February 1-7, 2025
SATURDAY 1 At Kings Place we saw an intriguing concert of violin and choral based on the non-verbal communication methods of a high-dependent autistic person, a collaboration between Kate Adams’ children Ruby and Paul.
📌 In the Parcel Yard in King’s Cross we struck up a conversation with a very tall man from York.
SUNDAY 2 I threatened to resign from the allotments committee if they didn’t start taking accessibility seriously. It backfired when they put me in charge of saying what needs to change. At least the new chairman of the committee is a rottweiler, so fingers crossed there will be improvements.
MONDAY 3 A few days ago you couldn’t go anywhere without bumping into the word DeepSeek. I successfully dodged it for a while but now, thanks to an article in the Conversation, its importance has become clear. DeepSeek is China’s answer to OpenAI and America is seemingly outraged because it believed that it was in charge of artificial intelligence, endov. To add insult to injury the cost of DeepSeek is a fraction of its US enemy’s AI baby ($6m versus $100m). It is the Primark version of AI and has the potential to become equally popular.
📌 Today’s Sensemaker would have us believe that Donald Trump thinks Saudi Arabia should rule the whole of the Middle East.
TUESDAY 4 Patricia Highsmith is having a deserved renaissance at BBC Radio. Last week we got the first five installments of Ripley’s Game. This week we have the following five installments. And for gluttons they’ve resurrected a superb adaptation of Strangers on a Train from 1996 and featuring Anton Lesser, Michael Sheen, Saskia Reeves and Bill Nighy.
📌 Someone on the radio last night said Hitler had a crush on Mussolini.
📌 Also on the radio Eleanor of Aquitaine is being lined up to marry Fat Louis in the robustly feminist historical serialisation Eleanor Rising.
WEDNESDAY 5 Got an email from the October Gallery asking if I’d like to “explore the liminal boundaries of creative materiality” of its new exhibition.
📌 Michelle needed the toilet when she arrived and Jo told her to be careful because the public toilets at the Royal London Hospital are reported to be a dogging destination.
📌 Today’s Dayroom session at the Royal London was the second of two “discovery” workshops. PLACE is becoming a theme. Jo and patient Bobby chatted endlessly about Hornchurch, but thankfully also did some drawing. Michelle got some great mark-making out of John (stars, clouds), whose attention span is about 10 seconds. Michelle is enjoying this project and learning. Getting great things in snatches is a skill I’m not sure she knew she had, or at least hadn’t used in a long time.
I liked Raymond. He enjoyed referencing me as The Scouser. When he was making his signature I asked him if he was in pain. He was, so I told him to stop. He wanted so much to be part of something that he was happy to hurt.
📌 Donald Trump’s insistence that the citizens of Greenland would prefer to be citizens of the USA is a total distortion of survey data, says an academic article in the Conversation.
THURSDAY 6
📌 I’m more and more convinced that Donald Trump is escalating his bizarre remodelling of Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East” so that he can then back down and hand the plan straight to Saudi Arabia, who at the moment claim to reject it.
📌 At Headway we were visited by the filmmaker and brain-injury survivor Lotje Sodderland, who tried to get us to write a poem about Summer. I got as far as the first line…
That Summer when I cheated death twice
I will hopefully build on it, but probably not.
📌 At our residents’ association meeting a lot of frustrated voices added to a catalogue of complaints about the poor state of repairs and the indifference of the estate management. All the meetings are like this, but this one was better attended than most. At first I thought it might be the offer of free wine at the end, but very few people stayed afterwards, yet engaged robustly during.
📌 One of the commentators on the Liverpool versus Spurs game said, “Liverpool are one of the best teams in the world right now, never mind anywhere else.”
FRIDAY 7 We’ve made elaborate plans to visit Ireland in August for the special birthday of a friend and neighbour, Anne. But last night I dreamt that Anne cancelled her party and obliterated our travel plans when she spotted a coat in a shop window and decided the coat was more important than the party. My wife was livid, a micro whirlwind of perpetual rage for about a week. I was phlegmatic but did tell Anne firmly that I thought less of her.
📌 I must start messing around with AI art effects a bit more. Below is a photograph taken through a window of a garden.
📌 Reflecting on Wednesday’s art session at the Royal London Hospital, my artistic instincts are pulling me to favour one very difficult patient called John, whose very limited mark-making is exquisite, but whose behaviour is totally unpredictable. My team instincts, however, are telling me to be broadly inclusive and generally nurturing. One way is dangerous, the other is safe. I think I’ll talk to Michelle about it.
📌 My wife is out with friends, so I had a glass of wine with my lunch, because that’s what she’ll be doing.
Read all of my scrapbook diaries…
PLEASE MESSAGE WITH ANY CORRECTIONS, BIG OR SMALL.
Billy's Scrapbook 
In despair
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Many bloggers are in desabout Trump and his pronouncements. Here too many are deeply worried about the working of the central government and others are blind followers of Modi. One YouTuber stated that such people have kept the brains elsewhere. It is easy to brainwash people. I remember Curtain by Agatha Christie. It is Poirot’s last case. In it I read how easy to influence people and make them believe what we want them to believe. Trump wants to buy Gaza !!! Illegal immigration is wrong but people are horrified and indignant that they are being sent back in chains, especially when Modi claims that he and Trump are the best of friends. Thank you for this post.
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I thought it was only in my country that accessibility is not taken seriously. My son has Retinitis Pigmentosa and the conditions of our footpaths and their non existence makes him angry.
Deepseek is making waves here too. And what amused people was that OpenAI team stated earlier that it was not possible to replicate what they had done.
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