One month as it happened…
FRIDAY 1 On Borrowbox I’m listening to an audio collection of Ruth Rendell stories, A Spot Of Folly, that are said to have not appeared previously. Most of them are about men being undone by their own vanity and conceit, or else undone by the women they’ve treated with contempt, but they do illustrate Rendell’s love of the final twist. I’ve found myself scouring the stories as I listen to them, trying to spot the detail on which the final twist will pivot.
📌 Bunhill Fields graveyard was as wild and spooky as ever when I passed through on my way to Margaret’s funeral service at Wesley’s Chapel. I sat next to Jacqueline, and we both disrespectfully started laughing when the man sat behind us bellowed all the hymns at a volume they could probably hear all the way up City Road. He also had the habit of extending every word by one syllable, so for example, “Heaven” got freighted with three syllables.
📌 I’m really quite glad to be doing some simple Sashiko stitchwork on coloured tote bags. Plain but pleasing, and finished in no time at all…
SATURDAY 2 One of our neighbours is so boring you wonder whether she was born boring, without personality, or whether boring took her on one unsuspecting night while she still thought she was interesting. There is another way of looking at this. That she is not actually boring, but that the way she chooses to express herself is boring. In other words, inside the person who has no talent for expressing themselves is a sparkling personality not known maybe even to the person themselves.
📌 Gill said she discovered she was short-sighted when she bought some maps for a holiday, noticed they were blurry and took them back to the shop to complain about the quality of the printing and demand her money back.
📌 My wife wants us to support the Arsenal Ladies football team, who play at the Emirates stadium, which is a short ride on the 153 bus.
SUNDAY 3 The New Statesman reveals that the youth vices of the past (namely sex and and drugs) have been replaced in the digital world by online gambling, which is seen by Gen Z as a social activity. The article does not state how much money Gen Z is squandering in Paddy Power or on Bet365, but if it is anything like the amount the young me squandered in the pubs of Liverpool, the future for these 18-24 year-olds could go a number of ways. Which brings us to the subject of Luck and its role in our lives. New World philosopher Nigel Warburton seductively uses the England Women’s triumph in the Euro25 tournament to illustrate that having luck is not the same as being lucky…
According to [Scottish philosopher] David Hume, what we call ‘luck’ is only our ignorance of the causes of things turning out the way they do. I suspect Leah Williamson, the England captain, would agree. She put it this way: ‘We have ridden our luck, but I don’t think we were lucky.’
📌 Nice line in the Guardian about an openly lesbian woman who has become an archbishop in the Anglican church: “She has well and truly broken the stained-glass ceiling.”
📌 Another Guardian article claims that Donald Trump is already in the Joe Biden wastelands of losing your marbles…
The president repeatedly drifts off topic, including during a cabinet meeting this month when he spent 15 minutes talking about decorating.
MONDAY 4
📌 RIP Stella Remington, 90, the subject of one of the best headlines I ever wrote at the Guardian.
📌 Liam Neeson doesn’t quite measure up to the comedy genius of Leslie Nielsen, but the resurrection of The Naked Gun is nevertheless a beautifully daft and downright silly romp, which kicked off my wife’s “birthday week”.
TUESDAY 5
📌 My wife’s birthday present was a hit, probably because she picked it herself…
📌 After a visit to the V&A we had a glass of champagne in Fortnum & Mason, came out, crossed the road to get the bus home and bumped into Martine, in London with friend Janet for a play, the brilliant Till the Stars Come Down. In June we were in Paris and bumped into Martine’s brother Gino. They are both very old friends from Brighton and meeting them both in succession after such a long time was a pair of rare coincidental delights.
WEDNESDAY 6 A zoo in Denmark is asking people with unwanted pets to donate them to the zoo as food for hungry animals. Menus include live chickens, rabbits and guinea pigs.
THURSDAY 7 There’s a cheesy article in the New Statesman about how UK prime ministers handled the publicity of being on holiday. It claims Harold Wilson invented the one-shot stunt in which photographers are allowed one seemingly private picture before being told to shove off. But it was a later PM who perfectedthe art…
David Cameron is perhaps the finest practitioner of the staged snap. Wear the same outfit: navy polo shirt, navy trousers. Do the same thing: point at fish. Always fish. Fish in Cornwall in 2011, fish in Devon in 2012, fish in a Portuguese market in 2013, and again fish at a different Portuguese fish market in 2014.
📌 Always nice to hear of a win on the Premium Bonds.
📌 I asked Matthew why he wasn’t in the gym this morning, doing his exercises as usual. He told me he was injured with a fractured shoulder. Sean interrupted: “He did it answering the phone.” Which turned out to be sort of true. Matthew had over-reached for a ringing phone and took a tumble.
📌 Just as I breathed a sigh of relief that the Big Brain stitchwork for the Royal London Hospital project is nearing completion, I got a message from Carmel that means I effectively have an extra month, which is fab news.
FRIDAY 8 I’ve often wondered during all the conferences and meetings I attend on power-sharing methods in large institutions whether any of the big lessons learned about dismantling hierarchies, etc, could ever be translated, or even proposed, as government policy. A recent article in the Guardian argues that big government could, and should, have the courage to let go of the levers of control. It reads like a manifesto for a New Enlightenment.
📌 CapX, the best site to witness cutting-edge capitalism, reports that Britain now has its first AI MP. He (he would be) is West Yorkshire MP Mark Sewards, who uses an AI chatbot to deal with his constituents’ questions.
SATURDAY 9 Last night my wife saw a fake Dolly Parton at Brighton’s open-air theatre. Today the pictures arrived, and fake is probably an unkind way to describe it. Yet one of our friends still remarked cruelly that Dolly’s calfs were so big they’d turned into cows.
📌 We got the 700 bus to Shoreham to meet Elias. I haven’t seen him in about 20 years and his lovely, even temperament is unchanged. It was a joy. He told us two very fascinating stories. One about the quest to get paid for filming and editing a Hare Krishna funeral, and another about the quest to eliminate rats from his conservatory.
📌 Shoreham is much changed and really quite chi-chi. On the high street a gathering of wedding guests became an exhibition of undersized clothing. Both men and women appeared as specimens crammed into outfits made for people smaller than themselves. We dined in Teddy’s Tearoom and one of the antique shops had a collection of vintage juke boxes.
📌 At dinner in a Turkish restaurant in Preston Street, Lil bet Sue that Liverpool would beat Palace 4-0 in tomorrow’s Community Shield game.
SUNDAY 10 You have to imagine that Paul Mason and Jeremy Corbyn had a massive fight over some obviously important point of principle. There is no other way to account for Mason’s continued attacks on the new ultra-left political party Corbyn is said to have formed with Labour defector Zarah Sultana. Mason’s latest sideswipe labels the new Corbyn party as a collective of privately-educated poshos, whereas Starmer’s Labour cabinet, he says, is a cabal of comprehensive-school alumni.
📌 With Paul, Sarah and Stephanie, we drove out to Saltdean for a weird lunch in a beachside cafe that did not offer bread as a side order. Then to the excellently refurbished, and very busy art-deco Lido.
📌 At lunch, Steph told us that Isle of Wight tomatoes are said to be the best in Britain but very few places sell them. Then in the evening at Hove Place we spotted them on the menu.
📌 Palace beat Liverpool in the Community Shield.
MONDAY 11 Half way through the night and half awake, I thought I was dreaming when I heard the sound of Les Dawson’s voice. I wasn’t dreaming…
📌 There are a lot of headlines about discontent among Liverpool players.
📌 An article in the New Statesman names Justice Minister Shabana Mahmood as a rapidly rising star in government for her canny handling of tricky subjects such as prison reform, immigration and foreign criminals.
As the child of migrant parents, who came to the UK from rural Kashmir, she has an authentic outrage over foreign criminals: ‘To be welcomed into this country, as my parents were, is to assume responsibilities as well as rights.’
TUESDAY 12 We’ve started watching The Assassin, starring Keeley Hawes as a “menopausal hitwoman“. It is charmingly stupid but compelling and thrilling. It carries with it a strand of sarcastic humour I suspect might turn some viewers off but which makes me laugh out loud, much to my wife’s irritation.
📌 My wife told me she read a report in which someone brandishing a sign saying “Plasticine Action” was arrested by police.
WEDNESDAY 13 The Big Brain stitchwork is nearing the finish line with a curvy flourish in two shades of brown.
📌 Every day Tortoise Sensemaker arrives with a new atrocity from a government that was not meant to be in the business of atrocities.
Today’s also includes news that half of the 532 people arrested in London on Saturday at a protest in support of Palestine Action were over 60, including a former advisor to King (then Prince) Charles and an 81-year-old with Parkinson’s disease.
And…
In recent weeks several people have been arrested for displaying pro-Palestine messages, without supporting Palestine Action. This includes a man who held up a Private Eye cartoon in Leeds and a woman who held up a sign saying ‘Free Gaza’ in Canterbury.
The New Statesman called it “the radicalisation of grandma”.
📌 In a fabulous reflection on how voting habits have become more and more transactional (based on polling by his pal Peter Kellner) David Aaronovitch urges the nation’s political moderates to find a defining cause (DC) on which they can campaign to beat opponents such as Reform (DC: Immigration) or the Greens (DC: Climate Crisis). My choice has always been the NHS, but others might lean towards Housing, Transport or Energy. The present government has failed to take ownership of those causes.
THURSDAY 14 Michelle asked me to write a short pitch arguing why our studio should have a permanent partnership and representation with the Whitechapel Gallery. It seems obvious to me, but obviously not to art-world elitists who have been gifted the privilege of filling galleries with their own petty obsessions rather than with works that are in and of the community in which they exist.
📌 I learned today that the term ‘Beard of Zeus’ is used to describe a “long, full, and well-maintained beard, often associated with wisdom, maturity, and accomplishment. It’s a symbol of a life well-lived and goals achieved, similar to the mythical Zeus, the king of the gods, who was often depicted with a majestic beard”. And the reason I learned it?
📌 The Daily Mash has a powerful explanation for why A-levels don’t matter, from people who didn’t get any. The best quote is from ‘Simon Cowell’… “…instead of swotting up, try and be the child of a powerful executive. It’ll open up even more doors than a first in PPE from Oxford.”
FRIDAY 15 I had a touching conversation with Mathew (real name Mathieu) yesterday at Headway. I told him I never wear quality clothing in the art studio because it inevitably gets soiled with paint. I cited a cashmere sweater that was accidentally ruined in this way and Mathew said cashmere sweaters reminded him of when he had friends and went out. Nowadays, his disability has robbed him of that life. He said wearing quality clothes is a thing of the past and trying to recover a social life is very difficult.
📌 The seven actors onstage for Goodnight Oscar at the Barbican steered a play about TV celebrity and its skill in rebranding people with complex needs as oddities into a soft virtuoso comedy in a way fans of TV’s The Big Bang Theory will be familiar. The difference is that the mental health of the protagonist in The Big Bang Theory is protected by friendship; in the celebrity TV world of Goodnight Oscar it is exploited mercilessly.
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.
SATURDAY 23 In the morning we mooched around Ardglass and found an off-licence. In the afternoon we went to the beach at Ballyhornan and watched Anne’s sister Ita doing a marathon swim. In the evening we boogied into the late night at Anne’s birthday party at Ardglass golf course.
📌 Anne says that snooty people pronounce Londonderry as “Laundry”.
📌 The Ardglass butchers shop sells something called “baby boils”, which I’m told is small potatoes.
SUNDAY 24 Dawn excused herself briefly from Anne’s birthday barbecue saying she had acid reflux and needed to return to her room for some Gaviscon. Later, after a lot of wine, she confessed that her “acid reflux” was in fact the result of her bra being too tight.
📌 When they were all children, Anne’s younger sisters took revenge on her one day by putting slugs in her bed.
MONDAY 25 In Belfast city centre, the small, pokey alleyways connecting main roads are called “entries” (nearby ones include Pottinger’s Entry, Sugarhouse Entry, Joy’s Entry). Seeing them prompted a childhood memory of a newspaper cartoon strip in my hometown Liverpool called The Back Entry Diddlers.
📌 Got a nice thank you message from Anne for her birthday present.
📌 Even in Belfast Project Artworks have prints in the Plus rooms of Premier Inns.
TUESDAY 26
📌 On our way up the coast north of Belfast to the Giant’s Causeway. In the distance across the Irish Sea you can see Scotland.
📌 I tried, with not much success I think, to explain the geology of the Giant’s Causeway to Seàn. I must have sounded like a bad schoolteacher with my tutorial on the difference between magma and lava and the unique mineralogy of basaltic lava that meant it solidified into neat interlocking hexagons of fine grained, very hard black rock.
WEDNESDAY 27
📌 Torrential rain brought a watery feeling to our visit to the Titanic Museum. But once we got inside at least we had the opportunity to dry off, unlike Leonardo di Caprio.
📌 Seàn was so wet from the walk over from their Air B&B in Templemore Avenue that he needed a new (dry) T-shirt.
📌 The rain had obviously pushed too many visitors into the museum and it was oppressively crowded. The most memorable section for me was towards the end when all of those who survived or perished were named. One of the perished shared the name of my wife. Cruel factoids abound, such as the absence of a single pair of binoculars on the ship’s bridge, the captain was steaming too fast towards ice, warnings unheaded, etc. Ultimately, the story of the Titanic is pitched as a story of Belfast itself with naked empire, sectarian and class divisions included.
📌 We never knew Belfast was famous for its linen.
📌 Included in the price of the Titanic experience was a free exhibition of Lucian Freud etchings. I think if Lucian had been on board the Titanic when it struck the iceberg he would have been one of the first into the lifeboats, just like all the other privileged classes who watched the poor people die.
THURSDAY 28
📌 Breakfast in The National reveals another Belfast building interior that carries the weight of a once successful iron and steel industry.
📌 In Belfast city centre there’s a £500 fine for drinking in public places.
📌 With yet more rain forecast we opted for a visit to the Ulster Museum, which not only boasted a flock of sculptured dragons by “the world’s best basketmaker”, a superb photo exhibition by Akihika Okamura, a Japanese war photographer who settled in Ireland after the Vietnam War and a big and quite solid collection exhibits of all kinds..
📌 One of the best exhibits in the Ulster Museum is a prop from the TV series Derry Girls. In one episode the girls are asked to state the similarities and differences between the Protestant and Catholic communities of Ireland. The differences won and included the news that “Protestants keep toasters in cupboards” and “Catholics love bingo”.
FRIDAY 29
📌 The tour guide says Belfast used to be called Linenopolis. He also says that the Albert Memorial Clock tower leans not because sex workers used to prop themselves up against it but because it was built on wooden beams that have rotted. Belfast also used to be a cash-only city, which is why it has so many banks (many now converted into pubs and restaurants).
📌 My wife says fancy photo effects make me look a lot worse (ie, older) than I really am.
SATURDAY 30 In his latest Newsletter Of (Not Quite) Everything John Elledge claims that your fear of plunging to your death when the lift you’re in fails and plummets earthwards, is such a remote possibility that you really shouldn’t fret about it. You are, he says, more likely to be crushed to death by a failed lift shooting skywards and hitting the roof. Examples of both types of death are cited.
SUNDAY 31 I haven’t yet found a new audiobook on Borrowbox or Libby, so I’m back with Drama on 4 at BBC Sounds. Collapsing Orbits is an obvious but nevertheless intriguing dramatic take on the monster that is Elon Musk and his obsession with tech brotherhood and interplanetary travel. Intriguing because it has a whiff of romcom about it, something it’s hard to imagine the real Musk having a part in. After that came a harrowing piece of narrative journalism, Hershey’s Hiroshima that details using interviews the hours and days following the 1945 Atomic bombing of Japan. Harrowing because it includes unflinching descriptions of melting faces and empty eye sockets.
📌 At the Barbican “garden” party in St Giles church, Myra told me all her artworks are about dreams. Despite claiming to never dream, her recent dreams, she said, were about Donald Trump and Angela Rayner. Trump was very charming and Angela Rayner got out of a car with a cloud of smoke wafting around her head.
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Billy's Scrapbook 
The stitchwork is pleasing. Your neighbour may not think that she is boring. Audio books are a boon. I was thinking of commenting after reading the whole post but found this is better. To comment after reading some paragraphs.
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