May 25-31, 2024
SATURDAY 25 Last night we took a step into an alien world. One of the art websites I subscribe to sent an invitation to a private view at the Bond Street auction house Sotheby’s, where great masses of young lower-league socialites swan around like they’re auditioning for a part in a new reality TV show, pretending to be interested in modern art but actually more interested in standing in front of it waving a glass of champagne and attempting a manner of excited superiority. In between these Gucci mannequins was some art for sale, at suggested prices my wife paid a lot of attention to, often with her jaw on the floor. I just tried to squeeze through somehow (put that on my gravestone) and find some art I liked, which was quite easy given the presence of such talent as Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach, Ravilious and Francis Bacon. There were also some nice Grayson Perrys and a collection of Peter Blake retro board-game combines inspired by the work of Robert Rauschenberg. And if you really felt like splashing out, there were luxury watches/jewellery for sale and the chance to bid for a pair of Paul McCartney’s old black suede chelsea boots.
📌 Perfect Show For Rachel is an unsettling play, to begin with. Rachel, a learning-disabled young woman, sits at a console fitted with 39 big plastic fair-ground push-buttons. Whichever button she presses initiates an improvised sketch from an assembled cast of actors, which includes her sister and her mother. In the beginning it looks like Rachel is being used in something resembling, my wife said, a children’s TV show. Or is she? For me there was something powerful about the marriage of disability with improv theatre. Aspects of fun, play and living in the moment unfold continuously, and Rachel genuinely appears to be a part of it. All the sketches were crafted around Rachel’s life and choices, so I ended up believing Perfect Show For Rachel was both a ground-breaking way to bring people with complex needs into the creative workplace and a piece of riotous popular entertainment.
SUNDAY 26 All the pundits are surprised by Little Rishi’s surprise timing of the general election. Some of his parliamentary colleagues are annoyed that he’s ruined their Summer holidays. No one seems to find credible the idea that Rishi’s just about had enough of trying to be a prime minister.
MONDAY 27 At a birthday lunch yesterday for our friend Danielle I was keen to know whether she will be voting for Jeremy Corbyn in the July 4 general election. Corbyn is her standing MP and lives in the next street to Danielle. But she is still undecided, as most likely are a lot of Cornbyn’s Islington North constituents. Then today I learned that Corbyn has effectively set up a super leftwing organisation called The Collective, which hopes eventually to become a political party. I’m pleased about this because all my life spicy radical politics have run alongside centrist vanilla politics.
📌 Richard Linklater’s new film Hit Man is two hours of pure entertainment. Gary is a nerdy lonesome psychology professor. By day he unwraps the mysteries of id, ego and superego to his students. As a side hustle Gary is Ron, a fake hit man employed by the police to squeeze incriminating confessions out of his clients. When Ron falls for Madison, who wants him to kill her nasty husband, an Argentinian Tango of a comedy-thriller unfolds around the issues of truth versus perception, honesty and lies, manipulation and deception.
TUESDAY 28 According to Curious Kids from the Conversation, one of the questions children most often like to ask experts is…
Would it be possible to get the DNA of dinosaurs and then recreate them?
The answer, briefly, is no, because despite the wealth of dinosaur bones available to scientists from excavations, DNA disintegrates after about six million years, and dinosaurs died out about 65 million years ago. Sorry kids, Jurassic Park really was just a story.
📌 Tony Blair’s successful mantra for victory in the 1997 general election was “Education, Education, Education”. Keir Starmer’s version for the 2024 election is “Security, Security, Security” states the Daily Sensemaker from Tortoise. The word security has obvious associations with defence, yes, but…
As an umbrella term it encapsulates neatly the range of issues on which Starmer wants to fight the election, from the economy and energy to the border and crime.
WEDNESDAY 29 Can’t help thinking Keir Starmer has made a mistake in banning Diane Abbott from standing as a Labour MP at the July 4 general election. Like Jeremy Corbyn she is a trusted local MP with a massive majority (33,000). Starmer’s determination to look tough with Labour members he disagrees with while inviting disaffected Conservatives onto the Labour benches is a worrying sign that Labour is becoming a narrow and bitter institution, almost a quasi-dictatorship. It will be interesting to see how Starmer reacts to the planned strike by junior doctors in the week running up to the general election.
📌 One hour later: Keir Starmer now says he hasn’t banned Diane Abbott from standing.
📌 At the Barbican Conservatory I helped deliver an afternoon presentation on the manifesto we made with Barbican Communities based on the evaluation of Headway’s community collaborator experience. Then in the evening we had a party to close the partnership.
THURSDAY 30 There’s still confusion as to whether Diane Abbott has or has not been barred from standing for Labour in the Hackney North & Stoke Newington constituency on July 4. The fiasco looks very bad for Labour.
📌 Popped into our local small gallery, the Ed Cross Gallery, for a last chance to see the intriguing paintings by Pippa El-Kadhi Brown, which place creepy blobby alienesque forms in weirdly shaped and brightly lit multicoloured domestic settings. The overall effect is to draw you into the picture, where the blobby alien sits waiting for your arrival.
FRIDAY 31 The day started with disruption. After eating some spicy nibbles while out with friends yesterday my wife later did something with her contact lenses and woke up this morning requesting an urgent visit to the nearby Moorfields eye hospital. Some kind of eyeball abrasion was diagnosed and antibiotic drops dispensed. Waiting for antibiotics to take on their cumulative effect is a drawn-out process involving more pain and self-pity. I saw it as a test of character to steer my way through this, dropping the drops onto the sick eyeball every two hours and making toast. But I suspect this is just the end of the beginning and more tests are in the pipeline.
📌 Michelle is setting up differently various at Westminster City Hall. My five stroke paintings have ended up in a glorious yellow corner.
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Billy's Scrapbook 