January 20-26, 2024
SATURDAY 20 Britain will soon lose the ability to make steel, says Jonty Bloom. That’s because the government has worked out that it is cheaper to buy it from a country that does produce it than to make it itself. But steel is symbolic, says Bloom, of a nation that has an industrial strategy, since steel is an essential element of everything from ships and cars to scientific and medical equipment. Having your nation’s day-to-day fortunes reliant on the steel price of other nations is no strategy at all…
SUNDAY 21 I began last week’s scrapbook by noting that Jonathan Freedland described Benjamin Netanyahu as Israel’s worst ever leader. One week later the Observer goes one step further saying the only solution for the peaceful future of the region is his removal from office.
📌 There’s a big storm called Isha out there. One of our neighbours, Miguel, asked in the WhatsApp group if our windows are strong enough to withstand it.
📌 In Junior Bake Off nine-year-old Esme’s “Florence And The Machine” tart collapsed into a pile of rubble before she could get it to the gingham altar.
MONDAY 22 The cheerful news this morning from Jonty Bloom is that Jeremy Hunt is planning a new Loadsamoney boom in an attempt to give Rishi a chance of winning this year’s election. He knows fully well that the boom will go bust in about five years, by which time poverty and desperation among the little people will have soared out of control.
📌 The Knowledge quotes the Israeli sociologist Eva Illouz in trying to work out what Benjamin Netanyahu is playing at with his Rambo politics in Gaza. It says he’s being bundled by a group of ultras in his government who want to turn Israel into a supremacist regime and rid the world of all Palestinians. The irony of course is that this is the type of politics that led to the creation of Israel in the first place. And it won’t work for Israel because it effectively means it will become a theocratic dictatorship rather than the democracy it still proudly claims to be…
Israel will be viewed as a rogue and racist state and shunned by the world. It will become an economic backwater; its brightest talent will leave and its military capacity will dwindle. Without democracy, Israel will not survive.
📌 The new Tenerife stitchwork is finished. I started it while we were there over Christmas but never finished it before we returned. I guess I was too distracted by wine and volcanoes. Alex says it looks like an avocado.
I think I might need to add some light blue into the purple Atlantic Ocean. In the meantime, there are hours of endless fun to be had putting it through AI to see what happens.
📌 We’re now at the end of Season 2 of Top Boy, which if you include the original two seasons of Top Boy Summerhouse from 2011-13, makes four seasons completed. Only one final season remains and Sully has just sensed a weakness in Dushane and done something very dramatic. The latest inner-city gangsta jargon expressions we’ve adopted include “pre”, meaning take a look or to preview something, and “inabit”, which works on the lines of “see you later”. Still find it hard to believe that words such as “fam”, “cuz” and “blud” are still in use, but I do like “yoot” and “bredren”.
TUESDAY 23 I’ve decided that if I am to exhibit my attempts at art I should learn something about it, so I signed up to a course that takes you through all the primary-school stuff in 10-minute chunks, asking you questions along the way such as “is this white piece of paper on a white piece of canvas art?” The course didn’t cost very much.
That reminded me of my own white-on-white project, from 2022, in which I remade The Pyramids and assorted bits of Egypt with cotton buds, lots of talcum powder and tiny marshmallows for coffee.
📌 On the floor, right below the underside of the dome in St Paul’s Cathedral they’ve installed a meditative Labyrinth. The idea is that you walk it slowly in your stocking feet and some kind of spiritual enlightenment overtakes you on your journey. The inward path to the centre of the labyrinth is associated with release, the centre with receiving, and the outward path with return. The experience was not unlike snaking through the queue at an airport check-in, but it was a group invitation and I was glad to say yes to because it meant I could snoop around the Cathedral free of charge (normal price £25) and revisit Henry Moore’s Mother & Child, alongside which I had my first ever painting exhibited in 2016.
WEDNESDAY 24 We’ve slipped into the habit of pledging to do that thing that really needs doing “at the weekend” instead of today.
📌 You’d think Donald Trump was well on his way to becoming America’s next president by the way his victory in a poll of New Hampshire Republicans is being reported.
📌 Got a great tip-off from It’s Nice That about The Therapist, a short film that details the role of barbershops as a safe space for black British men to talk with their barber (their Therapist) in ways not available elsewhere.
📌 Vera said Iris knocked on her door in the middle of the night asking if Vera was ready for their two o’clock lunch date.
THURSDAY 25 At Headway James told us his dad had an obituary in the Guardian. He also showed us the small scar above his left eye he got while playing under a table with Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes’ children Frieda and Nick.
📌 There was no writing group today, but I’d already done a story with the title The Haggis Hunt…
Martin was more than surprised when Heidi dragged him out shopping for Haggis. She was a lifelong militant vegetarian and everything about Haggis should have been a red-flag issue. But here they were, traipsing around Hackney in search of that mysterious lump of unwanted animal body parts, pulped and compressed into a plastic ball. And it was only now, after four hours studying the spice list in each of these competing globs of viscera, that was he starting to understand why. Her new boss Mark and partner Jenni were coming round for a Burns-night supper and Heidi wanted to impress. She’d already prepped the neeps and tatties, insisting on turnip and not swede. Her vegetarian militancy had melted in a flush of suckuppery, and Martin had already agreed reluctantly not to mention that haggis is banned in the US, as is any food product containing sheep’s lung. But what was really bothering him was her insistence that only red wine can be served with haggis. This just seemed plain bonkers.
📌 In the stage play Dear England Joseph Fiennes looks like a natural playing England football boss Gareth Southgate as he drags a deeply entrenched collection of primitive soccer talent into new sophisticated “touchy-feely” ways of thinking. He has sports psychologist Geena McKee at his side in the colossal task of slaying collective fear. The message is that losing is OK, but the type of loser you choose to be impacts on others and can even mutate into a destructive cultural virus, a malaise. Fiennes puts in a classy performance, playing Southgate partly in caricature and partly as an internally conflicted hero on a quest amid an energetic cast of comedy banterists and boys trying desperately to be men. My wife thought the play was a game of two halves, the first half being better than the second. The reviewer in the Guardian thought the reverse. That’s football for you.
FRIDAY 26 And then came that horrible moment when the 10 screws you counted out carefully became nine…
📌 The media is reporting that Liverpool’s Jürgen Klopp will “leave the club” at the end of this season. This isn’t a real shock as he telegraphed his intention in the media sometime last year. It is poignant on the back of seeing the play Dear England last night and one of Klopp’s quotes in his resignation press conference will no doubt resonate with Gareth Southgate, who in Dear England talks a lot with his players about love.
I love absolutely everything about this club, I love everything about the city, I love everything about our supporters, I love the team, I love the staff. I love everything. But that I still take this decision shows you that I am convinced it is the one I have to take.
Jürgen Klopp
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Your profile photo is good. 🙂 Thank you.
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