The Vatican gets to own a Picasso

I’m fairly overwhelmed and quick to flames of late. I saw someone saying that this is the post-pandemic hangover, this exhaustion and carrying on and complaining and carrying on. It is stubbed toe season.

I missed a movie in the cinema a few weekends ago because the bus would not move. I walked around town for thirty minutes and got a hot chocolate and hated its melted plastic taste. Someone didn’t acknowledge the important role I played in making something happen. A person I hate was beatified in a publication. My phone stopped working. I read a bad book in a series I was so far enjoying. My wardrobe isn’t ready for the warmer weather. I keep forgetting to make lunch the night before.

There is a story in the news that has me jittery. I want the whole thing to just stop, but I know it won’t. I pray for a conspiracy of silence. I can’t bear to talk about it with anyone but those who know what my guts look like. In Terence Rattigan’s play The Winslow Boy, the barrister character Sir Robert Morton says, “It's easy to do justice, very hard to do right.” I always think of those words when I read the court and coroner’s reports. We don’t need to draw blood in this world. We just need to leave it slightly better than we found it.

I was in the Vatican Museum a few months ago and as you journey to the Sistine Chapel you pass through the Catholic Church’s modern art collection. It is beautiful. Works gifted to the Holy See by the son of Matisse. After everything that has happened in our country and others, the Vatican gets to own a Picasso. It’s quite the ‘go fuck yourself’.

Other things

• I enjoyed Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. The Bridgerton guy was great in it and Chris Pine was v charming and both Ireland and fake Ireland looked nice.

• I’m reading Nothing Special by Nicole Flattery and am enjoying so far. Has a Catherine Lacey’s The Answers and some Atwood vibes to it. If you start a novel with a “My mother wore only one brand and shade of lipstick her entire life and now I can’t find it anywhere” vibe, I’m like grand, settling in for some light misery and soul searching, boil the kettle for a hot water bottle.

• I was looking up people and places on Irish archival sites (always a great way to pass the time) and came across a Caesar Sutton in the 1830s. Just wanted to share that powerhouse of a name. There was once a baby Caesar.