Scrapbook: Week 34

August 16-22, 2025

SATURDAY 16 If you find the Bonus Word of the Day, Squaredle gives you a free reveal to add to the single reveal already allowed. Only if I get the BWOTD do I permit myself a reveal. Otherwise I stagger on not using the reveals.

SUNDAY 17 Lawrence Freedman reckons something useful did actually come of the charade summit in Alaska in which Trump and Putin pretended to talk to each other, each claiming the conversation had a positive outcome. Freedman noticed two details: that the US broadly aligned with Ukraine on territorial claims, and that the talking is now trained on the endgame.

This is to shift the argument from how to get an immediate ceasefire, which has been Trump’s priority, to negotiations on a final settlement while the fighting continues.

This didn’t stop elements of the British media confirming Putin’s view that land in the east of Ukraine is still up for grabs…

📌 The argument for Rachel Reeves to introduce a tax on wealth is growing. Stories abound of a wealth tax successfully shifting the fortunes of Spain’s economy. And a convincing argument in the New Statesman says that Reeves has already proved that taxing the super-rich does not drive them out of Britain, as is often asserted. In fact, they stay put.

📌 We went on a day trip to Heathrow Airport T5 to check out the logistics for Friday’s journey to Belfast.

MONDAY 18 I dislike cats. I think them sly and cunning and only too happy to prey on my persecution complexes. I am also allergic to their fur, which kind of excuses me any reluctance to engage with them. Mainly I am openly hostile towards them, which seems to raise their game. I cannot ever imagine being affectionate towards a cat, until now. In Letters of Note Raymond Chandler writes about his cat Taki and I almost wish I could meet the beast and exchange dirty looks, just as an experiment in psychological warfare.

📌 Yesterday we saw some graffiti on a building that read, “I farted in yoga”. And today my wife returned from her lunchtime yoga session to report that one of her classmates had unleashed a “massive fart”.

📌 And finally…

📌 Another nice bit of character description by Mick Herron in Down Cemetery Road…

He had never really lost his youth; he just kept it in a small room off the landing.

TUESDAY 19

WEDNESDAY 20 A tipping point has arrived in the question of where to house asylum seekers. Up until now, governments past and present were able to place asylum seekers in hotels that have spare capacity and pay the going rate, but did not offer local authorities extra funding to cover increased demand for services and infrastructure. Some hotel owners saw this as an opportunity and changed their business use from “hotel” to “hostel” and took in asylum seekers. Now this commercial manoeuvre has been challenged, and beaten, in the high court under council planning laws. More councils look set to follow and the home secretary is struggling to find places to house asylum seekers. The government seems to be getting most of the flak for this, but it was the previous government that initiated the practice of using hotels to house asylum seekers, maybe in the belief that they were supporting local businesses who needed the (taxpayers’) cash. Which casts the high-court ruling in a different light. It is a move not against asylum seekers but against hotel owners exploiting both vulnerable asylum seekers and a weakened government wrestling with a spike in immigration. It is an anti-business ruling.

Coincidentally, we had Ario, an asylum seeker artist from a nearby “hotel”, join our Stitchers group. He got straight in, drawing his pattern and choosing his threads.

THURSDAY 21 There’s a fascinating explanation on Quora about the destructive power of a bullet fired casually into the air during a celebration of some kind. 

FRIDAY 22 The Slow Horses offices on Aldersgate Street as depicted in Mick Herron’s Slough House series of spy stories, is available to rent. A museum-minded entrepreneur might consider the possibilities of a quick killing exhibiting the grotty workspaces of Jackson Lamb, Catherine Standish, River Cartwright, et al.

📌 At Heathrow airport it is now obvious that some travellers are gaming the “assistance” service. There is no separation between families with unruly children and people with physical disabilities who need specialist assistance. In the queue for security, my wife even overheard two fully able men talking about how they sneaked into the “assistance” area merely as a way to jump the queue.

📌 Last night we finished The Darkness at breakneck speed before our departure to Belfast this morning. The end was, as is the case these days, left slightly ajar, but it’s hard to see how a second series might be carved out now that the mother-and-child/parental love theme has been wrung dry. I hope it can, because the characters and the scenery deserve it, and with director Lasse Hallström, his wife Lena Olin and daughter Tora as the series’ principals, I’d not bet against it.

📌 Our first taste of Northern Ireland was to visit the picturesque tiny port of Strangford.

As we journeyed from Strangford to Ardglass, the scenery brought back childhood memories of playing with my sister on the beaches of the Isle of Man. Then my wife asked our driver about a hazy landmass discernible in the distance. It was the Isle of Man.

Read all of my scrapbook diaries…

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