#99 The Offcuts
Acts of kindness and peach melba ice cream
This week, I bring you a dollop of food nostalgia, a concept of ‘emasculinity’ and a sentiment to help you move through the week with greater love and care.
I finished Termush by Sven Holm, translated from Danish into English by Sylvia Clayton. It’s a short book, so I got through it in a couple of sittings. I really enjoyed it. Throughout, I kept thinking of similar books or TV shows and films that dabbled in similar plot or storylines. If you’re a fan of Triangle of Sadness (rich people antics), White Lotus (set in a hotel, rich people antics), The Lobster (set in a hotel, dystopian plot), or I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman, translated from French into English by Ros Schwartz (dystopian plot, uncertainty for the world that lies beyond) - then you might enjoy this book too.
I’ve moved on to Don’t Look Now and Other Stories by Daphne du Maurier. Her writing is crisp and flawless, her short stories are sharp and haunting. The first story in the collection, Don’t Look Now, gave me chills when I read it before going to sleep.
Other reads from the week:
Grief is so often made to hide in the shadows
It’s not you, it’s my startup
By 2027, the penis-implant market is expected to reach $640.5m
The Real Housewives who raised me
The “Girlbossification” of AI
Adore Art Magazine - Monthly showcase feature of writing submissions
Alex Friedman - Weekender round up
kate lindsay - The social contract of phones has entirely broken
Elizabeth Day - I don’t want to be a girl’s girl
We all know that merch has gone off the rails in recent years. Limited edition Wicked: For Good dishwasher tablet? I’m okay thanks, babe. But the new Rivals inspired range at Waitrose for the release of season two actually looks pretty good. Perhaps it’s because the food and drink have been well considered. The dishes and flavours accentuate the show and nostalgia for the 80s. A sensory addition of smell and taste to enhance your experience and allow you to engage further with great TV. No second screening here.
More food nostalgia came for me this week in the form of fairy cakes. The ones from Tesco (and other supermarkets) with the hard blob of icing on the top. I’d sometimes have one in my lunchbox at primary school. They’re not very good. I caught a whiff of the lemon one so distinctly as I was walking through one of the copious tunnels at Green Park to reach the Victoria Line. I am far more likely to purchase a Rival’s peach melba ice cream from Waitrose than stock up on any of these sad little things.
Single women are buying more houses - the men they’re dating don’t like it. I found this piece in The Guardian fascinating. It reminded me of an episode of MAFS (my greatest source of inspiration at the moment, it seems). At the dinner party after homestay week, Danny voiced his feelings of emasculation because his (then) partner, Bec, was a property owner. Moving to Adelaide and into a house owned by his female partner was unsettling for him. Gradually, all the men (in heterosexual relationships) around the table agreed they would feel the same or similar to Danny. How pathetic.
I often think back to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TEDx talk and essay We Should All Be Feminists written in 2014, in circumstances like this:
We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, you can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful. Otherwise, you would threaten the man.
Are you sure you support equality of the sexes? Or do you also secretly harbour an affinity for social “norms, morals, and traditions” that prevent you from doing so?
Acts of kindness, however small, are vital to carry out and witness if we are to maintain our communities and hope to heal wounds of alienation. More prominent now than ever. This week, I saw two particular videos on Instagram of strangers interacting in fleeting day-to-day type moments that made me want to cry happy tears. The first was a woman having a drink alone in a pub garden, striking up friendly conversation with an older man for a few minutes. The next was a video of someone applying make-up in a London tube station and asking commuters for their opinions on which eyeshadow to apply. The more of Evin’s videos I watched, the more my bias was challenged. Choosing to be kind in a world that incites so much violence is a mark of resistance that takes courage and bravery.
