Sunday 7th August 2022

Val’s zapper went on the blink. His telly was stuck on ITV2. Luckily by the time I arrived at Moscova, a nice neighbour had re-programmed the machine. But for days Val was trapped, as in Waiting for Godot. ‘I turned the sound down in the hope of making it more interesting,’ he said. But in vain. ‘ Z list American actors are still Z list American actors.  “Acting” seems to involve looking like you’ve got serious indigestion and we can all do that.’

He is worried by Liz Truss’s hair. It’s very small but not as bad as Margaret Beckett.  ‘You know the ineluctable theory of power and women’s hair.’ Nobody seems to like Liz Truss. The Gay Mother said, ‘Have you seen this Liz Truss? Wretched little girl. Miserable little thing.’ But I never have seen her, or only in pictures, never moving or speaking. What is to be done? Maybe at the last minute they’ll announce that it’s all been a bad dream and it’s not Liz Truss but Lynne, the other Truss (how many can there be?). Nobody could object to her… surely. And it’s so nearly the same name, would anybody notice?