Hi team,
Welcome to the twenty-fifth installment of Furloughed. Maybe it’s a newsletter about things I’m doing while furloughed, things you can do, or both.
Recently, on furlough days, I’ve been sitting in a local public park and pretending it’s my garden. It’s the only place I feel comfortable taking my mask off outside now, as although it looks fabulous, our stoop-garden out front is too close to openly coughing people (I live in a crowded area, I don’t know why so many people are coughing). On the plus side, I’ll feel loads better in three weeks, as next week we FINALLY GET OUR SECOND VACCINE! OMG, I AM SO EXCITED. And I’ll be in Bristol a while.
We are now in a third wave. I will continue to wear my mask, socially distance, and get food delivered from local businesses. But I will feel a bit less anxious.
1,200 scientists say England’s unlocking is a threat to the world, so at least I know it’s not me who is crazy.
My middle sister said she wanted to hear about climate action this week, so I’ll say this first: turn all golf courses into commons.
I also wanted to tell you about how how knitting is calming and I saw a bush cricket katydid in one of the plant pots outside.
Things to watch
Short things
Series
Mainstay recommendations are City of Ghosts and Waffles + Mochi. And We Are Lady Parts. We finished the final series of Kim’s Convenience and continue to watch Black-ish. My sister says to watch Never Have I Ever.
Documentaries
We started watching How to Become a Tyrant — it’s good, but I’m not sure leaving out the parts where millions march against the invasion of Iraq, the war goes ahead anyway and more than 150,000 civilians are killed — with more than a million ‘excess deaths — in episode two is ideal. As one reviewer on Google said: “The show conveniently neglects to address both the role colonialism and imperialism have played in the creation of some of these dictators, and the support the USA and most member states of NATO have given to many brutal dictators all over the world.”
Films
Last Saturday, on movie and homemade pizza night, we watched part two of the very Netflixy horror flick thing. We will watch the 1666 one tonight, if Netflix fix the streaming issues from last week.
Things to read
This week, “writer and broadcaster for everyone”, Dawn Foster, died, aged 34. She had a long-term illness.
This sentence from ‘If Tom Watson had guts, he would quit Labour. Instead he is weakening the party’ alone shows why the Guardian didn’t deserve her:
‘In 1911 in Prague, the writer Jaroslav Hašek formed the satirical group The Party of Moderate Progress Within the Bounds of the Law, mocking the overtly accommodating tendencies of the Czech Social Democrats.’
And this one from the same article is important:
‘Centrist thinking is focused on two false premises. The first is that the 2012 London Olympic ceremony represented an idyllic high-point of culture and unity in the UK, rather than occurring amid the brutal onslaught of austerity, with food bank use growing and the bedroom tax ruining lives. The second is that the UK became divided by Brexit and the 2016 vote, rather than it being a symptom of long-term problems: the decline of industry and the public sector begun by Margaret Thatcher and continued by Tony Blair and David Cameron; vast inequality of opportunity, wealth and health; and the number of people being routinely ignored in a system with a huge democratic and electoral deficit.’
Rest in peace, Dawn.
My middle sister also emailed me after last week’s newsletter to say she felt like academic language was making discussion about sexuality and gender elitist. I agree. Sometimes I forget that in my efforts to appease ‘smart people’, I mimic them. She said:
“I find a lot of the current language around gender and sexuality changes so frequently and the people who discuss it in articles, on Twitter etc, are clearly SO WELL EDUCATED that a lot of the content is alienating / verbose and paragraphs are so packed with words and sentence structures that are hard to process (I'm struggling here and I've had the privilege of a good education and like to read a lot) that I wonder if the movement towards accepting everyone in their all their bodily forms and persuasions has in itself become...elitist?!”
I told her I’d even replaced difficult words with simpler ones in square brackets.*
* Seriously, the original text includes phrases like ‘performative disidentification’ and ‘memetic antecedents’. (Making ‘meme’ high-brow?! And what does ‘antecedents’ mean? And what does ‘memetic antecedents’ mean. And why are you like this?).
Scenes like the above happen in countries around the world every year. In Bangladesh, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe to name just a few. Now the climate crisis has hit Europe too. We are not safe until all of us are safe. We must take action together.
Beware the big polluters who make net zero pledges
"If buzzwords bug you, proceed with caution. Net zero, COP26, decarbonisation. The Paris agreement. Most people have heard these terms in the news, and in grand speeches by our political leaders. And while each might serve as an important shorthand in climate policy circles, this abstract jargon can be difficult to quantify or comprehend in real terms…
“…Until support for oil, coal and gas is withdrawn by all governments, including the UK government, whose historic contribution to climate change means it has an important responsibility to pave the way to a carbon-free future, buzzwords and impressive pledges remain the hollow promises of the powerful, who think they can lead us willingly into oblivion.”
Climate scientists: concept of net zero is a dangerous trap
“The only way to keep humanity safe is the immediate and sustained radical cuts to greenhouse gas emissions in a socially just way.
“If we want to keep people safe then large and sustained cuts to carbon emissions need to happen now.”
Books
I picked up The Good Immigrant to read some more of it. It’s very good. I felt uncomfortable a few years ago, when my white yoga teacher asked why I never did the chant at the beginning of sessions. She should read My Name is My Name by Chimene Suleyman.
Feel good
Scientists believe Scotland’s loneliest apple tree could date back to ice age
Baby beaver born on Exmoor for first time in 400 years
Gareth Evans Netflix Film ‘Havoc’ Hires The WonderWorks Mobile Nursery (EXCLUSIVE)
Things to listen to
Podcasts
Mainstay recommendation is this Blindboy podcast with Emma Dabiri. And more Blindboy - How to Solve the Housing Crisis. And a podcast about donut economics. My sister recommended How to Be Better at Death (Ep. 450).
Music
I’m old enough to remember this. At a time when we still had Section 28, George Michael was arrested for performing a lewd act on a police officer in a public toilet. He delivered this lesson in response
Join a union and find your local mutual aid
Millions of people who should have access to furlough do not.
You can join a union to help protect yourself and others. Another thing to join is your local Mutual Aid group. If the database is TMI, Google where you live + mutual aid and yours should pop up.
“Despite mounting evidence women have been disproportionately furloughed or made redundant while absorbing more of the unpaid work associated with the pandemic, we were concerned we weren’t seeing policy changes to reflect that, particularly ahead of the third lockdown,” said Clare Wenham, co-author of Why We need A Gender Advisor on Sage. — UK government ‘failed to consider gender’ in its response to Covid pandemic — Hannah Summers
Sustainable Suppression
Avoid the three Cs - Confined. Crowded. Close-contact settings. Mask up.
Here’s this week’s Independent SAGE briefing. And their vaccinations FAQ if you or people you know have vaccine questions. They have also put out a document about the continuing need for support measures.
A video on how to ventilate a room
After two million deaths, we must have redress for mishandling the pandemic
People to listen to
Things to do
Make a Corsi cube to filter a room/ set up a crowdfund to make them for classrooms
Send me any fun things to do or look at you see so I can include them!