Scrapbook: Week 33

August 15-21, 2026

SATURDAY 15 I recently made some quite successful breakfast bars by mixing granola with a condensed milk binder and baking at 110C for 30 minutes. I have since learned that condensed milk contains massive teeth-rotting quantities of sugar, so I’ve been on the lookout for a more healthy binder. Next I will try mashed ripe bananas mixed with peanut butter, though that combination does sound quite fattening. The other option, I read, is to use dates as a binder but that sounds like a recipe for hyperactivity in the bathroom.

SUNDAY 16 On the 56 bus to Angel we saw a woman fall down the stairs from the upper deck and onto her child, aged around 5. The noise was horrible but the driver responded very quickly and hopefully they were both not too seriously injured.

📌 A Spotify Premium subscription comes with 15 hours of audiobook listening. This equates to around two books, depending on exact lengths. In the past two months I have failed twice to calculate my allowance and been cut off half way through a book because I have used up my 15 hours. Now I must wait 11 days before I can finish Mick Herron’s Dead Lions.

MONDAY 17 An item from Fesshole reads: “At age 7 my idea of showing girls I liked them was to open my mouth during lunch and show them the half-chewed food.” I sometimes still do that to attract the attention of my wife.

📌 For years I have been searching for the best way to transfer drawings to fabric in preparation for stitching. Each has their strengths and faults. Tracing on a lightbox is good for light fabrics but not so good for darker ones. Sublimation pens are hit and miss, as are Japanese transfer pencils. Every project is different and the transfer is a one-off process. Screw it up and you will start a project on a negative note by trying to fix the error. One thing I have learned is that the transfer cannot be hurried. That is a surefire way to a bad start, and I’ve made enough of them to last me a lifetime.

📌 The government’s use of the emergency alarm system that went off on everyone’s mobile phone on Friday evening has been criticised for putting at risk victims of domestic abuse who hide secret phones from their abusers.

TUESDAY 18 I noticed that Seàn has been learning chess on Duolingo, so I thought I’d give it a try as I am hopeless at games that centre on plotting and killing. I reckon that learning to plot and kill will be a valuable skill to have in navigating the future. And Duolingo doesn’t disappoint. Right from the start you are trained to seek and destroy in the most effective way.

📌 Wooly Mammoths were still around when the Pyramids were built.

📌 The fascination starts the moment you walk into the David Hockney A Year in Normandie exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery. First there is the spelling of Normandy, showing perhaps where France and Frenchness sat in Hockney’s imagination. Then there is the opening text, which includes the paragraph “When you draw from the eye, you’re drawing from memory. A memory five seconds ago, a memory of ten seconds ago, a memory of a minute go. If you think about it, it’s all memory.”

This is just the start of a long and thin eye-opening panorama through the seasons of northern France, a journey that for me galvanised the view that Hockney’s greatest skill was to capture essence rather than pure likeness. Even the faces of his portraits are pure essence.

📌 Finally we got to give Mark the birthday present I’d made for him but was too embarrassed to do it at his party, in case any of his “three women” were there.

WEDNESDAY 19 My quest for the perfect transfer method for image to fabric has become a minor YouTube obsession, but I reckon I am close to a final choice. Three more days glued to the screen should do it.

📌 On our way home from our day out with David Hockney yesterday the taxi driver accused me of trying to break his door handle. When I told him I was not doing anything of the kind but just trying to exit his taxi he got quite shirty. I responded with sarcasm. I think my wife was embarrassed.

THURSDAY 20 At the early-start meeting of the Headway Coproduction committee Chris was surprisingly quiet. I wonder if it was because after the last meeting he was told he was “dominating”. Or maybe it was because it was in the music room and everyone got into harmony.

📌 Most of Squaredle’s Bonus Word of the Day entries are in or near my vocabulary, but some hit you completely unawares…

📌 I can’t see me finishing the Big Brain stitchwork in time for the Headway Conference in October, but Michelle has said no worries because they will display it unfinished alongside the five Stroke paintings I did about 10 years ago.

📌 After a second visit to the Barbara Hepworth exhibition at the Courtauld gallery with Marge we went to Nando’s and decided on a new mission – to always be the oldest people in Nando’s.

FRIDAY 21 I sweated buckets getting a pile of old books to the local church book fair. I just hope they get some decent money from it.

📌 Haven’t had a top score in Waffle for some time. Also haven’t come across the word “spiffy” in a while, and only ever on TV.

📌 At the book fair I bumped into Karen who was with an old college friend. It made me think of a TV game show called Friend Or Foe, in which a studio audience votes on the likely relationship status of two people presented to them by an over-excited host. The problem with this idea is that the possibility for prizes is quite limited.

Read all of my scrapbook diaries…

PLEASE MESSAGE WITH ANY CORRECTIONS, BIG OR SMALL.

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