One month as it happened…
SUNDAY 1 According to Paul Mason Dominic Cummings is trying to stoke up a civil war.
📌 RIP Sebastiāo Salvador, 81. The Conversation has a nice tribute.
His photographs were often shocking, yet stunningly beautiful. You couldn’t look away – and that was the point.
📌 Bev’s got a fox squatting underneath the cupboards in her kitchen. All attempts to entice it to leave with trails of food have failed.
📌 RIP Duncan Campbell, 80, a nice guy and the envy of many a Guardian journalist.
📌 Now that Germany, France and Britain have lifted their objections to Ukraine sending long-range missiles into Russia, a line has been crossed and what comes next is anyone’s guess.
MONDAY 2 The Conservatives are polling so badly that the return of Boris Johnson is being advanced as the only way the Tories can survive. He is, we are led to believe, the only one who can stop Nigel Farage. And yet, when veteran pollster Peter Kellner crunched the numbers on Boris, he found that his popularity is not what it’s cracked up to be. Boris as a person is popular among voters, but as a politician he is seen as a dead weight.
📌 Anna is trying to get some postcards printed of her mum’s watercolours, which we will exhibit during Open Gardens weekend. My favourite is the cabbage.
TUESDAY 3
📌 Found a Mick Herron short-story collection, Dolphin Junction, going cheap on Kindle, so I’m well sorted for when I soon finish This Is What Happened. Many of the 11 stories in Dolphin Junction are said to prefigure the characters in Herron’s Slow Horses and Zoë Boehm novels.
WEDNESDAY 4 My wife insisted we go to see The Salt Path because she’d read the book. I was not so keen, having seen the trailers, but was swayed by Google’s AI Overview, which described it as “Dangerous, cathartic and raw”. I think that might be an overstatement, if not a lie. The film offers up the landscape of the South-West as its real star, with the actors, principally Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs, as the tortured elements within, but it also carries some very valuable lessons to campers on where not to pitch your tent (beach, edge of cliff, etc).
📌 Discovered a very useful function on Google Maps that allows you to measure accurate distances in km. With my arthritic hips, it will be useful in planning my outdoor activities.
📌 I’m now on the audiobooks of spy writer Alex Gerlis. The stories can get quite confusing when the spies use an alias. You have to remember which spy is which alias.
THURSDAY 5 The next stage of the Dayroom project for the Royal London Hospital and Vital Arts went well and I think I’m clear on my next moves. I will be leaning on Carmel a lot from now on because this type of work is so out of my comfort zone. But at the end of the session we got to the point I wanted to be at, which was to agree the base colours of the walls and the direction to select the artworks to be used as framed artworks and those to be used as space fillers. I’m quite looking forward to going for it, which isn’t a feeling about work I expected to have at my age.
📌 With my wife out at her book group, I watched the BBC documentary When Bruce Springsteen Came To Britain. Obviously it was an incredibly nostalgic experience and a chance once again to touch my youth in some way.
But it also had a dark memorial feel about it, as if Springsteen’s time of reckoning had come before he is no longer about. I hope that is not the case because more than Bob Dylan, I think Springsteen deserves some kind of international award for writing before he dies. In the documentary, superman Rob Brydon says: “what we are seeing now is rage, rage rage against the dying light”.
The companion documentary, the far more revealing Bruce Springsteen: A Secret History, which unfortunately restates the lingering memorial message, tells a better story of the creative evolution of the songwriter lots of people now prefer to call The Boss, but who I and himself like to think of as a storyteller. His celebrity after early anonymity he describes as “just taking the ride”. Through all of it, his sincerity is hard to question, his honesty heartfelt, and Springsteen is impressively literate. But neither documentary attempts to explain why.
FRIDAY 6
SATURDAY 7 My indifference to the beauty of the musical has been undone once again. At the Barbican last night we saw a deliciously charming and timely Fiddler On The Roof. The story may be stupidly sentimental and riddled with hackneyed tropes about Russian Jews, but the singing and dancing had a warm, funny, music-hall feel, and the sparse but clever set even managed to include a real fiddler on the roof. When we got outside, Marge said to me, “Oh, I do love your people”.
📌 The Bureau Of Investigative Journalism has been successful in exposing the local council that play fast and loose with taxpayers money. Its exposure of crooked dealings at Thurrock council, an investigation that started five years ago, has just been taken up by the Serious Fraud Office. That it took five years for the SFO to wake up is a shocker, but the real bad news is that the government voters elected last year on a promise of change has failed to tackle the issue.
There’s no discernable plan from the government to get the situation under control.
📌 Jonathan Freedland’s portrayal of the Trump/Musk drama makes it look like a Shakespearean parable about two powerful men who go into battle and both emerge as crippled and bloody losers.
📌 I wouldn’t normally pay much attention to an article saying Russia is waging war on Britain (cyber attacks, poisonings, etc), but the words of defence expert Fiona Hill are chilling and convincing enough to put me in a defensive frame of mind. Maybe I secretly knew about it all along and that’s why I read so many spy novels.
📌 Anna’s mum’s watercolours and embroidery artworks look fantastic at the Open Gardens café in the Sir Ralph Perring Centre.
📌 It looks like we have a come to an inflection point when the State must declare openly its relation to private enterprise. That private businesses feel so emboldened as to try to hold a government to ransom (Thames Water) is obscene. If the government caves in, it loses any credibility to holding power over its nation’s fortunes. I hope it has a plan.
📌 The Ballad Of Wallis Island is a knowing, funny and touching piece of cinematic confection. And it made us reflect on how drone cameras have made scenery the star of many a modern film or TV series.
SUNDAY 8 Remarkably, Day 2 of Open Gardens was another success for our local allotment group. My wife happily chatted with visitors about the exotic tomato and herb varieties we are growing in our tiny patch.
📌 The Spanish end of the Brink’s-Mat caper in the second series of The Gold is in Tenerife, which made me miss it.
MONDAY 9 Yesterday my wife mused on the possibility of Britain forging an economic and security alliance with Canada and the Nordic countries. I agreed and was happy to learn today that such an alliance is already taking shape.
📌 Today’s Sensemaker explains the background to Donald Trump’s fanatical drive to round up and deport illegal immigrants from the US, and the backlash that has driven him to escalate his mission.
📌 The City of London maxi tote bag in heavy canvas is finally finished. The question of whether to sell it (and at what price) or offer it as a gift is one I’ll sit on for a while.
TUESDAY 10 At Barbican Cinema 2 last night we saw a remastered Darling, the 1965 John Schlesinger film starring Julie Christie in what today looks like a very dated homage to Vanity Fair‘s Becky Sharp.
📌 Elon Musk has said sorry.
📌 Got a message from Carmel to say that the end of June is OK to submit the first visuals of the Dayroom designs. Last week I felt on top of this project, now I’m feeling stressed again, a long way outside my comfort zone. No more of these jobs come August when I officially retire.
WEDNESDAY 11
📌 Rafael Behr reckons the “new” government looks a bit too much like the old one.
The fatal flaw in Labour’s economic strategy was overestimating how much goodwill would be available to the party once it had fulfilled its electoral utility as a tool for ousting the Tories.
📌 Back to Liverpool on a trip with Sue, Jaq and Lynne we found the Mersey surprisingly low. I don’t think I ever saw mudflats that big in the city centre when I was young. Jaq asked me the significance of the twin Liver Birds and I didn’t know the answer. Shame on me. Luckily, AI did.
It represents the city and its connection to the sea, with the female Liver Bird believed to watch over the returning seamen, while the male watches over their families in the city.
THURSDAY 12 In March 2023 we were nearly killed at a bus stop in Liverpool, and in order to process the ongoing trauma we were advised to revisit the site of our near death. It was a cathartic experience in some ways, but I’m not sure we will ever forget it. We chatted with a local car mechanic called Joe who offered to send us CCTV footage of the fateful incident and soothed our souls later with a trip on the Mersey Ferry, which is now a slick tourist operation rather than the public-transport service of my youth.
FRIDAY 13 Jaq’s got sunburn of the eyelids. It looks quite painful, but she says it isn’t.
📌 The man who survived the Air India crash immediately phoned home to say he was OK.
📌 In today’s Sensemaker we learn that birthrates in the world’s richest countries are falling dramatically because having children costs too much.
📌 Out and about in Liverpool, including a Vivienne Westwood exhibition, the Roman Catholic cathedral, the Anglican cathedral and a meal in Chinatown…
📌 In the Old Post Office pub in School Lane we heard a singer change the words of a Beautiful South song from “This could be Rotterdam or anywhere, Liverpool or Rome” to “This could be Rotterdam or anywhere, Everton or Rome”. In the next chorus he changed “Liverpool” to “Tranmere”.
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.
SATURDAY 21 In the aftermath of the vote on assisted dying I very cynically pondered that it opens the door for a huge business opportunity. What might evolve will be the already established apartheid of NHS/Private treatment. In this context I was surprised so many Conservatives voted against the bill.
📌 To measure my optimum walking distance with decaying hip joints I’ve downloaded an app to my phone that measures steps. I suspect my ideal step count before resting is 1,500. I will aim to increase that count.
SUNDAY 22 The context of the assisted dying vote is given an interesting contextual spin in the New Statesman. The reports adds assisted dying to a number of key changes in British society in recent times (decriminalisation of homosexuality, abortion, same-sex marriage) brought about by lone politicians, determined to effect change through private-members bills. The article also reflects on how quickly the public absorbs and comes to support this type of cause.
📌 We had brunch at the Barbican Bar & Grill with visiting American relatives, who told that their home state governor, Ron DeSantis, has introduced an anti-woke law that prohibits the use of changed or even contracted first names. Which means that calling me anything other than William counts as a state offence. They also said everyone just ignores the ruling.
MONDAY 23 For someone who claimed he wanted America to stay out of other country’s wars, Donald Trump isn’t doing very well.
📌 I think it must be a sign of where I’m at in my life when I’m more interested in the bonus word in Squaredle than I am in the latest apocalyptic mood swing of Donald Trump.
📌 Jonny Bloom is very pissed off that Donald Trump decided to bomb Iran on the very day Keir Starmer’s shiny new, all conquering industrial strategy was due to launch. The Guardian opted to “bury” its analysis of the strategy in a dark corner of its website front page, just below a story about environmental funerals.
📌 We finished Series 1 of Signora Volpe and for some time afterwards my wife remained transfixed at the size and stylistic extent of the signora’s wardrobe.
TUESDAY 24 On a coach trip to Deal we walked to the end of the pier and each scoffed a combination of lobster and crayfish, washed down with English fizz and New Zealand sauvignon blanc. During the meal I pledged to respond in future to the “any allergies” question from waiting staff with the word “dogs”.
📌 For £3.67 I have ordered a book from Amazon called Bus Pass Britain.
📌 We started the second series of Signora Volpe and another bewildering collection of outfits stole the show.
WEDNESDAY 25 In the introduction to an essay on the decline of liberal democracies, Sam Freedman traces the emergence of “capitalist autocracies” as their replacement, quoting Francis Fukuyama to advance the thesis: “The most significant challenge being posed to the liberal universalism of the American and French revolutions today is not coming from the communist world, whose economic failures are evident for everyone to see, but from those societies in Asia which combine liberal economies with a kind of paternalistic authoritarianism.”
📌 Rafael Behr reckons Donald Trump is always looking for the “easy win”, even if he has to turn facts into fiction to get it.
📌 Pip posted a picture of a card sent anonymously to Andy, who is still stuck in hospital until the doctors can work out what to do with his leaky duodenum.
📌 Another top score in Waffle. You get 15 moves, but the puzzle CAN be solved in 10 moves.
📌 Last week Royal Mail lost the 36 cans of sparkling white wine I’d ordered from Vinca. This week our invite to Jeff’s wedding in Venice went missing.
THURSDAY 26 Old Street station is an exceedingly hostile environment for anyone with disabilities.
📌 After an argument with Eurostar about an unannounced change of seating we settled back into better seats than we had originally booked and watched the rich agricultural landscape of northern France roll past.
FRIDAY 27 At the very creepy Foundation Louis Vuitton in the woody west of Paris we saw what must be the biggest, most exhaustive collection of artworks by David Hockney. The sheer volume was awesome, daunting and a little tiring, especially in the collection of later nature/season paintings, which could have been slimmed. There was an air of sadness in that the show resembled a reckoning of sorts, a “complete” retrospective even though Hockney is still very much alive.
📌 Two very lovely things happened this evening. We met for the first time my nephew’s girlfriend. She is a smart, talented academic linguist who translates ancient manuscripts into French. And, in a freaky coincidence in a bar on the Rue de Vinaigriers, we met friends from Brighton we hadn’t seen in decades.
SATURDAY 28 In the hauty apartments of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, normally a repository for the overblown homewares of the filthy rich across several centuries, we saw a hundreds of mannequins wearing haute-couture frocks by a galaxy of star designers. Each of them stood elegantly in reflection of each room’s theme. It was a clever piece of curation that must have at least doubled the footfall for this less explored gallery.
📌 Last night my niece told her mother, my sister, to stop being “such as Karen”. I had to look it up: “Karen is a pejorative slang term typically used to refer to a middle-class woman who is perceived as entitled or excessively demanding.”
📌 Graffiti in toilets is always a welcome sign of resistance, even if you have no idea what it’s saying.
SUNDAY 29 The Pompidou Centre will close for a refit in September. For five years. So we thought we’d give it a last look, hoping we’ll still be able to visit again in 2030.
The second-floor library space has already been partially emptied in preparation for the makeover, and in the short term handed over to what the Pompidou says is definitely not a retrospective of photographer Wolfgang Tillmans, but which in fact looks exactly like that.
Then on the sixth floor we saw Paris Noir, which frankly left us awestruck and exhausted by its depth and breadth, the outstanding artist for both of us being Beauford Delaney.
MONDAY 30
📌 Another top score in Waffle…
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