Week 89: Queen’s still dead
The Queen is still dead. Not that you’d have expected anything else. No unexpected resurrection. And yet every radio news bulletin has led with it, as if anyone could possibly not know by now.
On one hand, I’ll be glad when that’s over. On the other, it will mean that the new set of ideologues running the country can get on with implementing whatever wicked policies they have planned, and that can’t be good news for anyone.
Except, that is, for the plan to scrap the “sugar tax” – I don’t often drink soft drinks, but when I do, I’d like them not to be revolting, which is how I find them now that they’ve all been reformulated to use artificial sweeteners instead.
I passed the Queue several times when I was out and about. It’s a strange phenomenon. There are plenty of examples of how to manage access to popular events. The reason that people are queueing day and night is that someone has decided that they should. Monarchy is all spectacle, after all, and the common people are its props.
It’s very strange living in a country where so many people not only believe that it’s normal and proper to be ruled by a family with magic blood and a diamond hat, but that you’re an extremist, a weirdo, or a member of a lunatic fringe if you don’t believe the same.
We had some specialists round to quote to improve our loft space. They’ll upgrade the insulation, put in proper flooring, add high level shelving on the trusses, and adjust the ladder so that it’s a bit easier to get up and down. That will help to keep us warm in the winter, and we’ll be able to store things more easily and more accessibly. These are both things that should improve our life.
On Friday we went to see Mono playing at the Electric Ballroom in Camden. The gig was originally scheduled for April 2021, and I bought the tickets in July 2020 in that briefly optimistic summer to have something to look forward to. It was postponed to March 2022, then to September 2022, then the venue was changed, then finally it happened!
Unfortunately, the sound quality in the venue was among the worst I’ve heard. They managed to improve it towards the end.
I had been hoping to catch the first support band, GGGOLDDD (why so many Gs and Ds? Apparently because when they were just called Gold no one could find them online), but they had to pull out due to throat trouble. The other support band, Svalbard, were a very noisy lot.
On Friday, I saw a sign of the end of the pandemic-as-social-phenomenon: a bric-a-brac stall on Deptford Market was flogging dozens of large pump bottles full of hand sanitiser. Remember when you couldn’t buy it anywhere? Remember when they made you use it everywhere? (I mostly pretended, because my dry hands can’t take that much sanitising.)
The Greenwich to Rotherhithe section of Cycleway 4 is now open and it’s a delight to ride along. I hope that the remaining section along Lower Road gets built soon.
Okinawa Day is happening this Saturday 24 September. Come and see us at the Blue Market in Bermondsey and make the stress of the preparations worth it!