May 16-22, 2026
SATURDAY 16 Finally, I braved a walk outdoors to a nearby restaurant, The Black Olive, for lunch. On the way back I was delayed bumping into several neighbours, and the chilly weather made the expedition a challenge. But it was the first of what will now be daily excursions, and if the weather gets warmer next week there will be no stopping me.
📌 My first post-operative shower was a glorious experience.
SUNDAY 17 In an effort to declutter one of our bedroom cupboards, we found a stitchwork bag from years ago I don’t even remember doing. It features a Japanese symbol I can’t remember the meaning of. I hope it is polite.
📌 I expected when having a part of my body replaced by a piece of metal that I would in some way be aware of the alien constituent. Not at all. I have no sense or feeling that the replacement part (hip) is not an original piece of me. It even aches in the way the original hip did, though I hope that will diminish with time.
📌 Made the walk to Côte for Sunday lunch (steak baguette plus endless frîtes, no alcohol).
MONDAY 18 After the intriguing and very stylish This Is Not A Murder Mystery, which features a fictitious René Magritte as a consultant detective in a surrealist Agatha Christie plot, we found a new stupid cosy crime TV series to watch, A Taste For Murder, which sits comfortably in the clichés between Death In Paradise, Signora Volpe and Pie In The Sky.
📌 To Barbican Cinema 2 for The Christophers, a superb, quiet but assured film about what Art is and what it is worth. Standout performance goes to a permanently statuesque Michaela Coel, who tempers the arty theatrics of Ian McKellen in a role that owes a lot to the Lucien Freud/Francis Bacon school of behaviour.
TUESDAY 19 Don’t assume a Labour Party led by Andy Burnham will make good on all those perfectly sensible commitments Keir Starmer made about fairness and public ownership back when he was elected leader, says Owen Jones. For all his genuinely held ambitions and sturdy proclamations Burnham is not invincible and could simply end up being a Starmer 2.0. And what would be the point of that?
📌 Hot news: the gnome ban has been lifted. Phew!
📌 Rose Of Nevada is a real puzzler of a film, a visceral, timeplaying textured story that would deter anyone from joining the trawler fishers of Cornwall in their grimy ocean-going quest. Eternally miserable and grim, even the artistically beautiful photography and soundtrack did not leave us feeling good about it.
WEDNESDAY 20 Buried deep in today’s Sensemaker is the news that data centres pump out vast quantities of CO² and that rampant advances in the use of AI will impact heavily on climate change.
Eleven US data centres alone are capable of generating more greenhouse gases than the entire country of Morocco.
📌 Southampton have been booted out of the Championship playoffs for spying, which puts my wife’s team Middlesbrough in Saturday’s final and a chance to spend next season in the Premier League.
📌 My new cosy crime audiobooks are a series of amateur detective novels by SJ Bennett in which Queen Elizabeth II, assisted by private secretary Rozie, do the sleuthing. In the first, Murder Most Royal, Her Majesty spends the Christmas break at Sandringham recovering from a stinking cold and investigating a number of local crimes, including a hit and run and the criminal use of the Royal Pigeons in money laundering.
THURSDAY 21 Brexit is now overwhelmingly seen as having been a bad deal for Britain, writes veteran number-cruncher Peter Kellner. But it would still be a bad move for any progressive politician to argue for rejoining the EU before the next general election. Far better would be to shout about the damage Brexit, and its proponents, have done to the country.
📌 It’s still quite weird to think there is now a piece of mechanical engineering where there was once a piece of me.
📌 At Headway I finished the outline of the big brain I’m doing for the conference in October. I am now veining all the black lines with metallic gold. Then I will colour various parts it in a way that I’ve not yet decided.
FRIDAY 22 The late Queen Elizabeth II is posthumously facing scrutiny over her efforts to find her useless son Andrew a job. Maybe the cosy-crime audiobooks by SJ Bennett I’m listening to (in which QEII becomes a detective) have softened my outlook but it’s hard to see what is wrong with a mother trying to put her errant son back on track. If anything it is Andrew’s betrayal of that faith that is more noteworthy.
📌 Rachel Reeves’ VAT cut on funfair rides has the same gimmicky smell of Rishi Sunak’s Eat Out to Help Out scheme during Covid.
📌 John Harris has faith in Andy Burnham’s ability to instal nationwide the philosophy he has carved out in Manchester. If Burnham can find a convincing way to invite the people of Britain on an exciting political journey that embraces the fandom of music and football, Harris’s faith may not be misplaced.
📌 Judith Chalmers RIP, aged 90.
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