“I feel sorry for the old horse,” my son said, drinking his Coke in the interval.

“We all feel sorry for the horse,” I replied.

“He’s going to die, isn’t he?’’

“Er, well… it rarely ends well for the loyal, hard-working and exhausted masses under the yoke of a totalitarian dictator’s regime. But don’t worry. Pringles?”

We were midway through at a brilliant new stage adaptation of Animal Farm at Stratford East, and the fate of poor Boxer was already becoming clear.

It’s 80 years since George Orwell published Animal Farm. He wrote it after returning from the Spanish civil war where he had been horrified by leftist factional fighting. His attempts to get the book published were thwarted by an unwillingness among the establishment to so obviously attack Stalin’s Russia at a time the countries were allies.

A response from Jonathan Cape publishers suggested that if the fable were addressed “more generally to dictators and dictatorships at large, then publication would be all right”, but it was too obviously telling the history of post-revolution Russia. Jonathan Cape need not have worried. Watching last week, few in the audience were thinking of Stalin and Trotsky.

All must have been thinking about right now and how, little by little, a leader goes from saying, “I am with you” to “I am the chosen one”. How he harnesses minds into paranoia about saboteurs and “enemies of the people”. How he tears up the rules and makes his own. And how power and wealth become ever more controlled by a small group of already powerful people – leaving ordinary people lugging boulders up hills.

It may be that after a couple of months of whirlwind action Donald Trump will be content to retire to the golf course, the constitutional guardrails will kick in and things will calm down. If Elon (or Squealer?) allows it. But for now, none of this bodes well for the hard-working American people who put so much faith in Trump. It doesn’t look good for Boxer.

Naked ankles

Of all the things that seem to be disappearing from modern life – pubs, libraries, politeness and basic truth – the one most worrying me lately has been… socks. It’s been a cold week. Bitter. With icy blasts gouging the skin. So where have all the socks gone? On draughty station platforms, buffeted bus stops and icy high streets, more and more people are leaving their ankles to brave the cold. There they are wrapped in a bobble hat, quilted jacket and scarf – but with a gaping gap between where their trousers end and their trainers begin. Any socks that are on show are those silly ones that don’t quite hit the ankle bone. It’s all too much. Or certainly not enough for this time of year.

Phlegm brulée

Unpleasant moment of the week goes to Adrián Simancas, the young kayaker who found himself inside the mouth of a humpback whale. Adrián had been out with his father, Dell, in the Strait of Magellan, Chile, when a humpback surfaced and snapped up the kayak.

Jonah famously survived three days inside the whale before being spat out; for Adrián it was just moments. Apparently the humpback can only swallow objects no bigger than a watermelon. Adrián’s greatest risk would have been asphyxiation inside the whale’s mouth, which has no breathable air. We can only imagine the stench of rotting fish. And the pitch black darkness. Adrián particularly noticed the slime that hit his face. Eeeuw.

• Alison Phillips is a former Mirror editor-in-chief