September 28-October 4, 2024
SATURDAY 28 We popped into the Cubitt Open Studios in Angel to say hello to Buffy and Myra. Buffy is working on an esoteric exploration of the Greenwich Meridian in partnership with some Russian artists who seem to have disappeared underground since the start of the war with Ukraine. Nevertheless, she showed us a video of her and a bunch of others walking the Meridian in strange cultish costumes she’d made, looking at plants and insects. Next stop, Hull. Myra does massive stitchwork/paint combos and never draws or transfers her images beforehand. She told us she is developing a series (8 so far) of stitchworks based on the stories of people who have come back from the dead.
📌 At a conference yesterday I met Suzanne Alleyne, an expert in power-sharing within big organisations. She is a big fan of Liverpool FC, and Jürgen Klopp especially, and when I told her I had a vintage Liverpool shirt, she asked for a photo.
SUNDAY 29 In the New European, Matthew D’Ancona has a faintly embarrassing article that more resembles an audition to become Kamala Harris’s chief advisor. The article includes a fantasy interview with an influential podcaster in which Harris (using words written by D’Ancona) fluently and convincingly explains why she is great and Donald Trump is a tosser.
📌 Media commentators have been urging Keir Starmer to be less doomy about things getting worse before they get better. The government generally responds that this is simply the PM telling the truth and that only economic recovery will deliver better times in the future. In the Conversation, an essay about Kamala Harris by the social and political researcher Paul Whiteley touches on a point Starmer might want to pay more attention to. It is that the US economy under the Biden/Harris project is doing well, but the population doesn’t feel any better off for it.
📌 It’s rare for me to wholeheartedly agree with a Guardian review, but there isn’t much to add to Peter Bradshaw’s take on One Hand Clapping, a lost documentary film from Abbey Road Studios in 1974 of Paul McCartney and Wings recording a live album that never happened. It was like watching the musical equivalent of the best footballer in the world [insert name here] doing keepy-uppies.
McCartney’s extraordinary, unforced gusto and the delight he takes in every creative moment, his natural extrovert musicianship and casual virtuosity are such a tonic.
The one thing I will add to Bradshaw’s analysis is that with the insertion of McCartney now, at 82, doing chirpy voiceovers to camera, the project takes on the feel of a legacy, a heritage happening, a wrapping up of loose ends, and for McCartney, the Wings period of his musical career is probably the least known about and the one he feels closest to after The Beatles.
MONDAY 30 Pollsters use the expression “thermostatic” to describe public opinion, explaining that it moves in the opposite direction to policy. I’m not sure thermostatic is the right word, but if it catches on I suppose we better get used to it.
📌 Lewis Goodall spotted a move by Rachel Reeves at the Labour conference last week that is worth bookmarking. He says Reeves and Starmer both hinted at abandoning the previous government’s rigid fiscal rules and borrowing billions to invest in their vision for a new Britain. I seem to remember Ed Balls (and later John McDonnell ) saying something very similar in the past and being laughed out of the room.
TUESDAY 1 The Conversation has a very useful article for anyone who doesn’t quite get the connection between Hezbollah and the government of Lebanon. I’ve always told people that to think of Hezbollah as a regular Islamic terror group is to miss the point. It is much more than that.
📌 It’s always a treat when I get to decide what outfits to give the three party girls on a night out.
📌 The saga of the busted dishwasher is set to run and run. It first went on the blink a month ago. Since then two engineers have had a look. One said it needed two new parts, which were duly ordered. The second one claimed the fault was actually in the installation. Now a third engineer will come next week to establish what the real fault is. Fingers crossed.
WEDNESDAY 2 Jonty Bloom’s daily rant starts in a humorous tone then arrives at quite a serious point. He ridicules pronouncements from the Tory leadership contenders on wages, then points to where a truly radical new Conservative leader might actually stand a chance of success…
Abolish all in-work benefits and instead hike the minimum wage until it is high enough for people to live on what they earn.
📌 I have a daily “Task” message that reminds me that “the middle hen’s shoes are too big”. This refers to the image above of the three carousing women. The sketch from which this stitchwork comes needs correcting, hence the daily nudge to get on with the job. But my wife has a different way of seeing it. She says the “middle hen” has in fact keeled over on her high heels and the feet we are looking at are not too big but twisted by inebriation.
📌 I’m currently running with the thought that everyone’s idea of a good news story is as unique to them as their personality, and not as predictable as you might imagine. I know AI and the humourless Algorithms think otherwise, so I will click to confuse from now on.
THURSDAY 3 At Headway we learned that Barry was a goner, RIP. I’ll remember him affectionately for bravely taking on the role of bass player in the Neuro Skeptics, a band that also included me, Chris and Stuart formed for the sole purpose of recording a version of Elvis Costello’s Indoors Fireworks in time for November 5. We were one week late in finishing it. Sean said he was upset because on Tuesday Barry had complained that Sean hadn’t stopped to talk to him. Sean had apologised and said he’d make up for it on Thursday. But Barry never made it to Thursday.
📌 Me, Sam and Rosie visited Rob Ryan‘s studio in Bethnal Green, where we learned all about Rob’s paper cutting and screen printing combined practice. It was inspiring but also daunting because screen printing is incredibly technical and not the kind of DIY, cheap-and-easy craft I gravitate towards. And paper cutting requires years of toil to perfect the shapes.
Screen printing words and expressions I learned were “snap”, which is the distance between the print bed and the screen, and “printy”, which describes an imperfection that somehow renders the finished print more authentic in appearance, more hand-made.
📌 The visit to Rob’s studio meant I missed the Headway writers group, so I don’t know how my story based on a 10cc song title went down. It was called Dreadlock Holiday.
Even though they were now well into their 50s, Martin and Heidi still laughed about the night they tumbled into blissful agreement. And they both agreed now that it was all down to the superior quality of the dope you got back then.
It started with one of Martin’s sweeping statements about music: that only Jamaicans can make truly authentic Reggae. Everything else was fake, he claimed, with his chest puffed out. The evidence pivoted on 10cc’s Dreadlock Holiday, but roamed leisurely into the work of The Police, Steely Dan and even, yikes, Neil Diamond, who is said to have knocked out a reggae version of Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer.
Heidi bravely counter-argued, with particular emphasis on Elvis Costello’s Watching The Detectives, and Bank Robber by The Clash. They both conceded points on UB40, but by this time they’d descended into fits of giggles and an urgent need of salad-cream sandwiches and cheese-and-onion crisps.
📌 At a late-night opening of the Whitechapel Gallery we were reminded in the work of Peter Kennard that political photomontage has lost its teeth. In Kennard’s day, when the artist wielded scissors and glue, black ink, Tippex and a stack of relevant photographs ready to be dismembered, the purpose was to take sides in the big issues and shout about it – in Kennard’s case with a lot of anger. Today, while artists such as Coldwar Steve and Klawe Rzeczy undoubtedly make good political art, the message never quite seems to land as hard. And with digital technology, the task is made so much easier.
FRIDAY 4 At the Whitechapel Gallery last night we also saw work by a Brazilian artist called Lygia Clark, who in 1959 forged a movement called “Neoconcrete”, which appeared to have something to do with architecture and geometry and was in total opposition to the “Concrete” movement, which, argued the Neoconcrete Manifesto, was far too obedient to the technological advances of the 20th Century.
📌 Now officially OLD, I claimed my entitlement to the double Winter vaccination against flu and Covid.
📌 The TV series Joan ended in one of those tantalising ways that suggests Joan’s life of crime is not over and will extend into Series 2.
📌 It’s always nice to end the week with a solid achievement under one’s belt…
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Billy's Scrapbook 