Monday
Two days out from the earthquake that rocked New York City and the aftershocks continue in the form of everyone’s incredibly boring anecdotes about where they were and what they thought was going on when it happened. Was it a washing machine? Was it construction? Would you like to hear from a woman who didn’t feel it at all?! “Oh, boy, I was in the parking lot and …” says a man from a storage facility in New Jersey when I call for a quote. Per advice from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, in the face of catastrophically dull earthquake stories you should drop, cover, and hold your hands over your ears.
The main beneficiaries of the 4.8 magnitude quake, have, of course, been the Californians, who have long suffered the condescension of New Yorkers whenever they complain about cold weather or the cost of housing, and who, finally, have been given a moment to shine. Did you know that Californians have been doing earthquake drills since they were little? Are you aware that, to a Californian, it’s not a real quake unless all four wheels of the car have lifted clean off the freeway and their living room is now in their basement?
Have you heard the one about the Californian man who carried on drinking his green juice while the San Andreas Fault carried him from Marina del Rey up to the border with Oregon then via tsunami to the coast of Japan? By the way, when a person from LA goes on a rollercoaster, so accustomed to weathering extraordinary forces are they, that they literally can’t feel the motion? Which, given the proximity of Disneyland, is very sad indeed.
Tuesday
Further evidence of the end times in the form of the solar eclipse, an event that rewards a small number of people with an awe-inspiring experience and everyone else with the experience of staring at clouds while murmuring “wow” and wondering when they can leave. I don’t want to be a total killjoy about this week’s eclipse, which provided a nice pretext to meet and hang out with friends. But at 3.25pm, when 90% of the sun disappeared behind the moon in New York, the light dimmed to an approximation of any one of the last 70 grey days we’ve had in the city, and everyone said “is that it?” and went home.
The really exciting part of the eclipse was the large number of people who decided not to wear protective eyewear, in spite of the health warnings and the predictable price gouging, which, a few hours before the eclipse, found a $2 pair of glasses typically going for upwards of $20. In the hours after the event, the number of Google searches on the words “retina damage” surged and doctors saw an increase in patients with eye complaints, presumably filing their claims under the little-known “is an idiot” code used for insurers. Really, we deserve every extinction level event the universe can throw at us.
Wednesday
Liz Truss – who would never look at an eclipse without eyewear, I’m sure – popped up midweek after details of her forthcoming memoir, Ten Years to Save the West, appeared in the Guardian, namely her account of failing to heed advice from the late queen in 2022. After a lifetime of sizing up new prime ministers, the queen, showing a flair for euphemism one imagines is unique to monarchs of the realm, advised Truss to “pace herself”, perhaps sensing the Tory prime minister’s inability to “pace herself”.
Truss, it is safe to say, did not pace herself, but instead, in a sentence by this paper’s Martin Pengelly to be returned to and enjoyed, “introduced radical free-market policies that crashed the British economy and saw her ejected from office just 49 days after winning an internal Conservative party vote to succeed Boris Johnson, making her the shortest-serving prime minister of all”.
“Maybe I should have listened,” wonders Truss in the book, very much adopting the Carrie Bradshaw style of whimsical musings and begging for the chaser, “Did I really want to be prime minister? Or had I just gone through the wrong door while in search of the loo?”
Thursday
The Queen’s grandson, Prince Harry, continues his California journey, meanwhile, with an appearance in San Francisco this week on a panel entitled Beyond Burnout: Transforming C-Level Stress Into Strength. The panel, which was part of a $1,595-a-head event called BetterUp’s Uplift Summit, was aimed at the elite of executives who can say the words “BetterUp’s Uplift Summit” without smirking and enjoy its pitch as “the only platform that braids coaching, science, and AI-fuelled experiences to build the agility … your organization needs to weather any storm”.
Putting aside the ability of a platform made of braids to weather a storm, Harry’s expertise on the panel raised plenty of questions, starting, obviously, with: burnout from what? Followed by: what C-level stress? As part of an address about “the pressures of today’s world and modern corporate life”, the former working royal made mention of his time in the army, his experience at the Archewell Foundation, and being a dad. He did not, as far as we know, share the secret of how to help your organisation weather the storm if, for example, it signs a $20m content deal with Spotify then hands in a single, 12-episode podcast.
Friday
There’s an old French and Saunders sketch in which the two comedians pretend to be on horses and canter around a field jumping fences (it’s funnier than it sounds). It’s a whole thing, and so, this week, the most delightful news was the British Show Pony Society’s launch of a hobby horse competition, in which competitors under 12 will be invited to jog around a course holding a wooden stick with a stuffed horse’s head on one end. This is, as children have known since the beginning of time, not a joke and hats off to the BSPS for recognising it. The prize money will be £300 with points awarded for energy, coordination and balance, although – and I think they should reconsider this – no bonus points for making the neighing sounds.
