January 18-24, 2025
SATURDAY 18 On his travels Jake declares his love of China. At the Museum of the Home yesterday, the Home of the Future display imagined a near-future world dominated by China. And if Donald Trump tries to make life economically difficult for Britain, might China, despite its many faults, be a more useful courtship for the UK to pursue? Yes, says a learned article in the Guardian.
📌 The Guardian review of the film The Brutalist has an ambitious opening: “The Brutalist is about the design of postwar America and what was mixed into its foundations at the building stage. It asks us to decide if and how the brutalism of the title applies to something other than architecture, and wonders about the future ruin of what we all imagine at the drawing board of youth: an American Ozymandias.” It then goes on to list all the stuff that went into the concrete mixer to make America what it is today. Sadly, watching concrete dry is not much fun without compelling lines and powerful character performances. The big message works for the high-minded, but not for the rest of us. I got very little from a very long film that had me yawning in places at the dull predictability of its vast collection of clichés. During the interval I did a web search for the Hungarian architect Laszlo Toth, the main character in the film. The character turns out to be a fictional amalgam of various cult modernist architects and designers. But my search also uncovered a real Laszlo Toth, a Hungarian geologist who vandalised the Sistine Chapel and declared himself to be Jesus Christ. His story probably would have made a good film.
SUNDAY 19 Buried in a profile on the business pages of the Guardian is the news that the UK’s lousy economic performance is caused by lousy management, and most badly when Daddy hands over the family business to his eldest son.
📌 From the Observer…
We need to rethink what we mean by internationalism in this age of assertive nationalism.
📌 Tried a Shakshuka recipe that uses Ras el Hanout spicing instead of cumin and paprika. Quite a revelation, and so easy.
MONDAY 20 Prompted by an encounter with Natasha at the weekend we bought our first meal via Too Good To Go, an app that hooks you up with shops, restaurants and cafes who have surplus food at the end of the day. In most cases what you end up with in your “Surprise Bag”, is a gamble, but the discount prices can be worth the risk. For £5.20 we got a large tub of cooked food left over from lunchtime that included chicken, roasted cauliflower, broccoli and carrots, rice and beans, pasta and potatoes. Even so, my wife declared it poor value for money.
📌 Desperately trying to steer clear of anything to do with Donald Trump, which prompts a short poem…
Trying hard
To steer clear
Of Trump stuff
📌 In the latest Poem of the Week in the Guardian, Jonathan Swift proves in The Day of Judgement that he was one of literature’s great all-rounders, though I stumble a bit on the last few lines.
TUESDAY 21 The Knowledge recently quoted a Times article in which the author claimed that Gen Z pays people to change its lightbulbs. Amusing as this is, and anecdotally fascinating to learn that basic home skills are no longer considered by young people to be life skills, I find it hard to believe. My suspicion is that it is only the children of Times journalists who can’t change lightbulbs. All other members of Gen Z can probably work out how to do it.
📌 Orwell Daily has a gentle piece from 1944 in which he praises the roses you could buy at Woolworths back then for 6d. The best thing about them, he says, is that they were rarely the species indicated on the label, so buying one was an exercise in pot-luck, so to speak.
📌 Alan Sugar thinks Elon Musk is heading for a fall.
📌 At a consultation gathering for local people to have their say on the new London Museum in Smithfield I came away with the knowledge that not one minute of thought had been given to accessibility.
WEDNESDAY 22 On our way through the Royal London Hospital for the first of six sessions to re-design two day rooms, Michelle told us about when her husband was on the toilet as she arrived home. She shouted, “Where are you?” Her husband answered, “On the toilet.” Whereupon Siri interjected with, “Don’t forget to flush.”
📌 The response from patients and staff on our first day at the Royal London brain-injury unit was a success. The theme I plugged was names, faces and places. I got a sense from the patients that the places aspect is one to develop. Ali was from Turkey and his surname means “Cloud” in Turkish. Tomás was from rural Poland and Michael was a proper east London geezer.
THURSDAY 23 Kat says she wants her boyfriend to buy her the stitchwork of Fallopian Jesus for her birthday. I told her to talk to Michelle.
📌 Told James that I think the Headway writing group should be more collaborative. I mentioned I had the first two lines of a poem based on my 4 months in hospital but nothing else.
Every day same surprise
Gosh! I’m still alive.
📌 The driver of the 394 very kindly waited for me to arrive and hobble on board. He did the same later for another passenger.
📌 We visited Jennifer’s stall at the London Art Fair. Terence was her wingman and by the time we left she hadn’t made any sales but had someone interested in some of the drawings she had in show for a rich client to hang in their posh house. The whole event is a horrible orgy of ordinary galleries being done over by greedy dealers. The amount of art on display is vast, all of it technically competent and sometimes very clever, but lacking soul in nearly all cases. The overwhelming feeling is of a self-satisfied grubby business at work.
FRIDAY 24 Jonty Bloom says that if Canada became the 51st state of the US, it would secure so many electoral college votes that it could effectively control the outcome of every future election. I’m not sure that’s what Donald Trump intended when he made his invitation. I’ve always found the relationship between the two countries fascinating. Canadians I’ve met are quick to tell you they are not American. Gun ownership in Canada is said to be very high, but unlike its neighbour further south, gun crime is not high. Canadians own guns but rarely use them, least of all for criminal purposes. Maybe the US becoming the 11th province of Canada is a better idea.
📌 Bruce Springsteen and Robert de Niro are both moving to Canada from the US.
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