March 1-7 2025
SATURDAY 1 A neighbour had made overtures to involve me in an upcoming book fair she has planned. Today she sent me a draft proposal, which to me came across like a brief to assemble as many design and architecture poseurs in one place as possible. I told her it wasn’t the kind of book fair I’d attend. I said I’d prefer to browse Betty’s crime collection or Sue’s stash of Mills & Boons. I think Bill has several shelves full of old Westerns. I personally have a lot of old encyclopedias and school text books.
📌 Marge says her daughter spends £1,000 a month on dog food.
SUNDAY 2 Our 1.5m square raised bed at the allotment yard is falling to bits. The wooden box has rotted from inside and looks ready to disintegrate totally any moment soon, stricken by some sort of wood equivalent of leprosy. Happily, Dom, one of our fellow allotmenteers, has offered to rebuild it and complete the job by the end of March, just in time for my wife’s heritage tomato seedlings to be planted out.
📌 I have a strange feeling that Volodomyr Zelenskyy has pulled a stunt on Donald Trump with the proposed mineral deal.
MONDAY 3 Having second thoughts about combining all the work generated by patients at the Royal London into one big scene. Brain injury is an individual journey, and even though all the patients share a predicament, they do not share it collectively. I shall raise the idea of making the day rooms into comfortable, inviting spaces decorated with individual pieces. That way they can be renewed over time, thus representing the temporal nature of the patient-hospital relationship. I also like the idea that individual pieces come with individual stories, which can be used to present the works: John’s Stars, Ray’s Three Little Birds, etc.
📌 Another gem of a landscape arrived from Sam…
TUESDAY 4 Wes Streeting has for some time looked like a Prime Minister in waiting. And no more so now he has acted decisively in the business of taking back control of the NHS from its vast but diffuse management maze to the Department of Health and Social Care.
📌 W H Smith will soon disappear from the UK’s high streets, says today’s Sensemaker, because its most successful revenue stream is no longer in books, newspapers and stationery but from tiny outlets in airports selling phone chargers and other travel accoutrements.
📌 Ha! Zelenskyy is really winding up Trump (and Putin) offering to make Ukraine a US client state. Can’t wait to see what the big gobby deal maker makes of that “no cards” hand.
WEDNESDAY 5 At the Dayroom workshop at the Royal London the revelation was a patient called Winnie who, totally unprompted, drew a spiral combining blue, purple and pink. It was as if she’d read my mind. Jo responded with a wave pattern using the same colours.
📌 At the Chaka Khan tribute gig my wife continually screamed in my ear Chaka Khan anecdotes from her past that I couldn’t hear. That’s how good the singer was.
📌 Liverpool’s nicked a 1-0 win over the mighty PSG thanks to a host of miracle saves from Alisson Becker. The French newspapers were not happy.
THURSDAY 6 Michelle wants me to finish the stitchwork of Sam’s Red Shoes drawing for Monday. I was hoping she’d say don’t bother and I could relax. Now I’ll have a weekend tied up I red thread.
📌 At a performance by the Headway Drama Group we heard first-person individual stories told in the setting of a condensed replica of the Headway daily experience, where food, music, art and fun all come together in a caring and supportive environment. I learned things about my fellow members I never knew and glimpsed a bold restatement of the essence of theatre, which is to tell compelling stories honestly.
FRIDAY 7 I am looking forward to tonight’s performance of Chekhov’s The Seagull on the Barbican’s big stage to see how the performances measure up against those we heard from Headway members last night at a shoestring arts centre (Chats Palace) in Hackney.
📌 After a long day of stitching it’s one red shoe down, one to go. And I just have to hope no-one spots the accidental tea stain. On second thoughts, I don’t care if they do.
📌 For most of the three hours we sat watching a quite riveting modern performance of The Seagull at the Barbican I thought how much better it would have been in a smaller venue such as Chats Palace in Hackney. But I don’t think Cate Blanchett would have been interested in appearing in that show. Which ironically illustrates one of the play’s big themes.
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Billy's Scrapbook 