Scrapbook: Week 13

March 23-29, 2024

SATURDAY 23 Just caught up with a fabulous long-read, Putin and Beyond, that at first makes you think Russia will once again seek to do business with Europe (as Vlad once did) when Putin is finally gone but then turns into an explanation of how that would take decades as the nation withers under the attrition of war, and may never even happen at all. Putin’s regime is still powerful but vulnerable, ageing and, ultimately, mortal. Little is known about the generation of autocrats that will contest for power in 10 years’ time, but autocrats they will be, the piece’s author predicts, and not the stern uncle of democracy Putin pretended to be all those years ago.

📌 The Guild Hall School performance of Comedy of Errors was not impressive. I flippantly remarked that it was a jumped-up school play. Marge said that if she’d been on her own she’d have walked out. These actors simply had very little stage presence and poor projection, but maybe the stage is not a chosen route into acting jobs these days. The set was too simple, though I liked the use of a four-seat roundabout as a prop. It ended with a line-dance routine. Only then did the actors look like they knew what they were doing. The one to watch: Maximus Evans.

SUNDAY 24 One year after our near-death experience in Liverpool we met Rachel at The Grove pub in Ealing to reflect on the trauma. My wife says the Vegetarian Wellington had the texture of dense meat. The waitress warned us off the vegan tiramisu with the reminder that “it IS vegan”, the implication being that it was slop. The Teenager was still at home when we got back and not, as planned, out searching for a cheap ticket for Mahler’s 5th at the Barbican.

MONDAY 25 My wife spoke to Katie our financial adviser and tomorrow afternoon we are viewing an eyewateringly expensive Type 39 apartment in the Barbican. Those two facts might not be related.

📌 The Barbican seems to stagger from one PR disaster to the next. I’ve been invited to a meeting to hear what the Barbican has to say about the media controversy surrounding the cancellation of a lecture on Gaza.

📌 My wife’s actor cousin, who claims to have an ailment called “Actor’s Knee”, tells us that Indira Varma is a good laugh and plays Scrabble with other cast members backstage on Macbeth The Show.

📌 We sighed with relief when Ralph Little finally left Saint-Marie in TV’s Death In Paradise. Little ranks as both the worst of Saint-Marie’s resident chief inspectors and as the worst actor in the world.

TUESDAY 26 Jonty Bloom offers a taste of the ugly tactics we can expect from the Conservatives in the run-up to the general election.

The Tories will launch attack after attack on Sir Kier Starmer, accusing him of being a secret Corbynista and a friend if not ally of terrorists, rapists and child murderers.

📌 On Substack Tom Cox shared a review of Pride & Prejudice he found.

📌 I’ve never been entirely happy with the results from transfer pens and pencils when getting patterns outlined on to fabric in preparation for stitching. Now I’m trying sublimation ink in my Lamy fountain pen and the results so far are an improvement on what I was doing before. I probably need to spend a whole week testing different colours on different fabric shades. The heat of the iron to get the sublimation just right is another consideration. So far, half way between Cotton and Wool seems optimum.

📌 Marge has made my stitchwork of her grandson Max her screensaver.

WEDNESDAY 27 From what Jess tells us, the controversy at the Barbican over a lecture on Gaza was clearly a bit of mischief-making by the London Review of Books, who are obviously in desperate need of subscriptions. We cancelled ours a month ago.

📌 At a screening at the Barbican Hall of The Death of Stalin with live score by the BBC Symphony Orchestra it was hard not to imagine Vladimir Putin in the role of Stalin, other than that the chances of his death being a slapstick event seem so remote. The panel discussion afterwards, featuring director Armando Iannucci and actor Michael Palin (Molotov) seemed staged in such a way as to avoid talking about Putin, who thus became the elephant in the very big room.

THURSDAY 28 A morning in the studio went from bad to worse very quickly, upon which I asked anyone in earshot to shoot me if I ever try to use paint again. I was trying to finish the stitch+paint version of Max and his incontinent dog. Someone crept up behind me and I freaked, jerked and splodged paint on both myself and parts of the artwork that do not need paint. Then I tried to clean it up, which made things worse, so I gave up and walked away.

📌 The budget orthotic insoles that arrived yesterday are already a big hit with my feet.

FRIDAY 29 Jonty Bloom goes off on a fantastic class-war rant about the Boat Race being a closed shop competition for poshos.

📌 As Headway’s collaboration with the Barbican draws to a close Claire asked me what were my top 3 institutions to partner with next. I struggled to answer, partly because I’m so involved with the art studio, there must be other chances I will never spot. After some thought I named 1. The National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, 2. The Office of the London Mayor and 3. The Royal Academy.

📌 The images we got from Sam’s Queen of Wonky workshops at differently various are a dream to make stitchworks of. Once you’ve got the legs cracked, everything else is a wild party of stitches and threads.

📌 I’ve always thought orzo would make a good replacement for rice in a risotto. Now I learn that “orzotto” is a thing. We are having a leek-and-cheese version for our Good Friday evening meal. With champagne.

📌 My wife’s actor cousin Mike wangled a sicknote off a physio for his “Actor’s Knee”, which means he no longer has to carry a tree up some steps in the closing scences of Macbeth The Show.

📌 My wife did something magical with our dessert. She mixed Strawberry Bailey’s into crème fraîche and poured it onto fresh strawberries.

Read all of my scrapbook diaries…

PLEASE MESSAGE WITH ANY CORRECTIONS, BIG OR SMALL.

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