Monday
It’s rattlesnake season in the American south-west, which, if average June temperatures of 40C (104F) don’t deter you, might give you pause before planning a trip. This week, in Scottsdale, Arizona, the state’s annual venomous snake training course got under way, a series of events that take place every spring as the weather warms up and the snakes start to stir from their slumber. Three broad groups of people attend this course: park and wildlife rangers; Arizona residents with experience of finding snakes in their homes; and reporters from New York on the regional-Americans-are-a-hoot circuit.
In that last category, picture a northern type who might, for example, have been known to scream loudly when something rustles in the bushes during a hike, and who, alongside fellow classmates, is invited to trap and release a non-venomous gopher snake as a test run. This is followed by the provision of a tub with the word “danger: venomous reptiles” on the side, out of which, according to the intrepid NPR reporter, a rattlesnake emerges, and which those present – all of whom have paid $120 (£95) to do this – are taught “How to safely grab with tongs”. (For a further $120 you can keep the tongs). There are many skills I wish I had, but I can say with some confidence that grabbing a poisonous snake with a pair of tongs is not among them.
The instructor, meanwhile, seeks to educate the class on common snake misconceptions. Rattlesnakes are not aggressive, apparently. You can step on one and most of the time it won’t even bite you. Still, this month alone in Arizona there have been 13 bites and the state’s spectacular national parks all feature large signs carrying snake warnings – a handy reminder, in my view, of the greatness of Tenby as a holiday destination, or Ventnor, or Southwold, or Rhyl.
Tuesday
I have a friend who wants to write a Tarantino-type revenge movie about an ordinary American who goes on a one-woman mission to destroy Reese Witherspoon. One knows what she means. Witherspoon, who is a powerful force in American TV and publishing, tends to pick for her book club novels with names like Belinda Bees is Having a Bad Day, in which a woman who is misunderstood finds a man who is also misunderstood and together they celebrate their “weirdness” by organising a conventional wedding. One can enjoy these books, which Witherspoon’s production company often turn into TV shows, while never quite overcoming the suspicion that, were Witherspoon ever to encounter something genuinely weird, she wouldn’t like it one bit.
Anyway, the flip side to this cynicism is that Witherspoon sells an awful lot of books, for which we must, of course, be grateful, and here she is in the New York Times this week talking about her mission to save publishing, and feminism. “It needs to be optimistic,” says Witherspoon of her book picks. “It needs to be shareable. Do you close this book and say: ‘I know exactly who I want to give it to?’” Do you like to read it in a onesie and upload the photo to Instagram? Do you think books can be inspiring without being “optimistic”? Does Witherspoon make you want to put your head through a wall?
Obviously, if I’m ever in a position to have Witherspoon select a book I have written for her book club or any other purpose, I will take pains to have these remarks expunged from the internet and deny I ever made them, before her researchers can say “due diligence”.
Wednesday
Gerard Depardieu, that old rogue, was involved in a resolutely retro fracas in a cafe in Rome this week, where, according to witnesses, he punched a paparazzo in the face. The singular detail here is that, while one might be surprised to hear that, at 75, Depardieu is still in the photographer-smacking game, the snapper he smacked was 79 – Rino Barillari, the “king of paparazzo”. The entire episode was witnessed, meanwhile, by Gianni Riotta, a columnist for La Repubblica, who was enjoying a coffee at the legendary Harry’s Bar, as Italian columnists must, and who offered what we must assume was a finely observed witness statement to the police.
A lawyer for Magda Vavrusova, Depardieu’s female companion, described a chain of events triggered when Barillari, after ignoring repeated requests to stop taking photos, “violently pushed” her, whereupon Depardieu had intervened and “fallen and slid on to” him. According to the Italian columnist, Depardieu had fallen and slid on to Barillari so many times that there was “a lot of blood” on the Via Veneto. Eccezionale!
Thursday
The first full day of election campaigning saw Rishi Sunak visit a biscuit factory in Derbyshire, before stopping by a brewery in Wales for a quick gaffe with the lads about football. You might remember that excruciating moment during the 2008 US presidential election campaign when Katie Couric, then a CBS News anchor, asked Sarah Palin what newspapers she read, to which Palin replied, “all of them; any of them that have been in front of me over all these years”. With similar, almost heart-rending desperation, Sunak asked workers at the brewery in Barry if they were looking forward to “all the football”, only to learn that Wales hadn’t qualified for the Euros – a news flash about which he shrewdly decided not to ask any follow-ups.
Friday
Details are still coming out about the horrific experience of being aboard the Singapore Airlines plane this week that hit extreme turbulence. As in any disaster, one wonders how one might react in similar circumstances, a query into which, to a very minor degree, I gained insight this week. As severe weather in the US caused havoc across the country, I travelled north of New York on a train that, plowing into a flash flood, seemed to buck on the tracks, before screeching to a halt as the lights went out. In light of this brief experience, my fantasy of “extremely calm and admirable” in a crisis has, sadly, had to be replaced by something much more squealy and undignified.
