The Bluestocking, vol 47: Banter, pyjamas and the Sign of Wood
Hello,
This was parliament's end of term week. One of the weird things about Westminster is how much it's like some Olde Worlde idea of public school - "chapel cards", stained glass windows, deep carpets, endless tiny corridors, huge portions of stodge. You can see why Nigel Farage is so upset he never got in.
And therefore it also really feels like a school summer holiday during recess, in a way that most other professions would no longer recognise. You ask someone for a coffee in mid-July and they ask how you feel about meeting in September. (Provided one or other of you isn't off at a party conference). The sooner it moves to Coventry the better. I'm on Week in Westminster tomorrow on Radio 4 at 11am reviewing the political year and listening to Peter Oborne describe a vast number of people as "ghastly".
This week, I've written about a plan to radically redefine the legal attitude to gender (essentially agreeing with the modern idea that it's purely about an innate sense of self, with no material ramifications). It was one of those pieces where two opposing sets of people both hated it for completely different reasons, but luckily they found each other in my Twitter mentions. I live in hope that two of them will fall in love and name their child after me.
The Eeriest Novel I Know
It is Midwinter Eve, four days short of Christmas and one short of the 11th birthday of a boy named Will Stanton. Far to the north a snowstorm is brewing, and things are not as they “normally” are in the landscape around. Animals are restless, rooks clatter from the treetops to swirl blackly above the fields. Local people have seen these signs before—they know what is coming. Warnings are issued: “This night will be bad,” an old farmer tells Will, “and tomorrow will be beyond imagining.” And so it is.
Robert Macfarlane on the sense of place in Susan Cooper's Dark Is Rising series. I can still remember walking around school holding this book up to my face because I wanted to finish it so much. Yes, they are children's books but they are so beautiful in their evocation of landscape and seasons. Go on, it's the summer, you can definitely read a kid's book. Either start with Over Sea, Under Stone or just dive straight into the second and best book, The Dark Is Rising.
Chaser: this guy programmed a neural net to generate English place names. Writers of whimsical novels, look no further, there be some rum affairs going down in Farton Green Pear End. I blame them outsiders from Colon-in Mead.
Inside Team Theresa (Times)
A month into working at No 10 and it was dawning on all of us what the future might look like. It was grim. Fiona Hill and Nick Timothy, the other chief of staff, both of whom resigned following this year's general election, ran No 10 in one way: you were either with them or against them, and if you dared question anything then you were frozen out. Timothy was the smart, talented one - he read and commented on all his paperwork, and his strategic brain was often brilliant, but every now and then a very angry man would surface and his aggressive swearing would be inexcusable. I felt he let power go to his head. Hill would be volatile and unpredictable. I thought her days revolved around an enemy and how she was going to do them in. Some days I was the enemy. I still have no idea why.
I once stopped her going to join a bunch of political journalists at the back of the plane on the way home from a foreign trip, dressed head to toe in flannelette pyjamas and two bottles of red wine down. In hindsight, I should have bloody well let her go.
I think Katie Perrior might live to regret having written such a warts and all account of her time as director of communications, but that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy reading it.
The age of banter
“Everyone’s got a thing in the group,” Ellis said, as we walked from one bar to the next. “One guy, he’s not even that ugly, we say he looks like a Peperami. Tyson’s got this mole on his face, it’s like a Coco Pop, so you’ve got a Coco Pop on your face. I looked like Harry Potter when I was a kid, so they call me Potter, that’s my nickname. Every single one of us has something. So you – you’ve got Chinese eyes. You’re Chinese.”
For the record, I didn’t think this was OK, but coming after such a harmless litany, it didn’t seem malicious enough to confront. Of course, tacit endorsement is what makes such offensive epithets a commonplace, and so it troubles me that it made me feel mysteriously welcome, just as it had when John punched me lightly in the balls when I arrived.
I think I missed this at the time, but Archie Bland is a consistently funny, insightful writer and the stuff about the bonding power of saying awful things was really interesting here.
Random thing: I've become mildly obsessed with Mark Zuckerberg's I AM HUMON UNDERSTAND HUMON PROBLEMS tour of all 50 states of America. Pixelated Boat is doing sterling work capturing the weird vibe.
Update: I listened to the Longform podcast with David Grann in the end. It was great! I'm now definitely going to read his Killers of the Flower Moon.
Recommendation: I was team captain (obv) for a go at the Crystal Maze in London this week. It was AMAZING, even if I did bruise myself quite heavily during a task that involved rolling around in a barrel.
Opposite of recommendation: I regret to inform you that Queen Anne at the Haymarket was not as good as I hoped it would be. Full review in the mag this week.
A+ tweet:
Guest gif: I watched Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation last weekend, and you can't argue with someone who can turn a bass flute into a sniper rifle.
See you next week . . .