Monday
My life is now basically a series of cancellations. Last week I had to miss the launch of Elizabeth Day’s life-affirming new book, How to Fail, which is unmissable for anyone who is haunted by the idea they invariably get life wrong. Today I had to miss the party for Damian Barr’s compelling, compassionate new novel, You Will Be Safe, a multi-layered book that brings together the Boer war and present-day South Africa. Next week, I will be missing Spurs’ quarter-final Champions League game against Manchester City. Though that could well turn out to be a blessing. Call it the Brexit effect. Twice, the Commons held late votes during which it could find nothing on which to agree. On Wednesday, I will be in Brussels as the prime minister tries to convince the EU to give her another homework extension. Brexit has long since messed with my psyche. I wake up every morning with a tension headache and by the time that has passed I’m on to the full-blown anxiety that comes with the realisation that absolutely no one in parliament has a clue how any of this is going to pan out and somehow I’ve got to try to be funny about it. Nor is sleep much relief as my dreams are mostly nightmares. Now I also feel like I have been reduced to a series of bodily functions that does the occasional bit of typing. The UK may be struggling to leave the EU but Brexit has been entirely successful in separating me from myself.
Tuesday
Another day of chaos. Just as I thought I was in with a chance of getting home in daylight and possibly going to the gym, we get told that the prime minister will be giving a TV statement from Downing Street. So everyone in Westminster stopped whatever they had been doing and concentrated on Theresa May offering the Labour leader a spot of work experience as prime minister in exchange for him sharing the blame for screwing up Brexit. Still, the bad news for lobby journalists was good news for some. Not least Dominic Cummings, the former Vote Leave campaign director. Thanks to May’s intervention, no one bothered to report that the Commons had spent an hour and a half debating why Cummings was such a childish pain in the arse. Despite being summoned on several occasions to appear before the digital, culture, media and sport select committee – an invitation that even a rogue’s gallery of Rupert Murdoch, Philip Green and Mike Ashley couldn’t get out of – Cummings told them to sod off on each occasion. He would only come if there was a new select committee set up just for him. Needless to say this didn’t go down too well with most MPs, though Cummings did still have his supporters among some Brexiter MPs. Michael Fabricant suggested that despite being the former special adviser to Michael Gove and one of the best-connected men in Westminster, Cummings was just an out-of-his depth ingenue. A poor boy from a poor family. George Eustice tried comparing him to the mother of a murdered child whose phone had been hacked. Seriously. Amazing to think these two MPs were the best their constituencies had to offer.
Wednesday
Sometimes even a sucker catches an even break. The upside of Theresa and Jeremy exchanging awkward glances across the Downing Street table meant I could after all get to see Spurs’ first game at their new stadium after nearly two soulless years at Wembley. That had been another date I had expected to be cancelled. Walking up Tottenham High Road it felt like a coming home with all the same shops and cafes still there and the first sight of the stadium was breathtaking. An enormous Death Star that dominated the entire neighbourhood. The inside of the ground was every bit as impressive as I had been led to believe. Not the facilities – I wasn’t too bothered about them as I don’t go to football for the on-tap Diet Coke – but for the giant wall of the South Stand and the proximity to the pitch. It felt almost as intimate as the old White Hart Lane. Almost. Because even as I was enjoying the new stadium part of me was overwhelmed with nostalgia for the old one. Yes, it was too small and a bit knackered and Spurs have now laid a claim to the big league, but I rather liked things the way they were. The old ground contained years of memories that went well beyond football that I didn’t want to let go, and I don’t feel ready to commit to a new relationship with the Death Star. Give it time, I guess. The best part was meeting up with old friends – a group of us had all made sure we got season tickets next to each other – and having a good moan about Spurs being so Spursy. Which they were. After a nervy first half in which the players looked a bit clueless, it was entirely appropriate that the first goal in the new ground came via a large deflection. Start as you mean to go on.
Thursday
After passing through the Commons by one vote the day before, Yvette Cooper’s bill to force the government to request an extension to prevent a no-deal Brexit – the Labour MP is this week’s prime minister – began its passage through the Lords. It was not an edifying spectacle, as a hardcore of about a dozen elderly Tory Brexiter peers – many of whom are still fighting the same battle with Europe they were fighting while serving in Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet during the 1980s – railed against the “tyranny” of elected democracy as they tried to kill the passage of the bill in a series of lengthy filibusters. Prize for the most hypocritical intervention of the day went to the climate-change denying, no-deal fanatic, hereditary peerMatt Ridley. As Sky News’s Faisal Islam observed, it was a bit much for Ridley to complain about it being unprecedented for a bill to be passed in a day, when the Lords had to do just that during the financial crisis when Northern Rock – of which he was chair during its collapse – was nationalised to protect investors. Later that evening I bumped into Peter Lilley, who had also spent the day trying to talk out the Cooper bill, in the Newsnight green room, where I was due to do the paper review. Lilley declared the day to have been a total success, claiming it had never been his intention to block the bill, only to ensure an extra day of debate on Monday to allow their lordships more time to deliberate. If only Lilley had just said that in the Lords earlier in the day, he could have saved everyone a lot of bother, as it had looked for all the world as if his prime objective had been to keep alive the prospect of a no-deal Brexit. It’s not just the winners who get to rewrite history.
Friday
It can be a bit of a downer when colleagues describe some people of roughly my age as boring, old has-beens. But then it’s hard to disagree, as the people they are talking about invariably are boring, old has-beens, whose world view hasn’t changed in 40 years. Despite this, the only recent brush with ageism that I can recall was the young woman on the tube insisting on giving up her seat for me, even though it must have been obvious I was doing my best to ignore her. Judging from a recent report in the journal Lancet Public Health, which found that people who suffer from depression, coronary heart disease and arthritis are more likely to experience ageism, it appears I may have been lucky. As far as I know I don’t have a heart condition – my friend John Sutherland recently steered me to a heart rate app that confirms my average heart rate of 60 beats per minute with a healthy rhythm – but I do tick the boxes for depression and arthritis. There again, I have done for years. My mental health has always been decidedly iffy and I first developed arthritis soon after my first knee operation in my early 20s. Though perhaps this could explain why I have escaped too much ageism. Having always appeared a bit knackered right from the off, most people have long since factored my decrepitude into their dealings with me.
Digested week, digested: Après moi, le déluge
