June 14-20, 2025
SATURDAY 14 As the train left Liverpool Lime Street for London Euston I decided that the top moment of our 3-day visit was the bowl of “Catalan Scouse” we ate at the Lunya tapas restaurant across the road from our hotel.
📌 At Shirley’s annual quiz we won a load of luxury chocolate stuff from Waitrose.
SUNDAY 15 The news outlets are full of speculation that Israel’s attack on Iran was designed by Benjamin Netanyahu to draw Trump’s America into an all-out war. He might have succeeded, though Trump will feel unhappy at being outmanoeuvred and could now decide to pull a stunt of his own.
📌 In a Winchester Pizza Express with Liz and Bill we were conned by an ambitious waitress called Izzy into signing up to the Pizza Express app. Doing so gave us a substantial discount (around £20) on our food and drink.
📌 Bill tested the quiz he will deliver to guests next weekend. As he asked the questions, I repeated them into the microphone on my phone and AI promptly delivered all the correct answers.
MONDAY 16 An article in The Conversation claims that a growing number of powerful nations are happy to flout global rules as determined by institutions such as the UN, International Criminal Court (ICC) and International Court of Justice (ICJ): “This is a moment so stark that we may have to rethink what we thought we knew about the conduct of international relations… and confirmation that law no longer constrains power, institutions can be bypassed, and humanitarian principles can be used for political ends.”
📌 Liz has sold Magdalen House “subject to contract”, so this might be the last time we gaze on Winchester Cathedral through her window.
TUESDAY 17 Orwell Daily has another fascinating extract from 1946 in which Orwell tells us that it is only circumstances such as war and the rise of totalitarianism that made him become a “political” writer. He was to himself always more of an aesthetic descriptive writer.
So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the earth, and to take a pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information.
📌 Gordon Brown reckons that the biggest flaw in the assisted-dying bill is that it shelves the urgent need to provide high-quality end-of-life care.
MPs are being asked to pass a bill in the full knowledge that, whenever it is implemented, the services available to all those who would prefer assisted living to assisted dying are inadequate.
WEDNESDAY 18 The only way I will finish the big brain I am stitching for the Royal London Hospital is to use big stitches. I am inspired in my efforts by Myra’s big stitched and painted canvases.
📌 The New Statesman wrote to offer a super low-price annual subscription so I decided quite quickly that I actually miss reading it and took them up on it. Then I dipped straight into a gripping portrait of Benjamin Netanyahu by one of his former security guards.
Netanyahu can summon entire make-believe worlds out of words better than anyone alive today. The only comparison that makes sense to me is with cult leaders. Deep down, the cultists know they are being fooled by the leader. They don’t care though, because the illusion is too beautiful to abandon.
📌 My wife is out at a posh City dinner with Anne, so once again I’m faced with the dilemma of whether to watch something on TV I know she might like to watch, or to watch something only I would want to watch (last time it was a succession of Bruce Springsteen documentaries). Or maybe I’ll finish the Mick Herron short story I’m half way through.
📌 The answer was an old series of Taskmaster, in which I learned that Hugh Dennis is incapable of laughing at himself.
📌 It will be fascinating to watch which way Trump jumps in the Israel-Iraq conflict, especially if China is drawn into making a move, and possibly securing the peace “deal” that Trump has failed to nail down. My guess is that he will find a way to back off. Again.
📌 In Borrowbox I’m working through the Maeve Kerrigan series of police procedurals by Jane Casey. Much like Mick Herron’s Slow Horses characters, you identify and connect straight away, which instantly dispenses with the need to “get to know” the people at the centre of the story.
THURSDAY 19 Michelle continues to push for higher and higher prices for my stitchworks. I feel slightly embarrassed at the amounts she is asking, but they do take a very long time to make and are always very finely detailed.
📌 In a great opinion piece by Alastair Campbell I realised very quickly that I am a member of the 93% Club.
FRIDAY 20
📌 The debate in parliament on the assisted dying bill was laced throughout with muddled thinking and borderline hysteria. As it went on, it became clear that a private-members bill was not the best vehicle for this subject. Very few speakers disagreed with the principle of the bill; it was the way it had been drafted that was its flaw. The bill passes with a majority of 23.
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Billy's Scrapbook 