April 11-17, 2026
SATURDAY 11 Proof that history is indeed written by the victor emerges in a 1945 article by George Orwell as he travelled through the devastated postwar cityscapes of Germany. The horrifying images of rubble and death we see on TV from Ukraine, Gaza and now Iran are what Germany’s cities looked like after British bombing raids.
📌 Just as I thought I’d finished writing the artist bios for the upcoming exhibition, Michelle requests two more. Luckily they are Sam and Ade, so it should be quite easy. But as I write that last sentence I realise I will struggle trying to say anything new about Sam.
📌 When Richard Herring started his Craven Newsround alongside Ally, a battered old ventriloquist’s dummy he probably found in a skip, he was the worst ventriloquist in the world, but didn’t seem to care. Now he is quite good at it, but has a look in his eye that suggests he knows he has improved but wishes he hadn’t.
SUNDAY 12 I finally managed to add a chain to the ceramic pendant I made for my wife. It wasn’t an easy job because the jump rings I’d bought from Amazon were too small.
📌 On the way home from Sunday lunch at Spoons I ran into a rowdy parade of men on Penny Farthing bicycles.
MONDAY 13 In what feels like something that has happened several times in the past already, workmen turned up at 9am to start repair work on our balcony. Fingers crossed the outcome will last longer than the last attempt did.
📌 The new stitched community tote bag features an architectural sketch made during the development of our estate.
📌 My wife is preparing for my hip replacement operation like it it is a major event rather than a routine procedure. She insists I have new pajamas to wear in hospital and has contacted adult social services to let them know they may need to offer support after I am discharged.
📌 The doctor says it’s not wax in my ears that stops me hearing what my wife is saying, so it must be something else. An audiology test is the next step.
TUESDAY 14 We were visited by a crowd of surveyors from the council trying to work out how much extra ventilation our property will require when the new windows are fitted and we are hermetically sealed in an atmosphere of our own breath.
📌 Michelle got in a panic when she couldn’t find the stitchwork I did of the model Iris Apel. She eventually located it in a cupboard in the studio.
📌 To the Courtauld Gallery for some post-impressionist pointillism. It was nice to be able to get really close to the paintings, which is a rare treat in these days of barriers and alarms.
WEDNESDAY 15 Today’s Sensemaker has a warning. Don’t get too excited about the overthrow of Viktor Orbán in Hungary. Wherever insecure jobs and high living costs prevail, so will the ultra-right. The Guardian agrees.
📌 To Barbican Cinema 3 for the new Jim Jarmusch film Father Mother Sister Brother, a seemingly simple collection of three short stories about the relationships between parents and their grown-up children. At times it was like watching a bunch of actors improvising a “family tension” sketch, but beautifully done and with a real sense of place for the three locations (rural America, London, Paris) and some cute continuity motifs on subjects as diverse as water, cars, roads and English idiom. Plus a magic moment from Tom Waits, madly swinging an axe in a growing state of anxiety.
THURSDAY 16 One further reflection about the film we saw last night was the skill of actors who can act by not doing anything. Just thinking the thoughts of the character, and their transmission to the audience through the actor’s eyes, is a type of acting that can only ever work well on screen. It would never work satisfactorily on stage.
📌 Another nice column by Lucy Webster in her The View From Down Here series, strangely in defence of Donald Trump who, she says, is not evil because he is “disabled”, as portrayed by left-wingers in social media memes, but because he is a racist, misogynist fascist.
📌 At the Barbican Art Gallery we saw some paintings, sketches and sculptures vivid in both colours and thought by the Colombian artist Beatriz Gonzales. Every image featured a person.
FRIDAY 17 To my wife’s acute embarrassment, I lost my temper during a phone call with the hospital that will be doing my hip replacement, during which the decorators arrived to finish the job they started earlier in the week.
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Billy's Scrapbook 