May 17-23, 2025
SATURDAY 17 My wife arrived back in our hotel room at 5am!
📌 Out and about in Cardiff we revisited the National Museum and once again marvelled at its very digestible pocket collection of art from across movements and time. Inevitably a new favourite emerged. For me that was Welsh artist George Poole, but some other surprises popped up, notably a David Hockney that you’d never guess was a David Hockney and a cold Welsh landscape populated by a collection of lunatic naturist men.
📌 The Eagles (Crystal Palace) beat Man City in the FA Cup Final. Our friend Sue was very happy and the TV commentators could scarcely contain their delight in finally being able to use the line, “The Eagles Have Landed”.
SUNDAY 18 Our hotel in Cardiff is full of people who look like they are on an all-in package holiday in a sunny part of Europe. They arrive at breakfast in shorts and sandals, with sunglasses perched on top of their heads. In the evening they dress up as if ready for a night at the casino followed by drinking and dancing till the early hours.
📌 Greene King IPA in Cardiff is £1.79 a pint. In London it is £1.99.
📌 After visiting our friend Rachel in Whitchurch, where she is staying, we used our 1-day bus pass to visit the seaside at Penarth, where Rachel hopes to move to soon. At least that was the plan. We failed to get off the bus at the right stop and ended up staying on it, through countless housing estates, all the way back on its circular route to Cardiff city centre.
MONDAY 19 As we departed Cardiff, capital city of Wales, it was interesting to note the differences in the bus service with that of London, capital city of England. Two principal differences were: the length of time between buses and the way bus times are communicated to customers. In Cardiff the bus stops are miles apart, there is no live schedule and the buses do not appear to be linked to GPS. If you are lucky, buses run every half hour (or so says the published schedule), but hourly is common. In London, if you arrive at a bus stop you can expect to wait 10-15 minutes tops, more commonly 4-5 minutes. Also, buses in London carry GPS, so you can, via the internet, check the exact whereabouts and arrival time of your required bus.
📌 Ringo’s drummer son Zak has been sacked by The Who, just weeks after being reinstated after a previous sacking.
TUESDAY 20 I’ve been late in arriving at the news that Finland has passed a law that restricts the use of smart phones in schools. At first I was against the idea in much the same way I am against most restrictions on technology. In my A-level exams at school I was allowed to use a slide rule to assist in complex calculations, but not a pocket calculator. Then I learned that the Finish law on the restriction of using smart phones has a cunning flexibility…
Pupils will be allowed to use them only with the teacher’s permission for healthcare or learning purposes.
In other words, stay off social media while you are in school. Other European countries are now moving in the same direction. Norway seems especially strong on the issue…
Tech companies, the Norwegian government said, were being “pitted against small children’s brains”.
Britain currently takes a hands-off approach and allows headteachers to lay down the law for their respective schools. Maybe Sturmführer Starmer will change that.
📌 The guy who cuts our communal lawn apparently got confused. He thought “no-mow May” meant you didn’t start mowing until May. He got half way through the job before Bev told him what it really meant.
📌 The Guardian seems to be of the view that Keir Starmer just did a CTRL+ALT+DELETE on Brexit.
WEDNESDAY 21
📌 An article in the New Statesman reports that a solid number of moderate British Jews, are starting to question Netanyahu and his determination to rid the planet of all Palestinians.
To be clear, Israel has the right to exist, and the right to defend itself against the brutal terrorism of Hamas. But the Israeli government’s actions are achieving nothing, other than death and destruction, and sowing hatred of Israel and Jews… Israel is a democracy. It must hold itself to a higher standard than homicidal terrorists.
📌 As soon as Xabi Alonso was out of the door a Leverkusen and heading for Madrid, Liverpool swooped in on two of its top players, Jeremie Frimpong and Florian Wirtz.
📌 Gill spotted a really cool brick tent sculpture in Charterhouse Square, so I went to have a look. It is smaller than I expected but a quite clever idea.
📌 In Gangs of London the Georgian mafioso Koba met his end in a characteristically flamboyant way. Séan laced his burger with rat poison and two minutes after Koba had hungrily necked it, he started bleeding: first from his nose, then his eyes and ears until finally he choked on a reservoir of his own blood that had surged upwards from his internal organs into his mouth. To say the scene was dramatic would be an understatement. My wife was mesmerised.
THURSDAY 22 Keir Starmer’s reverse Brexit stunt made it on to Farming Today, where we heard numerous complaints about the cost of the compliance mechanisms exporters were compelled to install under the previous government’s Brexit rules that are now likely to be wasted by the present government’s different approach to trade with Europe. They also said something about sea potatoes, which I never even knew was a thing and which actually seem to be animals.
FRIDAY 23 Paula told us last night that while she was ranting on about something political, her 15-year-old son Seán asked her, sarcastically, “Mum, would you like me to buy you a membership to the Reform Party?”
📌 I’m not sure why I need to be reminded weekly about how crooked the world of big business is, but Sensemaker Boardroom nudges me every Friday with its accounts of the eye-watering sums of money that move around the planet, from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, unimpeded.
📌 Not for the first time have I been caught meditating the meaning of the lyrics to Don McLean’s American Pie. Today I found a useful article on the BBC website that lays out all the interpretations scholars have arrived at. None of them tallies with anything I ever thought about the song, which goes to prove that in music we build our own worlds, and they are exclusively our own, forever.
📌 In certain moments of madness I honestly believe Keir Starmer is doing the right thing. The move to saddle businesses, not workers, with bigger National Insurance contributions seemed to place the Labour Party on the side of ordinary people, as is it’s history. Ditto with the agreement to fall in with the EU on carbon taxes. But businesses always pass on higher costs to their customers, not to their shareholders, which leaves Sir Keir looking like he clobbered the little people when he didn’t, actually.
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Billy's Scrapbook 