March 8-14, 2025
SATURDAY 8 I don’t know if Chekhov was known for dabbling in farce, but the version of The Seagull we saw last night suggested he was.
A large jungle of tall reeds and rushes stands at the centre of the stage, through which the characters enter and exit. They come and go, bringing their neuroses and departing, most often, in a psychologically much worse state than when they arrived.
Somehow this metaphorical revolving door comes to symbolise the tortured state of the relationships the characters have with each other and the world. Cate Blanchett’s Arkadina knows only too well how to be a prima donna actress, but not a mother. She inches closer and closer to a normal maternal union with her incurably romantic son Konstantin but doesn’t quite have the guts to take it all the way. She loves herself far too much. All the love triangles play out differently but, yes, they are all tortured.
Most of the spoken words are expressions of internal thoughts about the character’s relationship status rather than a tool for plot advancement. Art and life, real love and pretend love, the self and devotion to others is a human minestrone that for me only lost its rich taste towards the end when angst with a capital A took over and what had been a truly enjoyable experience became a drag.
SUNDAY 9 In an old Arena documentary on the BBC’s iPlayer, Bob Dylan describes himself as a “musical expeditionary”. In the recent biopic, A Complete Unknown, a young Dylan is seen writing his lyrics on a portable typewriter. At the time I thought this odd. I’d always imagined him sitting in the corner of a coffee shop scribbling in a notebook. No, as the Arena documentary shows, he typed his lyrics. Maybe the rhythmic tapping of the keys helped him get the right form.
📌 Note to self: never agree to do a stitchwork to a deadline. This version of Sam’s Legs With Red Shoes drawing has been one of my least favourite recent experiences. Aside from agreeing to finish it to a deadline, I made several bad decisions that haunted me throughout the process. I’m just glad it’s over and done with.
MONDAY 10 Jonty Bloom reckons Boris is on the verge of doing a reverse ferret and going full pro-Europe.
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📌 Donald Trump is getting an early taste of voter backlash as he struggles to contend with the price of eggs and a wider discontent at the cost of living.
These problems will look very small indeed if the bird flu ravaging the US at the moment turns into a new global pandemic.
📌 A Canadian newspaper beautifully described Mark Carney as a “fast learner in the art of prevarication and hairsplitting”.
TUESDAY 11 Spent the whole morning working on muted background patterns to use on the dayroom walls at the Royal London, then I noticed a detail in some stitchwork I’m working on that might provide a solution. I feel like I’m auditioning for a job in the wallpaper business.
WEDNESDAY 12 Rafael Behr sees a hidden purpose in Trump’s merry dance with Putin over Ukraine.
The proposed model, unnamed but also unhidden, is partition. Washington gets access to Ukrainian mineral resources. Moscow gets a fat slice of Ukraine. Russia and America reset diplomatic relations and renew commercial ties without any of the old fuss around rule of law and human rights – an oligarch entente.
📌 Keir Starmer is right to hold his nose and talk to Donald Trump from a safe distance, says George Eaton in the New Statesman. Trump is not liked by the British public generally, Other European leaders are backing away cautiously from his bad smell, and even among his biggest supporters in the US, the economic downturn he has triggered is taking its toll on his popularity.
The tech billionaires who attended Trump’s inauguration have collectively lost $209bn since his second term began.
📌 Local newspapers still run some great stories. In Yorkshire, the Telegraph & Argus reveals that Lee Child (6ft 4in) called his hero Jack Reacher after his wife noticed that Lee was often asked by little old ladies in Asda to get them a can of something or other from a high shelf: “If this writing caper doesn’t work out, Lee, you can always become a professional Reacher”.
📌 At the Lines That Refuse To Behave private view, Jess said she missed working with us.
THURSDAY 13 Jeanette Winterson is a big fan of a new AI creative writing program. She also wants us to start using the term “alternative intelligence” because the world hasn’t got enough of that, whereas it is actually already stuffed to the gills with artificial intelligence. I decided to test AI’s creative writing potential with a three word prompt: SONNET, ONIONS, REVELATION. The result was deemed by the Headway Writing Group to be a masterpiece…
In layers deep the onion’s secrets lie
A bulbous form adorned in earthy sheen
With every peel a truth we can descry
Revelations writ in whispers unseen
Beneath the skin a world of spheres confined
Each slice unveils the essence bold yet shy
In fragrant tears the heart of flavour twined
As cutting through the surface we comply
From humble roots the alchemist prepares
A potion wrought from nature’s artful hand
In kitchens gleam the boldness that declares
The humble onion graced with glow so grand
In this a metaphor for tales untold
To seek the heart let layers unfold.
The only edits I made were to remove a mass of unnecessary commas.
📌 To Barbican Cinema 1 to see a big-screen remastering of the 1956 Douglas Sirk film There’s Always Tomorrow, plus a screen talk afterwards with some boring academics about props and their use and status within films. The screening was notable for the moments when the young, supposedly knowing audience laughed at things that weren’t funny. Gender-role conformity in 1950s America may seem quaint by today’s standards, but it isn’t funny. Ditto smoking indoors. One of the key props in the film is a toy robot, which is meant to represent the machinery of the so-called happy middle-class family. Towards the end of the story the tabletop robot marches off, alone, out of frame. The same shot by a contemporary film-maker might have included a loud clunk three seconds after the robot’s exit to symbolise it crashing to the floor. Douglas Sirk knew how to let meaning breathe.
FRIDAY 14 Foreign Affairs has a lengthy analysis on the economic costs for Russia of its war with Ukraine. Turns out that most of the economically useful members of Ukraine’s population have either left the areas occupied by Russia or fled the country entirely. So if Russia sticks to its war plan, it will in the end inherit an old, badly educated unhealthy population living in cities and towns that are now little more than rubble.
If Russia benefits economically from the occupation of Ukraine, the war may be remembered as a strategic success, albeit a coldblooded one. If Russia instead suffers economically, the invasion will be seen as a self-defeating, barbaric blunder.
📌 In his massive overhaul of the NHS Keir Starmer has handed Wes Streeting the chance to rise or fall. Spectacularly.
📌 At the Lines That Refuse To Behave exhibition they hung one of Affiong’s pictures upside down. Even she said that no one other than herself would notice.
📌 Smalltime jazz in the Barbican’s vast Hall is a mismatch. First up is the Guildhall School Ellingtonian ensemble: nine music students (all white bar one) desperately trying to squeeze out some of the earthy mojo their music suggests. No atmosphere, no drama, no dancing. It was like Duke Ellington done over by a terminally uptight Victorian chamber outfit. The Lincoln Center Youth Orchestra that followed at least brought a bit of heart and spark with music that played out in scenes and told stories, moved and bumped. The musicians stood up, walked around and blasted out a solo, to uptight applause. Otherwise the evening was a triumph for the Barbican’s sterile Hall, a venue that can suffocate as easily as it can liberate.
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