October 17-23, 2026
SATURDAY 17 During our Prêt picnic lunch break at Frieze in Regent’s Park yesterday the conversation turned to dreams and Alex admitted to killing an ex boyfriend with a fork. Others confessed to deliberately waking themselves up when faced with danger.
📌 Our VPN went on the blink so this afternoon my wife has been shopping for and attempting to install a new one on our TV. This has caused a lot of stress, though I’m pleased to say my wife took it all on singlehandedly. As I write I still don’t know whether we’ll be watching the next episode of Slow Horses series 6 tonight.
📌 The overuse of the words icon and iconic is starting to drive me mad.
📌 No Slow Horses tonight. Tomorrow is another day in the battle to get the VPN installed on our telly.
SUNDAY 18 You have to wonder if peaceful protest is even possible these days. My sister in Paris says the student demonstrations were initially peaceful, polite and full of joy. Then what she calls the yobs and violent troublemakers arrived to take over and turn the situation into a vicious war with the authorities. These people are obviously so well organised at spotting an opportunity for violence it is a mystery as to how peaceful protesters can stop them.
📌 The VPN situation is now hopefully resolved and Slow Horses series 6 can go back on the TV menu.
📌 Some time ago my wife bought me an Apple Airtag keyring so that I could locate my lost keys should the need arise. Or that’s what she said it was for. She more often uses it to keep track of where I am. But her sneaky spying has been interrupted because the Apple Airtag now needs a new battery and opening the device to fit a replacement is impossible given its ridiculous design. Continued surveillance will now be possible only by a visit to the Apple Store on Regent Street.
📌 In the book I’m reading at the moment the author describes an office pot plant as being in the process of “dying untidily”.
MONDAY 19 The printer is defaulting to black and white and I can’t remember what the solution was the last time this happened.
📌 My daily exercises are actually starting to feel like a pleasure rather than a task, which is a real surprise to me.
📌 The new series of The Diplomat was really quite boring until the US President got shot.
TUESDAY 20 For four days I have been delaying the start of a new stitchwork because I have a phobia of faces. Finally I bit the bullet, started, unpicked several times, overworked almost all of it and still ended up with a face that barely resembles a face. I think I need to devise a formula that suits my limited skills and at the moment that formula is eye+eye+nose+mouth=face. Trying to put character into a face early on is too dangerous. You run the risk of not only failing to find any character but of growing to dislike the face so much that the rest of the exercise becomes a chore.
📌 On the TV last night in an episode of The Diplomat we learned that the US military has successfully located and seized a Russian submarine in British waters, removed an “apocalyptic” weapon from it, stored the weapon safely somewhere and now intend, in partnership with the British military, to dig a sea-floor trench and bury the submarine in concrete. Today in the news we learn that the process to disarm a sunken WW2 warship, the SS Richard Montgomery, still sitting somewhere in the Thames Estuary, has begun with the removal of the ship’s masts. The deadly explosives it was carrying remain in place and a potentially devastating accident is still waiting to happen. If only they’d given the SS Richard Montgomery job to Netflix in the first place, the elimination of huge swathes of Kent and a tsunami all the way up to Wallingford could have been avoided. As it stands we must sit and wait in fear. To be continued…
WEDNESDAY 21 Made the mistake of opening the door to our boring neighbour “Concrete Dave”, who never fails to remind you that as a civil engineer his name was (and presumably still is) on the building safety certificate for Chernobyl. Dave is one of those people who can make even interesting subjects dull as ditchwater and I stood glazing over at all his medical predicaments for so long my wife arrived home from her lunchtime yoga session. Phew! I thought, but then my wife ducked out of sight as soon as she could and left me to pray for an exit strategy from Concrete Dave.
THURSDAY 22 Someone said that Lidl now has little labels on its citrus fruit saying “peel unfit for consumption”.
📌 In a stroke of political genius, Florida governor and climate denier Ron de Santis has been commemorated in a statue that melts at 30C to reveal a skeleton.
📌 Headway’s new chair, Sir Tim, came to the Coproduction Committee meeting to introduce himself and talk about the plans to make November’s AGM a memorable event.
📌 Michelle got me making more ceramic pendants. Very soon I can picture myself watching YouTube videos on how to make your clay less sticky and easier to cut.
📌 At the Headway event celebrating black music, Roots, Routes And Resonance, I did a short interview with James about my “route” to black music, which was through my relationships with women.
FRIDAY 23 Even before I woke up my wife had been working out what emergency food and water supplies we needed and where they would be stored in line with the government’s scary new Be Ready initiative. Her biggest concern was that without any gas or electricity, even tinned food has a limited use.
Read all of my scrapbook diaries…
PLEASE MESSAGE WITH ANY CORRECTIONS, BIG OR SMALL.
The expression on the face is interesting 😊. Thank you for the post.
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I agree with you. Peaceful protests are made violent by those who have no other work and unfortunately here by the police in Delhi.
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