May 4-10, 2024
SATURDAY 4 All the effort I put in last week to imagining Penny Mordaunt dragging the Conservatives back to the middle ground is trashed today by Jonty Bloom’s daily rant on Substack. In it he predicts a general-election defeat followed by a conjoining with Reform to marshall the rise of the lunatic right.
📌 We’ve renamed the BBC political editor Chris Mason the Blue Peter editor because he speaks to the viewing public as if they were children.
SUNDAY 5 In the Observer Keir Starmer just about resists the opportunity to gloat about the magnitude of success scored in the local elections. It was a political tidal wave, yes, but his insistence that the nation is eager to join him in his grand renewal project is just one step away from delusion.
MONDAY 6 Love Lies Bleeding is a daring/daft cinematic blend. Half of it is a comic-book scrutiny of female bodybuilding and hot lesbian sex. The other half is a fascinating family psychodrama built on secrets, lies and gory murder, the centrepiece of which is a huge desert ravine that acts as a human garchey, a deadly orifice full of skeletons and rotting corpses. The two hemispheres of the film struggle to communicate properly with one another, and a topcoat of comic-book moments of gross violence and CGI excess leaves an aftertaste of misplaced surreality. There are lots of bodies rolled up in rugs – so many that as soon as you spot a rug in a room you start a mental countdown as to when the body will be rolled up in it.
TUESDAY 7 After a lengthy period not practicising on my Casio keyboard I have now settled on a routine of working through Major, Minor, Diminished and Augmented chord progression to find the ones I like most. So many of the piano pieces I listen to are a progression of four chords with melody and flourishes on top. Einaudi’s Nuvole Bianche is where I’d like to be in 5 years’ time. Or at least a simple version of it I can play when called upon in social circumstances.
📌 At a meeting with the Imagine Fund panel to decide which projects get grants, I was pleased to see that my top 10 preferences for Seed funding were the same as scored by the entire group.
WEDNESDAY 8 The mood music sounds to me like America is settling into on a long-game approach to the Israel/Palestine war, slowly layering up the diplomatic pressure on Netanyahu to sign up to a ceasefire but not making any big daring threats. Netanyahu’s urge is to keep killing Palestinians to show how “strong” he is at home, but the US knows that his political power is ebbing fast. His end is in sight. “Pausing” the shipment of weapons to Israel is the latest slow turn of the screw. It won’t satisfy America’s protesting students but it will make Netanyahu sweat a little bit more and it will remind whoever comes after him that Israel is still a client state of the US.
📌 Ashamed to say I’m gripped by a soapy BBC Radio drama called Diamonds, a potboiler about the dirty dealings in South African diamonds entwined with the Upstairs Downstairs antics of an upper-crust English family over a period of 120 years.
📌 Keir Starmer is being touted as a “Weetabix” politician, which sounds a bit like Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith proclaiming himself in 2003 as the “Quiet Man” who was about to turn up the volume (he didn’t). Starmer should watch out for the Weetabix-gone-soggy similies.
📌 The Fall Guy, starring Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt in a stunt-driven action-comedy romp, must be one of the most stupidly entertaining films of the year. There may be a hint here that by once again embracing his inner wry humour Ryan Gosling (Ken in Barbie) is heading down the George Clooney road. Watch out for his appearance in a Cohen Brothers film.
THURSDAY 9 There’s a growing backlash against Natalie Elphicke MP after she seemingly swanned with ease out of the Conservative and into the Labour Party. Elphicke is, says Jonty Bloom, “the kind of Tory most Labour diehards use pictures of for darts practise.”
📌 Gill spotted a pair of sandals she thought would be a perfect match for my Screwfix Christmas jumper.
📌 In the Headway writing group we discussed a number of the commonly used words and sayings said to have been invented by William Shakespeare. The story I submitted this week was another sketch featuring Heidi and Martin – the fictional Hackney couple I have imagined to try out the Him & Her genre – was written to the prompt Shakespeare Was…
Whenever a Wednesday evening opened up, Heidi and Martin liked to visit the Cicero, Hoxton Street’s very own philosophy café, in a pub. Among the perennial topics such as Machiavelli, Il n’est-pas Morte (French) or Machiavelli Is Still Alive (English) were open-mic enticements for the drop-in public. And this is how Heidi came to be finishing the sentence Shakespeare Was… in front of around 25 slumming trustafarians. She went for what she believed was the Aristotlean method, which was a list. “Shakespeare was… not a looker,” she began, using his lank hair and beaky nose as testimony. “Shakespeare was… obsessed with genitals,” she continued, citing the 14 references throughout his literary catalogue to the “bull’s pizzle”. Then, just as she was about to start on Shakespeare’s misogyny, a voice came from the back of the room: “Point of Order!” Heidi paused. The Voice went on: “What exactly is PHILOSOPHICAL about all this feminist stuff?” Heidi steeled herself for a counter-attack, then realised with horror that The Voice was Martin doing his Pub Landlord impersonation.
📌 I can never decide whether I prefer the second word of the building on Kingsland Road to be a verb or a noun.
FRIDAY 10 There’s a kidney stone making its way through my body and will exit at some point, hopefully today. The stone’s existence is linked to a night-time sweat recently. Dehydration is the parent of kidney stones for me and my failure to deal with my dehydration promptly. Therefore today is a day of gently sipping water and shovelling painkillers into my mouth. The pain kept me awake all night so I will also be catching up on my sleep. Plans to visit Tate Modern have been shelved.
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Billy's Scrapbook 