August 24-30, 2024
SATURDAY 24 Farrow & Ball are under the social-media cosh for not being vegan enough in the naming of their fashionable paints, which allegedly include colours such as Smoked Trout and Potted Shrimp. This reminds me of a colour my wife once invented while on holiday in Malta. She noticed that a lot of people wore T-shirts in what she described as “Nuclear Salmon” (bright orangey-pink). You don’t see much of that colour any more, and my wife is a massive fan of Greggs’ vegan sausage rolls.
📌 Our new binge-watch is the first series of Only Murders In The Building, a mischievously inventive amateur detective pastiche that pushes together three strangers who are all fans of true-crime podcasts. Season 4 is about to go live, so we’ve a lot of catching up to do. American TV writers sure know how to pack an awful lot of character and plot into 30 minutes. And American TV studio bosses sure know how to keep a winning cast together – by awarding all the principal actors the title (and the pay) of “Executive Producer”.
SUNDAY 25 A long and sometimes tedious article in the New Statesman discusses the rise of “Cultural Christianity”, but nuggets of enlightenment nevertheless do surface, eventually.
Can Christian morality survive the loss of belief in the biblical story – the “supernatural framework” – underpinning it. What does the future hold for those who believe in “the principles of Christianity”? Can we, as Tolstoy did in The Gospel in Brief, remove the miracles while finding in its Scriptures guidance on how to live?
In one section the article quotes Nick Cave describing his surprise discovery that he had found some of his beliefs in the “wholly fallible, often disappointing and deeply weird” institution of the church. You probably only had to listen to Into My Arms to pick up that message.
In another section Clement Atlee is quoted as saying he believed in the ethics of Christianity, “but not the mumbo-jumbo”.
In all of these discussions, I always come back to a line written by John Lennon: “God is a concept, by which we measure our pain”.
📌 On our way to one of Leadenhall’s occasional flea markets we spotted a huge gold paper-bag sculpture in the street.
📌 In her Unmapped Storylands newsletter, Elif Shafak turns an existential tale of hiking badly (in espadrilles) with expert hiker friends into a biographical essay on Franz Kafka.
MONDAY 26 The film Blink Twice arrived with a lot of publicity attached to its director Zoe Kravitz and the psychology of its #metoo content, which revolves around a rich man and the druggy sexploitation cult he nurtures on a remote island inhabited by stary natives and hungry snakes. But it’s still more or less a revenge slasher movie in warm colours with one good twist.
📌 I started to investigate the possibility of taking a holiday alone. I like walking, but since my brain injury, walking is not what it used to be. It’s very slow, and forever full of risk and the annoying need to stop and rest. My mind never stops being drawn from my surroundings to the very small space in front of my feet. It’s a focus full of jeopardy. My wife is normally 20m ahead, often stood still with a resigned look on her face. Walking for me is a lonely pursuit.
But since the Lea Valley in Essex and Herfordshire has been reimagined and repurposed as a vast expanse wild and wet wilderness, a park full of walking trails, nature reserves and outdoor activities, I quite fancied the idea of doing a slow walk of discovery over a period of three days. Then I read the comments on the park’s website and the main complaint from walkers was that the walking trails are always busily occupied by rude cyclists.
TUESDAY 27 The Daily Sensemaker tells us that air conditioning is adding to global warming because it uses so much energy, much of it not coming from renewable sources. Globally it names India as one of the AC business’s biggest customers…
In Delhi and Mumbai, AC already accounts for up to 60 per cent of all electricity consumption. Three quarters of that power comes from coal, the most carbon-intensive source.
This made me think of the psychological possibilities of labelling future twin wall-mounted plug sockets “renewable” and “non-renewable” and charging a very tiny different price for each, even though the electricity they supply comes from the exact same grid. Then I realised this was just a dressed-up energy tax.
📌 The NHS is to add mental health to the services it covers on the 111 phone line. On the radio this morning a report stated that during the Pandemic a lot of expert mental-health support services sprang into action locally. Now the NHS will act as a “national front door” to services in your area. It will be interesting to track the success of this endeavour. One of the commentators on the radio said the 111 connection would offer a helpful ear to those who “just want to talk”.
📌 Keir Starmer has decided to not renew the £40m contract Rishi had with the RAF to whizz him around the country in helicopters.
📌 At the Memory Group Summer Party I finally got to identify the woman my wife and her friend claim to have seen regularly sitting in a window seat in Côte sipping wine at 10am. Blimey.
WEDNESDAY 28 Having suffered a multitude of time-wasters on Facebook Marketplace, we finally thought we’d cracked it with Louie, who would “definitely” meet us in our local pub 6-6.30pm to collect a huge cast-iron Le Crueset casserole pot. We still own the pot.
THURSDAY 29 Sam’s crazy glam-rock boot sculpture shattered in the kiln, leaving it without a heel. I really liked it so Michelle suggested I create a stitch-sculpture heel to attach to it as part of the great Billy/Sam collaboration. Must admit I’m quite excited about working on this.
📌 There’s a good observation at the heart of Martin Kettle’s otherwise arse-licking essay about Keir Starmer in the Guardian: that Starmer is to Social Democracy what Jeremy Corbyn was to Democratic Socialism.
Starmer is attempting to frame his picture of Britain’s 10-year future… His social democracy is extremely steely… and he is ruthless.
📌 At the Imagine Panel celebratory dinner at the Barbican, Georgia said her “lash lady” has gone missing, and Bee claimed that more people regret getting Harry Potter tattoos than having gender reassignment surgery.
FRIDAY 30 Patsy’s daughter Katie was on the BBC Radio 4’s Food Programme about food waste. Unlike the “dumpster divers”, who patrol the back yards of the supermarkets for free food that’s been thrown out, Katie’s company, Wasted Kitchen, actually buys and distributes surplus foods. It also encourages cooking from scratch with courses and workshops. But the idea that food waste has itself become a sustainable and profitable business is a telling comment on the cost of food production and distribution in relation to its price.
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