Bits #47
A big letter of all sorts
I’m back! In body, if not mind. I know a lot of people love la rentrée, but I’m ardently mourning summer. My son threw up over me on the plane home and then exploded over me via the other end in the cab, so September didn’t have the most auspicious start. Or perhaps it did? The only way is up, etc. (God, two-year-olds are disgusting. Mine treats the sanitary bin like a lucky dip and park railings like candy canes.) I didn’t have a spare t-shirt, so I borrowed my daughter’s vest, and looked like I was trying to do the Gen Z baby tee thing but with 38-year-old tits. I returned with 5 loads of laundry to a bust washing machine.
I’m jesting. I’m used to the chaos (embrace it, even) and it’s a bright blue day, with small people finally installed at school and nursery. I’m writing this to the dulcet sounds of a loft being drilled into being across the road, having just opened my first ever unsolicited dick pic on Instagram.
Milestones aside, I’m already coming round to September: lots of invigorating things happened last week to get my synapses crackling for the new term. I’ve switched the order of the main letter and Bits, incidentally, so that the main letter will come at the end of the week. Normal order resumes next week.
Below the paywall today: Miriam Margolyes, Ian McEwan, Rita Hayworth, Sartre and Sally Mann (all walked into a bar). Also, the bubonic plague, polycules, RushTok, the limitations of seeing Taylor Swift as ‘relatable’, and a great bit of advice on how to deal with intense pre-teen friendships.
I had the pleasure of listening to Caitlin Moran interviewed by Marie Claire editor Andrea Thompson, at a BSME lunch last week. I was nodding along to so much of what she said, particularly when it comes to managing her anxiety (she only reads hard news at the weekends and she no longer scrolls social media). Of her trademark ‘chatty’ style, she said it’s a Trojan horse: a way to make people engage with subjects that they might otherwise find daunting, or onerous. “The more serious a subject is, the more you as a writer should be making it a joy to read. I don’t want [reading me] to be like eating a big bag of fibre.” And here’s her tip for aspiring writers:
“Read it out loud. The minute you finish writing it, completely forget you’ve written it and read it as a reader. Is this boring? Do I understand this? Do I want a joke here? Switching between reader and writer mode is really important.”
I interviewed Ruby Tandoh for The Sunday Times Style about her new book, All Consuming (here’s a free extract) a rigorous and joyful study of food culture in the TikTok age, filled with niche deep dives such as how the Magnum became the world’s no.1 ice cream, why (and how) bubble tea became the biggest thing to hit the UK since the hamburger in the 50s and the madness of Erewhon, Poppi, cronuts, etc. I love Tandoh’s riposte to food snobbery (she has written pieces about her love for Wimpy and white bread) and her inclusive approach to how we eat. Here’s a passage from the piece:
“Our cultural appetites are shared and evolving. We yearn for what we see in books, on telly and on other people’s social media feeds. “Even though food culture is more chaotic and splintered than it’s ever been, there is so much generative energy, connection and imagination,” Tandoh says. Queueing for hours for a tray of strawberries dipped in chocolate is not for everyone, but we can all parse pleasure from this “synaptic, capricious” moment, with its endlessly replenishing mash-ups: cheeseburger tacos, say, or Yorkshire pudding burritos. Was the Yorkshire pudding burrito … nice? I enquire. “It was disgusting,” she says, laughing. “But you have to admire the vision.”
Tandoh also just published a romp of a piece for The New Yorker about The Great British Bake Off (which she was a contestant on in 2012). I’m still reeling over the American spelling of filo pastry (phyllo!!!)
“As the seasons have rolled on, producers have had to contend with the fact that the bakers often have more adventurous tastes than the judges do. Paul on gochujang: “Never tried this.” On peanut butter and grape jelly: “Not totally convinced about the flavor combinations.” Mary’s repertoire seemed to have lain almost untouched since 1976. In an old master-class episode, she makes a cake with an “unusual ingredient,” and it turns out the ingredient is an orange.”
I also had the pleasure of hosting a panel for Toast last week on the idea of living curiously, with poet and actress Greta Bellamacina, and biochemist and author, Dr Camilla Pang. Both women bring curiosity into their work in very different ways, but with a shared sense of optimistic enquiry. I usually interview people about a specific project, so I relished the opportunity to have a really freewheeling conversation; I felt very hopeful, afterwards.
I loved Camilla’s approach to everyday curiosity: she keeps a Whatsapp group with herself, where she shares voicenotes, screenshots and links of things that pique her interest (you can’t start a Whatsapp group without anyone else, so her partner is the silent witness), while Greta suggests standing in a garden, or park, with your shoes off and your eyes closed and paying carefula attention to what you see, hear, smell. Mine? Animal facts, of course! My favourite part of parenting is connecting with that childlike sense of awe, via all the incredible/disgusting/ bizarre fact books I can find.
We are currently reading these two, but this is my favourite (I’m excited for the sequel) and this is my most gifted book of all time.
Speaking of kids books, my daughter has discovered Jacqueline Wilson and the nostalgia of watching her devour Bad Girls (Mandie’s bunny cardi! Daddy’s smock!) was so intense. I have received a few messages asking for recs for kids books, so I am thinking of doing one soon about the books I’ve been enjoying with my 2/5/7 year olds. Let me know if that might appeal! (There’s also this post from a few years ago, with 30+ books for 2-6 year olds.)
I paused my news consumption for a while over August, which means I only just caught up on Sylvanian Drama, which plays like an April Fool. ICYMI, a 24-year-old Irish content creator with the rather brilliant name Thea von Engelbrechten, started a TikTok account in 2021 where she would use her Sylvanians to act out dramatic scenes of divorce, marriage and death. Captions included, “my boyfriend won’t post me on Instagram” and “did you eat my painkillers?” “Yeh, I thought it was Ozempic”. She racked up 2.5 million followers on TikTok, 1 million on Instagram and landed deals with Burberry, Netflix and Sephora. Whiskers trembling at the amount of money she was brokering thanks to their furry vermin, Epoch, the Japanese company who own Sylvanians, decided to sue. They’ve since dropped the case and von Engelbrechten has changed the name of her account from Sylvanianfamilydrama to GossipSquirls. I am obsessed with the name suggestions from her followers which included: Desperate Mousewives, SLAYvanian Drama and, my favourite, The Real Housewives of Sylvania.
A brief shopping note for those with open shelves: these Muji invisible book ends.
Y2K boho is fully back: I’ve spotted three cotton prairie skirts today and Chloe have re-released their Paddington bag, which I bought a knockoff of in Thailand aged 19 —I could have killed someone with that padlock. Further proof of its return, a big interview with boho queen, Isabel Marant, in HTSI. I’m a big fan of Marant, and not just for her aesthetic consistency. About 10 years ago, when I was a fashion editor/ columnist person, I went to a dinner with Marant. She spoke about how her and husband, designer Jérôme Dreyfuss, had recently taken a trip to LA, to see if they could ever live there. One night, on a long LA-ish drive home, Marant was desperate for the toilet. She got out to squat behind a car, as the earthier of us have done many a time, to covertly pee. “Isabel!” hissed Dreyfuss. “It is LA! You cannot pee on the street!” “But Jerome” she replied, wide-eyed, followed by a dramatic pause. “If I cannot pee, I cannot BE.” And so they remained in Paris.
I tried to get into The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox on Disney+ (exec produced by Knox and Monica Lewinsky, who have formed something of a friendship—Knox refers to them as “the Sisterhood of Ill Repute”) but quit after 2 eps. Not because I don’t think it’s Knox’s story to tell (I find this an odd take—it was an astonishing miscarriage of justice; although, there is an argument that she has told it across multiple mediums already) or because Grace Van Patten isn’t decent as Knox, but because it was jarringly camp. I read that they were influenced by Amélie which is tonally, just, no. Like Ryan Murphy, sans Ryan Murphy.
What did hit, was s3 of The Summer I Turned Pretty —notably sexier than it’s previous two series—and, to quote Helen Mirren on the disconnect between salary and material trappings (“it’s not a documentary”), I’m mainly here for the aesthetics: Belly’s vast Reformation by way of DÔEN wardrobe; the hilariously beautiful fictional college of Finch (I assume it is meant to be Brown); everything about the Cousins (I assume is meant to be Cape Cod.) But Christ, the love triangle got tiring.
