Photo by Hayk Badalyan

Most of the creative people I know in the UK are resigned to an uphill struggle. Many work in a vacuum. The city is pocked with such voids. Sisyphus and his boulder have returned. Nor is it anything to do with finding the perfect landscape. No such place exists. Not to those chipping away at the cliff-face with their backs to the beauty. No—it’s all or nothing here, with little space for part-timers. And yet, as confessional Anaïs Nin said: “We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.”

An ex-military friend, now a Buddhist, enters Monty Python territory when he tells me of Russian scientists creating a so-called squadron of bomber pigeons mostly for spying, though they could also carry small explosives. He reads this to me on the phone: ‘“A Russian neuro-technology firm have launched field tests of so-called “bird-biodrones” known as PJN-1,”’ runs the Express article. Until he sends me a link, I think he might be pulling my leg. In the end I am left to wonder if Steve Witkoff could make a good pigeon whisperer.

Pam Hogg was a ubiquitous, smoky figure across the catwalks and parties of the capital. She died only days ago in a London hospice. An anti-establishment fashion designer, an unapologetic queen of upcycling, and a former unsung musician, she used to pop up everywhere—from high-profile trendy weddings in celebrity chef restaurants, to ostentatious gallery openings on Hanover Square. What I liked was her Scots lack of impressionability when it came to other people’s wealth, right down to the fact she hated the way property could be used to throw rank—unlike some of her artist friends whose only........

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