One month as it happened…
TUESDAY 1 It was nice to see Sim again at an Art et al. online meeting, in which she told us about some exciting new collaborations with autistic artists in Indonesia.
📌 The big brain stitchwork for the Royal London Hospital project is starting to take shape.
WEDNESDAY 2 Most of the MPs who voted against the government’s welfare bill are in favour of reforms to the nation’s social security contract with the public. The opposition parties voted against it because they want to see a government defeated. That is their job. MPs on the Labour benches who voted against the bill did so because it was poorly presented, not because what it was trying to do was wrong. The bill’s near failure was a failure of politics rather than of policy.
For most it was a heartfelt desire to protect the most vulnerable, a conviction that this particular policy was wrong and that a new path could be found, without undermining the government on other issues.
📌 I’ve transferred the big brain stitchwork for the Royal London Hospital from the big rack to the big 18-inch hoop, the theory being that being able to see the whole thing rather than just a segment will boost productivity and I might even finish it before the Summer is over.
THURSDAY 3 RIP Liverpool player Diogo Jota, 28.
📌 Nora gave me some exercises for my deteriorating hips. Most of them can be done lying down, which is nice. My favourite is The Clam, which involves virtually no movement whatsoever.
📌 The camera on my phone is misbehaving. Greens look like blues, so I asked Eliza to take a ‘work in progress’ picture for me on her iPhone. Even that is not so great.
📌 James gave me some research documents to read and comment on. The temptation to eviscerate and rewrite the turgid nonsense academics use to try to say what they’re doing is colossal. I will, however, stay polite and make some broad general remarks.
📌 For lunchtime dessert at Headway we had Moroccan doughnuts sprinkled with cinnamon, which were a dense heaven of delicious.
FRIDAY 4 I woke up with the frightening recollection that while visiting my sister in Paris last week that I promised to gift her one of the ‘Memory’ collages I did several years ago.
Jeremy Corbyn is starting a new political party because the Labour Party is no longer left-wing enough for him and many others. He is doing his very best to avoid being titled the “leader” of this new party, arguing that it will have a collective structure that doesn’t fit the conventional hierarchies of British politics. I wish him great success with that.
📌 The prompt I have chosen for next week’s Headway Writing Group is ‘Galactic Snot’. Just waiting for an opening sentence to come into my head.
📌 Not sure anyone in Britain celebrates America’s Independence Day any more. If they ever did.
SATURDAY 5 The anti-poverty charity ActionAid is moving its money out of HSBC because it believes the bank doesn’t take climate change seriously and even ritually flouts its own official green guidelines.
📌 The Ealing Beaver Project claims that after an absence of 400 years, beavers have moved back into London, and are here to stay.
📌 After lunch with Rachel in Hampstead we had another bad experience with the 46 bus, which left us stranded close to Kings Cross, but not close enough to pick up the numerous buses we could have boarded to get us home.
SUNDAY 6 My cousin Helen posted pictures of the tributes to Diogo Jota that have started to collect at Anfield.
📌 Paul Mason viciously dismantles the aspirations of the doomed new Jeremy Corbyn project in an Orwellian piece on the Stalinist left and its creepy suicidal tendency of destroying any good ideas it might ever come up with.
📌 The beef madras in Spoons (4 chillies) was not too hot for me.
📌 The Observer exposes the lies and criminal activities of the characters in The Salt Path, a bestselling book and film, starring Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs, in which they offer an object lesson in how not to pitch a tent.
MONDAY 7
📌 It was so cold and windy that I stood waiting in the phone box next to the bus stop.
📌 In all the evidence presented in the Mushroom Murders trial in Australia was the revelation that the killer host of the deadly lunch of Beef Wellington gave her guests different coloured plates to her own. The poisoned grub arrived on grey plates while the host ate from an orange one.
📌 TV detective Madame Blanc talks about fine art and antique jewellery like she’s reading the words straight off a Wikipedia page.
TUESDAY 8 One of the best pieces on the future of the world I have ever read appears today in The Conversation, the website that translates academic studies into readable reports. Here we learn that Britain has within its grasp the chance to become the first “post-growth” nation, in which standing still rather than trying to outdo your own and everyone else’s economic performance in a mad dash for growth is OK. It is a more fair and just world all round, with higher taxes, yes, but much better public services, education and personal development.
Making shared values visible – and naming them – can be key to unlocking political momentum.
Almost coincidentally, the New Statesman has on its front cover this week a message to the government that the idea of endlessly tweaking fiscal rules is a passport to nowhere.
📌 BBC Culture has an article arguing that Superman originated not as a wholesome all-American hero but as a head-banging, butt-kicking socialist.
📌 Got a message from Carmel to say that the Dayroom designs for the Royal London Hospital have been given the green light. So it’s full steam ahead from now until September. My role from now on is minimal, thankfully.
WEDNESDAY 9 While the inquiry into the Horizon IT scandal is still in progress, Politico reports that Fujitsu is part of a consortium bidding to take over the running of the border between Northern Ireland and Eire.
📌 The England women’s team scored an impressive 4-0 win over the Netherlands with a far superior performance to their opening game against France.
THURSDAY 10 David Attenborough has turned his hand to philosophy. On Facebook alongside a picture of a dead-looking bird, he writes…
If you ever see a swift lying on the ground, wings spread as if ready to fly… don’t be afraid. It doesn’t have to be injured. It’s not dying. It’s a creature of the sky that has accidentally found itself in a place where it’s very difficult for it to take off on its own. The swift is not made to take flight from the ground. Its short legs and long, slender wings make it extremely hard to lift off from a flat surface. All it needs is for you to gently lift it. Just a little, in an open palm… And it will fly. On its own. Just like some people.
📌 Madame Blanc is Coronation Street in the south of France.
FRIDAY 11 The saga of Gregg Wallace rolls on. He persists in trying to cast himself as a victim. His cheeky greengrocer behaviour might have been just about acceptable 10 years ago, but not any longer. Wallace has failed to notice that times change, and manners do too. I can’t be alone in wishing he’d just go away and allow us all to forget him.
📌 The hot tip for the next Archbishop of Canterbury is an outspoken Iranian woman. Fingers crossed.
📌 Last year’s Mayoral elections threw up some freaky results that did not represent the number of votes cast, so the government has at last seen sense and scrapped the discredited First Past The Post (FPTP) voting system for Mayoral elections. Let’s hope this is the start of a genuine move towards electoral reform in all elections.
📌 The setup for tomorrow’s global picnic, at which estate residents share their national dishes, is almost finished. It’s a celebration of diversity as much as an excuse to have fun and act foolish.
📌 The Guardian’s First Edition newsletter exposes the myth that the super rich will leave Britain if taxes go up. In fact, the super rich have a long habit of staying put.
SATURDAY 12 Great line from a Mick Herron short story, All The Livelong Day: “This was the moment on which the day would turn, and the whole horrible event begin to be swallowed by the past.”
📌 We sat in the shade of the big fig tree for the Summer Picnic, eating egg sandwiches and cheese rolls from Greggs. Plus soft jazz played by musicians from the Guildhall School. The ants got to the slices of melon we contributed to the communal food table.
SUNDAY 13 Keir Starmer is using the words “not serious” an awful lot.
📌 For the Whitecross Street Party Artbox reopened their gallery, temporarily. One of the exhibits was a hat worthy of an outing to Ascot.
MONDAY 14
📌 When Dom finally declared his love for Jean and they snogged, we thought we’d finished Madame Blanc. But no, then we found a whole new undiscovered Series 4 on Channel 5. The saga continues for 7 more episodes. Yawn.
TUESDAY 15 Only 97 out of 650 UK MPs scored more than 50% of their constituency vote, states Peter Kellner in an article arguing for the Alternative Vote electoral system.
📌 At a stencilling workshop at the new London Museum Studios we made tote bags. I went for simplicity as the process can get quite messy.
It was fascinating to see the various efforts of the dozen people attending the workshop and to glimpse once again the imagination and creativity that surfaces simply by putting a group of people together in a shared space and giving them access to arts and craft materials. Amazing things happen.
WEDNESDAY 16 Worker’s Rights is now an issue in top-flight football, with world governing body FIFA accused of forcing players to play too many games in too short a space of time without proper rest periods or holidays. On BBC Radio 4 one player is quoted as saying the only time he gets a rest is when he’s injured. The accusation is that FIFA puts making more and more money before the wellbeing of the players who make them that money.
📌 Someone on the radio said that the only reason Donald Trump agreed to supply long-range missiles to Ukraine is because Volodymyr Zelenskyy wore a suit rather than his regulation combat gear to a NATO summit.
📌 Trump’s ultimatum to Putin to agree a peace deal with Ukraine has put the Russian president in a spot. Until now, he has been able to string Trump along, helped as always by Trump’s unpredictable behaviour and his impatience with Europe not spending enough to defend itself. Now Europe has agreed to pay more and Zelenskyy gives the impression of looking grateful, Trump has decided the roadblock to his treasured “deal” is “crazy” Putin. The supply of supersonic weapons to Ukraine might not be enough to weaken Putin, writes Rafael Behr, but if Trump makes good on his promise of tarrifs against Russia, Putin’s power will over time become diminished.
Stringing Trump along may prove to have been another grave error of judgment.
📌 Back to the London Museum Studios to hear Harshita and her fellow “Community Associates” talk about the new scheme to share power, money and resources. It was a rather smug and conceited love-in, and not the right time or place to ask hard questions about the dead hand of the City of London Corporation, so I slipped out as soon as I could.
THURSDAY 17
📌 At the Summer Open Studio my wife took a fancy to Errol’s Boobs.
📌 The Mick Herron short story The Last Dead Letter outlines the backstory of Slow Horses anti-hero Jackson Lamb as a young MI5 spy in Berlin. It reminds me of Endeavour, the prequel that came from the Inspector Morse stories.
FRIDAY 18 I woke up to read that the England women’s team beat Sweden on penalties in the Euro 25 quarter finals. They went 2-0 down early on and didn’t look like they had the magic to turn the game back to their advantage. So we switched over to the last two remaining episodes of The Madame Blanc Mysteries. We finished that with a sigh of relief but during the closure of Madame Blanc, the England players apparently pulled their socks up, stared their own closure in the face and said no. Now they will play Italy in the semi finals.
📌 An optimum score in Waffle is very rare these days. In fact, whenever it happens I let out a silent incredulous gasp. It’s almost as if all your good luck aligned in one deft movement. But of course it didn’t. I suspect those who play Waffle seriously get a maximum score every day. I just blunder a good score every so often. It is the story of my life.
📌 Oh I do relish a good quote. Mick Herron’s books are full of them. His descriptions are poetic in ways no poet would identify with. His characters are relatable in ways they never should be. And an undertone of small-p politics (let’s call it attitude) rides the wave throughout any of his stories. In one of the short stories in Dolphin Junction he describes the layout of a big out-of-town shopping mall section by section…
Its bookshops shelved volumes by every author its readers could imagine, from Bill Bryson to Jeremy Clarkson.
📌 RIP Sunny, the fat, cheeky cat. Yvonne is very upset.
📌 On the news that Donald Trump is threatening to “sue the ass off” Rupert Murdoch, Marina Hyde asks…
Oh please don’t, Mr President! His ass is 94 years old and incredibly wrinkled. Also, half of Britain’s political class still lives up it.
📌 The view from our living-room window is changing. A brand new skyline is in progress.
SATURDAY 19 One neighbour is mourning the departure of her cat; another neighbour is mopping up after 4 months of rainfall fell in one morning, some of it through her roof.
📌 On the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral our friend Shirley took part in a mass drumming session that shook the cobblestones. I tried to record it but the outcome was 30 seconds of distant rumbling that sounded like the rain was about to make a comeback.
SUNDAY 20 Alongside the derogatory terms “Croydon Facelift” (super-tight ponytail or bun) and “Peckham Rolex” (electronic police tag) we can now add “Hackney Birdsong”, which is the persistent clicking sound made by commercial ebikes that are in use but have not been paid for.
📌 It is quite a pleasure to see Donald Trump tripping over his own lies. A piece in the New World (formerly the New European) offers a clear summary of the background to Trump’s association with Jeffrey Epstein. But in the comments at the foot of the piece is the idea that this affair is bigger for Trump than Watergate was for Nixon. In other words, we are just at the beginning of a very long-running story.
MONDAY 21 My wife says the local weather is like the round on the TV show House of Games in which you are provided the answer and you have to guess what the question is.
📌 The Steve Earle song Nowhere Road is a brilliant compound metaphor. Not just a line here and there, the whole song is a long string of metaphors, just like Kenny Rogers’ The Gambler.
TUESDAY 22 For reasons scientists don’t fully understand the Earth is slowing down and days are becoming shorter. Today will be 1.34 milliseconds shorter than yesterday. If the trend continues, in 2029 a “leap second” will be added to compensate.
📌 News comes from Farming Today that Britain has finally learned how to cultivate blueberries. The optimum weather and soil, apparently, are in Scotland, from where a bumper harvest of the Highland Charm blueberry will soon be available to buy.
📌 My old art class, which I left in protest a couple of years ago, has a fantastic exhibition in Barbican Library. It was such a pleasure to see the work of my old colleagues in all its glory.
Someone even made a video of the exhibition, which creeps around the space in a scarily voyeuristic way, but nevertheless shows the depth and range of the works on show.
WEDNESDAY 23 RIP Ozzy Osbourne, 76. I have flesh-crawling memories of trying to impress a supply teacher with my heavy metal dance to Paranoid at a school disco. I still think of War Pigs as an anthem.
📌 I finally finished the Sashiko stitchwork tote bag I started in a workshop a few months ago. It was a proper botched job at the end but it left me with an appetite for more formulaic geometric stitchwork, so I’ve already started on a second one in which I will mix the colours purple, lime green and pink.
THURSDAY 24 An article in the Conversation reckons the much touted 10,000 daily steps to good health is a Japanese marketing myth. You actually only need to do 7,000.
📌 Jo Chard’s Are We Building Community Power Or Just Co-opting It? was my fourth OST (Open Space Technology) event and I’m more and more impressed by the soft power dynamics and the generosity of ideas that these meetings throw up.
FRIDAY 25 I’ve often wondered what a Ukraine led by Volodymyr Zelenskyy would look like had it not been at war with Russia. Would he have been a strong peacetime leader? Some clues are offered in the anti-corruption protests he now faces and his response to them.
📌 Yesterday was a day of trauma. I accidentally boarded the wrong bus and was forced to improvise an alternative route home, only to then discover that I dropped my travel pass on the wrongly-boarded bus, which I’d hastily disembarked from when I realised my mistake. Thankfully I’m married to an angel and today everything was put back on track. A replacement travel pass is on its way, but feeling less like a fool might take a bit longer.
SATURDAY 26 John Elledge pulls out a great opening sentence for his latest New Statesman column.
The truly unnerving thing about the fall of Rome was that most Romans probably didn’t notice it had happened.
This opens a clinical analysis about the woeful decline of British society and the very strong possibility that it will never be reversed.
📌 Not only did I get a top score in Waffle I learned that the expression Callooh! Callay! is from the Lewis Carroll nonsense poem Jabberwocky and defined as an expression of “great joy and excitement”.
📌 “You were very handsome… when you were young,” my wife told me.
SUNDAY 27 Never in a million years did I expect to find Paul Mason agreeing with Donald Trump. But they both share the view that Europe needs to take its own security more seriously and start coughing up the cash on defence projects that can repel Putin’s ambitions to carve out a new Russian empire.
MONDAY 28
TUESDAY 29 It’s hard to imagine a more unlikely partnership, but in The Jealousy Man, the Jo Nesbø collection of short stories, there is a thrilling murder mystery, Cicadas, that uses class to illustrate parallel universes and the scientific proof of their existence.
📌 Another unlikely partnership to consider is Polly Toynbee lining up against the BMA and the striking resident doctors.
📌 When player Chloe Kelly spoke about “being English” after the England women’s team victory over Spain on Sunday, we winced. Yet the idea of “proper England” or “proper English” has apparently been circulating in sport for some time, and it has nothing to do with the nationalist thuggery you might at first imagine it has. It is about resilience, determination and the belief that if we stand together, anything is possible.
📌 My wife reckons Robbie Williams now sounds like a desperate pub singer.
📌 I do like the baggy suits the Lionesses are wearing.
📌 Much is being made about the courage of the England Women player who soldiered on through the tournament with a fractured tibia. I feel like a spoilsport for questioning her employers for allowing that to happen.
WEDNESDAY 30 Nigel Farage has now started to mimic Donald Trump in ways that go way beyond creepy. It could be his undoing. Trump is not very well regarded in Britain despite his skills in plain speaking.
📌 Our financial advisor Katie has a plan that ensures the lifestyle we have now will continue, with knobs on, after my retirement next month.
📌 The race is on to finish the big brain stitchwork for the Royal London hospital by September.
THURSDAY 31 Last night we watched the first story in the TV series of Bookish and were impressed by Mark Gatiss’s ability to play with established tropes and genres. His co-reinvention (with Steven Moffat) of Sherlock Holmes in the series Sherlock, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Martin Freeman and Andrew Scott as Moriarty, showed a passion for period pieces coupled with well-drawn characters. In the Holmes stories the characters are off-the-shelf, but already in Bookish we see the team forming, all the players readying themselves for further adventures in postwar inner-city crime capery. I especially like the character Nora, who is like a postwar female Artful Dodger.
📌 Matthew’s family own 3 big farms in Zimbabwe, one of which might have gold beneath it.
📌 In a conversation with Alex about the Disrupt event I attended last week, I described Disrupt‘s mission as “power sharing”. Alex asked: “Do they have any power to share?” and that reminded me of one of the conversations I had during the event with a woman who had worked for the Gulbenkian Foundation, a privately owned Portuguese charitable organisation whose origins lay in deliberately surrendering power. Or at least that is how it was described to me.
Read all of my scrapbook diaries…
PLEASE MESSAGE WITH ANY CORRECTIONS, BIG OR SMALL.
Billy's Scrapbook 