Things I have enjoyed lately

(includes old books, strippers and terrifying biscuits)

Hello! Not a specifically writing-related one this week as I’m struggling to keep up with the demands of promo and the current WIP as well as the usual Christmas-related shenanigans, so here are a few suggestions for things which will hopefully lift your spirits if you find this a tricky time of year. They have mine.

sometimes I really love my neighbourhood.

The Wedding People by Alison Elspach

Sometimes you read a book that makes you feel absolutely furious that you didn’t come up with it. The Wedding People by Alison Elspach is one of those books. I was feeling a bit low last weekend and my friend Jenny Colgan recommended it, saying it was charming. I downloaded it as I had a lot of walking and driving to do that day, and within half an hour I was completely hooked. I don’t want to tell you too much about it, as it’s a clever plot with many twists and turns, but it’s funny, astute, sad and tender and made me laugh out loud several times. I eked out the final chapters; isn’t that always the sign of something great? Turns out it’s been a New York Times bestseller and I’m not surprised. If it isn’t already optioned I’ll eat my wedding hat. If you need a little lift in the run up to Christmas I would highly recommend it.

(image from screenrant.com)

Anora

When I first heard about this film – an exotic dancer is hired by an oligarch’s son and ends up marrying him in Vegas – I groaned inwardly. And the opening scene did not put my mind at ease; a positive extravaganza of near-naked lap dancers bouncing up and down in a nightclub. But I’m so glad I stayed with it; Anora is a loooong way from a grossly updated Pretty Woman. There were points in this film where I became almost giddy with delight (special shout out to the young actor who plays Vanya, the oligarch’s son, who perfectly represents a kind of adolescent goofiness you don’t often see on screen). But then the middle of the film feels like an anxiety attack, and the final third is like the payoff to a morality tale.

It is beautifully acted. Mikey Madison, best known for playing the eldest daughter in Pamela Adlon’s excellent Better Things, is extraordinary as Anora, with all her spiky, fearless exuberance. The final scene takes place in a car and there is a moment – an almost imperceptible movement between her and another character - which left me suddenly in tears. But the thing I loved most about it – just as with Wedding People above – was that I had no idea at any point what was going to happen next.

Mennonite In A Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen.

I had to dig this book out because I’d been asked by a podcast to recall a book that made me laugh and I had a sudden flashback to being tearful with giggles at this one. And then I discovered that, like all my favourite books, I had of course lent it to someone and never got it back, so I have just bought a new copy and re-read it cover to cover. If you need something that makes you laugh, repeatedly, abruptly, the kind of barking honk that causes your children to walk several paces away from you, or people on tube trains to shift seats, this is your book. A memoir about a woman returning to her benign, eccentric Mennonite family (think Amish on steroids) after the collapse of her marriage when her husband runs off with “Bob from Gay.com”. Just cheering and lovely.

(also: if I lent you my copy of this book, please can I have it back)

This one is not really a cultural thing, but I feel good about two utility companies. Since I moved back to London two years ago I have been a customer of British Gas. I won’t bore you with the monthly nightmare that was trying to deal with their customer service, or the endless saga of being cut off because they got my account confused with that of the previous owners, or their repeated inability to take my meter readings. All I will say was that I began to actively dread dealing with this company. It cast a pall over at least one day a month, a day in which I would spend at least an hour queuing online to speak to someone in a far-off call centre who would, inevitably tell me that everything was sorted until it all happened again the following month. There were no apparent actual human beings you could speak to. I imagine they are all shielded from actual customers, perhaps locked in those great Victorian gas cylinders that still sit like dead leviathans in industrial landscapes.

And then I realized I could just switch. I joined Octopus Energy and since I did I haven’t had to think about it. They provide energy, I take my meter readings, I pay my bill. That’s it. That’s the real luxury in dealing with these corporations – just not having to think about it.

Likewise my internet. I was with Virgin – another company where you apparently cannot speak to a human being – and now I am not. I am with Zen Internet, who seem to have a lot of nice human beings you can speak to, and don’t mind my Techno-nan tendencies and now I am again relaxed about my dealings with a utility company, instead of regularly puce and tearful with impotent rage. (Now I just rage about other things haha)

Mulino Bianco Baiocchi Pistacchio

I am trying to force myself to stay in my chair at the moment, not least to make sure I stay on track with my Substack at a point when 59 other things need attention. I had popped into my local corner shop – the kind that sells milk but also four different types of fuse and a washing powder from Uzbekhistan, and I saw these little pistachio biscuits in a bag on the shelf and somehow they ended up in my own bag. I love anything pistachio flavoured, and I haven’t eaten biscuits in however long and how on earth was I to know that I have basically landed on the crack cocaine mothership of baked goods. Reader, I just ate chicken and vegetable soup for my lunch with a TEN BISCUIT CHASER. Do not buy these biscuits. They are too much for ordinary humans. I don’t know why I’ve mentioned them.

Have a lovely week! x