Monday
In my household, discussions have been swirling around the unsettling idea of hantavirus or Ebola spreading as widely as Covid-19 once did. As troubling reports emerge from central Africa, the reduced US international aid comes into stark focus. It brings back memories of early 2020, a time when news of a mysterious virus from China escalated from a minor news item to a full-blown global emergency.
Parents of children finishing primary school face the question of how much their kids will remember from that tumultuous time. My two kids, currently engrossed in their Year 6 curriculum on World War II, like to imagine that in the future, they might be asked about their experiences during the 2020 pandemic much like people are asked about living through the Blitz. I often think to myself that if, in 70 years, Covid-19 remains the most significant event of their generation, they will be quite fortunate.
During New York’s first lockdown, my children were five years old and primarily recall it as a period of endless iPad entertainment and sweet treats, which led to one of them needing dental fillings at an early age. Six years later, they speak with a nostalgic tone, though their memories are vague—they don’t recall the empty streets of Broadway, the makeshift hospital in Central Park, or the constant wail of sirens. I, on the other hand, still have moments of mental lapses; just this morning, I instinctively patted myself down, thinking I had forgotten my mask.
Tuesday
Let’s pivot to John Travolta’s recent appearance at the Cannes film festival, where he donned a beret. At 72, Travolta explained that it was a nod to classic directors, a way to promote his directorial debut, “Propeller One-Way Night Coach.” He stated, “You’re an actor playing the part of a director, so look like an old-school director,” and noted how directors from the 20s to the 60s wore berets and glasses. He intended to pay homage to the role of a director by dressing the part.
It’s a quirky choice, and it doesn’t quite account for the facial hair that seemed almost painted on, which gave him a fleeting resemblance to the controversial director James Toback. Nevertheless, Travolta’s iconic status affords him the freedom for such eccentricities, reminiscent of his other unique decisions, like parking a Boeing 707 outside his home and his enduring commitment to Scientology.
“Propeller One-Way Night Coach” sounds like a title straight out of a Sean Penn novel, yet it is an autobiographical piece reflecting on Travolta’s childhood memoirs. Critics have been gently praising it—The Guardian offered a three-star review, calling it “sweet.” Meanwhile, Variety hinted that the highlight of the film was the pre-roll montage of Travolta’s cinematic achievements, with the beret unexpectedly stealing the spotlight.
Wednesday
I don’t think I’ve ever liked Rachel Reeves more than in this week’s footage of her fighting a powerful urge to tell some passing heckler to shove it up his back door then re-channelling that impulse in a more constructive direction. It was like watching media training happen in real time as the chancellor first ignored, then mildly admonished, then full on lost it in the direction of a man in a hi-vis vest shouting the words “Nigel Farage” at her while she tried to do a TV interview at a petrol station in Leeds.
Smiling with the tolerance of someone who has to interact with the public all the time, Reeves, it seemed to me, would like to have gone the full Shabana Mahmood and told the guy to “fuck right off”. Instead, as he went off at her about immigration and Englishness, she yelled at his retreating white van: “I love our country! I love our country!” and “one of the things about our country is good manners!”
This was painful to watch, like a person trying to suppress a sneeze, and, my god, she’s only human. Towards the end of the vignette, Reeves says, “it’s not very British” then does a manual override of what appears to be an adrenaline-charged malfunction in the smooth running of her persona and snaps: “Right. Very good. You can put that on the telly.”
Reclaiming basic civility as a tenet of Britishness was a smart save in the face of dire provocation, but, of course, she’d have gone up in the estimations of voters across the spectrum if she’d said what we were all thinking, which was: “Hey, thanks for dropping by and good luck winning a woman’s attention without screaming and gesturing across a petrol forecourt.”
Thursday
To the Soho Theatre Walthamstow for the opening night of End of the Rainbow, the musical drama starring Jinkx Monsoon as Judy Garland – addled by addiction, but still Judy – in the last months of her life in London, and it’s a joyous evening with the best people present, including Mason Alexander Park, fresh off the West End stage in Oh, Mary, and a lot of very excited Garland super-fans. The play, by Peter Quilter, positions Garland cleverly between her horrendous fifth husband, Mickey Deans, and her loving, loyal piano player, Anthony, a fictional character written to encapsulate Garland’s meaning to the gay community and the limits to what it could do to protect her.
Monsoon, who twice won RuPaul’s Drag Race, is terrific in the role, and I thought I could see in her performance the influence of Garland in I Could Go On Singing, the 1963 film she made with Dirk Bogarde in which she played a lightly fictionalised version of herself, right down to her tardy appearance on stage at the Palladium when she had to win over a hostile audience. There’s a scene in that movie which Garland apparently extemporised – “I’ve hung on to every bit of rubbish there is to hang on to in life; and I’ve thrown all the good bits away. Now can you tell me why I’d do that?” – and the energy of which Monsoon inhabited with pitch-perfect attention to the keening intensity and unvanquished charm of an icon in the last years of her life. Bravo!
Friday
With 30C weather and a bank holiday coming down the pike, I feel the urge to introduce my kids to a bank holiday tradition in this country by buying train tickets, standing for two hours in a sweltering, unairconditioned carriage that has stopped for reasons unknown, dragging ourselves to a pebble beach and a freezing, iron grey sea that may or may nor contain E coli from waste overflow and struggling home again, sunburned but happy. There’s no place like home.
