April 19-25, 2025
SATURDAY 19 Nigel Warburton’s philosophy column in the New European is a welcome re-statement of the fact that great things and great ideas are often made not by individuals but by groups.
The moral of this is that when you encounter something impressive, don’t assume it is the work of one genius. A team of lesser mortals working together can produce amazing results – often more amazing than could have been achieved by acting alone.
📌 At Autograph I stole some ideas for colour palettes from an exhibition of portraits by Eileen Perrier. I especially like the pink/turquoise combo.
📌 Wetherspoons’ Chicken Jalfrezi really is a standout dish for me now that I know that three chillies is just about as hot as I can handle.
SUNDAY 20 We’ve tried to keep out of the arguments about who is legally a woman and who isn’t. Because that’s what it is, even though it has been manoeuvred into an argument about trans rights, which it isn’t. Luckily, in her final Observer column Sonia Sodha tells it like it is.
📌 Pope Francis appeared in St Peter’s Square and waved from a balcony.
MONDAY 21 The first thing we did this morning on hearing of the death of Pope Francis, aka Jorge Mario Bergoglio, was to check if the film Conclave was on the TV anywhere. Amazon Prime had it for £4.99 and YouTube had it for £3.49. We eventually found it for free in a dark corner of the Canadian streaming service we subscribe to.
📌 On the recommendation of Marge, we started watching the Danish TV series Seaside Hotel and now we can’t stop.
TUESDAY 22 All the news media is still full of what a great guy Pope Francis was. Wonder how long it will take for the dark side to emerge.
📌 We still had a large panettone left over from Christmas. It has sat on the sofabed upstairs for four months. For Easter Sunday my wife used it to make a special tiramisu, which we had after our Easter meal of trout, new potatoes and green veg. But there is still half of the panettone left, so today I made a jumbo bacon panettone toastie, with brown sauce.
WEDNESDAY 23 The bespoke, hand stitched TK Maxx shoulder bag for a friend’s special birthday is finished and ready for posting. She shops there an awful lot and even has clothes she bought there long ago and still hasn’t worn.
📌 The Hogarth Shakespeare series is a collection of books in which famous authors reimagine the works of William Shakespeare. At the moment I’m on Hag-Seed, Margaret Atwood’s hilarious retelling of The Tempest. It features a dethroned and humiliated celebrity theatre director who is forced to showcase his dream production of The Tempest using a cast of prison inmates.
THURSDAY 24 Michelle went into a frenzy of action on the hospital dayroom project, whirlwinding ideas all over the place. I was quite overwhelmed, largely because I think she overestimates my interior design skills.
📌 When I moved to London from Liverpool in the 1980s to work in the music press, the London black music scene felt intimidating, fearful even. Only when I met my wife did I come to enjoy black music more and learned that fear was as much about ignorance as anything else. So the Barbican Library’s exhibition celebrating the evolution of London’s black music scene was a mixed experience, but ultimately a welcome one.
📌 I got a vague message from my cousin that my sister had “wrenched her knee somehow”. Once I’d put aside my irritation at the imprecision of this message, I contacted my sister, but she was busy having an MRI scan.
📌 While my wife was out with a friend I watched Celebrity Big Brother and didn’t know who any of the celebrities were. I can’t decide whether celebrities being indistinguishable from non-celebrities is a good or bad thing. I hate to say it but none of the “celebrities” looked special in any way. None of them was especially good looking, or even talented in an obvious way.
FRIDAY 25 I’ve finished Hag-Seed, Margaret Atwood’s reimagining of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and now I’m on Macbeth by Jo Nesbø, swayed totally, I’m not afraid to admit, by the book’s blurb…
He’s the best cop they’ve got.
When a drug bust turns into a bloodbath it’s up to Inspector Macbeth and his team to clean up the mess.
He’s also an ex-drug addict with a troubled past.
He’s rewarded for his success. Power. Money. Respect. They’re all within reach.
But a man like him won’t get to the top.
Plagued by hallucinations and paranoia, Macbeth starts to unravel. He’s convinced he won’t get what is rightfully his.
Unless he kills for it.
📌 I do love a flipside story, especially when it downgrades the popularity of Nigel Farage and Reform, who are widely and loudly reported to be a magnet for an emergent cohort of young males. Young women, meanwhile and on the other hand, are apparently flocking to the sanctity of the Green party.
📌 My wife has a theory that my hip pain is due not to arthritis or any life-threatening degenerative disease but to do with the hip-opening exercises I’ve been doing in yoga. She thinks I’ve overdone it. Do it gently, she says, and give it time to heal. She reckoned I’d not opened my hips properly for 65 years, “so it must have been a shock to the system.” The doctor has scheduled an X-ray and has booked me a physiotherapy appointment, so I will keep an open mind until more evidence is available.
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