January 27- February 2, 2024
SATURDAY 27 At the Courtyard Theatre, a small venue in a large building in Hoxton, we saw Ross become Lew Grade in Who Is No 1? a stage play about the business wrangling behind the making of the cult TV series The Prisoner. It centred on the tragic personality of No 6 Patrick McGoohan, the self-inflicted torture he suffered for his art (“I am NOT John Drake“) and his ultimate undoing. My guess is that he probably deserved it. Ross had a great line when, as Grade, cigar in one hand, whisky in the other, he warns McGoohan not to make himself “a second Orson Welles”.
SUNDAY 28 My wife asked me over lunch if I could spare “79 minutes” afterwards for a “surprise”. I closed my eyes, opened them when told to and started watching the film This Is Spinal Tap.
📌 One of the secret new-year resolutions I made with myself was to cook food from recipes instead of freestyling. Today I am tackling chicken and peppers with red onion, garlic and rosemary. It’s a single tray-bake so I can’t see what can go wrong. As a nod to my old freestyling days I added some old leftover chorizo.
MONDAY 29 Kinlochewe, a place right at the top of Scotland, has been named as having the highest ever recorded January temperature for the UK. It clocked up 19.6⁰C last Sunday, which made it hotter than Rome.
📌 Stitching straight lines is not easy, as my latest attempt at a Barbican tower proves. Or maybe I just can’t see straight.
📌 In preparing to sit on an interview panel described as a “fireside chat” with candidates for the job of artistic director at the Barbican, I realised I used to work with one of the candidates. I wonder if they will remember me?
TUESDAY 30 Jonty Bloom is not convinced the newly minted “deal” with the DUP to restore power sharing in Northern Ireland holds water unless the government has done a secret back-door deal with Brussels.
📌 The Barbican job candidate I knew from the past giggled then remarked, “Oh my god, it’s Billeee!”
📌 Managed to catch up with a fantastic picture gallery in the Guardian from Cuba by a welder turned photographer.
WEDNESDAY 31 Surprised to learn that one of the people on the interview panel I did yesterday, Mikey J, co-wrote the music for the Netflix series Top Boy with Brian Eno. During our online chat Mikey’s cat walked nonchalantly back and forth behind him on the sofa.
📌 Freddie Hayward makes an interesting observation about how foreign secretary David Cameron, free from the need to answer to constituents (he is not an MP) or the internal bitching within his own parliamentary party (he sits in the comfort of the House of Lords) is sneakily steering British foreign policy in new, uncharted directions. Directions that might even appeal to an incoming Labour government.
📌 The Knowledge has a tantalising story about Vladimir Putin’s holiday gaff on the border with Finland that automatically conjures images of a Bond Baddy in his secret lair.
The palatial pad includes three properties, kitted out with £8,000 bidets, £3,500 shower heads, and £300,000 worth of Austrian beer brewing kit capable of producing 82 pints a day.
📌 Bill Clinton (US President 1993-2001) is younger than either Joe Biden or Donald Trump.
THURSDAY 1 Jonty Bloom’s early-morning rant about the “deal” to get the protestant Democratic Unionists back into power sharing in Northern Ireland ends with an epic quote…
As Samuel Beckett apparently said of the protestant grammar school boys he once taught, “They are like Irish cream, rich but thick”.
📌 Another quote from another writer (this time Ernest Hemingway) opens a superb comment piece by Aditya Chakraborty on the symbolism of the downfall of the Royal Mail, ushered by governments of all colour (but not, surprisingly, by Maggie Thatcher’s), into near extinction.
📌 On the radio a pub quiz host posed a question: “Which football ground is closest to the River Mersey?” Answer below…
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📌 Just before attending a meeting at the Barbican Centre to discuss how to improve its use of space, I took a picture to submit as evidence of something gone wrong.
FRIDAY 2 And today’s quiz question comes from Andy, our friend in Brighton, who asks us to name this actor (answer below).
uʎɥʇǝʅꓭ ɐpuǝɹꓭ
📌 The sick state of British civic society is exposed today in a Guardian report on how the present government’s determination to debase and corrupt every aspect of British life has slid effortlessly into local councils.
📌 Vera told us that when she wakes up in the morning she opens her bedroom curtains and goes back to bed. This is to reassure all the neighbours who notice her curtains still closed at 10am and bang on the door to make sure she is OK.
📌 I always put my feet up after lunch and read, which then segues into a snooze. Today I have lined up an article in Vice.
📌 We started watching Series 3 of Slow Horses (which is filmed on our estate) and were surprised to find it starting bang in the middle of a dramatic siege and gunfight. We were so transfixed by the action that we didn’t notice that we’d accidentally started at the end of the series. We watched episodes 5 and 6 before we twigged, so now we are watching episodes 1-4 in the vain hope that we will forget the climax and denouement. And in one episode our apartment appears in the background as Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman) takes a slovenly stroll to the kebab shop round the corner on Old Street.
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