Diary: March 2018

3 March 2018, London

Still haven't been out for three days (snow). This must be what it was like in the war. I am eating stuff that has been at the back of the cupboard for a year. The freezer is nearly empty. Theresa May would be proud of me.

5 March 2018, London

Two Russian exiles in Wiltshire, father and daughter, have suffered a mysterious poisoning and are in hospital “fighting for their lives”. Putin and agents of the Russian secret service are being fingered in the media. This, it seems, is the price a country might be forced to pay when it grants residency to “enemies” of a foreign state.

6 March 2018, London

Maybe one day everyone will describe themselves as a “citizen-producer”.

8 March 2018, London

Ben was talking about some Japanese thing about transience and imperfection called Wabi-sabi. To illustrate he explained it to me as the idea that “there is a little bit of sadness in everyone”.

15 March 2018, London

14 March 2018, London

There is a building over the road from Whitechapel Hospital that was once the “Working Lads Institute”. It sounds like something to do with the child labour and juvenile delinquency of 19C London.

https://www.jack-the-ripper-tour.com/generalnews/inside-the-working-lads-institute/

15 March, 2018, London

At Headway, E is playing Oasis on her phone for C. His head is tilted back and a big grin has settled on his face. His favourite is Some Might Say. Later we did a group rendition of Wonderwall and C was again in the land of bliss.

17 March 2018, London

It is snowing outside, and I am reading in the Guardian an article by Ian Jack about beggars, begging, rough sleepers and homelessness. At the end of the piece he describes a growing fellowship between beggar and begged-from that defines a shift in attitudes. More people now stop to talk to beggars and fetch them food and warm drinks. It sort of correlates with conversations I have had previously with successful and relatively wealthy people in which they speak of the very thin line that separates the rich from the poor. One of them went as far as to say that, but for one small lucky break, he too would be on the street begging or festering in a squalid prison.

22 March 2018, London

Near Anchor Yard/Wenlake Estate gardens on Old Street lives a man in a tent. On the pavement, taking visitors and welcoming them to his abode.

25 March 2018, London

Better late than never. The six primary emotions in bad selfies.

30 March, 2018, Brighton

‘Cathay Pacific completes two-leg journey, letting women wear trousers’
Airline becomes one of few in Asia giving its female flight attendants an alternative to skirts

The Guardian