‘Nigel Farage is top of the shopping list of people we want clipped’
FRIDAY 1 The Knowledge identifies a new type of class elite – the Bopea – who are described as bohemian peasants, which sounds quaint.
Among their approved hobbies are rewilding, keeping chickens and cold-water swimming; no-nos include processed food, supercars and “bread that isn’t sourdough”. They don’t make honking jokes about sex; they do chat about gut health. And obviously, they are still rich.
Our present King, Charles III, is said to be the original Bopea.
📌 A Spanish modelling agency has a pneumatic AI model on their books called Aitana, who is said to earn more than €10,000 a month.
📌 Viewed from a different angle, the Tenerife map stitchwork in progress looks like a frightened ghost, which begs the question, What do ghosts fear?
📌 At a day-long training session to prepare us for membership of the Barbican’s Imagine Fund panel we learned all about values mapping. As the group of strangers had already been introduced to one another and gelled quite well it came as no surprise that we shared many values both generally and individually. From a list of about 60 personal values I named my top three as LOVE, LAUGHTER and PURPOSE.
SATURDAY 2 Today’s training session to prepare us for our role on the Barbican’s Imagine Fund panel was interrupted by the arrival of my wife who had locked herself out. We were bang in the middle of a session on systems of oppression, positionality and intersectionality. It was a chance to leave the room for five minutes to hand over my door keys. I returned to the session to learn a new word, “misogynoir”, which is discrimination against black women.
SUNDAY 3 My wife and I enjoy using jargon from TV crime shows ironically by inserting them into dull domestic settings. On various occasions in the past we have adopted “OCG” (Organised Crime Gang, from Line of Duty), “Wagwan” (What’s going on? from Top Boy), and most recently the act of “clipping” someone (killing an enemy, from Kin) in relation to kitchen activities and politics. Nigel Farage is top of the shopping list of people we want clipped.
📌 The Euro 2024 draw was interrupted during transmission, reports the Guardian…
The interruption, which sounded like sexual moaning, was initially heard after Switzerland were drawn in the same group as Scotland, Hungary and hosts Germany.
📌 My wife gave me an early Christmas present because giving it to me on Christmas Day would rob me of the chance to show off my Screwfix jumper at all the parties building up to the big day.
📌 The reverse side of my stitchwork projects continue to fascinate. I sometimes wonder if subconsciously I’m thinking about the underside while stitching the show side. I know I check regularly for knots and loose threads, so maybe these subliminal “accidents” are not so accidental after all.
MONDAY 4 Of all the Shane MacGowan obituaries and tributes that have appeared over the past few days, the one that did the best job for me was in the Socialist Worker.
📌 Absorbing insight in today’s Sensemaker from Tortoise as to who is actually in charge of the Israeli side of its horrific assault on Gaza, the bottom line being that once America runs out of patience with Israel it will be on its own.
📌 Keir Starmer stupidly stated the fact that Margaret Thatcher was a truly transformative prime minister. Now he’s getting slapped up for being a Thatcherist.
The distinction between praising someone’s power to affect change and the change itself is easily lost.
New Statesman
📌 The local transvestite, Patrica, turned up to my wife’s Age UK Christmas party (the first of several) and played the piano.
📌 RIP Glenys Kinnock, 79. I remember you telling a reporter how you met your husband Neil at Cardiff university by asking, “are you the man from the socialist society?”
📌 To La Petite Auberge in Islington for a pre-Christmas catch-up with Shirley, Sandra and Gill, where we leaned that Gill has a thing about spinach and its impact on her kidney function and that Sandra once broke both arms at the same time.
TUESDAY 5 Good luck to anyone who ever tries to persuade Guardian economics editor Larry Elliott that Brexit was a disaster. His stubbornly reasonable analytical approach to the subject is a constant cold shower to all rose-tinted Remainers.
📌 Beyond all expectations the Fallopian Jesus painting is being splashed on posters around Dundee to promote the Nomas Projects window exhibition Chris got for us.
📌 A High Court judge has ruled against an attempt by Tortoise to get information about how Conservative Party leadership elections are run – specifically the ones that delivered prime ministers the public had no say in choosing.
WEDNESDAY 6 Intriguing investigation in today’s Sensemaker on the very determined and scrupulously planned rise of Keir Starmer to become leader of the Labour Party and the nation’s most likely next prime minister. It includes secret meetings and shadowy fixers.
📌 On our way to East Croydon station after a Christmas lunch with Sue, Margaret and Lil, I accidentally kicked over a beggar’s (empty) paper cup. By the time I realised what I’d done I’d lost the will to go back and say sorry. I think my guilt probably caught up with me later on the train home because I used the time to write a long email to Anna at 38 Degrees saying keep up the good work.
📌 Rishi’s government is starting to crumble right in front of his eyes.
THURSDAY 7 I was disappointed last week to miss the Artbox London exhibition Identity, which clashed with our own Open Studio. Artbox is a project I have long admired so it was a treat to get an email this morning saying Identity is available to view online.
📌 Freddie Hayward in the New Statesman says the resignation of immigration minister Robert Jenrick is “the latest sign that a death drive has gripped the Conservative Party.”
📌 David Gauke revels in the irony that it is Rwanda, a country deemed unsafe by the UK’s Supreme Court, that could end up burying Rishi’s desire to dump asylum seekers there.
📌 The second of the stitchworks to come out of Sam’s Queen of Wonky drawing workshops is finished. The race is on to find a fresh supply of the silky brocade fabric for when I finish the next one. Sarah’s son Caspar is on the case.
📌 To Guildhall School with Marge, Christine and Alison for a free concert from the Guildhall Big Band jazz combo, which featured music arranged by Allan Ganley and vocals from Elaine Delmar, 84, a veteran jazzer who mentors the school’s students.
FRIDAY 8 Benjamin Zephaniah died yesterday aged 65, which is no age these days, says the guy who is 64. Zephaniah was the subject of one of my earliest reviews for NME in the 1980s, when he was known as a “dub-ranting poet”. I think my NME review highlighted the ranting aspect of his work, which to me sounded very angry.
SATURDAY 9 The Conversation reckons we’re being too hard on rats and that we should work on our instinctive revulsion for these poor creatures. In a thorough essay that occasionally borders on satire, rats are revealed to be selfless, empathetic and very hard to dislike.
There’s a wealth of science to show that rats are OK guys. They live socially complex lives and have friends beyond their immediate family. They are capable of imagination (can you say that of a pigeon?) and display kindness towards other rats for no reason.
📌 To the Barbican for the last day of our training in participatory grant-making and a chance sneak preview of items from a costume exhibition from the upcoming film Poor Things.
SUNDAY 10 At the workshop on conflict resolution at the Barbican yesterday one of the younger participants characterised conflict in terms of the reality TV and the political debates he watches on YouTube. Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer were equals in his analysis for attacking their opponent’s personality rather than their policies.
📌 The government’s crooked deals during the pandemic continue to surface. It would be nice to think that those involved will be hunted down and punished appropriately, but endemic corruption in government has somehow come to be seen as a natural state of affairs.
MONDAY 11 Many months ago a group of us from Headway visited Burgh House museum in Hampstead and were encouraged to enter their Tell Me A Story competition. I found out this morning that I am a winner in the 18+ Spooky category. Submissions were meant to be inspired by an object or picture in the museum’s extensive collection. I wrote a draft movie scene, Toddler Zombie Walk, inspired by an old cine camera on display.
EXT. CEMETERY – DAY Martin and Heidi agreed that a Toddler Zombie Walk would be a fun introduction to the complexities of death. Martin got all the costumes from one shop, the one opposite Poundland, and plenty of slime from the Monster Supply Emporium.
The kids showed character and went along with it to please him. They put on their best deathly looks, walked slowly, gave it the glazed stare, made ghosty noises, whatever. Three turns around the graveyard with the bones of Blake, Bunyan and Defoe resting silently underground. Plus jelly and chocolate, and fizz. Too much chocolate, really.
But it all felt a bit flat, as death is always likely to. Then, out of the blue, a line of grown-ups filed through the graveyard gate, headed by community police officers Christine and James. Only up close did anyone notice that the grown-ups were all crying tears of blood.
📌 Rishi seems to be getting battered from every side of his party ahead of tomorrow’s big vote on his controversial Rwanda bill. It’s make or break, or maybe even break or break. One political commentator remarked, “there is the sense of an ending in all this”. Giving evidence to the Covid inquiry today must have felt like a nice day out for Rishi, writes John Crace, a chance to forget about everything – especially the thousands of WhatsApp messages that mysteriously went missing during a moment of national crisis.
📌 I got trapped at the front door by Jehovah people punting the idea of “good news” but not able to supply any examples. I could sense my wife chuckling at my misfortune from the safety of the kitchen.
📌 To St Clement’s church for a carol concert featuring several of our neighbours. The woman behind us obviously fancied herself as a pro singer.
TUESDAY 12 Christmas came early with the arrival in the post of my NHS bowel-cancer screening kit.
📌 Rishi scraped through the vote on his controversial Rwanda bill. Suella abstained and continues to lurk in the background stirring up a full-blown war for January. She won’t give up until he’s toast.
WEDNESDAY 13 Matt d’Ancona reckons “the Tories are acting like pound shop Enoch Powells.”
And he gets quite wound up about it. What’s not funny, he writes, is…
…the lasting damage that they risk inflicting upon the social fabric and upon civic cohesion as they release ever more poisonous toxins into the political bloodstream.
📌 Spotted our neighbour Nigel padding absentmindedly outside his front door in an outfit he’d obviously lifted from an upmarket hotel – fluffy white gown and towelling sliders.
📌 The stitchwork map of Tenerife is nearly finished, and when rotated through 90⁰ still looks like a ghost.
📌 To the Barbican for a farewell party with the crew that put on the differently various exhibition. First a big lunch at the Barbican Grill, then a free look at the Re/Sisters eco-feminism exhibition, which I expected to hate but ended up liking a lot for its thorough exploration of ideas. The section on the Greenham Common women’s protests felt quite nostalgic. Then it was tea, cakes, speeches and daft photographs to make the day memorable.
THURSDAY 14 According to an article in the Guardian my sleeping habits mark me out as a Neanderthal.
📌 Started to experiment into slapping acrylic paint on to stitchwork outlines and scratching the wet paint with a sewing needle.
📌 To the Old Bailey, where our local council, the City of London Corporation, decided to host it latest attempt at listening to the people. They call these dubious sessions City Question Time, and they are well attended because finger food and alcohol are laid on free. First the council bigwigs do a pompous “you said, we did” presentation, then they face questions from angry residents about planning corruption, street lighting and tripping over e-bikes. That bit can be quite sparky. Afterwards everyone behaves civilly until the alcohol takes over and snide comments get uttered in dark corners. The chance to see the interiors of the Old Bailey was enjoyable. This is, after all, where the nation’s most serious criminals are dealt with – the irony of which somehow got lost.
FRIDAY 15 The first of the stitched patches of Tenerife on an old scrap of denim is finished. Not sure the peak of Mount Teide in bright orange stands out enough from the browny-red slopes. The shape of Tenerife always reminds me of Sherlock Holmes’s pipe. Not entirely satisfied. Might try another on Calico.
📌 Fascinating essay in the LRB by Neal Ascherson about the old East Germany, now long gone politically but not, he says, in the collective memory.
📌 Freddie Hall in the New Statesman uses the demise of crooked Blackpool MP Scott Benton to describe and rail against the insidious methods of the gambling industry. Not till very firm action against the industry is taken can Britain be a safe place, socially and politically.
SATURDAY 16 The Golden Lane Festive Singalong was a living hell of modern parents and noisy children. Thankfully a good dose of mulled wine dulled the pain. On our way home we found a lost iPhone, which I managed to break into (with the help of Siri) and return to its owner. Earlier, while helping to set up for the show (a community choir and a Year 3 pupils rendition of scenes from Matilda) I got a chance to view a framed stitchwork of Welsh signatures that included Tom Jones, Betty Davies and Evan Evans.
📌 My wife was shocked by Georgia Meloni‘s very open “touchy-feely” flirting with Rishi.
📌 My favourite TV advert at the moment features a herd of hang-gliding mountain goats. But I can never remember afterwards what product they were trying to sell me.
📌 Ellie won Strictly Come Dancing, and she can thank the nine votes I gave her from two of my 10 email accounts.
SUNDAY 17 On Duolingo I learned that in Spanish the word “honeymoon” is a very literal translation of the words honey and moon – luna de miel, or “moon of honey”. In French the equivalent expression la lune de miel is also used, though the expression voyages de noces (voyage of the wedding) is also common.
📌 Desperately trying to eat any remaining perishable food before we leave for Tenerife tomorrow. And I discover that yes, you can freeze tangerine segments.
📌 Marge recommended the superb documentary series Berlin 1933, the year Hitler came to power. The story is told using letter and diary extracts partnered with stills, film and news footage. Marge recommended it in the context of her prediction that Suella will take over the Conservative party once Rishi is out. I was quite dismissive of the idea that a fascist party can ever gain power in Britain. Watching Berlin 1933 made me think again, and specifically which country I would flee the UK for.
MONDAY 18 On the train to Gatwick airport we overheard a young woman pitching her services as a dance teacher to what we presumed was some kind of agency. The pitch was so good – simple, clear, polite and professional – that I really hoped she got a job out of it. Then we heard her doing the same spiel a second time, presumably to a different agency, and my enthusiasm evaporated.
📌 The Gatwick Airport hotel linguine looks and tastes as if someone emptied a can of budget tomato soup on to a heap of overcooked pasta, added 3 prawns and a few slivers of rocket and cheerfully charged £14 for it.
TUESDAY 19 Gatwick Airport departures at 5.30am is an agglomeration of all the reasons I don’t care if I never board an aeroplane again. The “Special Assistance” for people with disabilities is overrun. The adjacent “Family” queue is a knotted snake of chaos with children grabbing every opportunity to break free from their parents and wander freely around the security zone. The looks on the faces of the staff suggest they have long ago given up trying to bring order to this salad of disorder.
📌 Back in the Paloma Beach apartments for the first time since the pandemic. Not much has changed except the local Superdino supermarket now keeps its stock of cigarettes in a chiller cabinet.
WEDNESDAY 20 Estonian foreign minister Margus Tsahkna writes in the Guardian that unless big-politics institutions such as the EU, NATO and the UN start to think big they will be eaten up by predatory new empire builders such as Putin’s Russia. He names Ukraine as the acid test of whether they can reform or die.
📌 In its list of things to be glad(ish) about in 2023, Tortoise names a tortoise called Jonathan, who “celebrated his 190th birthday on St Helena in the South Atlantic.” They didn’t report on what a tortoise celebration looks like.
📌 After my training in anti-oppression at the Barbican I accused the kitchen bin in our Paloma Beach apartment of being ableist because it needed two fully functioning hands to put anything in it. Only later did I discover it had a concealed foot pedal, which sort of made it more ableist, according to my training.
THURSDAY 21 It wouldn’t be Christmas without a volcanic eruption. All eyes are on Iceland but for lava lovers with an appetite for more The Atlantic has a handy picture gallery of “2023: The Year In Volcanic Activity”.
📌 My wife likes to ridicule my habit of photographing “inanimate objects” in close-up.
📌 The nights here in Cristianos draw in fast and quickly settle into a sombre, expectant mood. Back home in the UK storms are causing devastation and travel chaos. Here as soon as the afternoon sun has slipped away an ominous dark quietness arrives and you wait semi- nervously for the next surprise.
FRIDAY 22 On a seafront stroll into Cristianos town we came across an angry artist shouting at his dog for adding a bit more water to one of his freshly created watercolour paintings.
📌 Arrived at the Swedish church in Cristianos to find that this year they have not installed a nativity scene. Elsewhere in the town centre there was no shortage, including one that gave a guest appearance to a goose and its baby gosling, plus one of the Wise Men who appears to be cradling a bottle of cava in front of an empty crib.
📌 Greatly relieved to find that the Overseas Supermarket has individual Christmas puddings, two for €3.50.
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!”
SATURDAY 30 Artificial Intelligence (AI) has arrived with the same stamp of “inevitable” that came with the worldwide web all those years ago, so it’s something I’ve tried to rub along with, mainly by playing with it. I regularly get AI programs to conjure images and stories, not as finished pieces of creative content but as something I can apply my imagination to and use for myself. It’s fun, obviously, and I will keep at it while the ethical debates and power struggles unfold within the world of AI, as inevitably they will, says the Guardian, in a useful essay giving the subject a bigger context than I can.
📌 An Indian government food inspector dropped his Samsung into a reservoir while taking a selfie, so he got his staff to empty it. They pumped out 2m litres of water so he could get the phone back. The BBC report adds that 2m litres is enough to irrigate 6km² of farmland.
📌 A day out to Las Galletas is always a treat, but this visit was special because I finally realised why our old (now deceased) Brighton friends Eric and Glen loved it so much, and why our current Brighton friends Sue and Lil likewise rate it highly. It is because it has the feel of a slightly faded seaside town doing its best to make the most of itself. It also looks like real people live here and that the ocean (Atlantic) is a real one, with tidal muscles. At the local bus stop it also has a great view of Mount Teide, Tenerife’s famous active volcano.
SUNDAY 31 The last day of the year started poignantly with Kazuo Ishiguru’s Remains of the Day on the radio. The whole WHAT IF? resonance in the story is given a special tension in this adaptation, first broadcast by the BBC in 1990. Every moment of every exchange between Stevens and Miss Kenton is laced with it. Later in the day (evening), the sight of a lone fisherman on the rocks somehow told the story in another way.
📌 Out on the craggy beach the naturists made the most of its natural inaccessibility and bold walkers scrambled to find the best viewing spots. I found a pair of volcanic outcrops that looked like two ancient philosophers locked in an argument about the meaning of life.
📌 One recurring story in my Quora feed is about the footballer Cristiano Ronaldo. I like it so much that I refuse to verify it in case it’s a lie. Here it is… A journalist asks Cristiano Ronaldo: “Why does your mother still live with you? Why don’t you build her a house?” Ronaldo replies: “My mother raised me and she dedicated her life for me. She would go to sleep hungry, just to let me eat. We had no money at all. She worked seven days a week and nights as a maid to buy my first shoes so I could be a player. All my success is dedicated to her and because of her and as long as she has a life, she will always be by my side, she has everything I can give. She is my refuge and my greatest gift.” The story comes with a beautiful Getty Images photo of Cristiano and his mum at some awards ceremony.
📌 The Daily Mash is begging for subscription money, but you can register to get a regular dose of their witty headlines for free…
📌 I enjoyed it he sound and the smell of the NY fireworks more than the actual display. 2024, let’s hope it’s a good one.
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