November 9-15, 2024
SATURDAY 9 I finally finished GF Newman’s The Corrupted, an epic BBC radio drama in 58 episodes. It is a fascinating mix of historical fact and fiction starring Toby Jones as Joey Oldman, a Jewish Russian immigrant in London whose scuzzy odyssey spans post-war gangland crime and the racy 1960s to New Labour and the great financial meltdown of 2008, by which time Joey Oldman has become banker Lord Joseph Olinska and is nicely cuddled up with an outfit called Lehman Brothers.
📌 Squaredle‘s Bonus Word of the Day was “savvying”, the present participle and gerund of the word savvy, which I learned became became popular after the actor Johnny Depp used it in his role of Jack Sparrow in the film Pirates of the Carribbean.
📌 The latest stitchwork from Sam’s Queen of Wonky drawing workshops has finally started to grow on me and the prospect of colouring those grand ears is mouthwatering.
📌 We have loved the TV adaptations of the Mick Herron Slow Horses stories and now I am happy to report that in print they are even better.
📌 On Strictly Come Dancing, one of the contestants, the comedian Chris McCausland, remarked that disabled people are more creative, more imaginative and better problem solvers than the able bodied.
SUNDAY 10 Elif Shafak’s latest newsletter from her Unmapped Storylands collection reads almost like a sermon on the state of the world.
📌 The Harvest Celebration at the allotments was poorly attended but the children didn’t seem to notice. Towards the end we were visited by a fella called Eamonn, who it turns out is married to the Bishop of London. He gave the impression, here among the common people of the Golden Lane Estate, of being slightly embarrassed by his own lofty status as a Consort, less so about his role as a Farringdon councillor and a City of London tour guide who specialises in anecdotes about Charles Dickens and occasionally dresses in Dickensian clobber to deliver his learned tours.
MONDAY 11 Larry Elliott’s final column as economics editor for the Guardian is a six-point list of lessons learned about world economics. It makes for bleak reading but has a tone of honest nostalgia I find comforting. The upshot is that the bad people have taken over the world because the good people were too smug about being good to come up with a better plan.
📌 As promised I joined our Alderwoman Liz for Father Jack’s outdoor remembrance service next to some historical remnants of the old wall that once enclosed the City of London. Jack was assisted in his readings by two pupils from the City of London School of Girls and by a trumpet player to deliver the Last Post.
📌 The Bonus Word of the Day in Squaredle was “argil”, which Squaredle defines as: “clay, especially used by potters”, adding that, “some argil is noted for its mossy colour.”
TUESDAY 12 Articles arguing that a Trump presidency might not be as bad as expected have started to appear, alongside others describing how the Democrats effectively beat themselves.
Trump’s strategy enables him to present a party of private power as the voice of the ordinary voter.
📌 The Teams meeting for the Headway/Royal London hospital project with Vital Arts went well. Jo steered us diligently through the agenda and I felt a good rapport growing, especially with the brain-injury ward team led by Molly. They seem excited by the prospect of using arts and crafts to engage patients and their families. The six workshops will need proper planning and I have a lot of confidence in the people I’ll be working with. They all want it to be a success.
WEDNESDAY 13 I’m devastated that the old-style news narrative has been withered to death by the internet. What has replaced the classic news headline – eg, ‘Man Bites Dog’ – is now the suggestion that the dog might have bitten the man. Then you need to scroll through several paragraphs of nonsense to discover that the dog looked at the man in a threatening way, claims Mr Blah who was walking past at the time, and who wears very thick glasses.
📌 At a schmoozy Culture Mile event, Harshita introduced me to a friend who turned out to be someone I knew as Susie Barron, a fashion assistant at the Guardian when Susannah Frankel was fashion editor. We reminisced endlessly and Susie recalled a time I stood up and defended her in an argument with some superior tosser. We talked at length about then Guardian Weekend magazine editor Deborah Orr, who Susie found terrifying. I think I was one of the few people who didn’t find Deborah terrifying.
THURSDAY 14 In a moment of madness I wandered into the Headway gym and spent half an hour cycling vigorously to the Scissor Sisters. I got so caught up in the frenzy that I missed the start of the writing group. My contribution this week was from the prompt King Of America.
They’d avoided talking about Donald Trump for several days. It wasn’t a deliberate choice, but both Heidi and Martin found themselves skulking miserably around their small Hoxton apartment with a bereaved look on their faces, not quite knowing how to process the news that he’d won, he’d won also by a good margin and was now loudly proclaiming himself King of America. The deadness inside them couldn’t be expressed in words. The inevitability of endless global trade wars amid an endlessly overheating planet and a Henry 8 reign of misogyny seemed conclusive. And their fellow citizens in the United States, a supposedly advanced nation, were responsible. They felt let down. Martin found some equilibrium in the opening words of an Elvis Costello song…
He thought he was the King of America
Where they pour Coca Cola just like vintage wine
Now I try hard not to become hysterical
But I’m not sure if I am laughing or crying
Heidi was still a bit stuck in a state of hysteria.
📌 Before lunch at Headway we all sang songs with former members of the 1970s band Darts. After lunch, in the studio there was a memorial for Barry, who died recently. Lots of people said nice things and we all looked at fabulous retro pictures of Barry. I didn’t think it was appropriate to say he always reminded me of Catweazle.
📌 A perfect spur-of-the-moment visit to the cinema for Anora was stained by a group of young women behind us who seemed to be involved in some kind of performative giggling contest. They laughed forcibly at things that were clearly not funny, but ultimately did not spoil a cleverly slapstick parable film about getting the kind of relationships you give. Standout performance for superb character transition – from happy and joyous to miserable, angry and desperate – goes to Mikey Madison (Max in Pamela Adlon’s Better Things), whose character name is Anora but prefers to be known as Annie. That was a clue we got right from the start that didn’t quite sink in until about half way through when Annie got quite stroppy with authority figures who referred to her as Anora. Another clue was that Annie’s antagonist was a Russian who spoke bad English and English-speaking Annie also spoke Russian badly.
FRIDAY 15 I wonder if in 4 years’ time we will still be bothered by news of how badly and stupidly the previous government wasted taxpayers money.
📌 In a moment of curiosity inspired by a Spotify playlist I learned that Alannah Currie from the 1980s band Thompson Twins is now an avant-garde artist called Miss Pokeno and part of a group that does arty pranks with old pieces of furniture.
Read all of my scrapbook diaries…
PLEASE MESSAGE WITH ANY CORRECTIONS, BIG OR SMALL.
Billy's Scrapbook 