I just want to say a massive THANK YOU for landing me in the Top 10 Literature Substacks globally, this week. I am really, really thrilled! A wee boost to grease the wheels.
Language I have adopted from my children this week:
via the newly 2yr old, ‘moonback’ (as short-hand for “love you to the moon and back”)
via the 5yr old, ‘belly button’ (in lieu of ‘bell end’ which is what his father actually said, when someone swerved into his lane)
via the newly 7yr old, ‘get graved’ (for when you die)
The Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction shortlist was announced this week, which reminded me that I haven’t read much non-fic for a while; I keep getting distracted by novel proofs. I’m tempted to add to my towering pile: Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton (which sounds a little like Featherhood); and Private Revolutions: Coming of Age in a New China by Britain’s first Chinese-born MP, Yuan Yang.
Last week I discovered that I am older than Van Gogh1 was when he died. This week, I learned that Stifler’s Mom is 37. THIRTY FUCKING SEVEN? You might as well bump me off the boat right now.
I’m so enjoying my daughter’s copies of The Junior Week. Recently I’ve learned that scientists have created an electronic tongue which lets you taste food without eating it (the Ozempic era just got a side-kick); that Colossal have made their first step towards bringing back the woolly mammoth by creating ‘a woolly mouse’; and that Vesuvius once turned a man’s brain into glass. Honestly, I see this becoming my favourite magazine.
This is a great interview with Ben Affleck by Zach Baron for GQ. Ding dong the celebrity profile is not dead! (He looks like a cartel boss in the accompanying pics.) Of his famously dishevelled pap shots, Affleck says:
“I think I don’t present in a very careful way… And some people are probably, I guess you’d call them smarter or more strategic because they think, well: “I don’t want to be seen wearing some T-shirt or spilling some drink.” And I just think: Oh fuck it, man, I could give a shit. I just want to get the coffee. So maybe that’s a part of it, because people are accustomed to a more presented, curated image. My life is actually pretty drama-free. And so even if I have the same events that people have—I’m sure in your mind you’re thinking, Oh, well, you just got divorced. That’s not drama-free. And I understand that instinct, but all of this is pretty adult, and for all the sensational stuff that gets written, if somebody sat down and talked to me about it, and I said, “Well, this is really the experience,” their eyes would glaze over with boredom.”
I’ve fatigued of scam docs in the last few years, but I was compelled to watch Con Mum after reading a riveting interview with Graham Hornigold last week. The documentary is unbelievable—in that you literally can’t believe it. Unlike the victims of most scams, Hornigold is low-key famous, a Michelin-starred pastry chef and Junior Bake Off judge. And even more unusually, the scammer was his octogenarian mum.