Month: March 2020

Nobody is dealing with the virus very well and that’s okay. How can you deal with something you can’t comprehend? 

I really could do without the constant entrepreneurial Instagram posts about it though. I don’t want to make the most of my lockdown. Nobody should feel the need to. We should be resting, staying safe, calling the people we care about and keeping our minds and bodies ticking over. So with that in mind, here is my list of things the Covid-19 pandemic is not:

1. The pandemic is not a writers’ retreat.

2. It is not an opportunity to work on my career (nor should I feel guilty for not doing so).

3. It is not a sign that I should be spending more time on self-care.

4. It is not possible to understand what it will mean for the future.

5. It is not glazed with silver linings, neither should I disregard any optimism I might feel.

6. It is not my own personal tragedy or an excuse to feel sorry for myself.

I haven’t been on Twitter (except a few weak-moment check-ups) for nearly two weeks because the constant rolling updates were getting to me, but honestly, it’s mainly because of the snark. The endless snark. The thing that pushed me over the edge was seeing people taking the piss out of other people using their quarantined time at home to learn how to make bread. I don’t know why this was my breaking point, but I truly snapped.

Bake your bread. Read your books. Nap your naps. Stay safe, take care and do what you can to stay mentally strong throughout this.

Other Stuff

• Bake your bread! This no-knead bread is great if you’re feeling exhausted, have limited mobility in your arms/hands/shoulders or you just don’t wanna knead.

• Hate bread? Not to worry, Jack Monroe has some amazing, cheap and totally store cupboard-friendly recipes to get you through the isolation period.

• I discovered American-Korean artist Yaeji this week and I can’t get enough. Her track “Waking Up Down” is a modern anthem. “I got waking up down/I got cooking down/I got making my list and checking down/I got hydrating down”

• There’s a new wine publication in town and it’s growing free and wild. Planet Of The Grapes is over on Medium and there are tons of great people writing for it already, including my fellow Trossenwein harvester Valerie Kathawala who directed me towards it. Her piece on “Disrupting German Wine” is a must-read, as is Alicia Kennedy’s fascinating look at rosé wine’s unpopularity in Spanish wine-drinking Puerto Rico — spoiler alert, it’s because of toxic masculinity. Finally, read this piece “Wine In Strange Times”, where wine legends talk about what they’re drinking right now. What pairs well with apocalypse?

• Get ready for a ton of art content from The Guardian: 

• First, a sensitive look at the late Kenny Rogers’ photography. I wish I’d been aware of his photography while he was alive. It’s so atmospheric and dramatic. I love it.

• I’m working on a History of Art A level at the moment — it’s something I’ve always wanted to do. Maybe I’ll talk about it another time. That means I’ve started reading art and exhibition reviews. This week I was studying mythological and religious painting, so I read this review by Laura Cumming on Titian: Love, Desire, Death.

• The Museum Catherijneconvent in Utrecht is offering would-be visitors to their Miracles exhibition to call instead and hear about — or share their own — miracle.

• And some escapism: The best online galleries to visit, and download Smartify, who are making all of their audiotours free for the rest of the year.

• End of Guardian transmission.

• I read this poem and I really liked it. Is there ever a better reason to share a poem?

• I love, love, LOVED this piece by Josh Barrie on Vesta noodle nostalgia. I was excited at the thought of the weekly shop rolling out of bursting carrier bags over the kitchen countertops. Perfect, rose-tinted memories of the best time of the week — the day the fridge got re-stocked. I needed this comfy, cosy vision of simple domestic contentment, and I’m determined to replicate it in my house.

My Stuff

• I filed a piece last week! And I’m going to do another one this week! 

• I was invited to be a part of Brussels Beer City’s Cabin Fever podcast. You can find the episode I’m on here.

• I have been re-reading my Trossen piece a lot because it’s giving me serious escapism vibes.

• I’m stuck in a feedback loop of wanting to do more with my time, and seriously struggling to cope once I try to do more with my time. There’s no point to this statement, I just wanted you to know that I’m as *anguish noise* as you right now.

• I’m going to try and write more fiction. I keep saying that, but I’m actually going to do it. I’m trying to think of a way to get short stories out to you once I’ve written a few I’m happy to publish/share. Bear with me on that. (If you have any ideas, let me know!)

“West Coast near San Francisco” — Kenny Rogers

The coincidence that I’m sat in what essentially amounts to quarantine listening to a song called “Harpsichord” while a plague ravages the world outside is slightly amusing. I’ll admit it. 

It’s from Four Tet’s new LP “Sixteen Oceans”, which is packed with birdsong. It flits from track to track, above in the snares, chattering around sliced samples. I especially love it in Baby, a track you’ve no doubt heard enough to get sick of (not me, I must be on my 3000th repeat) where parakeets throw down morsels of tropical fruit from their sunkissed branches in a moment of pause that’s there, I assume, so we can spend a moment looking at a breathtaking coral sunset. 

Here’s Lush, one of my all-time favourites. It’s delicate two-step makes me feel warm and light, the hang stumbles and then gets into its bop and it’s like finally learning how to hula hoop, you never want to stop, you just keep going and going and going. The whole track moves on a breeze; it’s summer, the air is sparkling, in the distance calm seas ripple and you’re so gently and perfectly happy.

Other Stuff:

• This week I finished reading The Offing by Benjamin Myers. Set (mostly) over the course of a long, glorious, life-changing summer, it’s about so many things, but mostly I thought it was about choosing to live your life. Or at least, understanding that choosing to live your life doesn’t mean going through with things simply because of duty or stubbornness. (And the nature writing in this is detailed and beautiful, if that your thing.)

• Two architects chose to live in Tokyo’s Nagakin Capsule Tower for a year to learn about what it achieved, and what were its main failings. (via the excellent Lecker podcast‘s instagram account)

• I really liked this piece by Lily Waite for Pellicle on Our Mutual Friend brewery in Colorado. It’s really upbeat and positive and they sound like really cool folks. “We just want to be kind to everyone, treat every single person with respect, and if you don’t like us, fuck off.”

• I also enjoyed David Nilson’s piece on Two Hearted Ale for Pellicle. It made me really thirsty, and to go paddling in an icy cold river.

• Now’s not the time to ask what happiness really is, but it’s the perfect time to wonder about all the different ways a person could be happy. The Glossary of Happiness concerns itself with collecting and understanding cultural concepts of joy from all over the world that have no direct English translation.

• I do love a Marissa Ross interlude, and this one involves Cab Franc and a party sub.

• I visited Conwy last weekend (which feels like a million years ago already) and I particularly loved the castle and its stained glass. The stained glass is actually a new commission installed in 2012, and includes short couplets written by Welsh writer Damian Walford Davies.

• Short stories are the best, and I’m really happy to see more and more of them on bookshelves in people’s houses. Yes, I look at your bookshelves when I come over. Here are 50 of the best short stories, chosen by writers like Hilary Mantel, Joyce Carol Oates (yes, obv she chose an Edgar Allen Poe), Kevin Barry and Yiyun Li.

• Chef Sabrina Ghayour has taken it upon herself to create daily easy recipes on her Instagram channel and to write about storecupboard meals that use fewer ingredients on her blog. Of all the ways people are trying to help each other at this difficult time, I really like this practical way. I’ve been doing a lot of baking and cooking this week and it’s definitely helped.

My Stuff:

• Hoping you’re all getting by and keeping safe.

• I’m not using Twitter for the foreseeable future because it’s a non-stop carousel of self-perpetuating anxiety and I need a break from it all. If you need to get in touch with me, or just feel like saying hi, my email address is katiematherwrites@gmail.com — please don’t be afraid to use it.

• I’m using my bookstagram account a lot at the moment because it’s so calm and nice over on that side of the internet. Find me at @shinybookscuit.

When I quit my job, it felt like a snap decision. In the days afterwards, I started to feel differently. It felt like I had swam up from the depths of a lake and finally broken the surface. I didn’t know I’d been kicking underwater for so long.

Even though I was excited to be free, I was worried about working without a workplace. I had worked at home before, and it had been a disaster. Once I left my job, however, it turned out that self-control is a much easier skill to learn if you’re using it to achieve something you actually care about. An important point I’d somehow never appreciated before.

Sitting at home all day seems incredibly easy or unbelievably hard depending on how you look at it. Your home is where all your comforts are. It’s where your stash of Nissin noodles is. It’s also hard to relax in your living room if you’ve spent all day sitting there with your head in your hands because something you need to write just won’t come out of your head.

This weekend marks two years since I packed my desk belongings into two Lidl bags and then threw it all away when I got home. Every weekday since, I’ve sat at my kitchen table surrounded by piles of magazines and notebooks and felt like I was achieving more than I’ve ever achieved in my life. Instead of living up to my fears: too lonely, too quiet, too sad, too distracting; working at home has made my house a protective space where my mind can grow. I solidify my ideas here. I’m not beholden to anyone else’s moods, tempers, derision or dependency. Under my roof I only have to answer to my own expectations. I can use this lookout point to try and understand the world better.

Other Stuff

• A fantastic piece on the vital queer history of Grace Jones’ legacy.

• Illustrator Matt Saunders is working on a new personal project documenting his recent trip to Japan, so now seems like a great time to share his Yorkshire Dales work again. I love it.

• I really enjoyed this interview with Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk that The Paris Review dug out of the archives this week. He talks about the dangers of speaking wrongly and having your words twisted, particularly when his government campaigned against his work. I also found his attitude to his success interesting. 

• I know this isn’t a job mailer, but The Skinny are looking for writers to pitch for their Intersections section — particularly PoC and LGBTQIA+ voices. (Via a tweet from editor Katie Goh)

• I absolutely loved this heartfelt and fun piece on the newsagents of London. And the photos are something else. Joy!

• Skater Nora Vasconcellos is 100% badass. This rough-cut shows her repeatedly slamming into the floor and just getting up like it’s nothing and trying again. By far one of the most inspirational vids I’ve watched in ages. (See her with most of the falls edited out here from 17.34 — but just watch the whole of Seance tbh)

• Food chemistry is so fascinating to me. It took restaurant chain two years to come up with a new-improved queso recipe. And smoothness and “meltiness” were priorities over flavour.

• I was super interested to read this story on Waterford Whiskey’s website, where they talk about using biodynamics to grow their barley.

• Darjeeling Express owner and activist Asma Khan is a force of nature, and she shows that food is so much more than the simple act of eating. Please read this Lifestyle Asia interview and then this one from The Telegraph India and get to know her.

• Poetry, beer, eco-back-to-basics, hardcore DIY mentality, stove engineering; what’s not to love in this piece about Canvas Brewery?

• How a Basque football match brought about the legalisation of the Basque flag.

• And finally… your favourite authors respond to your unsolicited dick pic. My favourite is Virgina Woolf’s response. “I took a look at the image, for I had a constant sense of it there, something turgid, something imposing, which I shared neither with my friends nor my Twitter followers.”

My Stuff

• Not much to report, I’ve been busy studying all the things I unwisely signed up for at the same time and trying to get some other writing done.

• However, I have been busy working and will have some articles coming out in the near future!

• Sadly the wine fair I was heading to in Cologne is postponed this weekend. I hope everyone is keeping well and that I can see some of you there soon when it is reorganised.

• I am going to Wales this weekend and decided to learn some Welsh (because of course I did). I found this gem of a YouTube channel and now I can say various greetings while imagining a man waving a shoe around. (Watch it and you’ll know what I’m on about.) Hwyl!

Matt Saunders
“Yorkshire Dales“

I entered a short story competition last week. The story I entered was the first piece of fiction I’ve ever put anywhere near the career part of my life. I wrote it quickly out of nothing, and it reminded me of writing in school. Our creative writing classes were always silent. For 55 minutes I had the time and space to write absolutely anything I wanted. I wrote so many short stories then, and I can’t get my head around how I had so many ideas, and where all the unused ones went. A couple of my friends told me every week that they hated those classes. For them it was almost an hour of a clock ticking, a blank page. At the moment, I can sympathise: that’s how my days feel. I’ve been stuck for a while, no ideas, no motivation. So writing a story and sending it to a competition was more surprising to me than to anyone else. I don’t know how it happened. 

But it did. And that has proven that I can do it again. What a sneaky trick.

If you tipped me via Ko-fi last week, thank you very much. I used that money to pay the competition entry fees.

Other stuff:

• I very much enjoyed this story about Find + Foster cidermakers. There’s a lot of emphasis on fruit harvesting. I seem to be into that sort of thing these days.

• A great story about everyone’s favourite beer. Spoiler alert: it’s Keller Pils.

• Thank you to Olly for sharing this earlier in the week — how Ultrarunners are pushing the limits of human endurance.

• Read this and weep, at it’s beauty and it’s content. Night Swim by Anne Enright.

• I just want some of these Sonoran flour tortillas. With pollo asado in.

• I really enjoyed this newsletter by Isabelle O’Carroll and I think you will too. Don’t forget to subscribe if you’re into it.

• A real shop filled with real things you’d swear were pretend. Obviously I quite like the occult socks, but the indoors/outdoors hats are doing it for me, and the candle that smells of deadlines might be more useful.

• I baked “dirt bombs” this week, along with everyone else on the internet, and you should too.

• I can’t remember now how I got to reading a book review from 2013 but I did, and it’s great.

• This story was so good, so amazingly and amusingly good that I spent a good hour reading it then thinking about it afterwards. It’s about a homeless man called Dominic Van Allen and the underground bunker he built under Hamptstead Heath. But obviously it’s also about much more than that.

• I’m sure you’ve read this before on “digital blackface” but it is well worth reading again, as Bethany Rutter pointed out today.

• A story — ignore the word “Christmas” if you must — about meeting Truman Capote’s Aunt Tiny. It’s a fascinating read I pick up every few months, then get into a Capote frenzy. “When I leave her home after about five hours of talking, I go out to my rental car and put my head in my hands —  pulverized. I’ve got a great story. But it’s not the one the newspaper wants. And it will be a long time before I can tell it.”

• Another great story from Bitter Southerner. This one is about steamed ham and swiss cheese hoagies, and childhood, and a deep sentimental love for soft bread, and it’s so touching, and I swear I read the whole thing in a Knoxville accent without even realising it.

My Stuff:

• I’ve been working on a few things this week (hurray) but nothing new to share here yet.

• I’m going to Cologne next week for the natural wine fair there unless the government strictly forbids it. If you’re going too, let me know so we can drink something nice together.

• I’m very excited to be brewing at Thornbridge tomorrow with the legendary Alice Batham!

• I’m also very excited to be brewing with Cloudwater and the very brilliant Charlotte Cook next week!

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