November 22-28, 2025
SATURDAY 22 The 1977 Cheap Trick album In Color (And in Black And White) reminds me that I did once have an interest in rock guitar bands, though I think the initial attraction of this album was once again a single, I Want You To Want Me. And that track is quite poppy. Again and again I seem to know all the words to every song on the album. The band also had two intriguing characters in the form of guitarist Rick Nielsen and drummer Bun E Carlos.
📌 I’m beginning to think Saturday’s Waffles are the easiest to score the maximum 5 swaps remaining.
📌 Another great line from Mick Herron in Smoke & Whispers, the fourth book in the Zoë Boehm series. A character is drunkenly reflecting on his eight-month old profoundly disabled child…
Anything can seem like a pleasure, if you compare it to a life utterly bereft of possibility.
📌 About 30 years ago I paid an extravagant sum for a pair of quality deck shoes from a boating shop in Brighton. Amazingly, I still have them and they still fit me. They have become especially useful on this holiday because as rainy weather set in today, my feet were glued securely to the ground.
SUNDAY 23 Elton John’s 1970 album Elton John has amazingly never been off my playlist from the day I first heard it more than 50 years ago. Those familiar only with his flamboyant later work will barely recognise this gentle bluesy singer-songwriter. At times his voice is so bluesy it overtakes Mick Jagger. This is an album full of sadness and reflection, held together by the ever-present piano and subtle orchestral arrangements, though the Spotify Deluxe version adds a curious set of demo versions of the tracks in which all the detail outside of voice and piano are missing.
📌 The surf was up today so my plan to go for a swim in the Atlantic was hastily abandoned. The last time I swam in this tempestuous ocean was probably about 40 years ago, at Westward Ho!
MONDAY 24 Two Irish journalists have written a book in the hope that a referendum on the unification of Ireland does not slip into the trap the UK fell into with the Brexit vote, where a simple yes/no question resulted in a slim result but with devastating consequences because no one bothered to state exactly the full ramifications of voting either way. The authors hope to start a national, balanced interrogation of what a united Ireland might look like and how it would function.
We do not want a referendum on a thumbs-up-thumbs-down, vague proposition whose consequences have not been spelled out because then you find yourself with an extraordinarily divided society where people who have lost are not reconciled to losing and the people who have won don’t know quite what it is that they have won.
TUESDAY 25 It will be interesting to see what Chancellor Rachel Reeves puts into this week’s budget. What Labour Party members themselves would like to see is increased taxes on gambling and bank profits. Giving local authorities the power to levy a tourism tax is also popular. They might get these things, but they will likely also get things they don’t like so much.
📌 Listening again to Queen’s 1974 album Sheer Heart Attack not only made me nostalgic for Freddie Mercury’s beautifully daring wordplay but reminded me that the vinyl albums of my past were often a game of two halves. Side 1 of Sheer Heart Attack has all of my early Queen favourites (Brighton Rock, Killer Queen, Now I’m Here, Lily Of The Valley), but I never quite got into Side 2. Even that long ago the guitar of Brian May and the piano and vocals of Freddie Mercury were a marriage made in heaven, and remain so to this day.
📌 Images from an evening in Santa Cruz include the island’s designated spaces for copulating wheelchair users, a dubious character from the Traitors Christmas special and a plant pot my wife says gives kitsch a bad name.
WEDNESDAY 26 Rafael Behr reckons that until the government gets a deal from the EU that effectively reverses Brexit, Britain’s economic plight will remain dire. He also urges the government to start talking honestly about this, and with a stated sense of purpose.
The prime minister and the chancellor are uncannily alike in their communicative deficiency, stilted and reticent in a way that pushes audiences away instead of drawing them in.
📌 Another of my sister’s vinyl albums I feasted on as a youth was Bob Dylan’s Blood On The Tracks (1975). It was the moment I finally gave in and accepted Dylan’s genius as a songwriting storyteller. I wasn’t surprised when he won the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature. My favourite track is undoubtedly Tangled Up In Blue and the bonus of listening to it now all these years later on Spotify is that bootleg and unreleased versions of all the tracks show how Dylan liked to play with his own songs, often even changing the lyrics. For example, the vinyl album version of Tangled Up In Blue is sung in the first person…
Early one morning the sun was shining/ I was laying in bed/ wondering if she’d changed at all/ if her hair was still red
Whereas the Spotify bootleg version starts in the third person…
Early one morning the sun was shining/ he was laying in bed, etc
But then switches back later to the first person…
She was working in a topless place/I stopped in for a beer/ I just kept looking at the side of her face/ in the spotlight so clear
📌 RIP Jack Barron, age unknown. Neil posted on Facebook that he was a goner. Lots of nice memories in the Comments. I posted one about Jack’s car (white Triumph Stag) and Blixa Bargeld. His real name was Nick. He got his writing name from the title of a science-fiction novel.
THURSDAY 27
📌 The green bag my wife left on a bench at Blackfriars station right at the beginning of our holiday became a point of stress at the end of the holiday when she asked me if I had my wallet and house keys in preparation for our return to the UK. I didn’t have them, and I had forgotten to check I had them. In a late panic search they were found to have been stored in the infamous green bag. My wife graciously accepted 80% of the responsibility for this mishap. She wanted 70%, but I beat her up to 80%.
FRIDAY 28
This story is being cast as yet another example of the government backtracking on its election promises. Two things come to mind. First, I’m not sure voters are as hung up on election promises as political commentators are. The Labour government was elected overwhelmingly in order solely to get the previous Conservative one out. Second, a minister on the radio this morning did not emphasise far enough that the policy change was done after intense wrangling with both business and trades union leaders. In other words, two traditional enemies are complicit in a compromise outcome.
📌 To Milton Court for an orchestral celebration of 50 Years of Bohemian Rhapsody. The words were missing, but they are always in your head.
Read all of my scrapbook diaries…
PLEASE MESSAGE WITH ANY CORRECTIONS, BIG OR SMALL.
Billy's Scrapbook 
Your shoes look good even now. My husband feels very proud of his wrist watch which was given to him by his uncle in the late 60s. It is still working and he has key it regularly.
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We too remember the lyrics of many Hindi movie songs though we do not hear them regularly. They are there somewhere in the back of the mind. And invariably we talk about the lyrics of these days and how forgettable they are 😊
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I think they are forgettable simply because there is too much to digest properly. Individual lines from books and songs still impress me and make me happy that writers still take such care with words.
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