I remind myself that I started writing a daily blogpost during this period as a diary of these strange days; I remind myself of this because of the distressing need to mention Mr. Cummings again.
Today we were treated to the absurd theatre of this unelected bureaucrat presuming to address an expectant nation from the Rose Garden at 10 Downing Street, apparently having appealed to a higher authority than Lynn Anderson. In any reasonable alternate universe he would have been invited to gather his personal belongings prior to being escorted off the premises by security.
Anyway, I’d love to tell you what he said, but I didn’t watch it (though I did follow it on Twitter). The only important outcome is that the slug still clings to the rotting lettuce and Mystic Ian’s prediction that he’d be gone by now is falsified.
For now.
Hubris => Nemesis; the drama is in how it works itself out; the horror is that it’s being played as a promenade performance and we, the audience, are in the firing line of their arrogant incompetence.
***
One of the things that most annoyed me yesterday wasn’t the Prime Minister’s stupidity, I’ve come to expect that from him, though not, perhaps, on such extravagant display. No; it was that I’d planned to post an inspired lunchtime Tweet from Toyah Willcox and Robert Fripp. Their Sunday lunchtime posts throughout lockdown have been fun, but yesterday’s was the best yet. I’m hoping at least one of the links below will be workable for you.
In this week’s Sunday lunch, Toyah & Robert are discussing which has more cultural significance…. #Toyah or #KingCrimson. Only one way to find out….. a #showdown pic.twitter.com/4shyP9PMbc
— Toyah Willcox (@toyahofficial) 24 May 2020
***
I had high hopes of sitting out in the sun again today; unfortunately, by the time I got the opportunity, the best of the weather had gone and I retreated indoors. Once there I fell asleep in a recliner reading my book. I woke up just in time to avoid the Cummings presser, which started late anyway. So it was up to the shed to listen to Adrian Corker’s fine soundtrack to Way of the Morris (previously referred to here) and The Garden of Jane Delawney by Trees.
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Last November, I wrote here that I’d sent the opening chapter of a novel to a selection of literary agents. Most of them sent polite rejection notes; a couple didn’t bother themselves to reply. I’m going to try again with a different set of agents after performing some surgery on the text. I’ll report back as and when.
***
Music: Dave Van Ronk used to talk about the night he and Tom Paxton were in the audience when Bob Dylan debuted Hard Rain and knew Bobby had taken it up a notch. Dylan got the opening line from the traditional Lord Randall, a murder ballad. The best covers of Dylan’s songs are always by people who take them and do something different with them to make them their own; Brian Ferry did this with Hard Rain in 1974. Here he is in 1977 with one heck of a band.
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