#57 The Offcuts
What will survive of us is music from the twenty-tens
Who’s excited for a big, juicy bank holiday weekend? Will the rain hold off, or in true British fashion, will it be a washout? I have mere days left to stock up on hot cross buns for the freezer and as much Easter chocolate as will fit into the cupboard because it truly is the best. Although a moment of remembrance, please, for another fallen food-favourite to be added to the discontinued list. Galaxy Enchanted Eggs, where art thou???
I finished Maybe in Another Life by Taylor Jenkins Reid. I think I’ve realised that I enjoy her fictitious celebrity biopics the most, like Daisy Jones and The Six or Carrie Soto is Back. In an attempt to get through more of the books I’ve left sitting on my Kindle shelf, I started Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane. A few pages in, I’ll admit I was worried I had made a mistake with my choice. The first chapter didn’t thrill me or fill me with confidence. But as I’ve gone on, I realise its necessity in firming up the plot of the novel and the relationships between certain characters. Now that I’m a good chunk in, I’m enjoying the pace more. Though I am scared that the book will end in a kind of devastation that will leave me bereft for weeks.
12 Women on Living Alone
How to be a happy 85-year-old
You can’t fix him
Condiments are now the hottest commodity in ‘little treat culture’
A new start after 60
Visiting a viral TikTok restaurant as a food snob
The kids stole the show on the eve of the Masters
The UK sauna boom
At the end of this week I’ll be tasting wines at Chapel Down. I actually haven’t been to a vineyard in the UK, but with English wine receiving more recognition in recent years for its taste and quality, I’m excited to learn a bit more of its history, too.
I’ve hit a music rut where all my usual playlists aren’t slapping in the way I want them to. So, I’ve been letting Spotify lead the way with random playlists curated for me, and wow, have I been indulging in some throwbacks. I’ve pulled the best together for you below in case you need a little mood-lifting power hour this Monday.
It is absolutely criminal how funny I found the Lynx Cherry Spritz advert. Ads are shoved forcibly down our throats at every turn in a digitally-led world. There is a certain charm and magic in a TV ad that is able to draw your attention back to the big screen while you’ve temporarily moved to your little screen while waiting for your show to come back on. This advert did exactly that.
Hate to be a downer, but I don’t like these weird Barbie AI things that everyone, including big brands, is creating. I dread to think of the environmental cost and impact of a trend as widespread as this. AI is a huge energy and water guzzler. We can’t stop the ways it’s going to embed itself in our lives, but contributing to its usage for nonsense reasons like this actually makes me sad. It’s also a slap in the face to digital creators and those working in illustration and graphic design when preferred content is one generated by a machine. Sigh.
At the weekend, Philip Larkin came up in discussion. I studied The Whitsun Weddings at A-Level and fell in love with his poems (I was resistant at first, of course, because it’s me). Particularly, I enjoy the debate over his cynicism and whether it was genuine or all a defence mechanism because he was much more sentimental than he cared to let on. The last stanza of the final poem (An Arundel Tomb) in the anthology is a great example - is it hope, or resignation?
Time has transfigured them into
Untruth. The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.
