March 29-April 4, 2025
SATURDAY 29 The Knowledge has a very timely summary of what makes the modern tyrant, but concludes optimistically with the message that statistically most of them will soon be dead.
Donald Trump’s pathologies are well known, his character having been shaped by his bullying, high-functioning sociopath father.
📌 Surprised to hear that Vladimir Putin is all for Trump’s plan to invade and take over Greenland. Maybe he sees it as the kind of place where a limited nuclear war can be fought and won.
📌 A Day of Action on our estate centred on residents documenting in photos the poor state of repairs and maintenance, the aim being to collectively shame the council into doing something about it. I photographed some leprotic paintwork on an overhead duct along our corridor.
📌 If Donald Trump’s ridiculous bullying antics ultimately force the rest of the world to switch off and do without the US, I’m not sure it will be a bad thing.
SUNDAY 30 An article in the New European suggests a reverse brain drain. Just as persecuted scientists and artists in the early 20th Century fled tyranny in Europe for sanctuary in the United States, so US talent is now locked in the temptation to flee tyranny at home for a more tolerant environment elsewhere. The article says Ireland has been the first nation to get a grip of this trend and open its doors with welcome, closely followed by France.
📌 Even though I no longer subscribe to the New Statesman, every week they send a free newsletter telling me all the great articles they have in the current issue. The summaries they provide are quite adequate.
📌 The best news I could find on Wiki Future today is that in 24,000 years the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone will be safe to enter. Terraforming Mars to give it an atmosphere breathable for Earthlings could be finished in just over 100,000 years.
📌 Finally finished Susie Dent’s Guilty by Definition audiobook, on loan from Borrowbox. I can imagine its casual littering of etymological references throughout to be quite irritating in print, so audio was probably the best choice.
📌 From Paul Mason in the New European on US detachment from Europe…
Who cares if a bunch of Bible-thumping, gas-guzzling Red staters, force-fed chlorinated chicken and algorithmic control, want to throw away their global leadership role, and tank the value of their currency with it? Not the people of Paris, Brussels, Rome and Warsaw.
Plus…
📌 Collecting my medication from the local pharmacy does have its upsides.
📌 From Fesshole…
When working from home, I sometimes book fake meetings in my calendar with my dog.
📌 We saw Alex on Death in Paradise. He played a dopey ex-boyfriend on a mission to save his ex-girlfriend from a predatory online lothario. Alex was one of the actors we met in Chichester a few years ago when Mike was in the Roy Williams play Sing Yer Heart Out For The Lads.
MONDAY 31 In its Teach Yourself Marxism section the Socialist Worker describes how Trump and Musk’s dismantling of and attack on US state institutions will soon be their undoing. Because in any capitalist society the state is the apparatus that twists and turns in devious and ever changing ways to protect the ruling class. Which in the case of the United States is its business and civic institutions.
Trump is posing as the master of the US state rather than its servant.
📌 Yesterday, while collecting my medication from Boots, I noticed they had a machine you can plug your phone into and print photographs. At only 55p a go, I decided to give it a try and in the process accidentally hit on a new craft method that for the moment I will call, grandly, “Iteration”. It involves repetition and the exploration of repetition. Here are two examples. The image below is a digital photograph of the Boots photoprint, which originated as a digital photograph of a stitchwork in progress put through an AI filter to make it look like a watercolour painting.
Another example of my grand theory of Iteration is the image shown below, which is a digital photo of an inkjet print of a digital photo of an action painting in acrylics. Furthermore, the inkjet printer was running out of ink and the print was made solely to use up any residual ink. The Iteration method thus transforms existing works according to happenstance. Each Iteration will thus always be a one-off.
TUESDAY 1 I couldn’t finish my latest audiobook soon enough. Sweet Pea, by CJ Skuse features a serial killer whose victims are just about anyone who gets on her nerves. It features severed heads and penises in scenes that normally culminate in a desire to have sex with a corpse.
📌 Buried in today’s Sensemaker is news that Asda has started using face-recognition software in an attempt, it says, to combat shop crime and staff abuse. Two months ago I would probably have not held any serious objections. Then I saw the very believable BBC TV thriller The Capture and became skeptical about the use of technology in crime detection. What is more sinister is that Asda intends to compile a “watchlist” of people its technology deems dodgy.
📌 Not sure why some French people think Marine Le Pen is above the law that insists that embezzlement is a criminal offence. If their argument is that the courts are politically motivated, they could be right, but they won’t prove it by claiming Le Pen has done nothing wrong.
WEDNESDAY 2 Another Royal London Hospital session in the gym to finish the workshop phase of the project. Winnie was again outstanding in her exploration of colour and pattern. Members of staff, SLT (Speech and Language Therapist) Jess and American rehab nurse Kayla, expressed a real interest in and understanding of the project. Jess told me of the potential uses for art workshops in SLT. The group dynamics were gentle but purposeful and the gym is clearly the best place to hold pop-up workshops. I have come to think of the gym as the studio and the day rooms as the gallery. I will keep this in mind when I sketch out ideas for the rooms’ makeover.
📌 Sam seems to have found some kind of cruise control in her production of drawings. What I envy most is that each week they get better and better, whereas every new project I start is a trip back to first principles. Or maybe I’m just not conscious of the progress in my own work. I hope that is the case.
THURSDAY 3
📌 The journey on the 153 bus to Liverpool Road for Sue’s 50th birthday bash in The Horatia on Holloway Road was like being in an episode of Wacky Races. The drivers of single-deck buses seem to inherit a devil-may-care attitude to passenger comfort as soon as they get behind the wheel.
FRIDAY 4
📌 My new audiobook fascination is for the works of Anthony Horowitz. I already sampled his Alex Rider series, which I thought too daft by far; now I’m on the Hawthorne & Horowitz series, in which the author is himself a character in the stories, retelling anecdotes of writing episodes of Foyle’s War and other autobiographical titbits.
📌 The Big Brain is sketched and stretched on the rack. I think this and Fallopian Jesus are the only two pieces of my own I can tolerate for any length of time. That affection is essential for me when stitching large pieces because they take so long and mistakes get made along the way that then have to be corrected or bodged. I much prefer smaller pieces, but this one will hopefully end up on display at the Royal London Hospital as part of my artist-in-residence project. I’m thinking of using large fine stitches in lots of colours, underpinned by black outlines.
📌 Blimey! Paul Mason really is angry with all the lefties who’ve turned on Starmer. In a very hard-hitting long essay he caustically debunks all of their claims that Starmer and Reeves are Tories with red hats on, and in the process punches up the cool facts in a way that the government itself should have been doing all along but has been too timid/frightened to do so.
📌 A patch of decaying paintwork on our estate looks like the profile of a medieval prelate.
📌 Siena: The Rise of Painting at the National Gallery has been set up successfully as the exhibition to see in April. Religious painting turns me cold and the temptation to ridicule the multitudes of Baby Jesus depictions that resemble dirty old men is never far away. I detected an emotional honesty in many of the faces, though, but the politics of 14th Century Siena (Christian oligarchy) obviously made anyone who wasn’t allowed to wear a halo miserable. I’m not sure I was in the right mood.
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Billy's Scrapbook 