeat wide-eyed persona like they’re being interviewed for a place at an elite university. Which in essence they probably are.
SUNDAY 19 An article in the New European reminded me why I still name Bologna as my favourite Italian city, despite having visited only once.
📌 On the Threads social media site (Facebook’s answer to Twitter) Bill Gates recommends a visit to Brussels’ Sewer Museum and the chance to “experience the authentic sewer”.
📌 I’m a big fan of the “Early Life” section of Wikipedia entries, even though they might not always be scrupulously accurate. Today I enjoyed the text on Rosalynn Carter, wife of former US president Jimmy Carter, who has died, age 96. Wiki also researches some very nice images, free to use under Creative Commons licence.
MONDAY 20 With the vague idea that I might one day put together an art collection inspired by our 1998 trip down the east coast of the USA (Title: Route 1), I have been re-reading the scrapbook we made during that journey. The gist of the project would be to create something with the same flavour as the Australian one I did with MUMA (Monash University Museum of Art) for Art et al. Browsing the US scrapbook, I’m impressed by the care we took in recording the obscene price of restaurant wine and the obesity (and bad manners) of American children.
📌 Noticed on Instagram that Michelle had posted a picture from South Africa of herself with her dad, who has died. I knew he wasn’t well and suspected the worst, but never asked for details.
📌 Finally getting to grips with Let it Be on the piano. Want to move on to the C-inversion version, but happy at the moment to master the “walk-down” from F at the end of the intro.
TUESDAY 21 A whole day (ok, five hours) making patterns and testing various methods of transferring prints and drawings to fabric for stitching. Transferring to light fabrics is mainly easy, just a simple trace. Transferring to dark fabrics is another matter and always prone to failure. Transfers are often a one-shot deal involving transfer pencils or ink and a hot iron, so if it goes wrong you either start again or attempt to salvage the project in some way later as stitching is in progress. Up until now, I’ve always opted to salvage the bodge, but today I decided that every project needs a whole day to nail the pattern and transfer to fabric ready for stitching. I need to learn to enjoy this process and not see it as an interruption to actually stitching.
📌 Half way through the film Saltburn you get the idea that the lead character Olly, a seemingly dopey first-year student at Oxford, is on a mission to destroy the aristocracy, or at least a tiny part of it. But his motivation is unclear. Is it just his own sexual repression, or is there something deeper going on? Is this really class war? We never find out, and the rest of the film spirals into a bundle of half-cocked sub-Brideshead sequences with a few colourful twists thrown in.
📌 The trailer for the BBC drama Boat Story had you thinking it was a crime caper in which two innocent unwitting strangers get caught up in a drug war. It is, sort of, but not very much. It’s a very clever and very, very funny COMEDY caper.
WEDNESDAY 22 The government is now so desperate that it has given up even trying to stem its loss of public support. It is now on a massive, ground-zero wrecking spree of public services, says Rafael Behr.
Labour will inherit a colossal mess and face vast pent-up demand for palpable improvement in the state of everything.
📌 Film director Ridley Scott is getting a slap for playing fast and loose with historical facts in his war drama Napoleon. One of his biggest crimes is said to be his depiction of Josephine (IRL older not younger than Nap) and her relationship with the crazed general. Cue the arrival of a university boffin at the Conversation to put the record straight and to tell a love story that is quite touching in its banality.
📌 Record numbers of people are being found dead at home long after their bodies have already started to rot, the Guardian reports.
Men are more than twice as likely as women to be discovered in a decomposed state.
📌 Dense, heavy and a little bit creepy was our verdict on the film May December. I drifted in and out of concentration a few times during this over-studied film but managed to stay awake for the big non-climax climax in which Julianne Moore finds herself during a staring match with a wild cat in the woods.
THURSDAY 23 Google Photos contains nearly all of my visual thinking over the past 10 years. Sometimes it’s worth browsing as a reminder of where your head was at a particular moment in the past. Or sometimes you look back and wonder WHAT WAS I THINKING OF?
📌 At Headway I agreed to put my leaf stitchworks and the big gold Adam & Eve one into Open Studio.
📌 Ade agreed to let me make a text stitchwork of his poem Otherwise Engaged.
📌 Our journey to Winchester was interrupted by an “intruder” on the railway track.
📌 Winchester is so dark I got lost on my way to the ceremonial lighting of the Christmas tree at Kingsgate and missed it entirely. I ended up taking refuge in the Wykeham Arms.
FRIDAY 24 Another very strong analysis from Andy Beckett, who reckons Rishi’s dubious lurches towards authoritarianism are not seen by voters as a sign of strength but as laughable.
📌 In 1817 Jane Austen became ill and moved to a house in College Street, Winchester, to be closer to her doctor. She later died here and is buried in Winchester Cathedral. Winchester’s book shops make the most of this connection.
📌 My wife thinks there should be a law against any kind of Christmas frivolity starting before December 1. Winchester does not concur.
Read all of my scrapbook diaries…
PLEASE MESSAGE WITH ANY CORRECTIONS, BIG OR SMALL.
Billy's Scrapbook 
Sewer museum sounds interesting. I think it is good if we learn to appreciate each step in whatever we do. Some times I feel like jumping ahead though I cannot do that 😀 I have been deleting a lot of photos in Google photos. Now I do not click just because I want to. I remember my father, he loved photography but in the days of the reels, one had to be very careful. One of his favorite books was Pride and Prejudice. Thank you.
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