This week I have continued to be slow, pacing myself for the marathon that is 2025. Squirrelling away writing and reading and putting small plans into place to achieve all the things I want to do this year. There is no excitement, no gossip, no news to make you gasp that I have to report. Things are contentedly mundane.
I finished Girls by Kirsty Capes. It was okay, I enjoyed the premise of the plot but found some characters insufferably cruel. Elements of the plot and writing style also reminded me a lot (maybe too much) of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s work, especially Daisy Jones and The Six. I started listening to the audiobook of Paris Hilton’s memoir and have found it borderline dizzying to see her treatment in the media now versus 20/25 years ago. So many of the experiences in her formative years were harrowing, yet dismissed or ignored in order to preserve this “dumb blonde” over-sexualised and objectified angle. I am so glad she found her voice in this book. I am now reading I’m A Fan by Sheena Patel too. I love it. Reminds me a lot of The Coin by Yasmin Zaher in the way the book reads as a stream of consciousness from a woman on the edge. Full of acts, emotions and thoughts that women aren’t ‘supposed’ to have.
Other reads:
In our own lives, we prefer obscurity because it is less painful than clarity
People feel uncomfortable in the world today
Life’s too short
The Metal Bowl
In the words of the working class
Pranks, parenting and belonging to a famous family
Bibliotherapy: reading to treat depression
At home we have a Deal or No Deal board game and it perhaps my favourite board game. Maybe even the best one to ever be invented. When we play it as a family I enforce a rule that everyone must create a persona as if they were a contestant on the actual show. This includes sharing insights about what they would spend the money on and performing lengthy emotional speeches when opening boxes. Admittedly, I’m not a fan of the show’s revival. Why is Stephen Mulhern everywhere and why is the top prize LESS than it was like 15 years ago?
This week I learnt about a show in the US called Deal or No Deal Island. Wtf??? It’s a spin-off where contestants collect briefcases of money hidden across the Banker's private island, which is filmed in the Panama Islands. Oh the irony. If you catch me using a VPN no you didn’t.
Until this weekend, I had not before seen the 2004 film National Treasure. I have truly run out of things to watch when I go to bed. I like to have something to put on my laptop just for a little bit before the silk shutters (eye mask) come down and the ambient lighting (sunset lamp) turns off and I drift of into state of semi-consciousness. My choice would be trashy thriller/ detective TV shows but I fear I have actually watched all of them. I’ve begun turning to films instead. I’ve been ravaging that Disney+ subscription. I’ve watched Avatar, I’ve watched Alice Through the Looking Glass and some other insanely random choices that I now can’t recall. So yeah, National Treasure. Initial thoughts were fuck why does a 2004 film look ancient? Gulp. Secondary thoughts were, I’m not certain but I think Nicholas Cage looks really fit. I can’t comment on the content of the actual film because both nights I’ve tried to watch it I have fallen asleep. But I did make sure to note the important things down. Maybe I’ll try again this evening.
It’s been a great week for Marketing and PR. Or maybe my algorithm is working overtime to show me the kind of content I feel compelled to share with you here. Chicken or egg, right?
I’ve seen a lot of supermarket-ing (lol) over the last week or so. Shout out to Waitrose Maidenhead for incredible TikToks showing staff fawning over all the Easter chocolate coming to the shelves.
Marks & Spencer’s campaign “The Trotters” in response to the current airing of series 3 of The Traitors is flawless.
This stunt from Severance cast and crew at Grand Central Station ahead of the new season release was genius.
Timothée Chalamet rode a Lime bike onto the red carpet for his premiere of Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown. My Lime snobbery went into overdrive watching him try to put the stand up. Fists clenched, eyes twitching. Lime’s thanks to Chalamet for the coverage was a £65 fine for parking in the wrong place.
I need to stop entering giveaways. On certain days, I have a particular wave of self confidence, belief and delusion that I will win that holiday or spa voucher and so in earnest I follow pages on Instagram I don’t want to and allow my email address to be incessantly abused with newsletters from companies I don’t like because you have to be in it to win it. But I haven’t won anything since December 2021 (a juicy win in the form of a Grind coffee machine and lots of extra goodies). So I’m going cold turkey.
The last poem I saved to my Pinterest board of poems by Attacca by Frank O’Hara. It begins, “To take up where you left off! without a breath of separation your new movement is begun. The heart pulses on, developing a future.” Whatever you’re working towards right now keep pushin’ on.
