December 23-29, 2023
SATURDAY 23 Radio 4’s Farming Today featured Corky, an “Agricultural Hip-Hop” musician who has become a west-country legend. He distinguishes his oeuvre from the more established “scrumpy and western rap” scene by describing its political content. His songs complain about issues such as the poor transportation links in SW England and wealthy out-of-town second-home owners sucking the life out of local economies. Corky’s musical heroes are The Wurzels. His best-known song is Ginster’s Paradise.
📌 The Everyday Philosopher in the New European tells us that the Athenian philosopher Epicurus was not a wine-swilling, orgy-loving glutton but a quiet, happy fellow, and not at all like Wittgenstein, who was a miserable sod.
📌 While my wife and her friend Rachel were out enjoying a performance by an Abba tribute band in the luxury hotel over the road I watched BBC2’s Disco Night on TV back at the apartment and in one vivid moment finally believed I understood this stuff. Once it got to Andrea True Connection singing More More More I realised I was wrong.
SUNDAY 24 The Knowledge has a topical quote from Shirley Temple as the last line of today’s newsletter.
I stopped believing in Santa Claus at the age of six, when my mother took me to see him in a store and he asked for my autograph.
📌 News that the UK economy has gone into recession prompts an editorial from the Observer listing all the things the government has screwed up during its 13 years in power. But the current recession won’t look like past recessions, it says. It will be like a nagging toothache, which is ironic given there is a national shortage of dentists.
A recession won’t trigger the usual dramatic rise in unemployment or a major spike in company failures. It will feel more like a prolonged period of stagnation.
📌 For reasons I can only imagine, Paloma Beach on the southern fringe of Los Cristianos has remained uninfected by the ravages of over-tourism. It has an untouched craggy beauty that I often suspect is part neglect and part missed opportunity. It has also become the unofficial home turf for a polite camper-vanning set, which gives it a bohemian feel. Tonight on one of the promontories one of them played a saxophone.
MONDAY 25 Yesterday we opened a “Christmas Eve” present from our friend Paula and her son Seán. It was a pair of baby Christmas stockings with our initials stitched on. We hung them up last night but woke up this morning to find that Santa had not visited. Then we checked one of the security cameras…
📌 Caught up with some radio drama, the best of which was a Mark Lawson play, Sticking Points, in which a government minister handing out degrees at a university graduation ceremony shakes hands with one student then discovers he has been super-glued to an eco activist. The twist is that the minister is as eco-active as the protestor, but obviously coming from a different place.
📌 The two turtle doves (ie, pigeons) that had become a fixture of our apartment terrace today became one, which could be an omen.
TUESDAY 26 Having stripped the leftover turkey carcass of all its useful meat I studied a mountain of white flesh. Sandwiches, salads, curries, all were possibilities. And yet when it came to lunchtime my wife insisted on a boiled egg, because that was the mood she was in, and not a turkey mood.
📌 In an article in the New Statesman Slavoj Žižek asks what happens next in Ukraine and Gaza in the face of enemies bent extermination. Žižek concludes the article on a chilling note by reporting that in South Africa today the gap between rich and poor is greater than it was under Apartheid and that some black youths would now prefer a police state to one in which they face hunger daily. Žižek ends with a quote from Mao.
What if the reality is that after the revolution there is nothing to eat?
📌 Experimenting with the Panorama setting on my phone camera…
📌 Also experimenting with monochrome…
WEDNESDAY 27 HuffPostUK has a fascinating story on celebrity autographs. Some celebrities refuse to sign autographs in blue ink and some refuse to sign a blank piece of paper, aka “blanks”.
Blanks are worth less than a signature which is written on a poster or prop, not only because the former has added fan appeal, but also because of the quality of the paper involved.
📌 On The Rest Is Politics podcast Rory Stewart, who regularly wins the “Leftwinger’s Favourite Tory” contest, admitted that if offered he would serve in a Keir Starmer cabinet.
📌 At the La Tasca 7 restaurant the other night we noticed that the second bottle of Viña Sol had not been added to the bill. We very nobly pointed it out and paid up. Tonight we were hoping they would “accidentally” repeat the mistake as a reward for our honesty. They didn’t.
📌 On Substack I’ve subscribed to The Kureishi Chronicles newsletter, in which Hanif Kureishi writes about his slow recovery from the accident one year ago that left him unable to use his arms or legs. A lot of the experiences he describes resemble my own from 10 years ago.
THURSDAY 28 It’s getting hard to avoid people eager to tell you what New Year resolutions they intend to make. My wife even weighed in yesterday with a pledge to be “more adventurous” in the kitchen. She was referring to the meals we eat at home, which she seems to think have become a bit samey. I will go along with this for as long as I can. For myself, I tend to make secret resolutions, don’t publicise them and feel smug when I manage to stick to them and blasé when I don’t.
📌 My wife is suffering from a spinal twinge. She has never been very good at enduring any kind of pain or suffering. I am guilty of what she terms “fussing”, and my attempts to help are met with irritation and scorn. What I never realised before tonight is that certain people prefer to deal with pain and suffering alone. Others demand/need attention. I do it myself. Only when I’ve run out of options will I shout for help. So now I will wait until my wife asks me to get her another glass of wine and some cheese. Until then I will do nothing.
📌 We finished the TV adaptation of the Agatha Christie story Murder Is Easy, which was a compelling mashup of race, class and feminism yet still very “Agatha Christie”. I do love it when TV writers embrace the same freedom of interpretation that playwrights have long enjoyed, and this one worked very well in that way.
FRIDAY 29 The sun is so bright I have resorted to using the audio function on my newspaper app. Once you overcome the monotone voice of the “narrator”, the experience is enjoyable and enables you to “read” and sunbathe at the same time, though it’s hard to work out whether the horrors of the war in Ukraine as described in a writer-soldier’s diary are somehow rendered less horrific by the bland delivery.
📌 The DRAMA button in the BBC Sounds app is a treasure trove of hidden delights. Today I found a detective series from 2014 called November Dead List starting Nicola Walker, who I don’t much like on TV but do like on radio dramas.
📌 Spotted a dangerous-looking plant while out walking and Google Lens tells me it is called Crown of Thorns.
📌 When I showed my wife my new ear deformity, hoping she would tell me if I needed to get it checked by a doctor, all she said was, “Don’t get it out in the restaurant!”
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