Hands up who is an expert on geopolitics now. Me! Me, Miss… me. I - and probably you - have had to get a handle on it quickly, quickly because children are so scared and we all need to have convincing answers. Well, in our house it’s the boy who is scared. The girl just wants snacks and a good book (she’ll go far).
But when the boy does look at me and says, genuinely very, very frightened: “Are we all going to die in a nuclear war?” I have to be able to say “No, and this is why.”
From a standing start of zero knowledge, beyond knowing that the Cyrillic “C” is pronounced “S” and “B” is a “T”, I have read everything I can and listened to all the podcasts. In the end I agree with former British ambassador to Moscow, Sir Roderick Lyme, whose view is that in the end, Putin is going to be finished off by the mobile phone.
I mean, Putin is finished anyway. Even if he takes Ukraine by force, he’s finished. Rebels will see to that. Maybe not this year, or next. But one day. Or maybe Poland will finish him. Or we will. Or, and this would be a twist, China? Even if Putin backs off tomorrow and says “Sorry, that was a mistake,” he’s finished. Russia is finished. It’s. All. Finished. This memo, allegedly from inside the Kremlin, gave me some light relief from sheer terror.
Some people say Putin is “mad”. Medically so? I don’t know. Perhaps he has lost perspective and is paranoid. And speaking as a person who is not medically insane but often loses perspective when under pressure and is very paranoid at times, I’m sympathetic. Those things that we paranoid people get very paranoid about? They feel real. I know I’m paranoid because Giles says, “You’re being paranoid.” But who is saying that to Mr Putin?
Andrei Kozyrev goes further: Putin isn’t mad or even paranoid. He’s just wrong because everyone is too scared to tell him the truth - that the money he thought he was spending on the military has been stolen and spent on yachts; that an invasion of Ukraine would cause the West to divide and squabble. I enjoyed this reporting of Kozyrev’s thoughts.
Back to mobile phones. Putin’s playbook is from the Cold War and the KGB, as Sir Roderick points out, never had to deal with smartphones or the internet. History is no longer written by the winners, it’s written in a great big messed-up jumble online, and it is forever. And if I know anything about men it’s that they get ever so bothered about their reputations. While Putin might be thinking that what matters - (and this is from Andrei Kortunov) - is that no-one thinks he is weak, there will be some guys at the end of that long, long table thinking that what matters is that in forty years’ time no-one is spitting on their grandchildren and on their graves for their part in all this. So I’m on Team Palace Coup. I hope the FSB, which I’m told is the new KGB, will do what they do so well and bump him off in some creative way. Poison his trousers? Very Tudor. He could be “found hanged”? I am being gruesome now.
Or, as I was thinking the other day, someone needs find out what Mr Putin really likes. I don’t know if I have got this idea from pop culture or what, but I get the impression that dictators and despots normally have a great weakness for some rather odd and childish thing, like the Muppets, Dire Straits or Morecombe and Wise. We just need to know and then we can send Big Bird in to start negotiations. I think that’s what diplomats call “an off-ramp”.
This is the sort of crap I tell my children, anyway. I do in fact have an A in GCSE History so I am aware that one always has to be so very careful about dezinformazion from all sides, but you’ve got to tell the kids something, don’t you? What are you telling yours? Perhaps you, unlike me, have some genuine expertise in this area. Please share your thoughts with us in the handy box below. And for a run-down on how this might end by someone who knows, read this.
Next. Disposing of waste ethically and efficiently is a massive problem in all houses and mine is no different. It’s all very well deciding to have a giant Kondo-type clear-out but what do you do with all the stuff? My problem is non-recyclable household junk, which I feel like I will end up storing in my house until I die because I don’t want to send it to landfill, at which point it will be sent to landfill. I have investigated various different companies who claim they will dispose of this responsibly for me and the one I like the most is called LITTA. The worry with these companies that promise to sort and recycle as much of your stuff as possible is of course that they take your household junk - beyond-repair lamps, strange clay things made by the kids, broken mugs, ancient pillows - drive it out to Essex then fly-tip it in a field. But LITTA promises to divert 93% of waste away from landfill and if they’ve said it on their website and they’re lying then they can be prosecuted by the Advertising Standards Agency. I have no relationship with LITTA at all, beyond the fact that I paid them to come and get a whole load of junk from me about six months ago and they were quick and quiet and even closed the garden gate on the way out. Oh, and they’ve got an app. I’m just such a sucker for a company with an app.
Last thing. There is such fundamental disagreement on the subject of collagen drinks - do they or do they not work? - that I can only conclude that they work for some people and not for others. All the collagen drinks that I have taken properly, and by that I mean every day for a fortnight, have worked. And when I say “work” I mean I have seen a difference in the elasticity and bounciness of my skin, all over, not just on my face… although of course the face is the thing I am scrutinising. The problem, like with all vitamins and supplements, is remembering to take them.
I stopped the one I was using - Evolution_18’s fizzy pink collagen drink - because it was just kind of a bore. The pill must be dissolved in water and it took quite a long time to dissolve and it wasn’t disgusting but I didn’t exactly look forward to it, either. A reader sent me some Ancient and Brave collagen powder, (she works for the company), and I have been taking it and I reckon, if you have a propensity for collagen drinks to work, that this is good stuff. It dissolves instantly and 98% flavourlessly into tea with milk or a milk alternative, (it’s not so great in black tea), and would work very well in porridge, a latte or a smoothie. Anything that you have reliably every day. If you're curious about it, give this one a whirl. Not suitable, alas, for vegetarians.
Oh wait, no sorry - this is the last thing. You may have noticed that have started up my paid-for section of this newsletter, which is a fortnightly recipe. The last one was an excellent and very useful chocolate cake; the next one is a killer supper dish and will be out Monday 14th March. It’s a corker for real. To subscribe is £3.50 per month and you will get two really good and useful recipes, plus you will be supporting the continuation of the free section of the newsletter. And it’s good to pay for content!
apparently he's very obsessed with ABBA.
My partner works with an app called TipTapp / he picks up rubbish and has to prove ethical disposal or he doesn’t get the fee. He is freelance man with a van, so not employed by the app…they only take £1 per load from the drivers so ethical pay for drivers as well as ethical disposal.