Bits #10
Did you know that I copy paste the hashtag off Google everytime I write these, because I still don't know how to find it on the keyboard
For the newbies: I publish twice a week (bc no-one needs to hear from me more than twice a week*). Tuesday’s newsletter is free, while Friday’s is mostly paywalled (to fund this lil brain-drain) and STUFFED with content to gobble immediately: short stories, essays, pods, docs, film, weird words, old things I’ve moled out of the archive. I love reply guys, so please do scroll down and drop a <3 or a Comment if you like what you find. As ever, if you can’t afford a subscription, e-mail me and I will comp you.
I interviewed fashion director Kay Barron about her trend-free, no-nonsense guide to dressing (skinny jeans never went out of fashion and yes, you can still wear a floral tea dress) at The V&A on Monday evening and she was as wise and witty as her book. I’m easing off the live events now the nights are getting colder and my sofa is whispering my name, but I do have one more (there’s always room for one more) coming up that I’m looking forward to, with academic psychologist Dr Lucy Foulkes, about the teen mental health crisis for Intelligence Squared in November.
I spoke with Lucy multiple times ahead of my interview with Jonathan Haidt a few months ago - she’s a critic of the proposed smartphone ban, believing that anxiety is multi-factorial and that most of the time, bans don’t work. Her new book digs deep into the nuance - because this is not a one-message issue! - and I’m excited to chat to her about it.
Last Friday I found out that ‘comely’ is pronounced cumly and - sorry what? This is an adjective designed to flatter. CUMLY??? I tried it out on Rylan last weekend (sorry I dropped something) and he looked like he was going to throw up. I’m not surprised. I find it frankly ↓
Speaking of comely things, j’adored Jilly Cooper’s recent piece for Vogue, on sex’s glory days (the 80s) and why no-one’s shagging anymore.
“Today there seems to be far less bonking. Everyone seems to expend their energy in the gym or jogging round and round the country. So many couples meet online now, which is far less spontaneous and exciting than the wild office parties and dances of the old days when everyone was getting off with everyone.”
She’s not wrong!
Cooper wrote the piece to promote the new adaptation of Rivals, which is dropping next week. As a historic JC fan, I cannot fucking wait.
Ross Raisin just won the BBC national short story award for his story Ghost Kitchen about the gig economy, narrated by a bicycle courier called Sean and inspired by Raisin’s own time working in and around kitchens. (Audio version, here.) As Sean becomes more exhausted and disconnected from society, barely able to tell day from night, he reassures himself that this is true emancipation. This is what agency feels like. As the story goes on, it becomes a sort of delirious incantation.
“As the weekend went on, time continued to stretch, to lose its shape. There were some occasional stiller moments; long periods, too, of intense heat and sweat. The orders never stopped coming in. Day and night. With every ping on his phone, and every new order appearing on the pod’s blinking screen, he gave himself over to the ceaseless current of demand, a digitized hunger that could never be satisfied. This new life, he told himself, was the right one for him now. He was his own man, on his own time, able to lose himself in work – and the pod, hidden from the city, from people, was a place where the rest of the world, and his family, and the past, no longer existed.”
Ghost Kitchen feels like a fictive companion to James Bloodworth’s Hired, a haunting work of non-fiction about the author’s 6 months undercover at an Amazon warehouse. Ghost Kitchen is not a cheerful read, but it is compelling and thought-provoking and I recommend it.
Another short story that grabbed me this week was ‘Baby’ by Brittany Newell for n+1, which is more or less the first 20 pages of Soft Core, Newell’s strange and seductive second novel which comes out next February. It’s about an erotic dancer in her late 20s named Baby, fka Daisy (real name Ruthie) who gains a well-paying client named Simon.
“THINGS THE OTHER DANCERS TOLD ME: there was a girl named Horsie who named herself after the drug. There was a girl named Penny who never made shit. There were two girls named Unique who got in a fist fight over the name. There were two sets of twins named Molly and Holly, Lola and Lila. There was a girl who had her regulars call her Trash Bag. There was a girl named Patience who was so very beautiful, so beloved by all men, that no one has dared use that name ever since.”
For $800 a month, Baby’s more than happy to pee into a beer glass, put her used pants in a Ziploc bag and perform other kinky yet mundane tasks. Simon’s money brings an abundance into Baby’s life that she doesn’t know what to do with - but she knows that her housemate and ex-boyfriend Dino (a gentle giant and ketamine dealer and the love of Baby’s life) wouldn’t be so sure.
Baby pulsates with a glittery, slightly manic energy - a sort of skewed, old-worldly charm. It’s not really about sex. It’s about performance vs. being seen. About love, safety and - sorry to be grandiose - the literal meaning of life. I'm intrigued to see what the rest of the book will bring. (And if I like it, I’ll write about it next year.)
I was so touched by this helpful e-mail from a reader re: my failure to master 4-7-8 breathing - sharing here for anyone else desp to regulate:
The actual number of the breaths doesn't really matter. There's a bunch of speculation about where the precise pattern came from, but a gentle breath hold and extended exhale will kick in your rest and digest system. We struggle to fall asleep with a high HR which is why it's so effective at nighttime.
Start with a shorter pattern - even like 3, 3, 4 - anything that starts to lengthen the out breath. The other thing people do that makes it actually feel stressful is work reeeeally hard on the pause, which kind of defeats the point of trying to relax.
Soften your face and shoulders as you breath. When you pause, really intentionally keep your belly/face/shoulders soft. Play with breathing more outwards into your ribs like an accordion rather than up into the chest.
Stick with it. It can be magic.
That parting tip at the end “stick with it, it can be magic” - such a galvanizing mandate for life in general.
I cannot stop watching this video of Christina Aguilera ft. Sabrina Carpenter (via Feed Me) and feeling all the warm and fuzzies. Look how maternally Christina looks at Sabrina! Like peroxide sister kittens. Mildly distracted by Christina’s flesh-coloured tights (???) but my god - I’d forgotten the lungs on her. Divine.
And now for a couple of things which have been slagged off but which I liked!