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Monday
Hi, from the house of norovirus! One child down, one still standing, no community spread as far as we know, although every hour I check myself over and ask: is that nausea I’m feeling, or have I eaten too many walnuts (again)?
So far, it’s the walnuts. But we’re still inside the transmission window so there’s time! According to NHS figures released before Christmas, this year’s hospital numbers for flu are up 350% year on year and for norovirus, otherwise known as stomach flu, have risen by 86%. I can confirm from the bathroom that it is, indeed, a bad one this year, up there with food poisoning from an oyster, and that if you’re going the bowl-by-the-bed route, better make it a big bowl. (Also, if the bowl happens to be the one you use to make chicken soup in the pressure cooker, be sure that other, possibly fussier children in the house don’t see what you’re doing.)
Anyway, it’s been rough. When your child is sick you are inclined to wish that if only you could switch places you’d take on their discomfort as yours. This is true 99% of the time even when you know their distress will soon pass. I have to confess, however, that at 3am on Tuesday morning as we went through another round of Armageddon, a tiny, shamefully non-maternal thought flew through my head: yikes, I’m glad it’s not me.
Tuesday
More sick-making than norovirus – thank you – is the build-up to Donald Trump’s inauguration on Monday, but a couple of fun details leak through to lift the spirits. The first concerns in-fighting within the Trump camp. Over the weekend the rightwing website Breitbart reprinted comments made to an Italian newspaper by the erstwhile Trump ally and jailbird Steve Bannon, and what a joy they turned out to be.
Bannon, locked in a losing battle with the richest man in the world for his former boss’s attention, laid into Elon Musk as a “truly evil guy, a very bad guy”, and then hit the Maga ethnicity panic button. Why is it, mused Trump’s former chief strategist, who once invited members of the French National Front to wear accusations of racism as a “badge of honour”, that “we have South Africans, the most racist people on earth, white South Africans, we have them making any comments at all on what goes on in the United States”? In the language of his people, he then invited Musk to, “go back to South Africa”. Chef’s kiss, bravo, I couldn’t have enjoyed this outburst more.
Elsewhere, Pete Hegseth’s confirmation hearing in the Senate this week threw up an amazing snippet in the New Yorker about the aspiring US defence secretary’s drinking habits. Hegseth has admitted in the past to excessive drinking, but assures us he’s past all that now, or at least, he will be if he gets confirmed by the Senate. (I’m not sure that kind of if/when bargaining is approved by AA.) But an anonymous source – and patriot! – rats him out to the New Yorker. As recently as spring 2023, says the source, Hegseth took a breakfast meeting at Fox News in Manhattan, suggested the pair of them cross the street to a bar, ordered two gin and tonics, and then a third. It was 10am, a fact that would be sad, or poignant, or borderline impressive were it not for the fact that, if confirmed, this man will be in charge of the biggest military force in the world. Cheers!
Wednesday
Timothée Chalamet, not a threat to the world order but someone whose status as a sex symbol I have to admit I’ve always found baffling, has done it again; charmed us all stupid! In public appearances, Chalamet is conscientiously adorable, as anyone who remembers him popping up in Union Square in New York last year at a Timothée Chalamet lookalike contest can confirm. (Another explanation for this could be straight-up vanity, but let’s not be that person.)
And now Chalamet’s outdone himself by turning up to his own London premiere for the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown on a bloody Lime bike. Chalamet! You’re killing us! This enchanting example of a demigod made mortal was shared – in French, of course – on a French chatshow in which Chalamet also revealed that he was fined £65 by parking the bike in the wrong place.
As a colleague pointed out this week, “Lime’s penalty structure runs from £2 to £20, with no penalties for first-time offences. Representatives for Lambeth council, whose jurisdiction the venue falls under, have confirmed to the Guardian that they did not issue any such fine.” As transported by his own charm as the rest of humanity, it’s possible that Chalamet has tweaked the details for effect, which of course only makes the man more bewitchingly human. Oh, Chalamet!
Thursday
Here’s chef and restaurateur Rick Stein celebrating his 50th year in the business by offering customers in a range of his restaurants, including his flagship Seafood Restaurant in Padstow, Cornwall, a menu at 1975 prices. If you are already feeling bad about the march of inflation, this story will not improve things.
In 1970s Britain the rubbish piled up in the streets and the lights occasionally went out. But you could, according to Stein’s menu, order the lobster for £2.80, enjoy a seafood thermidor for £2.20 and grab starters (terrine of salmon) and desserts (apple pancakes) for under 70p. You could also buy a house for about £10,000, which adjusting for inflation, is roughly £76,000 in today’s money. Bookings for the four days of lunchtime offerings, which start on Thursday 6 February, open next Friday, but only for those with stomachs strong enough to withstand the nostalgia and regret.
Friday
If you have been in a toilet in Starbucks in the US recently you may have remarked that, as a public bathroom experience, it is down there with McDonald’s and French service stations from the 1970s. As Starbucks stock prices fall and sales decline, the US coffee chain has launched a code of conduct designed to make the average Starbucks more pleasant, which includes a requirement to buy something before using the bathroom – a provision designed to move people along that appears to be directly undermined by another new policy: that of offering unlimited free refills for anyone ordering a hot or iced coffee to stay. A commitment to removing every last chair must surely be in the works. Until then, let the all-day loitering begin.