Monday
As so often with long-running series, the season finale of Line of Duty was far less convincing and engaging that its earlier episodes. It felt like it was more interested in setting up the next series than tying up the loose ends in the current one as it raced towards an improbable conclusion. During the last 20 minutes alone the mysterious Balaclava Man was revealed as some unnamed lowlife gangster who had never appeared before and was in any case just one of many Balaclava Men; DCI Roz Huntley finally admitted she had whacked Tim Ifield but omitted to explain why she had spent so much effort trying to frame her husband; several key informants faded out of the script; and almost every police officer in the programme seemed to have a surname that began with H. By the end of the episode I was left feeling confused and a bit cheated. I’ve no idea what writer Jed Mercurio has lined up for series five, but it’s beginning to look as if the only logical conclusion is that every single copper in the force is bent and that the finale will involve Steve Arnott, Kate Fleming and Ted Hastings taking it in turns to unmask one another.
Tuesday
The solitary red-winged North American blackbird that made history by being the first of its species to turn up in the British Isles may be wondering how the hell he is going to get home, but he’s made a lot of birdwatchers very happy. Dozens have hired planes specially to fly up to Orkney to see the visitor for themselves. I admire their passion. And their good fortune. For 10 years or so I collected King George V booklet panes. For the uninitiated, these are the complete panes of stamps removed from stamp booklets. It was a hobby that helped to drive me insane because though half of those issued were quite common and readily available, the other half were never anywhere to be seen despite all the catalogues and price guides suggesting they were as easy to find. No stamp dealer could ever explain to me why this was so. The only logical explanation was that all the missing panes had all been broken up and their stamps used, as intended, for postage, but this didn’t come close to explaining why so many other panes had been kept intact for over 80 years. In the end I gave up and sold my collection. It was the stamps or me. But there was a time when I would have happily flown to Orkney to glimpse a booklet pane I’d never seen.
Wednesday
Just hours before Theresa May declared war on the EU outside Downing Street, she let out two of her generals, Philip Hammond and David Davis, to take part in their first election campaign event. Normally the prime minister doesn’t trust anyone but her to stay on message, and you can see why. Though Hammond and Davis did both manage to do what was required by saying “strong and stable” and “coalition of chaos” several times, things didn’t go entirely to plan. First they posed for photographs in front of an election poster featuring Jeremy Corbyn, a nuclear bomb and a slogan that read: “No bombs for our army. One big bombshell for your family.” Except Hammond managed to block out the Labour leader, leaving Davis to stand in front of a bomb and next to a slogan that now read: “Hell for your family.” Then a Labour supporter managed to infiltrate the event and hand out briefing papers to the assembled media, explaining why spending money on things like social care and nursery places wasn’t necessarily a bad idea as Hammond had suggested and that Labour’s plans were fully costed. Bizarrely, a Conservative event with no opposition MPs had turned into one of Labour’s most successful events of their campaign so far.
Thursday
I’ve only once seen an athlete break a world record. That was back in 2005 when I took my daughter to Crystal Palace. We were sitting in the stand by the back straight, right next to where the Russian athlete Yelena Isinbayeva became the first woman to clear 5m in the pole vault. It was utterly mesmerising and I count myself lucky to have been there. So I can only begin to imagine how pissed off Paula Radcliffe, Jonathan Edwards and Colin Jackson must be that European Athletics has put forward proposals to strip them of their world records simply because they were set prior to 2005, the year when the International Association of Athletics Federations first began saving athletes’ blood and urine samples for testing. The plan has the full backing of Seb Coe, the IAAF president, who is keen to be seen doing anything to make the sport appear clean. I can’t help feeling that Coe might do more for his sport’s reputation if, rather than penalising innocent athletes, he was a little more open himself about how he has failed to notice the widespread bribery, doping and corruption that has happened under his watch as a senior administrator of the sport.
Friday
It’s sod’s law that the moment I put the Digested Read on hold for the duration of the election campaign in order to give myself more time to panic about being in the wrong place, several books start arriving that might have been ideal candidates. My favourite is Ivanka Trump’s Women Who Work, which begins with the disclosure that she will be taking a leave of absence from her many jobs while her father is in the White House. The book begins with Ivanka having a dark night of the soul on a walking holiday in Patagonia. Should she stay working as a New York estate agent or leave to join her father and brother at the Trump Organization? After several nanoseconds, Ivanka opts to leave. She writes: “It turns out that soul-searching journey [eight miles in Patagonia] led me right where I belonged. Today, I’m an executive vice-president at the Trump Organization, co-founder of Trump Hotels and Scion and founder of my eponymous fashion brands.” Who would have guessed that having a billionaire Dad could have been so handy? But Ivanka also wants to reach out to the little women and advises them to marry the right partner and make time for regular massages. She omits to say what to do if your boss is a man who likes to grab women by the pussy.
Digested week digested
“It’s war.” “Not the Germans again?” “’Fraid so.”
