Monday
For most ordinary people who go away for the weekend or live a long way from their place of work, the options are limited. Either leave home late on the Sunday night or get up early on Monday in order to be at work by 9am or 9.30am.
They do things rather differently in Westminster, where proceedings don’t start on Mondays till 2.30pm in the afternoon to save MPs from Scotland and the north of England the inconvenience of taking the 7am train or plane.
It could be time for an overhaul; were parliament to start sitting at 11am, it would make a huge difference. Not least because Mondays are frequently one of the busiest days of the week in the Commons as there are frequently two or three urgent questions (UQs) on matters that have arisen over the weekend, as well as the odd ministerial statement to fit in after the usual hour-long session of departmental questions.
This Monday proceedings overran so badly, thanks to two UQs – one of which was completely pointless as the Treasury sent out a junior minister, John Glen, who was quite happy to admit that he knew absolutely nothing about anything and that MPs would be better off asking the prime minister later in the afternoon – and two statements from the prime minister and the foreign secretary, that all further business was postponed, which meant that the important offensive weapons bill got shelved.
Tuesday
From the sublime … On the day that near miraculous images of the world’s oldest shipwreck – an ancient Greek merchant ship lying at the bottom of the Black Sea – were made public, the Australian mining millionaire Clive Palmer announced he was planning to revive his idea of recreating a lifesize, fully functioning replica of the Titanic.
Just who might want to sign up for a cruise on a liner that was the last word in luxury more than 100 years ago and is best remembered for having too few lifeboats and sinking on its maiden voyage is another matter.
Palmer doesn’t have the best nose for potential tourist attractions – his “Palmersaurus” dinosaur park in Queensland was officially rated as crap by at least a third of all visitors – but it does make you wonder if there is a market in travel that ends in almost certain death.
Take a cruise on the Mary Rose and wind up in the mud at the bottom of the Solent. Or fly across the Atlantic on the Hindenburg. Then again, perhaps not.
Wednesday
The Booker judges’ rather half-hearted endorsement of their prize-winning novel, Milkman by the Northern Irish author Anna Burns, as “challenging” doesn’t appear to have put off readers. Or at least people who like the idea of the book enough to buy it and make a start: you can never get an accurate figure of the attrition rate of those who give up without getting to the end.
In the week after Milkman won the Booker, Burns’s sales went up from just under 1,000 copies a week to nearly 9,500. It seems that either readers are suckers for punishment or they have a different idea of what constitutes challenging to the judges. I’ve only read the first few pages but, apart from there being no names and long parentheses, it seems to skip along quite nicely.
I’ve certainly had a lot more trouble with some of the classics. Henry James’s The Golden Bowl was a struggle from start to finish, the sections on freemasonry in War and Peace are unreadable and I gave up on The Lord of the Rings after four pages. You can have too many hobbits.
Even supposedly undemanding books can be challenging in their way. Frederick Forsyth is often called the Master Storyteller but the hours I spent reading his latest book, The Fox, are hours I will never get back. Avoid.
Thursday
Gordon Ramsay has touchingly spoken of how he has taken to wearing his son’s clothes to help cope with empty nest syndrome. I know the feeling well. A month after our daughter left home to go to university, my wife and I got a dog.
Seven years later, that remains one of the best decisions we have ever made. Since then, our son has also left – and come back – but I can’t say I’ve ever worn his clothes. Though he has been known to appropriate mine.
But one item of clothing does have a particular connection for me. Nearly 20 years ago, my father died after goinginto hospital for what he had hoped would be routine bypass surgery. We were all devastated and went though the process of collecting up his belongings from his bedside in a state of semi-numb autopilot.
I found I had come home with my dad’s anorak. A truly hideous pale-green car coat that he had almost certainly picked up in a sale. And yet it somehow summed up my dad. Unflashy, slightly tatty but utterly reliable.
It was a cruel irony that someone as big-hearted as him turned out to have such a weak heart. It goes without saying that I’ve never worn it, but it’s been hanging in my wardrobe ever since, and will remain there long after my own clothes have been carted off to the charity shop.
Friday
Tomorrow my daughter gets married to the same man for the second time this year. As she hasn’t got divorced in between times, the more legally savvy among you might conclude this is impossible.
But Anna is adamant that the second wedding is merely a continuation of the first and it’s usually advisable not to contradict her. The first wedding took place in the kitchen of her husband’s family home in Minneapolis and was rather a last-minute affair: my wife and I were given about 10 days’ notice and had to hastily book flights to the US.
This time round, in the UK, promises to be a rather bigger affair, with her American in-laws having flown into London a week early for various very lovely pre-wedding celebrations, though what actually happens on the day itself has still to be finalised. If Anna and her husband, Robert, have a fixed plan, they haven’t got round to telling us.
So far all we know is that our son, Robbie, and eight of his friends have built a remarkable octagonal pergola (temporary, I hope) in the middle of the garden, under which Anna and Robert will exchange vows (so far unwritten) for a second time in front of just immediate family, before moving on to a much larger party in a pub in south London.
What I can be certain of is that it promises to be a very emotional day. I’m still not entirely sure where the 26 years between when she nearly died at birth and now have gone. I cried at her first wedding and I will cry at her second. Whatever she does and wherever she goes, she can take all my love with her.
Digested week: Brexit: The Ultimate Non-Disclosure Agreement
