Trump’s bleach blond bombshell
JMY TV face of the week has to be the totally watchable Marc Warren – ITV’s new Van der Valk. Reprising much-loved telly classics is always a risky game but Warren played a blinder as the Dutch detective. It was a terrifically nuanced performance; Amsterdam looked fabulous; the supporting cast was fabulous. Episode two tomorrow. More of Marc’s ice-blue eyes and Nordic cheekbones. Sunday nights in lockdown just got a lot sexier.
RSIXWEEKS into lockdown and every day brings fresh headlines and behaviour you simply couldn’t and wouldn’t have predicted when you went to bed the night before.
Take Donald Trump. (Many would like to, as far away as possible).Yes, I could always see the man was a vainglorious buffoon, but he’s been a strangely effective one, delivering impressive results on employment and America’s wider economy. Perhaps that’s why until now he got an easy ride for all those gaffes, howlers and preposterous selfcontradictory statements of his.
Last month, just a few days after asserting that reports of an imminent pandemic were “fake news”, he was boasting: “I was the first one to see this coming.” Breathtaking front – but he always seemed to get away with it.
Until now. Last week’s “bleachgate” nonsense may be the rock of ridicule on which Trump has at last foundered; a babbling bridge of baloney too far, even for him. Anyone speculating that injections of disinfectant could kill the coronavirus (or anything else, other than the unfortunate individual being injected) would be a shoo-in for the finals of the Fruitcake of the Year Awards.
But this was the most powerful man on the planet spouting his crackpot theories; heir to presidents such as Roosevelt,Truman, Kennedy, Reagan, Obama. (Try imagining any of them suggesting that mainlining bleach could cure flu.You can’t, can you?)
Trump’s later blusterings that he was “actually being sarcastic” were
Ra further insult to the intelligence. Until Bleachgate, I would have bet the farm on him winning a second term. But something’s changed.
He dropped his media briefings for days and when he finally re-appeared, he cut a strangely hesitant figure.You could almost see the self-doubt, fear even, in his eyes. Political dead man walking towards the exit next November? I wouldn’t bet the farm, but I’d chance a tenner.
We’ve seen a fair amount of coronavirus cock-ups on this side of the pond, too, albeit on a much more prosaic level.
Officious coppers ordering old ladies off park benches, or flying police drones over the heads of
WE LIVE in a city suburb created just more than a century ago, swiftly built on what was then open countryside. But nothing is ever wholly lost.
For weeks our local roads have been so deserted that for the first time I’ve properly noticed all their curious little kinks and seemingly pointless curves. Some crossroads are at oddly acute angles. Why?
Yesterday, the penny dropped. The streets are faithfully following the lines of ancient hedgerows, field systems and streams.
It’s as if the ghost of the countryside is stirring and showing us it’s longvanished form.
Yet another unexpected effect of the lockdown. innocent ramblers in the Derbyshire peaks in an attempt to bully them back indoors. Embarrassment.
Staggering rudeness, as well. Like the smartly-dressed man in front of me in the queue to get into my local M&S (30 customers sensibly allowed inside at any one time) who suddenly started screaming at the girl attempting to marshal us: ‘CAN’TYOU ****** COUNT,YOU STUPID ***** ?!? THERE’S ROOM FOR LOADS MORE IN THERE!’ (There wasn’t, and her unruffled politeness in quietly pointing this out was a wonder to behold).
Bonkers bleach theory in Washington; vile vitriol in Golders Green.This damned virus has a lot to answer for.