The beach at Aberffraw was wild and beautiful on Christmas morning at high tide:-

The mountains of the Lleyn Peninsula in the sunshine in the distance:-

I have been meaning to post a photograph I took a while ago of the view out of our dining room window one sunny morning.

I do so now as a way of wishing my readers a very Happy Christmas. You are a very elite group – not large in numbers, but I’m pleased to say very loyal, even in spite of my occasional rants. I like the sense of knowing who and where you are: a select group in California; one in Texas; one in Japan; a couple in Australia.

The photograph is an emblem of the last year. Less travel. But the pleasures of small things in the house.

One of my pleasures of the last year has been being a subscriber to A Daily Dose of Architectural Books, which is a wonderful way of keeping up-to-date with global architectural publishing. John Hill selects and then provides information about a new architectural book, occasionally adding an account of an old one. It is a formidable public service. Today he has posted his favourites from the last year:-

https://archidose.blogspot.com/?m=1

Christmas has come early in the form of a book written by George Ryle, the Head Chef at the Garden Café, and published by the Garden Museum. I’ve realised that it’s too late to get copies in time for Christmas, but I strongly recommend it as a treat for the New Year: so clear, beautifully produced like the food it describes, focussed on good ingredients, designed by Webb and Webb, with no less than four coloured page markers. What could be nicer ! Order form is (I hope):-

http://www.gardenmuseum.org.uk/product/the-garden-cafe-a-year-in-the-kitchen

Our garden had a radical clearance yesterday, out of which emerged a fruit – or is it a vegetable ? – which I have never seen before: Holboellia Latiforia, which apparently comes from Nepal, its fruit described by our friends at Crûg Farm as sausage-shaped, purplish and pulpy. They are apparently edible, but I have yet to try:-

I feel that not enough attention has been paid to the recent selection and rapid de-selection of a new chairman (highly paid) of the Charity Commission, a role of considerable importance in monitoring the operation and probity of the charity sector. The process took a long time. It presumably involved highly paid headhunters to identify suitable candidates.

So who was selected ?

A man who had read classics at Oxford with the Prime Minister, is said to be a close family friend, who established a charity which presented the Prime Minister with a Russian watch when he was Mayor (what could possibly have justified a charity doing this ?) and is now revealed to have stood down from a charity for accidentally sending an employee pictures of himself posing in a ladies’ lingerie firm. It would be hard to make this up. The best person to run the charity sector was deemed to be this man ? I can’t think why.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/dec/20/calls-for-re-run-of-selection-process-to-find-next-head-of-charity-commission?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

LLoyd’s Building (1986):-

Tidal Basin Pumping Station (1992):-

Millennium Dome (2000):-

Madrid Airport (2006):-

The attached BBC News report from a year ago is quite a useful reminder of how the police were terrorising people for breach of COVID rules: two people fined £200 for going for a country walk five miles from their home with cups of tea regarded as illegal on the grounds that they were a picnic.

It becomes weirder and weirder that the police cannot see a conflict between the way they prosecuted (and are still prosecuting) pretty innocent people while at the same time regarding Downing Street as exempt. What were they thinking ? I can see that it is a bit tricky for the Chief of Police to tell the Prime Minister to behave. But the Cabinet Secretary ? And the Downing Street Head of HR who encouraged staff to leave by the back door ? What were they all thinking ?

I ask this having watched the Prime Minister be interviewed on Sky News about the North Shropshire by-election. It’s clear that he feels absolutely no responsibility or culpability whatsoever, not a scintilla of awareness that he might be personally in any way to blame. It’s the same as the look of absolute gormlessness when people objected to Dominic Cummings going home to Durham. A lifetime of getting away with things has left him startlingly ill prepared to accept responsibility for things going wrong as they so obviously are at the moment.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-55560814

It looks like Sue Gray is a sensible person to take over the enquiry into the increasingly numerous reports of Christmas parties in Downing Street last Christmas: highly experienced, very independent-minded, with a lot of experience of conducting these sorts of enquiries, including Andrew Mitchell’s behaviour, when he called the officers on duty ‘plebs’ and the police on duty once again disgraced themselves by embroidering the evidence.

I think she should look most of all at the reason for the police refusing to investigate, implying that there is no evidence, when it would seem pretty obvious that there is no end of evidence, including emails, party invitations, photographs, and plenty of people willing to shop their colleagues to the press. But investigation should have been the responsibility of the police at the time, not of the press long after the event and their abrogation of any responsibility is one of the worst aspects of it all.