March 21-27 2026
SATURDAY 21 Why is Britain always so willing to play poodle to the US, asks a Guardian article, “behaving for all the world like someone stuck in an abusive personal relationship”. Fortunately, the article doesn’t just ask the question, it gives a very clear answer.
📌 Trump is starting to chicken out of his war with Iran. But it won’t be easy, says Foreign Affairs. To properly end the conflict he will need to find a way to neutralise Israel. Maybe he can rig the upcoming Israeli elections and leave Netanyahu hanging.
📌 My wife charmingly said my homemade chicken-avocado paté looked like it had already been eaten.
📌 The best word we could come up with to describe the film Project Hail Mary, starring Ryan Gosling, is SILLY. Fun, clever and entertaining were close contenders. It was nice to learn that it was made with minimal special effects or CGI.
SUNDAY 22 At the cinema last night we saw a trailer for an upcoming documentary about George Orwell (2+2=5), linking his writings of the early 20th Century to the state of the world in the early 21st Century. Coincidentally, I have just finished the audiobook of The Road To Wigan Pier, which ends with words that could usefully become part of Keir Starmer’s next attempt to revive his dwindling fortunes…
In the next few years we shall either get that effective Socialist party that we need, or we shall not get it. If we do not get it, then Fascism is coming; probably a slimy Anglicized form of Fascism, with cultured policemen instead of Nazi gorillas and the lion and the unicorn instead of the swastika.
📌 From an article that offers some advice to Keir Starmer about the beauty of multiparty coalitions as seen in other European countries, I learned that Green Party leader Zack Polanski is up for a partnership with Labour, but only if Andy Burnham is leader and Starmer out. That kind of attempted political blackmail is low, but at least it puts out a signal that Starmer should pay attention to about being a bit more broad church.
MONDAY 23 Harshita says she went to school with George Michael, but fancied not George but his cousin. Stephanie, who runs our local community centre, went to school with TV’s Jonathan Creek (Alan Davies) but fell out with him when he sneaked upstairs at her 13th birthday party and read her diary, which revealed that she was in love with Mr Jones, one of her teachers.
📌 The latest in the stitchwork fish collection is finished. I think I will proceed now with actual species such as cod and mackerel, ones people eat rather than imaginary fishtank fish.
TUESDAY 24 To the Royal College of Surgeons‘ first-floor library for a presentation of Stoke Association research and afternoon tea. All because when we die the Stroke Association are in The Will. The event included access to the newly revamped Hunterian Museum, where we saw lots of diseased body parts and assorted specimens in jars and got a sneak preview of what my new hip will look like (surgery scheduled for April 27).
📌 To the Guildhall School for a student production of a Russian play from 1836 called The Government Inspector, which pokes fun at small-town corruption as being symbolic of a grossly smug wider society that has unwittingly bought into a culture of universal debasement. It didn’t put me in mind of Putin’s Russia so much as Trump’s America.
WEDNESDAY 25 Dovetailing nicely with last night’s play is my latest audiobook, The F*ck-It List, in which terminally ill retired newspaper editor Frank Brill decides not to make a bucket list of exciting things to do before he dies but to kill the people who have done him wrong. His task becomes an odyssey through Trump’s America, and on more than one occasion Frank’s experience is so negative that he starts to wish his imminent death could be brought forward.
📌 At Cecil’s burial at Hanwell Cemetery with Michelle and Alex we met three of his children and two of his grandchildren. At the graveside service Michelle and Alex cried. I threw some soil onto his coffin, ran lovely memories of Cecil through my head and whispered the Lord’s Prayer when the minister spoke it clearly. When Alex showed his family a book of Cecil’s drawings they were astounded: “It’s like he had a secret life,” said one. Maybe he did, the old devil.
📌 I’m still in awe of the friendships that grow between the contestants on TV’s House of Games. All of them are hard-wired successes in their own way, but the format of the show, and the facilitation of host Richard Osman, allows them to show a depth of warmth and fellowship they might struggle to reveal alone. Only in TV’s Junior Bake-Off does this spirit of togetherness shine so brightly.
📌 Jürgen Klopp talks fluently about Liverpool in a way that perfectly illustrates what fans instinctively think but can never exactly put into words…
Even from a distance, it’s impossible not to feel it. It’s hard to watch from the outside when you’ve spent so many years in the heart of that fire. People ask me, ‘Jurgen, what’s happening?’ and I tell them: football is like life, you have seasons of rain before the sun comes back. This club, these fans… they are built from a different kind of metal. They don’t just ‘get by,’ they overcome. I see the struggles, yes, but I also see the soul of Liverpool. It’s still there. It just needs that one spark, that one moment where the ‘Doubters’ remember they are ‘Believers’. My heart is no longer in the dugout, but it’s still in the stands. I know they will rise, not because it’s easy, but because they are Liverpool. And Liverpool always finds its way back to the top.
📌 The comedian Graham Norton is doing weird horseback TV ads for a company called Revolut, an online bank. Revolut is owned and run jointly by a British-Russian and a British-Ukrainian, a young fintech (financial technology) partnership that seemingly transcends global politics. Or does it define it?
📌 The gossip says that Thomas Tuchel has been cavorting with Trent Alexander-Arnold’s former girlfriend, which is why TAA has not been selected to play for England. Nothing, of course, to do with since he left Liverpool TAA has been injured and/or performing badly.
THURSDAY 26 During an online meeting with Jo and Carmel from Vital Arts, Natalie deftly seized control of the short video they want to submit to a health design conference in June. Kit will film me talking and Natalie will attend the conference. We hope to demonstrate that the co-produced workshops we did with the Royal London Hospital offer clues to a better, more collaborative way of working in institutional settings.
📌 A top score in Waffle has been a distant memory for some time.
FRIDAY 27 Donald Trump really is in a bad place. Saudi Arabia and Israel want him to destroy Iran. The rest of the world wants him to stop his stupid war and let global trade start flowing freely again.
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