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The disastrous two months of Theresa May continued, with her responding to the disaster in her capital with jaw dropping ineptitude. I am not even being partisan. Two months ago I would have reluctantly conceded she was the best choice (admittedly from a shit-show of politicians) to lead our country (as much as I wanted her to flip-flop back to her original position on Brexit. But by the end of the day I was struggling to think of a worse person in the country to lead the country and even idly wondering if it might be better to go back to having a monarchy for an interim period, until we could find somebody who would lead the country and have the country’s best interests at heart.
At around about 6pm on a hot Friday evening it even felt like her reluctance to just meet and talk to the people who have suffered from this entirely avoidable accident might lead to violence or revolution. Even so I went to the cinema. If terrorism isn’t going to stop us having fun then revolutionaries can take a hike too. However justified they might be. And personally I was angry enough to think, good luck to them. This whole thing has been handled so badly. If May had turned up the next morning offering £5 million and being prepared to listen to people and display a scintilla of empathy or emotion - I don’t need tears, just anything beyond hiding in churches and endlessly spouting from a script and refusing to answer questions, resorting to soundbites (was the election not enough of a hint that people aren’t really into that?) - then I think she might have been able to make people forget that she no longer seemed Prime Ministerial. But the last two months feels like a prank show in which someone fakes their way to a job and then reveals bit by bit that they don’t know what they’re doing. And the producers are annoyed because after all the work they’ve put in, America has done the same idea, bigger and better.
I mean really, it feels like the death of democracy right now. Hopefully it’s just the death of shit democracy designed to prop up corporations and billionaires.
We had a slightly disappointing pizza at Franco Manca - a chain I’d been looking forward to trying out, but in which my wife said her pizza tasted of soap. Her senses are heightened by the alien life form she hides inside her, but I tasted it too and even though it had all my favourite things on it, it was nasty. I had a bottle of “No Logo” beer, but they’re not fooling me. The “No Logo” thing is clearly a logo and they’ve copyrighted it too. At least have the bravery to put no label on the bottle.
The best thing about it was our waitress who affected the air of someone who had just had Sam Beckett leap into her. “Can I have the chorizo pizza please?”
“The chorizo pizza?” she asked incredulously, which made me wonder if I’d misread the menu and not only was that not actually on offer, but the restaurant was not a pizza restaurant and I’d entered an alternate Universe where pizza doesn’t exist. I honestly almost asked if I’d made a mistake, but she wrote what I had said down, presumably to be explained to her by someone in the kitchen who would hopefully know what I meant. There wasn’t that much on the menu. It can’t be that she hadn’t had a chance to learn it.
"And a bottle of lager,” I added, refusing to say the name of it because it was silly.
“Lager?” she again asked in a way that made it seem like no such drink existed.
I mean this is probably a sketch show character right (if it isn’t already). It improved my disappointing meal no end. I still ate everything. It was pizza and beer. Even bad and pretentious ones are good.
We then watched Guardians of the Galaxy 2 in a very hot cinema and as much as I enjoyed the film (it’s the only Marvel franchise that I can really get on board with as it’s smart and funny and has interesting characters- if still a few too many computer game fights in it) I was wondering if we might come out of the cinema to an overthrown London. Or at least some people smashing windows in the Westfield. But the world still existed after, even if helicopters were hovering disconcertingly above us. London life continued, though we didn’t need the helicopters to have the events of the last month hovering over us. Even though there is a lot of anger and the anger is justified, I don’t think we’re going to start smashing up our own stuff over this one. I think West London has stepped up in a positive way. And I hope we can start making the country a fairer place in the wake of all of this.
