Sick-room round up

Typing with the curtains closed

Day five post-eye surgery, and it feels as if I’ve been punched in the face. I can certainly see better already; the frosted glass effect is gone, and everything is whiter and cleaner on my right side. I will still need to wear glasses, but I can’t get a prescription for 4 weeks. It’s a bit awkward now because I can’t read small text anymore with my old glasses, and I had a half-hour comic episode yesterday trying to pay a bill, which involved using my main computer display, my mobile phone screen and the payee’s incoherent app - my bank app (even more incoherent) and referencing the small text on my bank card. I’m obviously very happy I had the procedure, but I’m not enjoying the process. I have a pair of prescription sunglasses, but they have those lenses that don’t work with LED screens, and I can’t work in front of a computer for more than half an hour at a time. I’m spending all day indoors with the curtains closed. Having a small piece of silicone in my eye where the faulty lens used to be still seems like science fiction to me.

Me. Live pictures from my house.

Yesterday I worked up the enthusiasm to send an angry email to someone who hasn’t paid an invoice from last year. They responded with a long email about how difficult their life and business are at the moment. It went on and on. Most of it was focused on the fallout of their bad decisions. Honesty - I’m past caring - I have bills to pay, and I can tell you that he is much more solvent than I am.

I had a few more pointless and frustrating house viewings - one guy who cheerfully admitted he hadn’t bothered looking at any of the details or photographs on the listing, immediatly told me it wasn’t anything like what he was looking for and then made me listen to him whinge for almost 40 minutes about how he had to take a big price cut on his own house and the general state of the property market - I coudn’t get rid of him. Another woman came and brought her ENTIRE extended family - I had people simultaneously in every room - it was like being a tour guide, and obviously, she had no real interest in the house. The market here is so depressed now that there is pretty much no real point in trying to sell the house anyway.

Sisu. Nazi’s bad. Obviously,

I watched Sisu last night - it’s on C4 streaming now, I’d been meaning to catch up on this one for a while. I suppose I enjoyed it; it’s very well done and beautifully shot and edited. It also succeeds in building a decent narrative with little if any dialogue. I found the absurd, gory violence a bit off-putting - as I get older, I find it harder and harder to find amusement in seeing bodies blown to pieces (even nazis). There is too much of that on the news already. One thing - we (meaning here in the UK) never went through the horror of occupation in the same way Europe did, so we can’t really tap into that multi-generational trauma. The film’s main villain is played by the excellent Norwegian actor Aksel Hennie, who most people will recognise from The Martian - but he earlier starred in a superb thriller called Headhunters (2011) as a man conned by the man whom he conned, and then has to con back - it’s a deliciously clever, complicated thriller (also stars Nikolaj Coster-Waldau pre Game of Thrones).

Headhunters is a FANTASTIC film

We had the local elections last week and, as anticipated, I now live in a small pocket of overwhelmingly green councillors - surrounded by the scourge of Reform. For years, the local council was held hostage to Labour and Conservative bickering and infighting with little actual benefit to the population, about 2 years ago, it accidentally fell to the Greens, mostly because the main parties had collapsed into pointless and silly splinter groups. Suddenly, everything calmed down, and the council just got on with things. It’s not unusual to hear people say things like “aren’t the binmen good now?” That’s all it takes.

Surrounded by the teal terror or Reform, the tories and labour oblitterated by an avalance of stupid

“It’s WAR”

I try not to think about the mentality of people who voted for Reform. I’m also trying not to think of the artificial chaos in Westminster. The media have a lot to answer for. The constant obligation they have to update us minute by minute with more manufactured news is not just exhausting, it’s fundamentally dishonest. I often think of that Chris Morris sketch where a simple TV interview descends into hysterical chaos - this is EXACTLY where we are now. I blame people, too. Back when Biden was US president, I used to follow an account that listed, DAILY, everything that the Department of Pete Buttigieg was doing. Building roads and bridges, improving infrastructure, investing in jobs and green energy - taking America forward responsibly and with people at its core. Not that it mattered. People still voted for that monster.

There is nobody in the Labour Party who would make a better PM than Starmer at this point in time - and certainly nobody who could win an election - the media are handing the keys to Number 10 to Reform. At least it gives them something to write about; it must be a very exciting time for them. I like Andy Burnham and voted for him to lead Labour when I was a member - but this is not the right way to do it.

“Son, you’re missing the point - I get to write heavy-hitting think pieces for my digital subscribers about how the world fell, who was to blame, how we could have stopped it, what tastes better - mealworms or cockroaches, which suncream blots out radiation and I’ve even been nominated to the Laura Kuenssberg award for that interview I did in Nigel Farage’s bunker, stop complaining - it’s just a news cycle, not the end of the world”