One month as it happened…
FRIDAY 1 I think my wife is secretly underdosing my pain medication.
📌 The visit from the City of London OT was partly successful. They don’t loan wheelchairs and they’ve run out of walking sticks. I will hopefully get a contraption to raise the toilet seat on Tuesday, but I’m not holding my breath. The difference in the services offered between my stroke 13 years ago and those offered today are stark.
SATURDAY 2 What happens when you have surgery that cuts a big hole in your buttock is that you get prescribed painkillers such as Morphine and Codeine to reduce the resulting agony. The bad news is that Morphine and Codeine cause constipation and you end up over-squeezing, in pain, on the toilet, just to complete a basic bodily function. The good news is that you have plenty of time to sit there (in pain) and score top marks at digital word games.
📌 King Charles III looks quite comfortable in his role as Sarcastist in Chief of the United Kingdom.
SUNDAY 3 Louise Chunn makes another one of her famous comebacks in the New Statesman with a piece about the decline of women’s magazines and what a jolly time was had by all in the offices of Elle during the 1980s, righting all of the world’s wrongs and preventing teenage pregnancies.
📌 It seems like only yesterday that I got a top score in Waffle.
📌 My wife, acting as Chief Medical Officer, fed me an orange flavoured drink called Laxido, which has transformed the operation of my stubborn bowels. That’s not as good as it sounds because the temporary suspension of the “No Farting In Bed” rule will no doubt be lifted as soon a full bowel control is restored. Might have to have an argument about “medical exemptions.”
MONDAY 4 I am reverting to type faster than I thought I would. This morning, I failed to conserve the energy I need to do a fixed set of exercises by washing and dressing independently. I used up so much effort getting my socks on I needed a sleep.
📌 I think the spirit of recovery might be on the way. For the first time in years I emerged from an afternoon dream with the firm belief that it won’t be too long now before we will be able once again to visit family and friends abroad and enjoy a Mediterranean evening stroll.
TUESDAY 5 My wife was worried that my hip-surgery wound was not healing properly. She took a fetching photo and had a reassuring conversation with Lucy, my recovery nurse, who gave her permission to shovel more dihydrocodeine into my mouth should the pain persist throughout the night.
WEDNESDAY 6 “Kryptonite” Kier Starmer is now widely predicted to take a heavy beating at Thursday’s local elections. Whether he will respond by falling on his sword or whether a challenge for the leadership emerges from within the party is not knowable. What is certain is that all the dull political gameplay and posturing that goes with this tedious predicament is exactly what the British public wants to see the back of.
While Rayner is not hostile to Streeting on a personal level, she believes his victory would be a continuation of what she sees as the Labour right’s disastrous control of the party, which she blames for the infighting that has led it where it finds itself today. Rayner is determined to see a leader who can unite the Labour Party.
📌 The spring in our front-door catch had broken. First we found a temporary way of securing the door, then we found an old-school locksmith happy to tackle a vintage piece of 1950s modernist door furniture. He dismantled the entire seven-tumbler mechanism, located the broken spring, was able to piece it back together and refit the whole unit to perfect working order. He even measured the old spring, so if the problem returned he could replace it with a new one. A potential charge of £450+ ended up being £150.
THURSDAY 7 The swelling in my left leg is starting to ease and I can sense more comfortable nights ahead of me.
📌 Michelle says Thursdays at Headway are not the same without me.
📌 There is a famous London urban myth that you are never more than two metres from a rat. A recent update of this saying has replaced the word rat with podcaster.
FRIDAY 8 I must be getting better because I am waking up earlier, and not always because of the pain. Yesterday on the radio, I learned from Farmer’s Today that Britain holds half of the world’s entire stock of bluebells, that they are a protected species and that picking them is illegal and can be punished with a fine of up to £5,000.
📌 Kier Starmer must be secretly excited by the proposition of Reform UK taking over so many of Britain’s failing local councils. At least come the next general election Reform will not be able to blame Labour for the chaos and misery caused by bad local governance.
📌 Happy birthday David Attenborough, 100 today.
SATURDAY 9 Today’s new word is “Starmageddon”.
📌 Shirley visited with watermelon juice, which she says is good for healing wounds. She wanted to bring gojiberries too, but couldn’t find any. They are apparently the thing for muscle healing. My wife came home from a concert with Marge with a box of chocolates and a card for me.
SUNDAY 10 My wife has been disapproving of my reluctance to leave our apartment and walk gently outdoors to exercise my new hip. My reluctance is based solely on the fact that as soon as you exit the apartment you bump into someone you have to talk to, which is not good exercise for my new hip.
MONDAY 11 I dropped off with Duolingo about a year ago when I realised my wife wasn’t as keen as I was on touring France by train. But recently Paula invited me to be one of her Super Duolingo family members, so I’m back arguing with the app when it tells me my answer is wrong.
📌 My wife has gone into a frenzy of decluttering in anticipation of a visit on Wednesday from our estate agent’s photographer. Even if they arrived with the worst of intentions, they would still find it impossible to make this apartment look ugly. But we do not anticipate any sale to proceed quickly or smoothly, so if in the end we are forced to stay here at least we will have been able to consider a looser style of living.
TUESDAY 12 The media intensity around Keir Starmer makes you wonder whether he is about to stage a desperate headline event to reverse his poor fortunes. Rejoining the EU would be one of them, as would a vote on the Unification of Ireland.
📌 The redressing of my surgery wound went all to plan. My wife saw the mutilated left buttock, watched the nurse remove the staples and declared the cleaned wound a beauty.
WEDNESDAY 13 Wes Streeting is said to be on the verge of resignation as health secretary so he can launch a leadership bid against Keir Starmer. This could be Starmer’s ace card. Streeting’s conceit is mindboggling, his ego and his arrogance both the size of Antarctica.
📌 Magnus the walrus has finished his holiday in Scotland and has now been spotted living it up in Norway.
📌 A new government bill offers discounts to households that use more energy when it is sunny or windy, when the National Grid is generating excess electricity.
📌 Keir Starmer walked into Downing Street more than two years ago knowing the nation was hungry for the change he had promised during his election campaign. But it now looks like he never had a single, winning Big Plan around which voters could gather. Instead he proceeded with a set of bit-by-bit policies that did little more than point in another misty direction. The knock-out punch (a reverse Brexit referendum, proportional representation, wholesale state ownership of public utilities and essential industries) never existed, so now Starmer is wriggling: “Caveat-laden half-pledges proving that increments are the only currency he holds,” writes Rafael Behr in today’s Guardian.
THURSDAY 14 Really hope Angela Rayner stands in any Labour leadership contest.
📌 Polly Toynbee is convinced the end is nigh for Starmer…
He is in that bourn from which no traveller returns: political death. No one ever came back from such public rejection. Ignoring it is not an option, just wishful thinking.
FRIDAY 15 Today’s Sensemaker notes that “cruise ships are among the most efficient disease incubators on Earth”.
📌 Reports say Starmer is determined to stay on as PM, and according to one new survey, he would likely beat most of his possible contenders in a face-to-face contest.
There is the sense that if only he could somehow find a way to make himself a bigger personality and deliver a rousing national message, the majority of MPs would in fact stick with him, but maybe that would only delay the inevitable. The seat his chief rival Andy Burnham will contest (Makerfield) is not an easy win. But if Burnham can win it he will be able to stand victorious and claim to have beaten back the advancing forces of Reform UK. Starmer is such a poor communicator it’s hard to see how he can now miraculously restart what must be one of the most stuttering premierships in British political history.
📌 Headway East London is now Headway London and the logo I helped design is in use on letterheads…
There was always some discussion about the inclusion of the River Thames as a symbol of London. I argued strongly that it was universally understood as such, but I could never quite explain its essence. Then recently I spotted a quote in the Mick Herron book Clown Town that did the job…
It was the essence of the capital; always London, but always passing through. As if the whole could be captured by a single moving part, the entire story held within a verb.
📌 The momentum is with Andy Burnham. I won’t in any way be surprised if a host of senior Labour figures (maybe even Starmer too) pile into Makerfield to support his bid for the vacant seat.
📌 On an episode of the TV show Would I Lie To You, the comedian Bob Mortimer claimed to have been doing his own dentistry for the past 15 years, using a product called Fuji 9. While Bob unravelled his hilarious stories of DIY fillings and crowns, I googled Fuji 9 and found it to be a real product, available on Amazon.
📌 Puns often don’t work very well when more than one word is changed, but in this case, “crypto” and “Christo” are close enough in sound to pull it off.
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.
SATURDAY 23 At the Golden Lane Rumble in the Jumble sale I got to see things both surprising and expected about my neighbours. Debs, unsurprisingly, has a big collection of caps and other hats; Mad Maria, surprisingly, has quite an exclusive collection of dolls. Her preference these days is for expensive vintage French dolls (“my girls”), so her crummy old English ones are up for sale.
📌 In a nail-biting finale to the Championship playoffs my wife’s team Middlesbrough were beaten 1-0 by Hull City.
SUNDAY 24 In an article about the declining fortunes of Vladimir Putin and what’s left of his ambition to conquer Ukraine, one source describes metaphorically Putin’s approach to waging war and claiming territory…
He is not a long-term strategist. His appetite grows as he eats.
📌 The dressing is off and the mutilation of my left buttock is out in the open air…
MONDAY 25 If ever I were asked which is the longest river in the world I would give the Amazon as my answer. That vast network of tributaries surely makes it the longest. My wife’s answer would be the Nile. And so begins an argument about how you measure the lengths of rivers. Luckily for us John Elledge has taken on the task with vigour, and even extends the question to which is the world’s shortest river, and just what is a river anyway. Where does it start? Where does it end? What happens when two rivers converge (Mississippi/Missouri)? Does a river stop being a river when it becomes tidal? Etc, etc.
📌 I never thought I’d miss Lily telling me off for my bad French…
📌 My wife got a mini jigsaw as a gift from a friend and decided to complete it during lunch in an Italian restaurant in Islington.
TUESDAY 26 An article in the New Statesman argues that politically Andy Burnham and Keir Starmer are the same thing, but that a Scouse accent and a relatable personality could turn failure into success…
Maybe things would go differently for a more compelling messenger: someone who doesn’t sound like his speeches were written by ChatGPT.
📌 At the jumble sale on Saturday our neighbour Anne sold something and regretted it immediately. As soon as she got home she bought a replacement on eBay.
📌 Shirley invited us to a tea-tasting session at a nearby specialist tea shop. Some teas, we were told, should be brewed at 80⁰ and not at 100⁰. Green tea being a case in point.
WEDNESDAY 27 The Establishment will not simply surrender to Andy Burnham’s winning personality should he replace Keir Starmer as Labour leader, writes Norwich MP Clive Lewis in the Guardian. It will resist his desire for big transformative projects such as Proportional Representation and public ownership by refusing to fund them by pushing up the cost of borrowing. So Burnham will need some even bigger ideas around public finances if he is to change Britain in the way he hopes he can.
📌 I think I might be deliberately avoiding one of our neighbours because she is boring, and utters her boring words in a whiny fake-frail voice. She may indeed be genuinely frail and a really interesting person under the boring exterior, but I will never find out.
THURSDAY 28 We finished Two Weeks In August last night and we’re still baffled by the insertion of Greek mythology into a drama about a group of old friends from university who thought going on holiday together in their 30s was a good idea.
📌 Not had a top score in Waffle for a while. I still think it’s a matter of pure luck, but I’m sure there are some people who spend hours trying to get the letters to fall in the right place…
📌 Alan Millburn says fair pay is a barrier to employers giving jobs to young people.
📌 It has taken a tedious old has-been politician (Tony Blair) to force a much younger one (Wes Streeting) to finally put his thoughts into a coherent statement.
FRIDAY 29 In an interview in the Guardian Paul McCartney says whenever his device asks him to accept cookies, he searches high and low for the “REJECT ALL” button. Problem is, Paul, not all cookie requests come with that option and you are left with the choice of accepting them or scrolling through the dozens of cookies listed, switching each one to “no”. I get a mild satisfaction from doing that. McCartney also revealed his favourite emojis…
SATURDAY 30 Farewell Arne Slot. Football is a vicious game and you came up just a bit short.
📌 Back in Portsmouth for Mark’s party at Ye Spotted Dogge and all those ancient ships.
📌 Arsenal lost to PSG on penalties in the Champions League final.
SUNDAY 31 Last night during Mark’s birthday speech, we learned that his party’s venue, Ye Spotted Dogge, was where in 1628 George Villiers, lover of King James VI/I (Scotland) was stabbed to death by James Fenton, a disgruntled former army colleague.
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