Bits #18
Things to read, watch, listen to, chew over
Silly season has arrived and I’m already on my knees. I always find December’s marathon sprint of work + socialising insane and now I have 3 tiny diaries to add into the mix, plus my older son’s birthday the week before Christmas. If I expire in a festive puff of glitter, it’s been nice writing to you the last couple of years and have a good one.
My sister was listening to the radio last weekend and she texted me excitedly to say that Elaine Paige had just signed off with a quote from me. What did I say? I asked, intrigued. “Do not covet what others have. Tread your own path” my sister replied. I have zero zilch zanada recollection of ever saying that, but it’s good advice. I’ll take it!
Notes from the week:
I noticed with a furious gasp that Whatsapp has co-opted iMessage’s three dots of doom. (I’m late to update, my husband says this happened a few weeks ago.) My question is why? The only thing that typing bubble ever did is stoke anxiety
Mocha Mousse is Pantone’s colour of the year. Here’s Viv Chen on why the colour is so bum-out
It turns out Sudocrem comes from the Dublin pronunciation of “soothing cream”1 — which was what it was originally called when it was invented in Dublin in 1931. It reminds of my fave pronunci fact, which is that ‘space ghettos’ in an American accent sounds like ‘Spice Girls’ in a Scottish one. Go on, try it — it’s an instant mood-boost
Apparently, everyone’s about to start ‘revenge quitting’. I’m sceptical: do the figures match up with the anecdata? Granted, Business Insider has a US focus — but in the UK, everyone is doing everything they can to hold on to their jobs
Last month, Collins chose brat as their word of the year and now, The OED has chosen brain rot. Thoughts? Aside from a rotting brain being the most horrifying visual one can possibly imagine?
The teeny martini is trending and I’m not surprised — after my friend Dolly introduced me to Rita’s mini martini, I immediately began scouring the internet for 100ml martini glasses, so that I could make my own mar-teeny at home. (I’m yet to find any that small, but Beata Heuman tells me these are a neat choice.)
According to Rita’s genius co-founder, Missy Flynn, it’s what’s called a “starter drink”, which are good for people (me) who don’t want to be on the floor before dinner. I must note, while we’re on martinis, that I find the term “wet” for a drink which is by its nature already wet BECAUSE IT IS A DRINK, an infuriating bar term. I must also note that these seashell martini glasses on Etsy are so fun. A pair would make an excellent wedding present.
I loved Katy Hessel for The Guardian on how art galleries are the antidote to smartphone brain, which is a great companion piece to my letter on Tuesday, about the value of awe and reciprocity.
“As the writer Iris Murdoch said in an interview: ‘Most of the time we fail to see the big wide real world at all because we are blinded by obsession, anxiety, envy, resentment, fear. We make a small personal world in which we remain enclosed. Great art is liberating, it enables us to see and take pleasure in what is not ourselves.’
Art reminds us to look up from the tiny world we’ve made on the black mirror that lives in our pocket. It helps us to understand our place in the universe, and look out to the expanse, rather than into our filtered selves through tech. It’s time to take back our attention; and to give it to the things we deserve and that matter.”
Season 8 of The Missing launched this week, with the first 2 eps now available to listen to. The first episode tells the story of Rodrigo Falcon, who mysteriously disappeared from Aviemore, Scotland, in 2022 and the second, Tony Donnellan, whose disappearance from Camberwell has baffled the authorities for three decades.
It’s been 4 years since I begun hosting this podcast and 70 stories later, it’s now on its eighth and final run. It has been an extraordinary privilege to be involved in an ethical take on true crime, which is made in collaboration with the charities Missing People and Locate International, where the missing person’s story is told through a loved one — where the intention is not to titillate, but to help find these long-term missing people. If you’re new to the show, there’s a back catalogue of 70 episodes to listen to. All of their stories deserve your attention.
I had the fun job of interviewing the cast of new espionage thriller, Black Doves, at the London premiere on Tuesday. Keira Knightley plays a spy called Helen, a long-term member of the ruthless Black Doves, who has been selling secrets on her husband, the defence secretary, for their entire marriage. When her lover is killed unexpectedly, it looks like her cover might be blown. Cue, the arrival of Black Doves boss, the terrifyingly calm Reed, played by Sarah Lancashire and the return of Helen’s once best friend, hit-man Sam, played by Ben Whishaw (forever in my head as the voice of Paddington) who is absolutely brilliant. (“I guess I liked, basically, that this was a queer guy who shot people for a living”, Whishaw told GQ this week.)
In the words of Black Doves writer, the very droll Joe Barton (who also penned Giri/Haji and The Lazarus Project), “everyone wants to see Paddington shoot up London.” If you like Mr and Mrs Smith, Christmas movies in London and Killing Eve - preferably a mash-up of all three - then this will go down very well. “It’s the blood on the tinsel” grinned director, Alex Gabassi. As a sidenote, Sarah Lancashire is the nicest celebrity I have ever met. I don’t get star struck very often, but as a huge - and I mean, huge - Happy Valley fan, it was a thrill to discover that she is as humble, curious and dry as I’d always hoped.
As a 9-year-old, I was fascinated by JonBénet Ramsey’s murder — it was one of those horrific news stories that date-stamped my childhood, along with the deaths of Princess Diana, Leah Betts, James Bulger and Jill Dando. I latched on to it in a way that now makes me squirm, getting my aunt to bring me National Enquirers over from Colorado, where she lived. (They covered it for years.) I’m not watching the new documentary about the tiny beauty queen’s murder, because I don’t like how salacious the Netflix true crime genre is, but I was still interested in this interview in The Independent with the doc’s director, Joe Berlinger, which reminded me of a lot of my own feelings at the time, even as a child.