29.04.2020

I texted a German friend, “looks like covid’s killed more Londoners than your grandparents.”

Note, this makes me wonder if covid is masculine or feminine in German, they’re weird about that. A girl, das Mädchen, is ‘it’ for example, but a table, der Tisch, is ‘he’. They’re probably debating that as we speak. Herr Covid oder Dame Virus?

Note 2.0 – yes I know how tasteless that is.

Woke up to distant sirens again. It’s Ramadan so the quiet here has intensified which means more or less the only thing you hear is sirens and helicopters, and bird song. The news isn’t good either, looks like we have a higher death toll than the Blitz. The government downgraded the threat of coronavirus so they didn’t have to abide by their own regulations, they fiddled the numbers of protective equipment by doing things like counting each individual glove, rather than pairs or boxes of gloves, counting paper towels etc. And British Airways is making 12,000 people redundant, even though there is a government backed furlough scheme. With that background the newspapers and tv news seems like it’s on another planet, I can’t be bothered to dig out examples, but believe me, it’s appalling, on top of that the FTSE100 is now at a 7 week high.

The other day I said capitalism was a Ponzi scheme, and thinking about the disconnect between the real economy and the financial market, it’s hard to deny. Two of the red flags of a Ponzi scheme are, according to the US Securities and Exchange Commission are high investment returns with little or no risk and overly consistent returns we’re seeing both of those and arguable a third, secretive or complex strategies. To quote Tim and Eric’s Zone Theory, “It’s a pyramid scheme that works!”

There was an article in yesterdays Tribune, headed The Slow Death of Modern Journalism, which essentially lays out the way they, as did the government and more or less every other business, responded to falling turnover and productivity over the last ten years, not by cutting dividends or changing business model, but by cutting staff, cutting costs, making people do more for less, chasing clickbate rather than real stories. That’s part of why we’re being so let down I think, most journalism is just PR and plagiarism.

“…it became clearer and clearer, year after year, that money from digital advertising would never replace cover prices or subscriptions.

Did media bosses change their strategy when its failure was stamped in size 48 font? No. Instead they did what all good capitalists do: they fired workers to save dividends and told survivors to work harder and longer to cover the losses.”

We watched a film last night called Official Secrets, about Katherine Gun, the translator who leaked documents proving the US government was attempting to blackmail UN ambassadors into voting in favour of the illegal Iraq War. The dodgy reporting practices and out of touch editors in the film seemed like crusaders for truth compared to what we have today.

Now government ministers just won’t speak to media organisations that actually question them.

I’m still waiting for my hospital job. I’ve done all the paper work, and keep chasing them up but still don’t have a day to come in. It must be chaos. They’ve said they’ll get back to me today (again). Have to wait and hope.

In slightly better news I’ve managed to furlough myself from my ltd company, so I get a few quid from that, but not very much at all.

The mice are back. I caught another one the other day. I’m thinking of getting something like bombers or fighter aces used to have painted on their planes, or the back of their leather jackets, denoting how many bombing runs they’ve been on, only I would get a block of cheese or a mouse tattooed on my arm for everyone I catch.

This battle was shorter and more brutal than the others. I’m no longer timid. I'm ruthless, I see an opportunity and I pounce. Like they say about killing, after the first time it’s easy. I heard this fucker in the kitchen when I was reading, so I crept in, set off an incendiary illumination device (turned the light on), and saw my adversary crouching behind the pestle and mortar. I denied it cover and pursued with intent. It sprang out on to the kitchen floor, I took the initiative and pounced. Unfortunately, I think I hurt it a bit, because my Tupperware box just pinned it to the ground at first and it squeaked away. I kept my cool though, and moved the box for a clean capture. I inspected the creature on transit to the flowerbeds and it seemed ok, no serious damage anyway. The shorter battle was probably a blessing. And I think it’s better to be caught by me than a glue trap or some other atrocity.

I like to think there’s some honour between me and the mice. Like the fighter pilots and sea captains of the first world war, who downed the plane, not the pilot, I hunt to capture not to kill. Maybe one day they’ll return the favour.

I resealed anywhere I thought the mice could get in and hoped it would be the end of it, this morning though, I found more mouse shit.

The mice problem must be because all the restaurants and pubs are closed. I read a story in the Guardian about all the employees made homeless and it’s really heart breaking. In normal times, being made homeless is bad enough, but there are places to wash, get food, and sit and talk inside, but now all of that is gone. And as harsh as it sounds, most homeless people have a bit of a taste for it before they are full time on the road, and there are enough experienced homeless people to give them advice, but now, there are thousands of people who suddenly find themselves homeless for the first time without warning.

Apparently all the hotels who were supposed to put the homeless up are fed up of it now, and I believe the homeless population has rocketed with so many people being kicked out of precarious restaurant jobs, and uber jobs, combined with unscrupulous landlords, which most of them are, and they’re on the streets. It’s not unusual to see people in tents or sleeping under canal bridges, but I’ve started seeing bedding in new places, in the bushes in the park where I walk my dog for example. The other thing, is all the shops and cafes that would give the homeless left overs at the end of the day are gone, as are all the people who would normally buy them coffees, give them change, chat to them. London is a cold, hard place, but Londoners, like anyone else, really do take care of people. Now more people than ever need more help than ever, and there’s fewer people to provide it.

Apparently over 50,000 people have applied for farm jobs. My mum grew up on a farm and picked potatoes every summer, according to her it’s incredibly hard work. I imagine it would be quite fun if you’re young and healthy, but if you’re a bit older, used to a sedentary job, maybe not so much.

Not long ago, I had a job that took into kitchens all across London, so I know a lot of the people who must be on the streets now. The stereotype that head chefs are mad, often shouty, is generally true (I’m thinking of one manic 7 foot Lithuanian who would sometimes pay for orders in cash, wads of 50s that he’d say were fake and you’d never know if he was joking), but then so are kitchen porters. From my experience working in and with restaurants, it’s generally the floor managers who are arseholes.

Some of my favourite colleagues I ever worked with were all the Bangladeshis at Yo Sushi (I was the only Brit, as is quite often the case in these jobs), who still message me occasionally. People like the old cockney who was head chef at Wilton’s on Jermyn Street (where resided Isaac Newton, Aleister Crowley and the famous highwayman William Plunkett). Wilton’s is, I believe, the oldest continuously running restaurant in London, it opened as an oyster stall in 1742 and today is one of the most prestigious establishments in the city. It’s the kind of posh that doesn’t need to look its nose down at anyone, where you know they treat the staff well and they’re proud to work there. More tradition than patrician. The head chef is an ex boozer from Hoxton, who found salvation and structure in cooking, became one of the best, and now takes in other lost souls and trains them up. Then there’s the writer and actor I know who worked his way up to shift manager at Ottolenghi, the friendly, but brisk Nigerian lady who ran the larders at Balans, who took all the stock centrally at the Old Compton Street branch and distributed it around London from there.

I never really got to know the front of house stuff, was never really me. The immaculate French, Spanish and north African waiters of Mayfair used to always hold doors open and stop for a quick gag, but I loved it behind the line, where everyone knew everyone else had an equal part running the place, so they called even the delivery guy ‘chef’ or if not ‘bro’.  Even the surely pot wash at Thomas’s in the basement of Burberry’s in Mayfair, older guy, I don’t think spoke much English, but always gave me a nod and a “yes boss”. There really was a sense of pride in working hard, in the better restaurants anyway. Even if it wasn’t your ideal gig, it was a way toward something better.

Unfortunately my own boss didn't share this level of respect, but that's a story for another time. 

I’m sure one or two of them were dicks to me, and yes, there was often quite a lot of shouting, but on the whole there was an understanding and respect that comes from knowing you’re all in the same boat. You’d get shouted at if you fucked up, so you learn to get out the way, and you’d laugh about it after. That’s better than disingenuous niceness up front but backstabbing behind the scenes, which is the MO of ad agencies.

The majority of these people are from other countries, so they won’t have family who can put them up. They can’t get back to their own countries either because there are travel bans in most instances, and they have no money. You can’t save if you’re on the kind of wages most of these people are, especially not with London rent. These are people who work hard, take pride in what they do, always pay their taxes, kept the city running, now they have nothing. They’re hungry, sleeping outside among criminals and robbers, can’t wash and there’s not much food, not even any cardboard to sleep on. No one deserves to be homeless, but these people least of all.

I know the restaurant industry has a lot of ex addicts working there, who managed to stay on the straight and narrow with the help of their jobs. It’s terrible to think about how they will end up.

So when you see the FTSE100 on a seven week high and the Federal Reserve giving billionaires billions more, and most of the papers raving about what a great job Boris Johnson is doing, you’ve got to ask yourself, what the fuck is going on?

Also the US government just released official footage of confirmed UFOs. That's like the ultimate dead cat, TELL THEM ABOUT THE ALIENS but no one even noticed very much. 

I found another slightly odd magical curiosity walking the dog yesterday. What seems like a rodent coffin left among human headstones. I tried to open it to see, but it was sealed. I gave it a quick shake to see if anything was inside, there was more of a thump, than a rattle, which indicated the contents had an organic nature. It said Pixie on top. It could have been a distant cousin of the mice in my kitchen. I felt a bit bad for disturbing it's afterlife, but, it was pretty weird. Just flush it down the loo bro. 

And check out this hair cut. 

Oh and one last thing, the door, or portal into the magic square has been closed, but the perimeter has all been made 'porous'. Some of the wood that was used as corner stones has been burned too. I don't know what's going on with that.