Scrapbook: Week 39

September 20-26, 2025

SATURDAY 20 A visit to Brighton is always a prolonged moment of nostalgia. You want it to be the same but you know innately that it will always be different. As we arrived a noisy far-right gathering outside the railway station was preparing to march on a small gathering of Palestine Liberation campaigners. In a friend’s house for an old-pals reunion we made a merry dance like nothing had changed in the years since we last met, but under the surface we all knew everything had. It was both lovely and awkward at the same time.

SUNDAY 21 Reacquainting ourselves with Brighton included places we haven’t actually seen in many, many years. We even dared to visit the Marina, which had changed beyond recognition but still carried quite an upmarket grubby vibe. The old Chinese boat that doubled up as a restaurant is no more.

MONDAY 22

📌 I read an article arguing that Britain’s devolved mayoralties should be given more powers over education, health and transport. It argued also that Mayors should be allowed to generate their own income to spend on such public services. It chimed with a story in the local news here in Brighton that record £millions have been raised from parking fines. More powers for local governments is broadly a good idea, until that power is abused and the monies raised are siphoned off to the pals of corrupt council officials.

TUESDAY 23 Thirty-seven years ago.

📌 Our anniversary lunch was a massive portion of eggy bread to share. In the evening we dined on something more refined at the Barbican followed by a marathon screening (with old-fashioned “intermission”) of the 60th Anniversary remastered film of The Sound of Music. The theatre was rammed with young people, who clapped at the end as the Von Trapps made their escape from the Nazis in a long migrants’ walk through the mountains from Austria to Switzerland. 

WEDNESDAY 24 Many of Europe’s leaders, along with their populations, must be wondering whether more benignly constructive relations with Russia, China and India might be preferable to dealing with Trump’s America. If only the present leaders of Russia, China and India saw it that way.

📌 Rafael Behr reckons the Lib Dems can become the Conservative Party minus the Faragist swivel-eyed loons and Ed Davey the saviour of the suburban soft-right cake-baking classes.

Davey’s speech outlined the contest between a “silent majority” of moderate, compassionate patriots who actually like their home country, and Faragist fanatics who hate modern Britain and would twist and fold it into Trump’s America.

A Guardian Editorial resists the temptation to join that view but does express the view that Davey is the only party leader currently courageous enough to call out Tramp, Farage, Musk, et al, and wave the flag for being nice and sensible.

📌 I get the sense that Morgan McSweeney is becoming Keir Starmer’s Dominic Cummings, so getting rid of him asap may be the magic “reset” button the Prime Minister has been searching for.

THURSDAY 25 My wife used our Costco membership to buy jumbo tubs of Marmite for friends as gifts.

📌 If you arrive at Headway before 10am, Wednesday’s menu is still up on the board. Yesterday it included “pimped-up peas”, flavoured with ginger and spring greens.

📌 We joined the St Luke’s Thursday Murder Meetup Club at the Barbican Library for a photo exhibition of Blondie, which took pains to remind us that “BLONDIE IS A GROUP”, though millions of adolescent boys (self included) never quite saw it that way.

FRIDAY 26

📌 Once again Rene (aka, Count Dracula), the phlebotomist at our local GP surgery, struggled to find a suitable access point in the crook of my right elbow to extract the necessary blood sample.

📌 I’m very pleased so far with the reverse side of my latest stitchwork. It is meant to show the moment in the 2006 World Cup final when the French player Zinedine Zidane headbutted the Italian player Marco Materazzi. It is an image that has fascinated me for a long time as a split-second expression of animal violence that transcends thuggery. I remember at the time thinking of it as poetry in motion.

📌 At the St Luke’s Performing Dickens workshop it was decided that since I will not be available for the grand performance of A Christmas Carol on 14 November, I will be “assistant director” and help the rest of the “actors” deliver their lines as if they mean it. Hayley from the Dickens Museum, who joined us for the first workshop, squirmed when I suggested Scrooge might be so uptight, cold and godawful mean is because he lost the one thing he ever loved (Jacob Marley).

📌 Another bonus Reveal in Squaredle.

Read all of my scrapbook diaries…

PLEASE MESSAGE WITH ANY CORRECTIONS, BIG OR SMALL.

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