October 26-November 1
SATURDAY 26 At Barbican they were celebrating the Darbar Festival with a full programme of music, meditations and market stalls.
In the Curve gallery we had a quick look at the giant wooden narrative paintings of Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum and emerged with a pledge to return for a longer visit so as to better understand the shifting noirish story of the character depicted.
SUNDAY 27 Jonty Bloom hammers home a very rusty nail in his declaration that Britain’s so-called “Special Relationship” with the United States has been dead or non-existent for a long time already.
We used to be a bridge to the EU, now we are a bridge to nowhere.
A Trump victory in the November Presidential elections would make the case very clear. Out of revenge he would humiliate and insult Britain, which, says Bloom, might not be such a terrible thing. But whoever is the next president, Britain needs to face up to its post-Brexit world status.
We are a small island, off the shores of a huge regional power, our economy is inadequate and our armed forces pathetic and we don’t have any ‘special friends’.
📌 Nick Cohen also has a big rusty nail to hammer home, and his victim is David Cameron…
By any standards, including, crucially, his own, David Cameron was a disastrous prime minister.
But in the way Cohen tells it, Cameron becomes a sinister reminder that public deference to the monarchy and the ruling classes leaves open the continued possibility that tyranny is never far from the living rooms of Britain.
MONDAY 28 Uber has held a monopoly in the on-demand cab business for too long, so we tried Freenow, one of London’s upstart rivals, to get to the Smile & Align dentist in Canary Wharf, where one of my bad old bottom teeth was promptly wrenched out and thrown away. I honestly can’t say I noticed any difference in a service that costs £5 less with Freenow than it costs with Uber. The Align & Smile dentist was a model of no-fuss politeness and competence.
TUESDAY 29 The gigantic sink hole in my lower right gum, where a bad tooth was extracted yesterday, has started to heal over. Which I’m a bit sad about, because I have become quite the avid student of imaginative things to do with mashed potato and rice pudding. I think therefore I will feign woundedness for a little while longer yet.
📌 On Threads, someone posted a fascinating piece of memorabilia, which literally made me picture a habitually grumpy man, sitting on a sofa with a pad and pencil in hand…
📌 Just discovered that the pink tablet I take each morning to keep me alive is not pink at all. It is a white tablet coated in something pink, which rubs off easily.
📌 Today’s lunch is mashed potato stirred into smooth tomato soup with a healthy dash of Worcestershire Sauce.
📌 My wife often gets compliments about her jewellery, but the other day one came from an unlikely source. A child around 10 years old cycling with friends stopped his bike in front of us and said to my wife, “Excuse me, I love your beads.”
WEDNESDAY 30 At a focus group to bash out the issues around how AI might in future help older people with their health and care needs, we heard Peter the coordinator start a conversation with a bot he has named Klaus, who immediately asked after the wellbeing of Peter’s pet pug.
📌 A canny budget, confidently delivered, that was surprisingly redistributive, with a clever reduction in the price of beer. And the chancellor chose not to raid my pension pot. Happy days!
The previous government had in the past decade turned British citizens into reluctant survivalists, where hanging on was a way of life. Business was set free to screw every last penny from customers (even during the COVID crisis), and working parents were forced to visit food banks to feed their children. The streets became littered with rough sleepers, unable to make the pace of a callous, greed-infested society. Schools and hospitals were coshed into submission, or dereliction. The message? Don’t thrive, just survive.
Now it’s business that must buckle up. Or not, maybe. Decent profits are still available, but only to businesses who offer decent wages and conditions. The two go hand in hand, implies the chancellor. What was most surprising about this speech was its toughness. It was telling, not asking: this is how it is from now on. Get with it or get off.
On the same day, Next, the very ordinary UK clothes and homewares retailer, was reported to have hit a £1bn annual profit. Last month Next was found guilty in an equal-pay judgement that is likely to cost it £30m in compensation. Shareholders must be questioning the skills of those who run the company. Or let’s hope they are. A different way of doing business might be on the agenda. Only might. To state otherwise would be stupidly optimistic.
THURSDAY 31 I wrote my story for the Headway writing group last week, but the group didn’t meet, so I submitted it this week, which happens to be more timely as its title is It’s Halloween!!!!!
Five exclamation marks! “How twattish is that?” thought Heidi on reading the handwritten note Martin had left on the kitchen table. He knew she knew what day it was and what it meant.
It meant watching The Blair Witch Project all over again and pretending it was scary, but not as “really scary” as the first time they saw it together and Martin bit off what he thought was the head of a Jelly Baby but was in fact the tip of his tongue. It meant yet another pompous reiteration that Halloween is meant to be a day to remember the dead and not, as is popularly imagined, to bring the dead back to life in stupid zombie walks.
But most of all Halloween meant not talking about that time Martin challenged a group of children on the doorstep to “trick” him, losing his temper on the way and telling one of them to go fuck himself.
So that’s why Halloween nowadays means sitting in the dark, out of sight, in case the doorbell rings.
📌 Jonty Bloom thinks Britain’s farmers should stop whining about the chancellor’s budget and cough up inheritance tax just like the rest of the population.
FRIDAY 1 The cold chips left over from my wife’s evening meal last night this morning went into the food processor, were pulverised at top speed then added to a can of mushroom soup. The finished concoction looked like a large pan of sick.
📌 To the Barbican for an RSC production of The Buddha of Suburbia, a play of two halves. The first half told me that the book is better than the play. The context was both over explained and over acted. In the second half, the characters came to life and their stories blossomed.
Read all of my scrapbook diaries…
PLEASE MESSAGE WITH ANY CORRECTIONS, BIG OR SMALL.
Billy's Scrapbook 