Happy birthday Bridget Riley.

"All my work is one thing, as it were, it may appear different but it is essentially the same" - Bridget Riley

On the 24th of April last year, Bridget Riley celebrated her ninetieth birthday. I'm not sure how she celebrated it but I know how the Lighgbox in Woking did and that's because on Saturday I met with my friend Darren and we went there to have a look at an exhibition, Bridget Riley:Pleasures of Sight, of her work.

It was a smallish collection but it managed to give a decent flavour of what Riley's all about. I've written far more extensively on Riley before (following a career spanning retrospective at the Hayward Gallery in London at the end of 2019) and I've even covered one of her smaller shows (at the David Zwirner, in 2018) so this, a show somewhere between the two - in the Goldilocks zone, will be a more casual approach.

 Red Movement (2005)

A brief account, basically, of a nice (and surprisingly sunny February) day out with a good mate looking at some nice paintings, drinking coffee and ginger beer, and eating veggie burgers and fries in the Marciano Lounge (my halloumi burger was one of the nicest I've ever had).

Before you even get into the exhibition proper, but after you've climbed some pretty steep stairs, there's an early, undated, figurative work. Probably made in the fifties when she was studying at Goldsmiths College of Art and the Royal College of Art, it shows her debt to Seurat and other Impressionist painters but it also shows an artist still looking to find her voice.

Women at Tea-Table (not dated)

Maybe I'm being cynical but this trick seems to happen a lot with shows dedicated to primarily abstract artists. Start the show with a nice figurative painting to win over the doubters, "see, they can draw 'properly', they just don't want to'.

That theory is further backed up by a quote from Delacroix in which he insists that painting should be a "feast for the eyes" and it'd be hard to say that Riley's work is not that - although it's very much a movable feast. Often in an almost literal sense.

Untitled (Oval Image) (1964)

Riley considers the viewer of the painting, us, to be as much a part of the painting as the brush strokes she has applied. The optical distortions of her sixties work is still as powerful, if a tiny bit dated, than it must have been when they were first made. The works beg you to move up close to them, to scan them until they trick your eyes, and then to walk away.

Hopefully without a headache. Darren and I considered potential migraines to be more likely from looking at the swirling circles and unresolvable vortices than the more modish chequered works although both are, aesthetically, equally pleasing.

Untitled (Based on Blaze) (1964)

Untitled (Based on Movement in Squares) (1962)

Deny II (1967)

Intervals 2 (2019)

So far, so monochrome. But as I've grown accustomed to Riley's works I've become as, perhaps more, intrigued by her use of colour as I am with her use of shapes and optical illusions. Riley herself has said "a square is a square. It is an absolute. One recognises when a square ceases to be a square. It's conceptually defined. But a blue...! The hues of a blue are infinite, and the same blue will look different in different contexts: in reality, and more crucially, in a painting".

Not just blue either. Any colour. Back in the sixties, Riley found what she wanted to achieve could only be done in black and white, gradually she moved into modulations of grey, and then fully into colour. Again, Seurat was the big influence. Some works, like Intervals 2, aren't too arresting. 

Just spaced out stripes really. Others, like Cantus Firmus and Ecclesia for example, have, as I've said before, something of the deck chair about them. The curators at the Lightbox make loftier comparisons. Cantus Firmus is a "curtain of colour" that lets the light filter through as if with the "columns in a Gothic cathedral" and Ecclesia makes use of the "five colours used in the tombs of the Pharaohs in the Valley of the Kings". I've got to admit I couldn't see that - and I've been to the Valley of the Kings.

Cantus Firmus (1972)

Ecclesia (1985)

Obviously wasn't paying enough attention! In Woking, we learn how Riley spent much of her childhood in Padstow on the north coast of Cornwall and it was there that she made observations of nature that have informed her art ever since. Though that may explain the deck chairs, it is otherwise not immediately apparent when viewing Riley's work which looks, for all its greatness, something very city like, something very 'indoors'.

But what she means, I think, is that the Cornish coast has inspired the wavy, gauzy, lines, as soothing as a gentle sea in places, and play of colours in her work. You could be looking out at the channel or staring up at the sky and though, at times, her work is too blocky to suggest nature, there are occasions when it most definitely does. All of it, or at least a very large amount of it, is a pleasure to spend time with. 

We didn't spend A LOT of time with it. We headed off for a look around the rest of the Lightbox, including a brief history of the UK's oldest purpose built mosque, one of Paul Weller's guitars, and Jenson Button's helmet, and then, after a brief coffee, made short work of those veggie burgers. I wish we'd popped a candle in the bun to mark one of Britain's most idiosyncratic and inspiring artist's birthdays.

Song of Orpheus IV (1978)

High Sky (1991)

Red Red Blue (2010)

Untitled (La Lune En Rodage - Carlo Belloli) (1965)

 Crest (1964)

Thanks to Darren for joining me for this day and for standing both coffee and lunch. Owe you one.

Tangled Web:Chloe.

"Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive" - Sir Walter Scott

Becky Green (Erin Doherty) is a fantasist who cons her way into society events with great ease and when there drinks wine and eats canapes with no little insouciance before worming her way into people's lives via guile, deceit, or outright criminality. The persona she adopts for these events is a very different one to her real life. Often spent eating cereal, staring into space, with her headphones in.

She also appears to be a stalker and a manipulative liar yet you don't, totally, find yourself hating her - at least not all the time. In Chloe (BBC1/iPlayer, written and directed by Alice Seabright - with further direction from Amanda Boyle), we first meet Becky at home, in Bristol, lying in bed scrolling through Instagram and looking after, not particularly well, her mum (Lisa Palfrey) who has early onset dementia.

One Instagram page she appears specifically addicted to belongs to Chloe Faibourne (Poppy Gilbert) but when she logs on to her 'socials' one morning to discover, via the medium of Smiths lyrics, that Chloe has died, Becky makes it her mission to find out how - and in doing so slowly starts morphing her own life into that of Chloe's.

To degrees that can, at times, be quite head spinning. A man Becky slept with after meeting at a party, Josh (Brandon Micheal Hall), has his calls blocked immediately but, soon, it appears that the calls Becky thought had been coming from Josh had been coming from Chloe. What could it all mean?

To find out, Becky ingratiates her way into Chloe's social circle. Chloe's husband, the local councillor on the way up Elliot (Billy Howle), seems a mild mannered sort, consumed by grief of course, who owns a nice big house and seems to be forever slicing a pepper in preparation for a healthy meal.

Another friend of Chloe's, Richard (Jack Farthing), is quite the opposite. Richard is angry, with a passion for culture, and seems to have thrown himself, not for the first time, into the dangerous solace of drink and drugs. All he seems to share with Elliott, and another friend Anish (Akshay Khanna), are questions about Chloe's death and a deep sense of loss.

Becky's way in to the group comes via Chloe's best friend Livia (Pippa Bennett-Warner) and once, via duplicitous means of course, she's inveigled way into Livia's social circle, Becky's life becomes an upwardly mobile one of dinner parties, premieres, and high level spas where architects and artists mix with politicians and fixers.

Yet when Becky's mum digs out an old box of photographs, it appears that all is not quite as it seems. Soon we're flung into a world of hidden histories, shameful schemes, double dealings, and betrayals. Flashbacks, too, reveal this story is not quite what we think.

Becky continues to dig, further and further, into the secret lives of the group, especially Elliot and Richard but can we be sure that what she discovers is true or is it merely in her head, another of her fantastical creations? Equally, will her new friends find her out. At times, the walls appears to be closing in on her to an extent that feels almost claustrophobic to watch.

As ever with liars, the tangled web Becky weaves brings her endless stresses and problems to go with the opportunities and openings it creates. It takes her, and us, on a journey into themes of identity, inequality, loneliness, wealth disparity, class, bereavement, obsession, 'oblique energies', what social media does to our sense of self, and the rarely discussed intersection between politics and bestiality.

As an 'Insta' agnostic (though one who regularly doomscrolls Facebook news feeds) I wondered if I'd be able to relate to the story at first but Instagram was just a gateway into Chloe and it didn't take long before I was intrigued to find out just where all this was going. It seemed certain it wasn't going to be a very nice place but I had no idea where.

I had some misgivings about the, admittedly sensitively handled, scenes tackling dementia possibly sitting uneasily against the general overarching theme of a sometimes uneven story but the wonderful performances all round (including Phoebe Nicholls as a spectacularly catty Tiggy, Elliot's mum) and the brooding soundtrack (c/o Will Gregory with assistance from Alison Goldfrapp and Adrian Utley of Portishead, special props for including LCD Soundsystem's magisterial Dance Yrself Clean) led to a tense, compelling, drama where the possibilities for Becky getting out of all this without hurting herself and others seemed to narrow almost as regularly as her eyes did.

Imagine lusting to join a different world, a different 'set', and lying relentlessly to get yourself there only to find out that your new 'friends' are beset by many of the same anxieties and problems you thought you were escaping from. To find your new life just as imprisoning and stifling as the one you're trying to leave behind. And to find, most shockingly of all, that these highly intelligent and creative people still have their mobile ringtones on default settings.

Theatre night:A Number

In 2002, during the short life span of Dolly the sheep, Caryl Churchill wrote the play A Number. In it, she asked questions about the morality of cloning. Not cloning sheep but cloning human beings. Not just as babies but as they grow up to be adults.

What would these clones think about the scientists who had overseen such a large part of their creation? What would they think about the process from which they were birthed? How would they feel about their parents? Most curiously of all, what would it be like should two, or several, identical clones meet up?

Would they be alike? Would they like each other? Would they be able to understand and support each other or would they compete against each other or fight for dominance? Twenty years later, Lyndsey Turner has revived the play at the Old Vic in London with Lennie James as the father Salter and Paapa Essediu as his son Michael and two of an initially unspecified number of clones.

It tells, in a fat free seventy-five minutes, of what happens when Michael (as well as B1 and B2) confront Salter with their fears, their anxieties, and, most of all, their questions. It probes the impersonal nature of cloning with references to 'batches' and 'clusters' but also, and this is where the play gets really smart - even if at times it's head spinning, accepts that these people are people and still suffer all the same problems as the rest of us.

A Number tackles depression, alcoholism, male violence, identity, and the nature of what it is to be. What it is to be alive. Perhaps more than anything else though, it confronts fatherhood and father son relationships. Each of Salter's sons, should he choose to acknowledge them or not, have very different relationships with him and he with them.

There are no easy answers and, ultimately, the story becomes as much about Salter's quest for unlikely redemption as it is about Michael, B1, and B2 learning who they really are - and why they are like that. As Salter, James is excellent throughout. At times, tetchy, yet at others, sympathetic and trying to learn. But Essediu has the trickier job.

The costume changes he somehow manages happen so quickly as to be almost impossible but, more importantly, he brings each of the three characters to life in very different ways and these two fine performances, aided by Es Devlin's startling red set and Donato Wharton's soundtrack, ultimately make A Number a gripping, enjoyable, and thoughtful piece of theatre. Even more so, it feels a very unique play and anything but a clone.

Do Not Feed The Trolls

"Don't feed the trolls. Nothing fuels them so much" - Oscar Wilde

The likelihood of Oscar Wilde ever having said that is extremely remote but it's all over the Internet which just proves that the Internet is rarely a reliable source of information. But, nevertheless, whoever did say it (or make it up) is on to something.

When I woke up this morning and looked at my Facebook feed I saw two shares from left leaning friends and acquaintances. One was some bullshit Tweet from Laurence Fox and one was a video, which of course I didn't watch, of Nigel Farage bloviating jovially on something or other. Of course, they'd both commented on them to say how ridiculous they are but it didn't matter. They'd shared Fox and Farage for all their friends and contacts to see.

They'd done their work for them. It made me realise just how topical last night's Skeptics in the Pub - Online talk, 'How ideas clash on social media' with Imran Ahmed, had been. Although the Russian invasion of Ukraine earlier that morning may have been an even more important reminder. Not least bearing in mind that the likes of Trump and Farage, both essentially Internet trolls, have come out in support of Putin and against democracy.

Hosted by the estimable Michael Marshall, Ahmed (the founding CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate and a recognised authority on the social and psychological dynamics of social media) began his story into the murky depths of Internet hate by telling of the six years he worked at the UK Parliament (Ahmed was born in Manchester but he works in the US now - hence Center and not Centre) for Hilary Benn, at that time the Shadow Foreign Secretary.

During this time, Ahmed noticed a huge rise of virulent antisemitism on the (hard) left and an equally large increase in Islamophobia on the (hard) right. If that wasn't worrying enough, on the 16th June 2016 one week before the Brexit vote, his colleague Jo Cox, the Labour MP for Batley and Spen, was murdered by the far right ideologue Thomas Mair.

As Mair shot and stabbed Cox to death he shouted "Britain First" and "death to traitors". Not long before this Ahmed had downplayed concerns about the news that the openly fascist Britain First were the first political party in the UK to get over one million followers on Facebook. Like many of us, Ahmed had not seen how online hate easily bleeds over into real world actions.

Something that seemed to have reached its apex with the Capitol insurrection in Washington DC on 6th January last year - but, more likely, hasn't yet. On social media, 'facts' become malleable. Amplification and visibility don't come from knowledge, as with other forms of media in the past, but from driving emotional reaction. When you hate tweet an anti-vaxxer, or call them an idiot or a moron - as I have done in the past, you give them the whip hand.

Like a retraction of a lie printed in The Sun, our comments about these hatemongers are written in much smaller text than the lies and hates they push out there, and it is human nature for us to start giving more credence to things we see, or hear, more often. Trolls, bad faith actors, and chaos merchants who get off on causing pain, realised this pretty quickly - and they gamed it.

Best off all, it cost them nothing to do so. You can tweet for free and it doesn't matter what kind of response you get as long as you get a response. In many ways being called an idiot, a moron or worse is better than being agreed with it because it drives further emotional responses and pushes them up in the algorithms and thus raises their profile.

So, with that in mind, best to say something really transgressive. While attending, for work - not as a participant, a Klan rally in Portland in 2020, Ahmed noticed a suggestion going round that Klan members should try to catch the then new disease of Covid and then go and spit on a black person. 

Covid, of course, was a gift to trolls and spreaders of hate. Research carried out by Ahmed and his team has revealed that a small group of leading anti-vaxxers had made the decision to take up that position before any vaccines had even emerged. For a complicated number of reasons, but one of them being that anti-vax would be divisive and therefore their profile would be raised.

They would feel heard in a large and confusing world, perhaps, if you want to be sympathetic. The giant social media companies were urged to take action on this, and many other issues, and of course, small tweaks aside, they failed. These companies have proven, consistently, incapable of getting their houses in order.

To take action costs money. To do nothing is free - and even results in increased profits. Imran Ahmed's idea was that social media companies should, instead of having rules, have rights that protect their users, specifically those that are on the receiving end of online abuse. It seems a drastic yet workable solution to a situation where we have created spaces that are unsafe for large sections of society.

Silicon Valley dudes like to present themselves as the good guys and many of us want to believe they are - but like most other 'hippies' we know they're not really. The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) did a little experiment into the algorithms that Instagram use and made some quite disturbing, though depressingly unsurprisingly, finds.

In the past, after an amount of time of scrolling Instagram you'd reach a message that read "you've caught up". That was not driving more interaction and therefore that was not driving profits. So instead it was changed and now you receive 'recommendations' and these 'recommendations' make Instagram an awful lot of money.

But what are they? CCDH set up an Instagram account that expressed an interest in 'wellness'. The recommendations that came up were for anti-vax accounts, the anti-vax accounts led them to antisemitic accounts, and the antisemitic accounts led them to QAnon accounts. It was a downward spiral into the world of conspiracy theories and online hate and though many, of course, can see this immediately and resist, others are pulled in.

Once in a world of conspiracy theories, you'll find there are a lot of things that still don't make sense (no shit!), a lot of holes in the theory. Again, some will pull themselves out but many others will, instead, go deeper into these fringe ideologies and theories, many of them hateful, most of them demonstrably untrue, and some of them completely fucking batshit.

This has always happened but in the past you had to work at getting yourself in to these worlds or have a supposed friend lead you there. Now, Instagram does that for you. The social media giants like to say they're a mirror to society but if they are they're a highly distorted mirror that belongs more in a fairground or a freak show than anywhere else.

Frances Haugen, the American data engineer and Facebook whistleblower, corroborated CCDH's findings and confirmed to them that if the algorithm was changed to make it safer for users then people would spend less time on the platforms - and, bottom line, the platforms would lose money.

In the 1970s, in the US, many Ford Pinto cars were discovered to have faulty fuel tanks that were causing deadly fires. Initially, the Ford motor company began to recall Ford Pintos before a study found that it was cheaper for them to pay compensation to dead victim's families than to recall ALL the cars - so they did that instead.

While it seems a stretch to say that Twitter, Facebook, Instagram etc; would rather their customers die than see a dip in profits it's, sadly, not that much of a stretch. Social media algorithms have been weaponised by antisemites, Islamophobes, and, most successfully of all, the Russian state to drive hate and division and to try and roll back the advances we have made in science and in tolerance over the last decades and centuries.

Almost to overthrow the ideas of the Enlightenment. Which makes Internet trolls fellow travellers with ISIS or the Taliban. All of this, of course, is unremittingly bleak but Imran Ahmed didn't want his talk to be of the "we're all going to Hell on a handcart" nature so he did offer what he felt were possible solutions to this problem.

Or at least ways we can change and hope to inspire others to do so as well. Primarily, resist interactions with liars, bad actors, and those we deem 'idiots' but seem to be able to use the Internet more effectively than us. Stop feeding the trolls.

At the moment our interactions with these people are almost always counterproductive. Fact checking is of limited use because these people don't care about facts. It's so obviously true the world isn't run by a cabal of lizard people we shouldn't have to waste time arguing with people over that. The trick of the trolls is to throw so many lies out there you could never possibly fact check them all.

You simply wouldn't have enough time. There will always be 'polluters' on the Internet. The trick is not to give them a larger platform. Instead, amplify the words, posts, and tweets of the good guys. Share their posts, not the baddies.

Another thing that would help is if the social media behemoths were forced into having greater transparency. Not just into their regulations but into how those regulations are enforced as well as into their algorithms and their economics.

One last idea is one we could all do with trying. Humility. Stop calling other people stupid. Ahmed did a little test and asked what vegetable helps our night vision. Most people would think 'carrot'. But that's not true at all. During World War II, the RAF propagated that myth to explain why their pilots had improved success during night air battles. Far better than telling the enemy about recent advances in radar technology.

You may have already known that. You may not. Either way you're not stupid. If you see someone spreading a lie, ignore it, block them, report them but don't share it and don't argue with them. Ahmed's talk had been fascinating and a Q&A that took in the likes of Trump, Putin, RFK Jr, Katie Hopkins, Nick Clegg, Rio Ferdinand, and Sacha Baron Cohen (I think you can work out who the good guys are amongst that lot) as well as YouTube, TikTok, and Telegram proved both amiable and educational.

One interesting fact that appeared was that until very recently Facebook did not employ one single moderator who was fluent in the Ukrainian language. These sort of oversights, attempts to cut costs, could lead to all manner of disinformation being spread and who knows where that might lead us. To war?

Kakistocracy XXX:I Have A Dream.

"I Have a Dream, a song to sing to help me cope with anything. If you see the wonder of a fairy tale you can take the future even if you fail" - I Have A Dream, Abba

I have a dream, and it's a bit different to Abba's - and very different to Martin Luther King's. I have a dream that Boris Johnson spends the rest of his life in prison, that effigies of him are burned on November 5th, and that generations of children are taught the difference between right and wrong by being told the story of the World King who couldn't stop lying.

Most of this blog was written before Putin invaded Ukraine so, obviously - this should go without saying, Johnson is not THE WORST MAN IN THE WORLD. But he is, undoubtedly, using the invasion of Ukraine and Putin's rise to become potentially the most dangerous man in the world since Hitler to hide his own misdeeds, untruths, and crimes behind.

Since I last wrote we've had the fallout from the heavily redacted Sue Gray report which, even in its redacted state - thanks to the intervention of the Metropolitan Police, has resulted in yet more Tories turning against Johnson. Both Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) and Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) called for a no confidence vote in Johnson and Johnson's predecessor, the woman whose premiership he sought to destroy so he could take over, Teresa May came in hard on him too.

Another former Tory PM, John Major, said Johnson's behaviour had made the government look "distinctly shifty" (as if it already didn't), that they had eroded public trust in politics, and that they had damaged the reputation of the UK internationally but, most powerfully of all, Aaron Bell (a 'red wall' Tory who took Newcastle-under-Lyme in 2019) told of how he'd not even been able to go and have a cup of tea with his family after his grandmother's funeral before pointedly, and passionately, adding "does the Prime Minister think I'm a fool"?

To which the answer can only be 'yes'. Johnson's response was to make ludicrous claims that the Labour front bench were all on drugs and repeat a long disproved lie, and conspiracy theory, that Keir Starmer had failed to prosecute child rapist Jimmy Savile when he was Director of Public Prosecutions at the Crown Prosecution Service. It was the final straw for Johnson's policy chief Munira Mirza who quit. She was quickly followed by three other Johnson staff members.

Rats escaping a ship that is sinking, and taking the country with it, under the sheer weight of Johnson's duplicity. When far right anti-vax protestors turned up outside of Parliament and threatened Starmer based on Johnson's lie I couldn't help thinking that Johnson, a keen student of Trumpian dog whistle techniques, very possibly knew this would happen and even, tacitly, encouraged it. 

Of course he Tweeted his condemnation but that's how it works with the likes of Trump, Putin, and Johnson. You sew not just divide but disinformation. Johnson didn't even care that Savile's victims were hurt by these lies because this wasn't about child abuse or child abuse victims. This was, and still is, about one thing only. Saving, or trying to save, Johnson's skin. 

For that he will do anything, stoop to the lowest lows, and put other people's lives in danger while at the same time causing hurt to those who have already suffered far too much. The usual lackeys stood up to defend Johnson. The Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries (still four words that should never be seen together) carried out a horrific car crash of an interview and there was suggestion that the "grown ups" had taken over Number Ten now so this would be the last scandal we'd see.

Of course it won't be and, as an aside, why weren't the grown ups already in charge? I know it was only the worst global pandemic in a century (which, as of writing, has claimed the lives of over 160,000 UK citizens) but it seems a weird idea to let the kids run the country.

Talking of kids, Guto Harri is back as Johnson's press chief and he got off to a flyer by insisting that Johnson is not a "complete clown" and letting it be known that when he met with Johnson, Johnson sang I Will Survive to him. To go with his rendition of The Winner Takes It All at the Abba themed lockdown party no doubt. 

A distraction scandal was thrown up regarding Carrie Johnson and the undoubted abuse she got, much of it sexist (for instance her nicknames:- Princess Nut Nut, Lady Macbeth, Carrie Antoinette). But Carrie Johnson is not the PM so she's not to blame for the PM's many failings. But when supporters of Johnson (B) started saying that Johnson (C) should be left alone as she has no role in government whatsoever then I had to wonder, why was she in that 'work event' photograph?

Jacob Rees-Mogg was rewarded for defending the indefensible by being given a new title - Minister of Brexit Opportunities. A bullshit job for a bullshit person. A made up job for a made up man. A fantasy post for a man who lives a life of fantasy. But those are the men, and women, in the ascendancy right now. Ignorers of fact, deniers of truths, disrupters. Men like Boris Johnson.

Men like Vladimir Putin. While Putin is likely, certain, to unsettle the entire world, Johnson works on a smaller scale. Damaging the UK every time he lies, every time he peddles conspiracy theories, every time he promotes another bullshitter like Mogg. It may seem to be missing the point to go on about Johnson when a potential World War III is breaking out in Ukraine but I don't think it is. Johnson has failed this country incredibly badly during one global disaster. Do we really trust him to be in charge as we enter what may be an even bigger one?

One sign is that though the likes of Rees-Mogg saw 'partygate' as a big enough issue to break their Newsnight boycott for, they're back to being unavailable when it comes to Ukraine. Saving Johnson is vital work. Saving Ukraine, or Britain, or even the world, is much less important.

It's a funny old game, politics, and if I dwell on it too much it's not good for my health - but I refuse to ignore it because it affects my life - and everybody else's. You have to have other interests though, just for your own sanity, and when I've not been watching the horrors on the borders of Ukraine I've been to a couple of exhibitions (one about the Beano at Somerset House) and Life Between Islands at Tate Britain.

I intend to write about them soon but there's a lot to write about. They were big shows and I want to do them justice. I did write about my return to the theatre after two years to see The Glow at the Royal Court in Chelsea and I was quite proud I walked all the way there. I was less proud of how much I drunk on various nights out including two admittedly very fun ones with Ian and Mike in both Camden and Kilburn.

I've chatted on the phone with Michelle and Ben, I've met with Vicki for pizza (also in Chelsea), I've had a lovely curry (jeer aloo from Jai Krishna) and board games (Balderdash & Confident) evening at Kathy's with her, Pam, and Mike, and, on Tuesday, I joined the BC/DC (Basingstoke Curry and Drinking Club - on this occasion:- me, Shep, Tina, Neil, Adam, Teresa, and Ian) for a trip to Agra Indian restaurant in Basingstoke (obviously), and went for halloumi fish fingers and chips and beans with my mum and dad at Oliver's in Old Basing.

Global politics is a nightmare at the moment and so is the state of my head sometimes - but, sometimes, the state of my head is dreamlike - and in a good way. But the dream I have that I know will make all our lives better and safer is for Putin to be defeated or dethroned and for Boris Johnson, that huge Abba fan, to finally meet his Waterloo.