7-13 November, 2026
SATURDAY 7 Now he’s been convicted the media pictures of Russell Brand have shifted from naturalistic to the classic crime mugshot of evil.
📌 A letter writer in the Telegraph helpfully translates the language of courtroom lawyers: “With respect means You’re totally wrong. With great respect means You’re totally wrong and you’re an idiot. With the very greatest respect means You’re totally wrong, you’re an idiot and I doubt whether you are capable of reading the rest of this letter.” The letter writer goes on to say that the translation of With utmost respect is not suitable for a family newspaper.
📌 There’s a clever bit of stitchwork in today’s Guardian illustrating an article on how to write an award-winning novel.
📌 Gaby Hinsliff believes that if all Andy Burnham manages to do before the next election is clamp down successfully on rampant anti-social behaviour (fly tipping, dumped ebikes, cycling on pavements, noisy headphones on buses) he will at least be able to claim to have taken back control.
SUNDAY 8 Winning wars these days is only possible if you first win in space, where commercial satellites jostle for power in the control of missile guidance systems. It’s a daily skirmish up there that could easily become an all-out battle.
📌 On social media Donald Trump has been filmed scuttling away from a press pack asking him what it’s like to be a loser.
📌 Confession. Whenever I’d like an answer to an imaginary question I ask AI. With the UK government continually muttering about closer ties with “Europe” and my own view that the EU is in crisis, my imaginary question was “What would a reformed EU look like?” First, AI told me the EU is in a perpetual state of reform, which I don’t believe, then it offered some alternative visions of the institution, among which was a federal EU…
Proponents of a federal EU advocate for a clearer separation of powers, where foreign and security policy are handled at the federal level, local issues remain regional, and a directly-elected European President represents the bloc internationally.
Among some of the less attractive reforms was a continual, rolling expansion of states.
📌 Camilla wore an interesting cluster of three cheap, paper poppies at the Remembrance Day ceremony at the Cenotaph. The absence of Andrew and Harry were a sign of the times.
📌 Some Irish fella on Strictly Come Dancing has been trashed on social media for allegedly not wearing a poppy. On close inspection my wife and I believe he was actually wearing a small poppy pin on his blue shirt.
MONDAY 9 We are enjoying the second series of Black Doves, in which Keira Knightley plays a secret agent who also has a side hustle as the Prime Minister’s wife. How she juggles the two jobs is what makes Black Doves an example of the stupid bordering in the brilliant. But Knightley’s action-packed performance is nevertheless eclipsed in series 2 by Williams and Eleanor, the two trigger-happy assassins she is occasionally required to employ to complete her secret task.
📌 Russell Brand has been sentenced to 10.5 years in prison for rape and sexual assault. He won’t be eligible for parole until he has served at least seven years. Russell Brand is 51.
📌 Alastair Campbell has gone on camera saying that despite being a nice guy, Andy Burnham is ruthless.
📌 We finished Series 2 of Black Doves and it cliffed in a way that says a third series is inevitable.
TUESDAY 10 I have a digital file into which I drop weblinks and casual notes I believe at the time I will need in the future. A lot of them are gift suggestions for my wife or recipes for how to make bread. At the bottom of this file is a single entry marked “Old Stuff”, long forgotten references I’ll one day be happy to forget about. As the debate on having closer economic ties with Europe re-emerges and the arguments for rejoining the EU are rekindled, one of the links in the Old Stuff archive comes as a warning.
📌 Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch tried to justify a planned £36bn cut in welfare by claiming “double amputees run marathons”.
📌 Some years ago as part of an art-class project I created an image that I thought reflected the changes in telecommunications that have taken place in my life. I’ve now decided to try it as a large stitchwork. Not over optimistic about what might result…
📌 My wife reports a disgruntled fare dodger on the bus telling the driver who’d just refused his pleas for a free ride and kicked him off: “That’s why you’re bald”.
📌 The sausage-and-mash supper became a mash supper when my sausages got accidentally overcooked. My wife’s sausages looked lovely.
WEDNESDAY 11 Marge has been consistent in her fear that Nigel Farage will become our next prime minster. She cheered up a bit when Andy Burnham muscled his way into Downing Street but the lingering suspicion remained that the country was ready to vote in a right-wing ultra. Rafael Behr in the Guardian today points out how unlikely this is. Farage, he says, has been scooping up millions in dodgy crypto-currency donations to advance his ambition. But it can’t even compete with the millions gathered by his arch ultra-right rival Rupert Lowe, who is financed by the world’s richest man Elon Musk, so soon Nigel is very likely about to crawl off into the undergrowth like a wounded pheasant (my ridiculous metaphor).
📌 The children in the school playground didn’t go quiet at 11am.
📌 The dark comedy Wild Horse Nine is worth it just to discover that John Malkovich can still turn in a compelling screen performance. As a washed up, cantankerous and dying CIA agent who may or may not have had something to do with the Kennedy shooting and has just laid the groundwork for the 1973 Chilean Coup, he is now looking for some kind of atonement. But the CIA doesn’t let its decrepit renegades do atonement. There’s a nice quote from director Martin McDonagh on Malkovich’s performance.
In the silent moments you’d see acres of sorrow and regret when he’s seemingly not doing anything … That, I think, is the heart of the movie.
THURSDAY 12 At the Headway coproduction meeting Chris got his knickers in a twist again about what member questions should be put to the board of trustees at this year’s AGM. Dee tried to explain to him that most members are not interested in interrogating the board but do have genuine questions for the senior management team about the service and its future. Chris is stuck on the idea that the board of trustees and the operational/executive side of Headway are the same thing rather than two arms of the same organisation.
📌 Not sure the new set of ceramic pendants will be fired in time for this year’s Open Studio, but I’m definitely getting the hang of it.
FRIDAY 13 High-tech companies such as Nvidia seem to have a business strategy of moving very quickly to a monopoly position and crowding out competitors from what should be a free and open market. Maybe this is standard practice in business. I can’t say I noticed it before Google and Amazon. But it does mean that the market is dominated by businesses that can attract monopoly money even if they don’t necessarily have the best product.
📌 That horrible word “outage” again! It makes the failure of a man-made system sound like an act of nature.
📌 My appointment with the dental hygienist was relatively painless, though she said I had a lot of plaque and gave me a short tutorial on the colour of the interdental brushes I should be using for different teeth.
📌 With a security man at her side, our MP Rachel Blake called into the community centre to listen to a list of complaints from the residents on our estate about how badly housing issues are managed by our local council. She listened. She nodded. She kept assuring us that by the end of the meeting we will have collectively decided on some “actions”. The actions she recommended were to get angry and organise ourselves.
Read all of my scrapbook diaries…
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