Developments

Ailz would have been going to church this morning if Ourdert had been going too- but Ourdert is helping a friend at a car boot sale.  She was round here yesterday afternoon with a gift of a pasta dish with sardines in it. She tells us the Muslim guy I took to meet the evangelicals and who then disappeared is back at church again and says he would marry her if she wasn't married already.  A month ago he was 20,  now he's 23. What kept him away from church was the ear-ache.

She painted her toe-nails and we played with Fabrizio. Last time he was here- about a fortnight ago-  I put the xylophone in front of him and all he wanted to do was suck the stick. Now he knows to bang the keys.

This May Lose Me Some Friends

The music never dies. It goes on and on and on. Ad nauseum. Someone switch the bloody thing off.

Jackson's work is kitsch. Even the better stuff is slick and empty.

Fred Astaire said Jackson was the greatest dancer of the 20th century. I refuse to believe he meant it.

Bad? Not in the way he wanted us to think.

I find it shocking that people make excuses for Jackson that they wouldn't dream of making for other middle-aged men who like to share their beds with children.

By the time of his death he was a freeloading junkie who indulged himself in every little whim- but couldn't be bothered to pay his staff.

Celebrity turns men and women into monsters. The strong-minded get out before it destroys every last scrap of decency and truth.  Jackson wasn't strong-minded.