June 6-12, 2026
SATURDAY 6 My legs are wobbling with over-exertion. After yesterday’s lower-limb exercise class at the hospital I attempted to devise my own daily routine, designed to take around 30-45 minutes. Best laid plans, etc. The exercises on my list today were…
3 mins each
1. Knee rolls
2. Glute bridges
3. Abduction leg raises
4. Cat-cow
5. Knee to chest
6. Rowing with theraband
7. Heel raises
8. Tandem stance
9. Squats
10. Sit to stand
11. Leg swing side
12. Leg swing back
13. Air punching
I might have to revise this schedule.
📌 My wife asked me if I’d like to visit an exhibition of Queen Elizabeth II’s outfits. IN OCTOBER. I said no thank you.
📌 I took up a subscription offer to the Observer for £50 a year (usual price £144).
📌 The Observer failed to unlock its content to me so I binned the subscription.
📌 The VPN is on the blink, so our Canadian streaming service is unavailable. My wife sat 2ft from the TV for 15 minutes resolving the issue with meticulous dedication. Upon which we continued with Ep3 of Criminal Record.
SUNDAY 7 An article in the New Statesman offers some clues as to where Andy Burnham would like to take the country were he to become Prime Minister. What he doesn’t say is how he will do it. He is obviously a better communicator than Keir Starmer but politically I’m not sure they are very far apart. So a Burnham government might simply be what we have already but with more energy and more personality. Which is probably OK. Keir Starmer might make a good Foreign Secretary.
Starmer as foreign secretary would add weight to a revived Labour government, in sharp contrast to the foreign affairs spokespersons of Reform UK, the Greens and the isolationist Tories. Denis McShane, former Europe minister
📌 At the annual Open Gardens festival we laid bare our wreck of an allotment box for all to see. As ever the tea, cake and toilet were the most popular attractions.
MONDAY 8 Jonty Bloom reckons the tide has fully turned on Russia, that a long queue of would-be leaders are lined up, scanning the horizon for the opportunity to get rid of Putin and that even China sits, laughing and ready to pounce on Siberia.
The economy is pathetic and the cost of the war in Ukraine huge. He has failed to conquer a small European country with wide open spaces over which to use his massive armed forces. He has picked a war for no good reason and he has lost a million people.
📌 Successfully managed to sync Amazon Music with Spotify.
📌 At Holy Sepulchre they put on a choir, sandwiches, cake and coffee event for Shirley’s City Carers Community project, which was fun. Shirley introduced us to Jonathan Steele and his wife Ruth. Jonathan I knew from his work for the Guardian. They live on the same floor of Lauderdale House as Shirley and her parents.
TUESDAY 9 My wife says my bum scar is healing “beautifully” and that it will soon be gone completely.
📌 I had the idea to mix a few grated cheeses together to make a sauce for a pasta bake, but my wife quickly stamped on that idea saying single-cheese sauces are best.
WEDNESDAY 10 My wife turned off the radio when they played a trailer for Series 2 of the TV drama A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder. We only just started watching Series 1 last night.
📌 In an article about stubborn presidents stuck in wars they don’t know how to end or wriggle out of (Trump/Putin), Rafael Behr draws comparisons between the two, one of which strangely made me feel quite proud.
Both view Europe as a decrepit civilisation in the death throes of cultural suicide by overdose of immigration and liberal degeneracy.
📌 At the St Luke’s User Group meeting we got a lavish picnic lunch of egg sandwich, falafel wrap, fruit kebab and chocolate brownie, plus soft drink and tea. Plus all the fairy cakes you could manage. We also got to meet the new Chief Executive, Abbi, who I think/hope will bring a new, youthful dynamism to the centre. Brian got told off for talking across people. One of his hearing aids is bust.
📌 It’s nice to see Sam re-discovering some of the mono magic she built her reputation on. Every time she goes back she gets better…
THURSDAY 11 At Headway Stuart asked me the names of Frank Zappa’s children. I could only remember Dweezil and Moon Unit.
📌 Alex told me today that Jon Barry had died. He was one of my all-time favourite studio artists and never really got the attention he deserved. I’d written some notes about Jon for the recent Peaks of Imperfection exhibition at the Art House, which Jon was sadly too ill to attend.
Jon’s fabulous portraits always look natural and free-flowing, but each is in fact an epic quest that begins with a series of questions he answers with his eyes. They evolve and build their deep, luxurious layers through an intricate dialogue that is part verbal and part gesture. Whoever is assisting Jon seeks a magic moment when together they hit a rhythm and the paint flows.
📌 An invitation from Holly at St Luke’s took us to the Charles Dickens Museum in Doughty Street for what is meant to be the first in a series of creative writing workshops based on Dickens’ relationships with and representation of women. My wife did not really feel comfortable with the idea of being “creative” (she never does) but nevertheless knocked off a brilliant poem by ruthlessly chopping the overblown Dickensian woffle out of a passage from Bleak House. She even read it out to the group! Awesome.
FRIDAY 12 The tutor at yesterday’s workshop at the Charles Dickens Museum asked us to think about what we had seen and learned on our tour of the museum and how we might use it to write something from a woman’s point of view. I originally thought about writing something by a (female) mouse in the Dickens kitchen, but I’m now swinging towards something about Dickens’ youngest daughter Kate.
📌 RIP David Hockney, 88. An inspiration always.
📌 To Milton Court for what was billed as a Guildhall School student tribute to the great TV and film composer John Barry. It was obviously a strictly theoretical musical excursion because not one note of it brought the mastery of John Barry to my mind.
Read all of my scrapbook diaries…
PLEASE MESSAGE WITH ANY CORRECTIONS, BIG OR SMALL.
Billy's Scrapbook 
I liked your posts. Thank you. Please convey my appreciation to Sam.
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Charles Dickens museum sounds interesting. I remember those days when I read his books at a stretch. My father loved saying ‘Barkis is willing’ and smiling. There are so many books that remain a part of our lives.
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I liked what you write about your wife. Please convey my regards to her. Are you going to do all those exercises at one stretch?
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