Bromance got a bit hot and heavy in White House... until Donald’s dandruff faux pas
THIS week’s visit by French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte to the White House was the passive-aggressive pleasure fest that just kept giving. Trump and Macron appeared to be locked in a strange game of feel-me-up chicken, neither wanting to be the one to utter the safe word and pull back from the brink.
For a start, there were handshakes of every hue. One began as a sideways high-five before morphing into an awkward fist bump. Another lasted so long I began to wonder if the pair’s fingers had become surgically attached.
But it didn’t end there. There was also some high-end (literal) backslapping, awkward air-kissing and a few cheek-chafingly close embraces. The two heads of state were even seen walking around holding hands at one point like a pair of besotted toddlers.
Brigitte and Melania, meanwhile, found themselves left out in the cold, shoved to the other side of the podium while the hot and heavy bromance unfolded just feet away. They looked unimpressed, like two wives left to down white wine spritzers in the corner of the pub while their other halves bond over the Champions League semi-final.
And just at the point when I feared their next appearance would see them arrive in the Rose Garden wearing matching
‘I’m With Stupid’ T-shirts, Trump put a stop to it all.
In the full glare of the press pack, the US president’s eyes darted to Macron’s shoulder, honing in on a tiny speck of something before brushing it off with a couple of determined flicks of his puffy index finger.
“I’ll get that little piece of dandruff off,” Trump told the watching media. “We have to make him perfect, he is perfect.” In the animal kingdom, grooming another male is usually a sign of deference, a nod to social hierarchy.
I guess in the political jungle, the same rules don’t apply.
Dump dull books?
ILOVE books. All I really did in college was read. With just four hours of ‘class’ time a week, I spent much time holed up in my bedroom ploughing through dusty classics, obscure plays and impenetrable critical theory. It was a privilege, sure, but a lot of the time, especially when all that stood between you and the next morning’s tutorial was a 700-page modernist door-stopper, the act of reading became a perfunctory, joyless slog.
After four years of force-feeding myself this rich literary diet, it took quite a while to rediscover the joy of text, so to speak.
I think I was suffering from a severe case of reader’s block. Like its close cousin writer’s block, reader’s block afflicts all of us at some stage. It usually last for a few weeks, though can persist for months, and is characterised by an inability to ‘get into’ a book.
This week a UK reading charity offered a simple cure for the condition: if you’re not enjoying a book, then ditch it.
On the face of it, this sounds like good advice. Life is too short to waste time on activities we deem dull.
But here’s the thing: if we only stick to rollicking reads that rattle along, then we miss out. Call me a book snob, but not every good book is an ‘easy’ read.
So while I don’t advocate trudging through turgid prose, plodding plotting and onedimensional characterisation, I do warn against ditching every book you struggle to get into.
Unless, of course, that book is ‘Ulysses’, then it’s probably best to move on.
Sorry, winter is not coming yet...
SPEAKING of writer’s block, I’m beginning to wonder if ‘Game of Thrones’ author George RR Martin may have fallen victim to a particularly severe case himself.
He has revealed that the sixth instalment of his fantasy series will not be hitting the shelves this year, as had been rumoured.
Its predecessor, ‘A Dance With Dragons’, was published in 2011, so if it is a case of the creative juices drying up, it’s been a particularly protracted dry spell.
However, Martin has not left his hordes of fans totally bereft, revealing that what he’s describing as an “imaginary history” set in the ‘Game of Thrones’ world will be released in November.
Fans are understandably disappointed. But surely in an age of box-set bingeing, this small slice of delayed gratification makes for a welcome change of pace.