the duke…

Roger Mitchell’s film ‘The Duke’ opened this afternoon at the Watershed and Moira+I attended the first showing of its ‘run’. Given the awful events in Ukraine, I felt a little guilty booking the tickets - because I did so knowing full well that the film would bring a smile to our faces at a time when so many others were suffering.
But, in the end, I’m very glad we did.
Somehow, watching a feel-good film about someone operating with the best of motives and for the benefit of others was a reminder that, even at the worst of times, there are bright pin-pricks of light.
 
The film is based on the true story of Kempton Bunton (quite brilliantly played by Jim Broadbent), a Newcastle cab driver who in 1965 appeared at the Old Bailey for stealing Goya’s portrait of the Duke of Wellington from London’s National Gallery.
Bunton writes dozens of unpublished novels and unproduced plays (emotionally driven by the tragic death of his daughter) and is briefly imprisoned for refusing to pay for his TV licence on the grounds that he has removed the cathode that allows his set to receive the BBC. He’s something of a working-class eccentric – frequently protesting at the government’s misuse of taxpayers’ money, standing up for workers’ rights and the like. The excellent Helen Mirren plays his exasperated, but loving, wife Dorothy.
Bunton ends up making a trip to London to petition for pensioners to be given free TV licences – a trip which ends up taking him to the National Gallery, where they’ve just spent £140,000 of public money to secure Goya’s portrait of the Duke of Wellington (which Kempton describes as being “some half-baked portrait by a Spanish drunk” and argues that the cash would have been better spent providing free TV licences for all the UK’s old age pensioners. Bunton is one of those stubborn, eccentric individualists – at times hugely irritating, but also someone with admirable determination and energy (and with the best of motives).
I loved this film. I loved the story. I loved the characters and I loved the acting. Yes, it might have been over-sentimentalised at times… but it gave me a very warm feeling inside and made me smile – something we all need in these difficult and testing times.
You have to see it. 

february books...

Manifesto (Bernardine Evaristo): This is an intimate and fearless account of her life and career. Her London childhood was steeped in racism (her father was black, her mother white) from neighbours, priests and even some white members of her own family. The book describes how she discovered the arts through her local youth theatre; about her many romantic partners, both male and female (some quite horrible!); about finding her soulmate; about discovering her roots; and, crucially, about her determination and tenacity to succeed in becoming a successful writer. She’s a pretty amazing lady – who is now a Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University. Lucky students. Fascinating book.
Lullaby (Leila Slimani): This is our next Storysmith bookgroup book. It’s set in Paris and involves a married couple who have employed a nanny for their two young children. But the first two sentences set the scene (abruptly!): “The baby is dead. It took only a few seconds” (note: these words are on the book’s cover, so no spoilers!). The nanny, Louise, is the perfect nanny and comes highly recommended and is absolutely wonderful – the children adore her; she cleans and tidies the apartment; she cooks delicious meals; she’s incredibly organised. But this hides an awful lot of other tensions: poverty and privilege; class and race; motherhood and work; marital strains and unequal relationships; mental illness and obsession. Clearly, given the opening sentences, the book has a sense of doom from the onset. While the parents love their children, they’re both far more focussed on their work. There’s something of a breathless tension about the book and, of course, the inevitability of its tragic, disturbing conclusion… but it’s brilliantly conveyed and reads very much like a page-turner thriller (I read it in two days). Compelling and disturbing.
The White Album (Joan Didion): Ridiculously, I only ‘discovered’ Didion some 7 years ago; this is the 5^th book of hers I’ve read… and the first since her death last December, aged 87. I absolutely love her writing – it’s both wonderfully elegant and beautifully perceptive. The way she writes compels you not to rush… so that you absorb her words and fully embrace what she’s saying. This book, first published in 1979, is a collection of essays and journalism – mainly focussing on California - from the 1960s/early 1970s. She writes about waiting for Jim Morrison to show up, about Janis Joplin and Nancy Reagan and other celebrities. She gives us her psychiatric report, her migraines, her diagnosis with multiple sclerosis. There’s wonderful stuff about the Hoover Dam, about shopping malls, about a party at Sammy Davis Jnr’s house, about how the traffic authorities introduced a ‘diamond lane’ - reserved for vehicles carrying 3 or more passengers - to a Californian freeway on environmental grounds (which resulted in angry, irate motorists and even people scattering nails on the lane in question!) and much, much more – including a beautiful piece about a Mexican-born man who grew orchids (for his rich boss) and who let her spend time alone in the greenhouses he tended. A wonderful book, full of details and insights – and all the more fascinating as they paint of picture of life 50+ years ago.
Saltwater (Jessica Andrews): I decided to read this novel on the strength of a book review. It’s a coming-of-age story about a woman’s difficult transition from working-class Sunderland to London university life… and, when things come to a head, her decision to take off for a tiny fishing port in County Donegal in Ireland in an effort to try to gain a sense of who she really is. It’s beautifully written and conceived – raw, intimate and poignant. I suspect that some of the story is part-autobiographical and I loved the structure of the book – essentially three strands (set in Sunderland, London and Ireland) and arranged in non-chronological format, comprising something like 300 short ‘chapters’ (some of them perhaps only 200 words long). It reminded me of my own architectural studies(!) and writing my final year thesis fifty years ago (I know!)… when I TYPED out (none of your new, fangled computers or even word processors in those days!) individual paragraphs on to filing cards before arranging them in what I felt was a ‘appropriate’ order and then RE-TYPING(!)(and with Moira’s help) the entire final version. I thought it was a lovely book – the challenges of identity and shifting class plus the complexities of the mother-daughter relationship. This was Andrews’ debut novel and a very good read it proved to be.
Love Wins (Rob Bell): I read this book nearly 11 years ago and found it helpful back then. It’s been recommended to me by good friend Mike after I’d blogged about my continuing, testing ‘faith journey’ and so decided to re-read it. He’s a very good communicator (I saw him at Greenbelt some 10 years ago) and I very much like his writing style. Needless to say, the book didn’t provide answers to all my questions (I would have been hugely sceptical if it had!), but it did give me the encouragement to acknowledge and explore my ‘faith doubts’ and not to be put off by the ‘certainty’ shown by some individuals who tend to make “negative, decisive, lasting judgements about people’s eternal destinies”. It’s an encouraging, provocative book and presents a case for ‘living with mystery’ rather than ‘demanding certainty’… and I’m absolutely with him on that. 

the souvenir: part 2…

I went along to the Watershed this afternoon to see director Joanna Hogg’s highly autobiographical study of a young film-maker in “The Souvenir: Part 2” - featuring the excellent Honor Swinton (Julie) in the lead role and Tida Swinton (her real-life mother) as her mother.
I felt something of a fraud because I hadn’t seen Part 1, but hey ho!
The film starts in the aftermath of Julie’s relationship with the heroin-addicted Anthony (played by Tom Burke), from the 2019 ‘Souvenir’ film, which leaves Julie struggling to make sense of their former life together, with all its mysteries and issues.
Julie is an ambitious film student entering an intoxicating world of unpredictable romantic entanglements in 1980s London. She faces the prospect of having to make her film-school graduation project while still reeling from the fallout of her doomed relationship and decides to channel her personal experiences into a free-form “memorial” to Anthony - that both baffles and irritates her tutors. For me, it brought back memories of student life (architecture not film-making, I hasten to add!) and the risky business, as a naïve and inexperienced student, of ‘ignoring’ the tutors’ opinions and directions (or at least bending interpretations!).
 
As Julie’s life and studies progress (and as she reflects on/recovers from her ‘Anthony’ experiences), we see her getting tougher, arguing for the camera positions she wants from her student colleagues, having to let down actor friends who had assumed she was going to cast them in her film… but also going into therapy to deal with her anxiety and loneliness.
The film ends (of course) with her tutors recognising her graduation piece and her talent at a celebratory showing of Julie’s work. It’s something of a creative coming of age story. Powerful and endearing. I rather loved it. 

“you are number 395 in the queue…”

There’s much frustration with the UK government at the present time (understatement).
Two key matters (but, hey, there are MANY more besides… cost of living, energy prices, world peace etc etc) involve a) the so-called ‘Partygate’ issues (and the delays to the publication of Sue Grey’s Report, due to the Met Police’s initial reluctance to undertake their own investigations) and b) the formal Inquiry into the Covid-19 Pandemic.
The government’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic has been heavily and widely criticised by health officials, politicians, journalists and the general public. Last May, the Prime Minister announced that there would be a formal Inquiry into Covid-19 pandemic… BUT, frustratingly, that this wouldn’t start unit “Spring 2022”.
Meanwhile, back in October 2021, Parliament’s Health and Social Care Committee and the Science and Technology Committee (comprising MPs from all parties) issued a 150-page document, ‘Coronavirus: Lessons learned to date’ (predominantly focussing on the response to the pandemic in England). They described it as “the worst public health failure ever” – with the government initially trying to manage the situation by ‘herd immunity’; delaying introduction of the first lockdown, costing thousands of lives; failing to focus on those who had died and blaming problems with laptops etc (which the committee described as “laughable”); etc etc.
In December 2021, an inquiry set up by the campaign group ‘Keep our NHS Public’ concluded that the UK government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic was “grossly negligent” and amounted to misconduct in public office. Key findings included that the depleted state of the NHS and other public services before the pandemic was a determining factor in poor outcomes. Additionally, the government was poorly prepared and responded too slowly, adopting an incorrect strategy leading to a loss of life and growing mistrust in its advice. Furthermore, a consistent failure of government policies to reduce inequalities put the most vulnerable at high risk of illness and death from COVID-19.
 
The formal Inquiry announced by Mr Johnson last May will be chaired by Baroness Heather Hallett. No start date has yet been announced – apart from “Spring 2022”. Additional panel members were to be appointed in the new year to “make sure the Inquiry has access to the full range of expertise needed to complete its important work” (as yet no names have been announced). The Prime Minister would be consulting Baroness Hallett and ministers from the devolved administrations on the terms of reference for the Inquiry and these would be published in draft in the new year (as yet no terms of reference have been published).
There is no timeframe/deadline for the Inquiry. You might recall the Chilcott Inquiry into the Iraq War… with Hearings undertaken Nov 2009-Feb 2011 and the Report published in July 2016!
Frustratingly, one can image that Mr Johnson and fellow members of his government will be long since gone by the time any Inquiry Report is published (and, by then, they’ll no doubt have 'retired' from Westminster and be ‘earning’ fat salaries serving on the Boards of influential companies)… and the then government will no doubt issue pathetic statements about “lessons having been learnt” and everything will be swept under the carpet. 

ongoing spiritual wilderness…

This is going to be a strange blogpost!
I took communion for the first time today in nearly two years. That must seem strange for someone like me who calls himself a Christian… but lockdown has made me feel somewhat vulnerable in such ‘communal’ situations.
As some of my friends are aware, I’ve been struggling with my faith over recent years and frequently find myself at odds (or at least finding it difficult) to take some of the talks/sermons in my stride.

Today was a case in point (and stop reading here if this isn’t for you). The New Testament reading was taken from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians (Cor1 15: 12-20) and it dealt with the subject of resurrection. Now, while I do have some doubts from time to time about the resurrection account in the Bible, I’m basically a ‘believer’. What I struggle much more with is the business of our own personal resurrections. I have to say that I, for one, don’t believe in life after death… in the literal sense (I might change my mind, in due course, as I approach my dotage!).

But this morning’s Bible text included the following (taken from the NIV version of the Bible): “For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either” (verse 16) and “Now if there is no resurrection, what will those do who are baptized for the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized for them?” (verse 29) - and this message was duly endorsed/repeated in the morning’s talk/sermon.

So, on this basis, can I REALLY call myself a Christian?
Well, no doubt there will be many who would answer “no” but, interestingly, the BBC commissioned a survey in 2017 (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-39153121) and found that a quarter of people who describe themselves as Christians in Great Britain do not believe in the resurrection of Jesus.
 
The survey also suggested that:
·         17% of all people believe the Bible version word-for-word (not me)
·         31% of Christians believe word-for-word the Bible version (not me), rising to 57% among "active" Christians (those who go to a religious service at least once a month, as I do)(not me)
·         Exactly half of all people surveyed did not believe in the resurrection at all (not me)
·         46% of people say they believe in some form of life after death (not me) and 46% do not (me)

So, I’m not alone.
I appreciate that I could be accused (with some justification) that I ‘cherry-pick’ what I believe in. But what I find really difficult is being ‘told’ by some leaders of our church communities what my faith should consist of – with, apparently, no room for doubt. Effectively, the message seems to be: “this is what the Bible says, so it must be true (or pretty close)… and if you’re not prepared to accept this, then you can’t really call yourself a Christian”. They might not think that’s what they’re regularly telling me, but that’s message that I receive and/or perceive.

So, I continue my meandering faith exploration – with its joys and all its doubts. I very much miss the reassurances and encouragement from people like our former vicar Lee, who was at pains to welcome people like me “whatever page you’re on at the present time” in terms of our individual spiritual journeys.
PS: The above isn’t a plea for guidance(!)… I simply felt the need to record (for me) how I’m thinking faith-wise at the present time.

dr semmelweis…

Moira and I went to the theatre for the first time since the FIRST lockdown this afternoon… to see “Dr Semmelweis”, based on an original idea from and featuring Mark Rylance (as the doctor) and developed with Writer Stephen Brown and Director Tom Morris. We’ve missed the theatre hugely and it was great to be back.
You’ve probably never heard of Dr Ignaz Semmelweis, but he was a pioneer (and controversial) surgeon practicing in 19th century Vienna – when the city was confronted by the terrible death toll of childbed fever. Semmelweis, a Hungarian, makes a discovery that had the potential to save hundreds of thousands of new mothers, but he faced strong opposition in the form of the medical establishment – who question his methods, reject his theory and even doubt his sanity.
During the current Covid pandemic, we’ve all been urged to “wash your hands”. Well, although the play was conceived before the pandemic, Semmelweis’s similar pleas for his fellow doctors to wash their hands represents a poignant reminder of how much we’ve learnt and how little we knew.
 
The production was elaborate and very impressive – a total of 22 performers (actors, musicians and dancers) are listed in the programme and, on top of that, there are large creative and production teams. Theatre is an expensive business – and one that’s suffered enormously over the past two grim, pandemic years.
It was an incredibly impressive production, with wonderful performances by very talented performers. The Old Vic was full and the audience’s hugely positive reaction at the end was both appropriate and telling.
I’ve been to a lot of theatre over the years and I’ve seen some pretty outstanding individual performances by some pretty amazing actors, but I honestly don’t think I’ve ever witnessed a performance to match that of Mark Rylance. Utterly mesmerising. Quite, quite breathtaking. It will live in the memory for the rest of my days.
Oh, how I’ve missed the theatre!
PS: ‘Our’ Felix (Hayes) played Dr Ferdinand von Hebra… and, of course, was very good!
PPS: I know I keep going on about face masks(!) but, again, the entire audience wore masks… those few who were unmasked as they took their seats were soon handed a face mask by one of the stewards and asked, unless they were unable to for medical reasons, to do so (and I didn’t see anyone object). 

parallel mothers…

I went along to the Watershed AGAIN this afternoon (that’s twice in less than a week – just like old times!), this time to see Pedro Almodóvar’s film “Parallel Mothers”. It’s a baby-swap drama (sorry about the spoiler, but it’s difficult to describe the film without reference to it) about two single mothers (played by Penélope Cruz and Milena Smit) and buried secrets from the Spanish civil war.
These heavily pregnant women share a hospital room and bond over their decision to go it alone. The two women’s newborns are whisked away for observational reasons at the same time… over time, one of them begins to doubt whether her child is really hers and orders a DNA test online. The disquieting results mean that the two women get back in touch and re-establish their extraordinary relationship… and experiences of their own mothers… and also the unhealed wound of Spain’s fascist past. The father of one of children is an anthropologist working with a historical unit formed to trace people murdered by Francoists during the civil war and buried in unmarked mass graves… and the mother (Cruz) believes that her great-grandfather was one such victim.
I think I’d best leave it there (things are somewhat more complicated than I’ve inferred).
I decided to see the film after reading Peter Bradshaw’s 5-star review in The Guardian and, although I did enjoy the film, it left me feeling a little disappointed.
For me, although I found the film both absorbing and quite moving, I also felt it was somewhat contrived and implausible.
PS: Again, I’m delighted to report that the entire audience wore face masks. Thank you Watershed!

january-february 2022 books…

Convenience Store Woman (Sayaka Murata): This is our next Storysmith bookgroup book. It’s a novel about a 36 year-old woman, Keiko, who’s been working in the same Japanese convenience store for 18 years. Keiko is an oddball character (bullied and friendless at school)… she once hit a boy with a spade to stop him fighting; another time she asks her mother if she can eat a dead budgie found in the park. I came to the conclusion that she was perhaps slightly autistic(?) – certainly her love of organisation, structure and routine was hugely important to her. She’s never had a boyfriend. Her parents want her to get a better job. Her friends wonder why she won’t get married… but Keiko loves her job and she’s an excellent employee – efficient, courteous, never late, never absent. She knows what makes her happy and she’s not going to let anyone take her away from her convenience store. Much of the book reads more like a non-fiction description of convenience store life and routines. It’s a ridiculously absurd novel and yet also quite compelling, funny and charming.
No One Is Talking About This (Patricia Lockwood): Four of my friends nominated this novel as their favourite book of 2021… so I thought I’d give it a go! The first half of the book is something of a whirlwind description of the absurdity (and reliance?) of online life. Frankly (not being part of any Twitterworld and not even really understanding such things), it took some time to get my head around what Lockwood was talking about - “the new communication, the new slipstream of information”. It’s written as something of a third-person diary and, clearly, Lockwood is a very gifted, imaginative and exceptional writer - even though I really struggled to keep up with her ‘stream of consciousness’ observations (bluntly, perhaps I’m just not clever enough?). While the second half of the novel continues in similar vein, it abruptly becomes far more ‘real’ in that the central character’s sister becomes pregnant, and the child is born with very severe birth defects (the book’s acknowledgements refer to Lockwood’s real-life sister and brother-in-law who let her “share in their daughter’s life” – she had been diagnosed with Proteus Syndrome). It’s something of an emotional rollercoaster – when (as the book jacket tells us) “real life collides with the increasing absurdity of a world accessed through a screen”. Impressive in its way, but not exactly my particular cup-of-tea.
When The Lights Go Out (Carys Bray): This is our next “Bloke’s Books” selection. It’s a novel about relationships and families set against the background of financial insecurity, climate change and the nature of faith. The husband is something of an obsessive eco-warrior - as well as being a struggling self-employed gardener/odd job man – who’s become a paranoid stockpiler of food, who turns off the domestic heating and is a constant moaner about everything that life conjures up for him; the wife also used to be a keen fighter for the environment, peace, the preservation of public services and worked as a librarian (until they closed her library). She’s now the one left to take up the household burden – coping with her two sons and their challenging, adolescent ways… and her ‘difficult’ husband. They live in the north-west of England, in an area that seems to be regularly battling against flooding issues. Things come to a head at Christmas when the husband’s mother turns up for a visit… and the cracks start to show. I think I’ll leave it there (*no spoilers)… apart from saying that, although the novel addressed a lot of complicated and relevant issues and was a very ‘easy read’, I found it rather lacked depth.
The Beekeeper Of Aleppo (Christy Lefteri): My good friend Ed lent me this book (published in 2019) and I think it’ll end up as one of my books of the year. The author worked in a refugee centre in Athens. While she was hugely affected by the stories she heard of traumatised people from Syria and Afghanistan, she also realised no one else would tell them.  So the tale of Afra, a woman blinded by the explosion that killed her son, and Nuri, her beekeeper husband, formed in her mind. This powerful, courageous book is the result: a heart-breaking story of loss and resilience, but also of love and hope, as the couple escape Syria for, eventually, the UK. At least 350,000 people have died in 10 years of fighting in Syria, and this number is likely to be higher according to the UN, with 13.5 million people (half the population) forcibly displaced. The passage in which Nuri describes his meeting with the UK authorities (and the ridiculous questions they asked) when he was seeking asylum is both shocking and shameful. Having worked myself with a 20 year-old asylum-seeker from Afghanistan (whose family had all apparently been killed by the Taliban) for 18 months and being instructed that I shouldn’t ask him for details of his ‘story’/journey to the UK, I’m well aware of some of the frustrations of this broken process. My friend was refused asylum and has had to appeal against the decision – largely, it seems, because he got some details of his story ‘wrong’ (his passport indicated he’d been through Greece, for example, but he couldn’t remember… he was 16 at the time and traumatised, for goodness sake! This is a wonderful, inspiring book and I think you’d love it too (and perhaps learn a little about the perils and challenges facing refugees).
Bad Apples (Will Dean): This was my fourth Nordic noir crime novel by Dean - set in the northern wilds of rural Sweden (Dean grew up in the English Midlands and now lives in the middle of a Swedish forest). Tuva Moodyson is a deaf reporter, recently promoted to deputy editor of the local newspaper in Visberg. All I can say is that she works in a pretty dangerous environment (think ‘Midsomer Murders’?) – if it’s not the elks or the wolves, it’s the odd murderer in their midst! I love the Tuva character and the pace of these ‘adventures’… LOTS of suspense and uncertainty. It’s probably best if I don’t try to explain any plot-related stuff (* no spoilers) – except perhaps that ‘heads roll’ and that it’s tense right up to the end. There will no doubt be a sequel. As usual with Dean’s novels, I read it very quickly (and am now ‘in recovery’).

belfast...

Moira and I went along to the Watershed yesterday to see Kenneth Branagh’s autobiographical movie about the Belfast of his childhood.
It’s set in 1969. The family (husband played by Jamie Dornam; long-suffering wife by Caitríona Balfe; and their two sons – played by Lewis McAskie and Jude Hill) lives in a mainly Protestant area of north Belfast, alongside a few Catholic families (and in relative harmony).
But violence explodes when unionist hardmen burn the Catholics out of their homes and set up barricades to protect their new neighbourhood against republican retaliation and the film represents a salient reminder of those awful times – all in the ‘name of religion’(!). 
At times, it all makes for difficult viewing but, thankfully, the despair of the Northern Irish situation is far outweighed by pragmatism and humour of the ‘ordinary’ people.
 
The film is largely shot in a black and white and is beautifully acted. Judi Dench is brilliant as the grandmother; Jude Law is quite remarkable as Buddy; but, for me, the real star was the mother, Caitríona Balfe.
At times, despite the painful references to the ‘Troubles’, it perhaps felt a little too ‘sugar-coated’ or sentimental – helped by the wonderful Van Morrison on the soundtrack (Van Morrison, of course, was the ONLY appropriate music to accompany the film!) – but the mix worked very well for me.
I think my only criticism was the difficulty, at times, in understanding what was being said – not because I couldn’t hear, but because I couldn’t make out what people were saying. Some of this was undoubtedly due to my failure to catch the Northern Irish accent. Sadly, I’ve become so used to watching the telly with sub-titles these days that I really missed them!  
I went to the cinema thinking this film might not be for me… but I was completely wrong. I thought it was rather special.
PS: My second film of the year at the Watershed (and also my second black+white film) and I’m delighted to report that, once again, EVERY member of the audience wore a face-mask!

not me guv’…

Sue Gray must be fuming… (I’m fuming!).
Thanks to the intervention of the Met Police, her report on the “alleged gatherings on government premises during Covid restrictions” was ‘limited’, to say the least (the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg describes it as a “terse summary”).
Despite this, the report was still utterly damning of government leadership (and who leads the government?) – a fact that hardly came as a surprise to anyone who’s been following the reported events. Sadly, because of the Metropolitan Police’s intervention, Gray’s report lacks all the crucial details, including (and I quote from the report): emails; Whatsapp messages; text messages; photographs; and building entry and exit logs. Gray lists 16 ‘gatherings’ and goes on to point out that all but 4 of these are currently being investigated by the Met.
Again quoting from the BBC’s political editor (and, frankly, I could have used any number of quotes from other journalists), “it is there now in black and white for all to see - there was rule breaking at the top of government when the country was living through lockdown. The prime minister's original claim that all the guidelines were followed seems almost farcical now”.
In the past, matters of honesty, integrity, trust and responsibility would have been regarded as essential qualities of any prime minister. Given what we already knew, Mr Johnson should have resigned weeks ago. Given the contents of Ms Gray’s much-edited report, he should have resigned yesterday… but, of course, he didn’t.
 
Many Tory MPs have been hugely critical of the prime minister and have made it clear that he no longer receives their support; many others continue to support Mr Johnson through (blind?) loyalty. Others tell us that they’re going to await outcome of the Met Police’s investigations.
When will that be? A fortnight? A month?
Well, yesterday, the Met Police told us that their investigation “would not take more than a year”.
What an utter, utter farce.

In political terms, the key questions are simply: “Did the prime minister mislead parliament?” and “Did the prime minister break the Covid rules?”. If the answer to either of these is “yes”, then Mr Johnson has to resign. In the ridiculous circumstances that we find ourselves in, surely it’s not asking too much for the Met to begin their investigations (from various comments made yesterday, it seems that they have yet to make a start!) by pursuing the specific allegations relating to the ‘gatherings’ that the prime minister apparently attended? Surely, even by the Met’s own ‘speed of operation’ (apologies for irony), it wouldn’t take more than a few days to establish the facts (afterall, Ms Gray has done much of the groundwork)
But, hey, what do I know! I’m just a boring old fogey who despairs of what we’ve become. 
It shouldn’t be like this.