January in Albertopolis

 I thought about going through my unposted photos from earlier in the year, when I wasn't blogging, and putting some up throughout December like I'd do at the end of every month, but looking through January's, it struck me that a more honest recap of the year might be, just to honour that lack of intention. Why catch up? 

 I had also forgotten how widescreen old photos from my good phone were, but here are four.

 I'd never noticed this collonade before. These are from January, and the earlier setting sun had now made it unignorable. I'd been living in Kensington for three months, and had finally decided to revisit the enormous museums along Exhibition Road as a resident, wanting to feel I was exploring my new environment, with an emphasis on the "my" rather than on the "new." I'd known this area all my life.

 

 During Boris Johnson's Mayorship – although he may have had no more to do with this than he had with the Boris Bikes – this road had become a "shared space" to "honour the area's cultural importance," meaning it stopped being a road for cars to drive down, and became instead a pavement for cars to drive down. This apparently resolved "the long stand-off between pedestrians and cars," until ten people got hit by a taxi in 2017. 

 This whole campus is called "Albertopolis" I found out today. It suits it. I keep discovering new ways in which, over a hundred and fifty years after the death of Queen Victoria's husband, the landscape of London still orbits his absence. 

 The railings here weren't always black.

 

Sure, I'm still on twitter.

 When I first returned to this blog* after Boris Johnson's 2019 election victory I thought I'd just remain on twitter to post links and provide a little daily – but potentially always topical – keening over our exit from the EU inspired by Megan Anram's daily "Today was the day Donald trump finally became president" posts. Initially, I thought spending less time on everyone's favourite hellsite was simply for my own good, but when I watched Lindsay Ellis' video about her own cancelling last April I realised maybe the problem wasn't just me, but twitter's own business model, which now required the active promotion of upsetting content in order to keep our attention. Capitalism depended on growth, and twitter had grown as big as it was going to get. So I pinned this to my profile:

 

 Yes, stay cool. Because Fascism Thrives On Division. 

 Then, just over a week ago, Elon Musk finally bought the site or app or whatever it is for forty-four billion dollars.

 

 

 And immediately sacked its content moderators – one week before the American midterm elections, and exactly one day before a terrorist attack on a migrant processing centre in Dover followed by our reappointed Home Secetary's warning of an "invasion" of the south coast by refugees – and I was initially nonplussed by commentators passing the popcorn and using phrases like "it's going to be a wild ride." I mean, I get it. I write, and sentences must be finished, and lot of this blog is just me sharing stuff I find ineresting and then realising I should probably provide some kind of commentary, and "it's going to be a wild ride" is a handy sign off. But it still seemed a weird way to describe the rise of Fascism.  

 

 My sister's a meme!

 

 But maybe that wasn't what was being described. Maybe those commentators anticipating twitter's downfall were looking forward to the fall of the rise of Fascism, certainly something I'd like to live long enough to see... That's maybe not entirely true. What I mean is, given that I have to keep on living, I would very much like the fall of the rise of Fascism to happen at some point during that. 

 Has the word Fascism gone a bit weird on me now? Maybe.

 Anyway, here's some chat.
 

 And I was talking to my uncle Gordie last week, and learning how well his children's generation have been rallying around each other, and how much help is now provided – ar at least seen to be needed – which wasn't when I was their age, and I have to remember that I'm living to see other, far better things also on the rise. 

 

 

* Here's how this post originally began: 

 

 When I first started

 Okay actually, before I continue I'm going to let you a little into how tediously I go about writing these posts: I've just started writing this, about four minutes ago, three of which have been spent arriving at the word "tediously" which I might still change, and it would normally now be about an hour before I looked back over all this and finally noticed how... again, I'm going to spend a while now trying to find a synonym for "bad"... let's just stick with "bad" then... how bad those opening four words are, only as it happens this time I noticed almost immediately. "When I first started"? Surely that's a... I'll look this up... tautology? Doesn't starting mean doing something for the first time anyway? And yet it sounds okay to my ear when I say it out loud. Maybe I just like the sound of my voice too much. "When I first started..."

 Okay.

 When I first started returning to this blog to post daily

 Oh bloody hell....

 "First started returning"? That sounds terrible. What can that mean? But no, back in December of 2019 I returned to the blog after a bit of an absence and I started posting daily, which I hadn't done before, and then there was a break in early 2021, and now I'm blogging daily again. Hence "first", hence "returning"... Yeah that"started" is redundant.

 When I first returned to this blog to post daily... I've honestly forgotten now what I was going to say.

Unposted Photographs of October 2022 in Chronological Order

 On the first, I left Trafalgar Sqaure in bloom, happy with the city I lived in, and crossed the river to get a better view of it:

 

 In the basement of the Royal Festival Hall, three dancers had found a space outside the toilets:

 

 I've lived in Notting Hill a year now. I finally found the quickest route to the park, but it still feels like I'm finding routes, rather than walks:

 

 Trellick Tower, its green heart still commemorating Grenfell. It always appears in view suddenly, and to the right of where I expect:

 This was the first time I'd revisited the Victoria and Albert Museum since moving up the road:

 

 I suddenly remembered seeing Jennifer Tilly here, and hearing her, and tried to recall the plot of Slipstream:

 Neil and I went to see Big Ben break his News Revue cherry. Their six week run outlasted two Prime Minsters, and Fred Strangebone in a blonde wig turned out to be a very serviceable Keir Starmer. He was the only one to do a silly bio:

 In Tate Britain, I stayed in the box with the racist language for the whole video (I can't find who's this was or what. It was wonderful. Does anyone know?) Others entered the box, and left very possibly because I was in there, but I don't know how better to screen it:

 

 Over the escalators in the tube, adverts are now screened an angle, tampering with my balance over the duration:

 Here, outside the vault of the Ned, it occured to me that on Saturday we should all wear robes:

 

 Then we moved on to Greenwich peninsula, to rehearse the counting of rice:

 Our rice in situ:

 Suddenly, October was beginning to end. I mean, to finish. I caught Ilona's exhibition just as it was being taken down:

 This Flying Tiger model could have got more into the spirit of the season, I felt. I bought nothing:

 On this stage, I saw David dance and speak lines from King Lear. A good block:

 Outside on Regents Street, they were beginning to put up angels:

By this point, my phone had crashed. Everything was harder to record on Badphone, particularly Maxfield Parrish light. Why was it still Summer?

 On this stage, I saw Natasha dance and speak lines from King Lear. I was not expecting that in a production of Henry the Eighth:

 My balance tampered with, I was still happy to have to caught the last matinee, and celebrated with a walk on the beach:

 

 On this stage, I saw my former rice wife Julia cast her own legs as her parents, and her hand as her dog. I'd missed her rumbling, threatening giggle. It got messy:

 

 Rehearsals started for the Love Goddess in Marylebone. Working in daylight suddenly:

 Opposite Alfies Antiques. Everything a walk away:

 And last Saturday, like the first, saw Trafalgar Square in bloom again.

A Third Startling Themblance, or When Dad Was Big Brother...

 

 

 Okay, I don't necesssarily expect you to know what my Dad looks like, so you're probably just thinking "Oh, that's a photograph of William Churchill's trusted adviser and possibly illegitimate son, former MP for Paddington, pioneering financial journalist, pretend Australian back in the days when pretending to be Australian was socially advantageous, and George Orwell's boss at the Ministry of Information, Brendan "BB" Bracken, born in County Tipperary 1901, etc..." without a double-take, and you'd be right. It's him. I think it definitely looks like my Dad too though. And so does this.

 

 Happy Birthday, Daddy! It's Dad's birthday today... I screengrabbed this picture of Bracken leaving Downing Street with Churchill from the very informative but, if I'm honest, not necessarily reliable documentary below – and I'm not just saying that because one of the interviewees is Jacob Rees-Mogg's dad.

 

 

 

 Bracken had all his papers burnt after his death apparently, so everything seems pretty apocryphal. Also the presenter bangs on lovingly about how big a liar Bracken was, so we're probably not on the same page politically. But it's interesting to see someone else have a go at making a history documentary, let's put it like that. The whole thing looks like it might have been shot on a phone, the music's fascinatingly awful, and there are some great, cheap choices of location to spice up the narrative, like a branch of Wimpy's when America gets involved. I'm not recommending it necessarily – again, William Rees-Mogg is in it – but I learnt a lot about BB from it, including the fact there's actually no evidence he was Churchill's son, and I feel I also learnt quite a bit about Conservative mythos too.

 

 

 Speaking of which, what I really do recommend is The Gathering Storm, this 1974 BBC play I found yesterday on youtube, starring Richard Burton as Churchill, in which Dad pops up playing Bracken. Sorry yes, that was what got me looking him up in the first place and discovering the resemblance. Patrick Stewart also pops up as Clement Attlee. It's an extraordinary cast. Dad died his hair red for the role, which caused a lot of amusement when I was born, and they shot scenes at Chartwell itself, from which Dad "rescued" a photo of Churchill with Somerset Maugham and H. G Wells that he found in a cleaning cupboard. I love the absence of twinkliness in Burton's pre-Thatcher portrayal of Churchill here, not least because it makes the jokes play better, but also because, while he might have been a figure of fun, Churchill was not a clown: he was a walking, breathing ideology – terrifying, but I've also not seen portrayed more vividly someone you'd definitely want as the enemy of your enemy.

 (Okay, I'm not saying Bracken definitely wasn't Churchill's son...)

Breaking

  No wonder that podium's always doing a double take. 

 I reached the end of yesterday wondering how I'd managed to get so little done given how little I currently have to do, and only realised with Liz Truss' resignation today how much time I've spent simply checking who's in charge.

 

 

 To be fair to the Daily Mail, she lasted longer than an hour. She also lasted longer than Andrew Neil when he tried to launch a similarly naked culture war over on that GB News then left after two weeks. And how long will the Tories last? Sorry, I mean the Conservatives! I'm trying to stop using the T word, as I have a theory the way they've managed to stay in office for so long is by having two names: the "Tories", who soak up the bad news and the hate, and the "Conservatives" who actually appear on the ballot paper, name unsullied. We'll see if this works again. I've no idea when. Anyway hats off to the Daily Star's "Will Liz Truss last longer than this lettuce" live feed, a properly salient piece of journalism – Yes I know we all know about it, but this is an archive too. To whoever's reading this in years to come: Shush, I know political chaos is never a prelude to good news, but let me enjoy this. Right, the rain's just stopped, laptop closing, I'm off for a walk. 

. برای زن، زندگی، آزادی

  My friend Faren is almost finished packing. Moving tomorrow. As I mentioned before she's had a testing  fortnight, and I offered to help with her boxes, but she asked me to go to Trafalgar Square instead. So I went and I took these videos and photographs and far more.

 

 A demonstration was being held to honour Mahsa Amini, the woman murdered by Iranian police for her inappropriate headwear. People were calling for revolution, and saying her name, and angry and smiling. It was glorious. It had the quality of glory. The Square was in full bloom.

 

 I saw a new statue on the fourth plinth, which I thought had been reserved for the Queen. But this was of Malawian preacher and freedom fighter John Chilembwe. It had gone up three days ago.

 

 The work of sculptor Samson Kambalu, it recreates a photograph taken in 1914 of Chilembwe refusing to take his hat off in front of the white colonialist over whom he now towers. Now he was looking on. Chilembwe would later stage his own uprising in Malawi.

  I remember when Boris Johnson was mayor, he tried to turn this plinth into a war memorial. Without meaning a shred of disrespect to the late Air Chief Marshall Sir Keith Park, I'm happy that didn't happen. Particularly today. As I say, full bloom.

Why it might actually be a good idea for Tasha Yar to resign.

Because...

 

 (Here's Yar in the opening of Labour's latest election video. An image that really captures the imagination. Capturing the public imagination is of course key to victory at the polls. It doesn't take much, either. Boris Johnson just had to not comb his hair.)

 

everything...

 

(I follow him on instagram too. Here. It's all like this. He gets about. Looking at things. Crawley hospital in Crawley. An Asda in Ilford.)

 he...

 

(He's also my MP. Here he is in Camden without a tie.)

 

 does...

 

 

(Another campaign image. The sign's too small for me to see what he wants to protect though. Would it have been possible to print the values any larger? Probably not. That was probably impossible.)

 

 is...

(Remember when he was director of the Crown Prosecution Service for the killings of John Charles de Menezes and Ian Tomlinson, and he just let the police cover it up?)

 

 literally...

 

  

 

(It was a vigil, not a protest. But Yar knows why he used that word. Some have argued a vigil is a protest, but whose fault is that? Wait, not Tasha Yar. Keir Starmer! Who's Tasha Yar then?)

 

pathetic. 

 

 (Apologies to Tasha Yar! Also, this was written before Starmer's call this evening for the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police to not resign.)