Monday
For one of the jubilees – I can’t remember which one as there have been so many of them and we have lived in the same house for nearly 30 years – it seemed as if you couldn’t move for street parties in our patch of south-west London. For this weekend’s coronation, there isn’t even one, so far as I know. It just feels as if no one is that bothered. We’d probably turn up to one if somebody else made the effort to organise it, but nobody has been prepared to make the first move.
I don’t think it’s because anyone actively dislikes King Charles – he seems a decent enough bloke who cares about the country. More that there is an overwhelming sense of apathy. Most of us are all royalled out after the death of the queen last September. We’ve seen enough royal documentaries, with the same footage used time and again, to last us a lifetime, and while some of us – including me – will be curious enough to watch the ceremony on TV, at least half the country will give it a swerve and get on with their lives.
My wife will be at her Saturday ceramics class. As a nod to the solemnity, she and the other potters have all agreed to wear crowns. I can’t imagine, though, that many of us who do follow the proceedings will be bothered to say the new oath of allegiance out loud. That’s a feudal step too far. A cheek even, though feel free to indulge if you want. I’m certainly not prepared to die for the king, and he as sure as hell isn’t prepared to die for me.
Though perhaps if I could find a sacred stone in my back garden – it turns out that the Stone of Scone that has been used for centuries in the coronation of Scottish kings wasn’t the pillow on which Jacob lay when he had his ladder dream, but actually came not far from Scone: who would have guessed? – then maybe it would make more sense. Perhaps I could leave the stone to my children in my will so that generations of Craces to come can swear fealty to the monarch in future coronations.
Tuesday
The contemporary historian Anthony Seldon has documented the time in office of every British prime minister since Margaret Thatcher. His latest book, co-written with Raymond Newell and titled Johnson at 10, has just been published. It is every bit the damning indictment you would expect. The lack of ideas, the lack of care: Boris Johnson’s premiership was essentially a vanity project. He had no great vision for the country, just a narcissistic need to become its prime minister.
Once in office, he had little interest in doing the job and became unable to make critical decisions. What we see is the decay and decadence of a government of warring factions – Team Dominic Cummings and Team Carrie Johnson – addicted to power. The detail is compelling, but essentially Seldon doesn’t really tell us anything that wasn’t readily apparent.
There is a scene on the morning after the Brexit referendum, when Johnson is panicking about what to say in his victory speech as he has nothing prepared. There was no Brexit roadmap as he had never expected to win. The referendum had all been a game to advance Johnson’s political career. Seldon would like this to be new insight but, looking back, this was exactly how I sketched the scene on the day. There was a long delay before Michael Gove and Johnson gave their press conference – I speculated they were trying to work out what on earth to say – and when they did appear they looked like spaced-out zombies.
I described Gove as looking “like a man who had just come down off a bad trip to find he had murdered one of his closest friends”. Here were two terrified politicians, coming to terms with the realisation they might just have ruined the country. So if it was that obvious to me in the room, perhaps the real question was why other journalists and newspapers didn’t see it. Why they carried on supporting Johnson even though he had revealed his utter emptiness.
And maybe his fellow Tory MPs should also carry some of the blame. Rishi Sunak would now have us believe he is a very different prime minister to Johnson, but he happily propped him up for three years despite having been closer to him than almost anyone. Party before country.
Wednesday
If Seldon is to maintain his run of prime ministers then sooner or later he is going to have to get round to writing about Liz Truss. Maybe he will keep it to novella length. Or maybe not. There were certainly years of madness compressed into just a few weeks. Last summer, while the rest of us were thinking about our hols and getting used to a post-lockdown world, Truss was living her best life.
With an unassailable lead over Sunak in the race to follow Johnson, she spent much of her time at Chevening, the foreign secretary’s grace-and-favour perk, planning what she would do in office with close MPs and ministerial aides. Which can’t have taken that long.
Because once you’ve decided to tank the economy with unfunded tax cuts, there’s not that much room for manoeuvre. So shortly after lunch each day, someone suggested raiding the wine cellar, and what with one thing and another, every night became party night. Not so different from Johnson after all. But everything has its price and those hazy, heady summer nights look like costing Truss £12,000 amid reports that her nearest and dearest mates walked off with £120 worth of dressing gowns and slippers.
There’s so much more we need to know. Was the bathwear embroidered with “Chevening” or normal John Lewis stock? However much it ends up costing her, it’s nothing to what she’s cost the rest of us.
Thursday
We may just have hit Peak Spurs last weekend. Having gone 3-0 down to Liverpool inside 15 minutes – a slight improvement on the Sunday before last when Tottenham were 5-0 down by the 21st minute – they slowly edged their way back into the game as the home side relaxed, confident the game was won.
Trailing by a single goal late in the second half, Spurs went in search of an equaliser, which duly came three minutes into time added on at the end of the game. Cue delirium in the away end and the commentators having to rethink their assessment of a team they had spent much of the game writing off. Only for Tottenham to make the brainless decision to pass the ball to Liverpool just outside their own penalty area and concede a fourth goal with about a minute left on the clock. All that energy spent clawing back what seemed like an unassailable lead, only to toss it all away at the end.
My club in a nutshell. For me, though, the season has already ended. I won’t be at this Saturday’s game against Crystal Palace as I will be busy sketching the coronation – you’d have thought the king might have chosen a day to be crowned that didn’t clash with the football.
And I won’t be at the last home game of the season against Brentford as I will be in Minneapolis for the weekend visiting my daughter. Hooray! Somehow I don’t think I will be missing much. It’s looking more and more as if what Spurs need is not just a new manager but a change of ownership, as almost everyone seems to end up falling out with the chairman, Daniel Levy. The mood at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium has become toxic.
Then, maybe I’m just out of time. I miss the old ground, the same familiar people I would get to see week after week. The new ground is like a sterile entertainment venue populated largely by tourists. Sure, it would be nice to win something now and again. But right now, I’d settle for a team that enjoyed playing football again.
Friday
I finally made it to the end of Great Expectations. Though for much of the last two episodes I was wondering why I had bothered. I could take the odd liberty, such as Pip’s sister being turned into the local S&M specialist, but changing most of the plot just seemed pointless. Why bother to adapt a classic Dickens novel if you’re going to alter just about everything?
If you don’t like the plot and want to add in the odd insurance fraud, attempted suicide, and make up your own ending, why not just call the series something entirely different? That way you’ll get no complaints. Turning the burning down of Satis House into a scene from Kill Bill, with Compeyson and Magwitch lying dead side by side, was absurd. However much Olivia Colman was paid, it wasn’t enough. And the final shot of Pip and Biddy’s wedding with Estella and Jaggers dancing was straight out of a bad romcom.
Dickens’ own ending was far more enigmatic and unsettling. Why change something that works brilliantly as it is? It would be like changing Pride and Prejudice and having Elizabeth Bennet decide to dump Mr Darcy at the altar and throw herself at the feet of Mr Collins, saying she had made a hideous mistake turning down his proposal.
For much better TV, I can thoroughly recommend the Northern Irish cop series Blue Lights, which seems to have slipped under many people’s radars. Great plotline, great characters. We binged it all in a week. Finally, a plea for help. It turns out my tree fern isn’t entirely dead after all. One three-inch frond has appeared. Is this just its death throes? Or is there anything I can do to encourage more growth. I’ve loved this plant for more than 20 years and I’m loth to send it to fern heaven.
