Scrapbook: Week 1

January 3-9, 2026

SATURDAY 3 Online pop-up ads are becoming more and more intrusive, but I don’t get worked up about them too much. They are just the way things are these days. Annoying, but not enough to get stressed about. Only if they reveal an obvious symptom of a declining civilisation do I become saddened.

📌 Another win on the Premium Bonds…

SUNDAY 4 Another scrape for Liverpool. They managed to go 2-1 up in extra time but Fulham came back with a scintillating goal to draw the game 2-2. It was a fair result in the end.

📌 Two articles, one in the Guardian, the other in the New Statesman, attempt to work out what Donald Trump is up to kidnapping the president of Venezuela and declaring his intention to steal the nation’s entire supply of crude oil. Basically, it comes down to Trump not wanting to protect America and Americans from drug smugglers but to take over, occupy and control all western continental land masses. It is the US equivalent of the Iron Curtain. It is the “Putinisation” of US foreign policy. In short, Trump wants an empire to call his own. He wants all of South America, Greenland and probably Canada too. I am not sure his desires stop there. Antarctica? This puts the question of his “friendship” to any nation outside that imaginary western bloc in doubt. Europe’s place in this new global order is precarious. Ukraine’s Vlodomyr Zelenskyy suggested that Trump use his dictatorship-removal skills on “other” tyrants. Jonty Bloom sees China as the real victor in Trump’s Venezuelan excursion…

MONDAY 5 It’s Give & Take Day at St Giles on Saturday, so we’re sorting through our cupboards for items that can be passed on to someone else. Most of the items I have selected so far are what I would term “junk”, but to others they will have value. “How many hole punches do we need?” I asked my wife while clearing out my desk drawer. One was the answer, so the spare one went into the St Giles box. I learn from Orwell Daily that Orwell himself had a fascination for “junk”, from what he called “Junk Shops”, which were not to be confused with antique shops.

A junk shop has a fine film of dust over the window, its stock may include literally anything that is not perishable, and its proprietor, who is usually asleep in a small room at the back, displays no eagerness to make a sale.

📌 Spotify’s algorithm repeatedly sends me a divine cover version of David Bowie’s Heroes.

📌 Russia doesn’t seem that bothered about Trump’s planned “takeover” of Venezuela. There is even some jealousy in the Kremlin that Trump did in one day what Putin was meant to have done in Ukraine four years ago. The Knowledge strikes a cautionary note…

As Obama found in Libya, however, and George Bush in Iraq, “it is the afterparty that causes the biggest headaches”.

And…

American commandos have ended the rule of Maduro, though not necessarily that of his regime.

📌 I’ve changed my funeral music from Crazy by Seal to Particles by the Icelandic neoclassical maestro Ólafur Arnalds.

TUESDAY 6 Jonty Bloom got me worried in his rant about Keir Starmer refusing to criticise Trump’s tyrannical takeover of Venezuela. He claims that Britain effectively rents its nuclear weapons from the US, implying that its defence status is that of a tenant. This is only partially true. The US is responsible only for the technical maintenance of Trident missiles that deliver the deadly warheads and can play no part in the deployment of British nuclear weapons. Moreover, Britain aims in future to maintain its nuclear arsenal without any technical support from the US.

📌 On two days running I’ve noticed news items that offer a small glimmer of hope both for the citizens of the UK and its government. The first was a quiet mention that immigration figures in the past year have fallen by more than 50%, which is good news from a propaganda point of view but possibly equals bad news elsewhere. The second was a radio story this morning in which a financial expert compared the economies of the US and the UK to the fortunes of The Hare And The Tortoise in the famous fable attributed to Aesop. The prediction was that Britain’s economy over the next year will reveal its government to be operating a “slow and steady wins the race” approach. Whether that washes with the voting public, or even anxious members of its own party, is a different question.

📌 My wife is outraged that one of contestants on Junior Bake Off is said to be 14 years old but looks older. She believes this is grossly unfair to her 11-year-old competitors.

WEDNESDAY 7 Venezuela has turned me into a geopolitical voyeur. Yesterday I read an article claiming that vice (now acting) president Delcy Rodríguez knew all about the Maduro kidnapping and had in fact been secretly conspiring with Washington to depose him. Today an article in LabourList clearly defines the legality of Trump’s audacious kidnapping and, more importantly, explains Keir Starmer’s muted reaction to it. It boils down to the fact that officially the UK has never recognised Maduro as the leader of Venezuela. In fact, it recognises the opposition as being the legitimate governing authority. The article also has some fascinating details of the “vast quantities” of Venezuelan gold bars that sit in the Bank of England. Maduro wanted to take them, the Opposition party wanted them to stay put in the Bank of England.

📌 “Titration” isn’t a word I’ve heard since studying chemistry 50 years ago. Now my doctor has used it to describe the gentle increase in pain medication he is prescribing for my dodgy hips.

📌 And Squaredle‘s Bonus Word of the Day is…

THURSDAY 8 The woman sitting behind me on the bus was shouting into her phone, seemingly oblivious, or maybe just not bothered, that she was in that moment living proof that public and private spaces no longer have boundaries. Is it some hidden “English Reserve” inside of me that cherishes those boundaries? Or is it default behaviour nowadays to be rude and selfish? The same thing happens in the cinema and at concerts: noisy snacks and drinks gang up with idle chat and the right to turn up late, waving mobile-phone torches in search of the seat you should have been sat in 10 minutes ago.

📌 Three stitchwork miniatures completed over the festive period.

FRIDAY 9 Nine days into January and the early consensus on finding better ways to store things we don’t use very often is in tatters. The outbreak of bickering and snarling will continue until one of us (ie, me) backs down. Surrender, though, is no long-term solution and until we can find common agreement on what we WANT and what we NEED to keep and store, a state of war will continue to bubble beneath the surface. I will suggest we start with one item and move on from there. We only need ONE small hammer. All the other small hammers (3) can go. That sounds like a way forward, but don’t rule out a major skirmish on WHICH of the four small hammers we keep, and a minor skirmish on who is the household’s principal hammer user. I can’t honestly imagine how perilous this conflict will get when we move into the kitchen.

📌 Nigel’s Welsh cottage is buried in snow so he’s been forced to slum it here in London.

📌 Jessie Buckley is mesmerising as William Shakespeare’s wife in the film Hamnet, which my wife thought was slow in parts and I thought corny in others. The biggest revelation was that the name of Shakespeare’s wife wasn’t Anne but Agnes.

Read all of my scrapbook diaries…

PLEASE MESSAGE WITH ANY CORRECTIONS, BIG OR SMALL.

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