It's fun researching the area where you live. Am slightly late with publishing July's effort, due to preparing a talk for the Camden Local Studies and Archives centre at Holborn Library. 'From Fields to Focaccia' looks at Kentish Town, an underappreciated part of North London. I've been asked to repeat the talk at Kentish Town Library in the Autumn.
That's the nearest I've got to a commercial in writing this stuff.
.........
I am often searching for the apposite phrase to encapsulate the British Government's behaviour when they believe that their Brexit efforts are being thwarted. Matthew d'Ancona has found it for me:
'That's Brexit for you. It has encouraged ministers, when they encounter opposition of any sort, to believe that they are speaking for 'the people' against its enemies: the oldest delusion of the autocrat.'
Speaking, or rather screaming, for 'the people' is the Daily/Sunday Express. I came across a collection of their banner front pages. I thought it might be fun to reproduce them, in upper case as per headlines and in slab form.
HUGE EU EXIT TRADE BOOST. PM:BREXIT IS UNLOCKING OUR TRUE POTENTIAL. EU EXIT DEAL TO BOOST BRITAIN. RISE AND SHINE...IT'S A GLORIOUS NEW BRITAIN. BORIS; BRITAIN WILL PROSPER OUT OF THE EU. BRITAIN'S MATCH FIT FOR EU EXIT. OFFICIAL: WE WILL THRIVE OUT OF THE EU. BORIS PROMISES NEW GOLDEN AGE. BORIS; OUR DECADE OF HOPE AND GLORY. PM: BREXIT BILLIONS FREED UP FOR NEW HOSPITALS. BORIS; MIGHTY TRADE DEAL TO CUT BILLS. BRITAIN'S £50bn EU EXIT BOOST. EU EXIT WILL BE GREAT SUCCESS. TEN YEARS OF BREXIT BOOM TIME. BRITAIN'S £26bn BREXIT TOURIST BOOST. BORIS: OUR LAND OF HOPE AND OPPORTUNITY. BORIS: GOLDEN FUTURE AHEAD.
Dear, dear.
.........
A telling interview quote from Melvyn Bragg:
'When I first moved to Hampstead 50 years ago I thought, "Oh great, I'm near the heath". Now I think, "Oh great, I'm near the Royal Free Hospital" '.
.........
Troll-di-roll: 'Threads' provides another outlet for the shouty people.
.........
Every time I see Giles Coren's picture in his restaurant review for Saturday's 'Times', I marvel at how this man who stuffs food down him for a living, has an ultra flat stomach. However, in a separate article Coren ventures into the subject of health, with a report on his midlife MOT. In the piece he reveals his height, weight and so BMI, the score for the latter a small incursion into 'overweight'.
Coren is the same height as me, and weighs roughly a stone more. Come on, Giles lad, get that photo updated.
.........
I was talking a couple of weeks ago to a Brit settled in southern Spain but who spends three months in summer back in UK because of the heat. In the 90s I did some work in the Gulf. I realised why so many of the monied locals headed to Europe in July on account of 40 degree plus temperatures. Now those temperatures appear to be a consistent feature for southern Europe.
Us next, but be brave enough to put up a hand if you have enjoyed 20-30 degree June temperatures, with little rain, in the UK (though probably best enjoyed away from cities). Yes, I will support you with a timid paw.
PS Then came July. Back to the Costa del Sol.
.........
Phrase of the month: 'in the days'. My 'A' Level English Master would harumph: 'In what days? Be precise!'. It seems intended as referring to some time in the past, maybe in another generation, and is a simple contraction from a fuller phrase. People started using it because they heard others using it and decided that it is in the vogue. Harumph away, but that is language evolving.
........
I was getting cross with the TV reviewer who started his piece on 'Evacuation' (Kabul) by pointing out concerning the service personnel: 'None was particularly fluent'. But he redeemed himself in noting how the documentary exposed the shambolic way in which the young men and women were thrown into the operation. 'Evacuation' was an open question to the UK Government (including Raab of Crete) and US Administration to explain their blunder in misreading the speed of the Taliban advance, a question that now will not be adequately answered.
And Diana of RAF Police said: 'I basically took a sixth form field trip to Kabul'. That was fluent.
.........
To 'A Little Life' next weekend. I have never received so many trigger warnings before a show (the last was from the audience expectation of Daniel Radcliffe's genitals in Equus, where the reality was diminished compared with the expectation...)
.........
The play was so moving that I must aim off into displacement and report that I have never seen a performance where a man's underpants were taken off so many times. Twice in two months (the other was for 'Dear England') I witnessed a show where the audience rose as one in admiration at the end. For more than that, at least for the time being, read the reviews.
.........
A report that the PR agency Brunswick has achieved top rankings in a legal directory, based on feedback from barristers, for its 'litigation and crisis communications' services. Business must currently be good.
.........
A piece by Damian Thompson is generally directed at the Vatican's apparent penchant for left-wing art, but in his introduction he mercilessly jests at the C of E's attempts at making its cathedrals 'relevant' to 'younger people' - the latter phrase requires a Lady Bracknell voice. We hear that at Ely there has been a silent disco, at Norwich a helter-skelter, and at Rochester a crazy golf course. My mind runs riot - 'Get the ball on the last hole into the chalice and you will receive a lifetime supply of communion wine!'.
Thompson dismisses the 'hideous misjudgments' (sic - note error in usage) of 'gullible cathedral authorities'. But I am not sure that one can categorically dismiss cultural novelty being inserted into a church building. At the Art Biennale in Venice, modern works are placed in religious places around the city. I recall Sean Scully's 'Jacob's Ladder' towering up in the main aisle of Santa Maria Maggiore, although I admit that a line would have been drawn over a crazy golf installation...
.........
There are two beneficiaries of the circumstances surrounding the closure of Nigel Farage's bank accounts with Coutts. The first beneficiary is the Conservative government, for whom the opportunity to hound NatWest is a welcome boost to their pre-Election wedge initiative on perceived cancel culture and progressive values. The second beneficiary is Mr Farage himself: after failing around on the margins of political relevance he has now found a cause, possibly a Harold Wales-like life's work.
.........
An insight on the US from writer Freddie Gray, that '...even in the more God-fearing parts of America, celebrity tends to trump religion and consumerism trumps everything...'. You might guess the end of the sentence: '...so Trump trumps all'.
.........
I am thinking of penning a re-write of 'Don't Leave Me This Way', as a hymn from Nadine Dorries to Boris Johnson.
.........
The next observation is not revelatory, but is about a small measure of self-administered cognitive behaviour therapy. I teach practical law, ethics and legal business skills eg negotiation, to junior lawyers. Most are decades younger than me. I have found it easy to adopt the mindset of being good for my age in still doing it and being credible. This is useful validation of self...but is wrong. I should judge myself solely on whether I am any good at doing it. Age in itself is irrelevant.
Now I shall go away and craft an article for the Life pages of the weekend papers...
.........
I have little (I hope) in common with Vladimir Putin, except that we are the same age. This makes me (just in last few months) a septuagenarian. That term was used in an article about Putin, and applied in a negative manner - fit for job?
I suggest that this is an insult to septuagenarians, especially if you have covered yourself in orange and done strange things with your hair. And Vlad will be unhappy that all the bareback horse-riding has come to nowt.
However, at the beginning of the decade your status can be useful, giving you flattering scores on measures of fitness (modesty prevents me saying more). Yet this is all short-lived. Managed decline, like the Conservative Party in current shape, is the order of the day. How cheerful!
.........
Scepticism here on how far a colonised country can blame colonising on its ills. A left-wing writer has been called out for suggesting that Malaysia's anti-LGBT stance comes from the legacy of the British Empire as opposed to through Islam being the majority religion practised in the country.
But I took an insight from an interview with India's PM Narendra Modhi, who explained that India's non-aligned political status derives in part from having been colonised and now being averse to being bundled in with politically aligned blocs of countries. To me at least, that makes sense.
.........
Please, something lighter.... So genuine LinkedIn advert, with my suggested strapline:
Remote Bookkeeper
[Must like figures, but can hate people]
.........
On Birkenstocks
(Thank goodness nothing more on ear and nose hair - see piece from end of June).
In the last couple of years I have embraced shorts in the summer, a development that the BBC's Climate Editor should surely have noted. A benefit of this is that I can be comfortable walking around Hampstead, where the men don shorts at the beginning of April, the same then being the uniform until end October.
Nevertheless, footwear has been an issue. Yes possibly trainers, yes possibly boat shoes, but each requires socks, and your real shorts man likes to give his toes an airing (why, in the light of most men's feet, I am not sure).
The answer is sandals. But not any type of sandals. Get choice wrong and you will be vilified as fit for nothing better than membership of CAMRA and a season ticket to the Great British Beer Festival. For years I had a massively comfortable pair. But they came from Clark's, and you know how some folk can brand-spot at a hundred metres.
Therefore, having reviewed the market, I decided it was time to try.........Birkenstocks.
My immediate issue is that I am naturally a closed shoe chap. This worked to my disadvantage, as you will see shortly.
So trying the Bs on in the shop, I decided that they needed the tightest notch on the buckles, so that I would feel secure.
So far, so good. A hot Sunday dawned for a 20-20 at Lord's between Middlesex and Essex. It was also Father's Day, and my wonderful children, with their respective partners, were treating me to the event. A super day for a first outing with the shorts (cargo, of course) and Birkenstocks. Some pinchedness, but essentially fine.
It was, and this is highly relevant, an alcoholic day, with beer-fuelled cricket followed by wine-filled supper in Kentish Town. Why relevant? Because alcohol is an anaesthetic....so when I finally reviewed my feet at home in the evening they did not look good, and if I were prone to exaggeration I would say that they were lacerated. Buckles too tight, and insufficient anticipatory application of plasters. Stupid me.
The road to move the things from instruments of torture to suitable foot apparel has been steady, involving extensive use of Compeed, and applying Vaseline around the cutting edges. But I have now worn them in and can shuffle around..
Oh what we men go through as disciples of fashion! Women, don't all laugh at once.
.........
The author is a writer, speaker, historian, occasional tour guide, and former Managing Partner of a City law firm.