Author: shinybiscuit

“They’re tearing up the streetlamps on my road.”

The first off-piste thing I ever wrote for a publication other than my own now-defunct blog was about Burial, and the changing shape of my world as his music lay glowing in the centre of it. That line, the one about the streetlamps, was the first sentence.

At the time of writing that first piece, in 2011, sodium lights were being replaced with LED, and I was lamenting the extinguishing of that distinct yellow haze that captures drizzle in the dark so perfectly. It was my private space to listen to Burial in, I said, and walking the wet, black streets, or on the top deck of a bus, lit up by glowing amber, I felt closer to the sounds, the musician. Back then I lived in a tiny cottage in Leeds, one of those really old houses that’s been built around over time, until it seems odd that it exists alongside pebbledash and concrete bollards. Like the stone and cobbles are the anomaly in the picture. I live in one again, years later — a cottage that had terraces built around it on both sides more than 100 years ago, a stranger on its own street. I don’t do it on purpose. I guess I just find them, these relics.

Wrapped in plastic, forever in my heart.

There are few snacks that satisfy my cravings for savouriness, butter and bread like a cheese single between two thickly-spread slices of seeded. It has to be soft seeded — I’m partial to Warbie’s Toasty for most other applications, but when I make butties, I’m a stickler for quality. Despite the cheese I choose for them.

Cheese singles have no integrity, and neither do I. Put them in a sandwich and they become one with the rest of the combination almost immediately, no heat required. A solid version of cheese sauce. They are my secret weapon in a homemade grilled cheese — put all your gruyere and your raclette you want into a toastie, but if you don’t place a single or two on top of the grated cheese, you’re missing a trick. It oozes instantly. It shows the rest of the cheese how to do it. Instant lasagne sauce.

Katie Mather’s The Gulp is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

I already eat TKG for breakfast most days — imagine my joy when I found out you can avoid the egg and lay a square of fake cheese on your hot sushi rice and mix it in like a gooey condiment. When I learned that a lot of Korean snack foods often have an element of processed cheese involved, that was it for me. Gilgeori toast became a staple food in my house. It quickly became bastardised to suit my usual fridge contents: sometimes adding leftover roasted veg, sometimes adding kimchi or chillies, sometimes making it as plain as possible to suit the days when I can only face butter, cheese and bread. It’s always good. I recommend it.

Cheese singles were always in my fridge growing up, even if my mum would never admit it. I’m not sure what they were for, perhaps impromptu barbecues or burger nights, but I know we weren’t really supposed to eat them. They weren’t really food. That’s not too far from the truth actually — when Kraft invented the cheese single in 1950, their marketing centred around the high levels of processed milk protein rather than the origin of the foodstuff. In 2002, the Food and Drug Administration gave a decided that singles could not be legally labelled as “Pasteurized Processed Cheese Food.“ In order for a food product to be a true “cheese,” it has to be more than half cheese, which is technically pressed curds of milk. Being that each Kraft American single contains less than 51% curds, they do not meet the standard. They are technically a “Pasteurized Prepared Cheese Product.” In America (I don’t know what the UK regulations are currently given we’re not in the EU anymore, ffs, but I’m assuming we’re similar) the ingredients include preservatives including antimicrobial agents that inhibit the growth of bacteria and mould. Delicious! In a world that’s becoming more and more concerned with natural, back to the earth foods, I kindof respect its grim refusal to get anywhere near the real thing. Fuck it. You’re number 1. Why try harder?

Just This One Thing

I know I normally put a list of links here and that’s usually the best part of this newsletter, but today I have something else to say instead.

I’ve made a book.

Glug, the wine magazine by Wine52 which I am commissioning editor for (send me your pitches: katie@wine52.com) have published a book filled with essays and stories about wine, curated and partially written by me.

It’s called the Glug Wine Almanac, because I wanted to take a look at wine throughout the seasons, from the barren, frozen ground of the winter months, right through the buzz and burst of spring, the sunny days of summer until the vendange of autumn.

There are pieces by myself, Claire Bullen, Susan Boyle, Rachel Hendry, Jemma Beedie, Laura Hadland and a host of others included, all taking seasonal looks at wine, wine culture, and the technical aspects of tasting, drinking, storing, ageing and making wine. It’s also filled with the sort of beautiful illustrations I could only have dreamed of having in something I made.

I’m extremely proud of this project, and of everyone who put their heart into working so hard to make it the book I wanted it to be.

You’ll be able to buy it later on this year, release date TBC. More info on the book will be going up on my Instagram soon.

I hope you enjoy it when you get a chance to read it.

Katie Mather’s The Gulp is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

You use two “n”s if you’ve visited more than once and want people to know that.

I came back from the Isle of Man two weeks ago and it feels like an eternity spent away. Away from its craggy shores and manic seagulls, away from its strangeness. My memories of the island are stronger than ever.

I’ve visited the Isle of Man throughout my life since I was little, heading over for the TT Races. This dangerous motorsport is something I love with all my heart, and I can’t explain why. I’ve been thinking it over more than ever this year. A tragic year for the race, the casualties were many and it shocked me. It’s hard to balance that passion with the guilt and sadness. But as my friend points out, who races in the Superstock and Supersport races, he chooses to do it. It’s his whole life. He spends his year thinking about it, training for it, and he wants to do it for himself, and for no other reason. You could call this selfish, I suppose. Delusion. I call it commitment. Passion. I praise him for it. Perhaps I’m deluded too.

The island itself is a mysterious rock in the middle of the Irish sea, named after the Irish Celtic god Manannán mac Lir, the ruler of the sea and the Otherworld. In both Irish and Manx Celtic mythology, Manannán survived the advent of human occupation in Ireland. He took his faerie and godly peoples of the Tuatha Dé Danann to reside in an isle cloaked in feth fíada, a magical mist, obscuring them from the human race, keeping them safe. There they stay, and there are places in the Isle of Man where even the automated voice on the bus will ask you to greet Themselves (the faeries) out of respect. The idea that this island is a place to protect yourself from the human race is enough to make me want to stay forever.

I didn’t have chance to visit the ancient and Neolithic sites of the Isle of Man, but I did have the opportunity to eat and drink there. To eat and drink on the Island is to learn about the fierce locality of the produce here. Borne out of pride and necessity, the vast majority of fresh produce you’ll find here has been grown or made on the Island. The Isle of Man is itself a brand, and it sells well. The produce is good. Isle of Man butter? Fantastic. Milk? Delicious. Seafood? Good enough for the god of the sea. Isle of Man-made vegan burgers covered in Isle of Man-made kimchi and Isle of Man hot sauce? Divine. (Shoutout to Junkbox for making the best burger I have ever tasted. I am not kidding around.)

It’s difficult to find some very common British products here, despite technically being part of the United Kingdom, and the alcohol taxes and legislations are different and confusing. But who needs British booze when you’ve got local breweries making really decent beer with local ingredients? Or imported cider when there’s a wealth of local orchards to farm fruit, and bountiful rewilded areas to forage in?

We took a bus to Port Erin on the southern tip of the island and walked along the seafront, graphite clouds racing to shower us then passing on to the east, leaving us, eventually, with mild sunshine that turned the water into glimmering copper oxide.

On the end of the sea wall above centuries-old fishermen’s shacks, is Foraging Vintners, a winery with a bar and outdoor seating where the sea wind can blow in your hair. Foraging Vintners make wine from local fruit and foraged ingredients, and spirits too.

The elderflower fizz and rhubarb fizz were both excellent quality fruit wines, with a soft mousse that gave us the idea some apple had been used in the making of it. We found out that these fizzes were used in place of Champagne on the TT podium. Manx pride. I love it. The elderflower fizz was delicate and bouncy, chucking handfuls of blossom into the air like a tipsy wedding guest. I loved it. The rhubarb was a blushing shade of sun-caught pink, and I was super happy they’d aimed to keep hold of the beautiful rose water flavours and aromas I get from really fresh rhubarb stalks. I had a Pomme-Rita to finish, made with tequila and their own apple fizz. It was hearty enough to keep me going when the rain started again, and kept me fuzzy on the steam train ride back to Douglas, waving at cars on the level crossings and playing music through the window with tinny drinking locals at Castletown station, on a steam train heading the other way.

Other Stuff

• The Two Headed Calf by Laura Gilpin

• ASMR fascinates me, and there is a whole exhibit dedicated to it at the Design Museum right now. The London Review of Books is a part of this exhibit, and is showing their short film The Lost Art of Paste Up.

• Artist Shishi, known as Shishi.San on Instagram, works in textiles and yarn, and I’m in love with her oversized, brightly coloured tufted pieces based on traditional vases. She calls her technique “fluffy painting”, which I also love. Her work is currently on display at That’s What X Said in Brussels.

• Really enjoyed having a big old think about the ideas and themes brought up in this piece on women, class and wine by Steph Shuttleworth.

• Been thinking a lot about this piece on tinned fish v canned wine by Rachel Hendry recently.

• Wine made in Prague by Ole Ellekrog for Pellicle. I enjoyed working with Ole on his piece, not least because vines thriving in unexpected (to me) places is a total thrill to learn about.

My Stuff

• A v short piece I did for Glug about popping a spoon in a bottle of wine to keep the fizz in. It was unexpectedly charming to write!

• I would like to use this space to ask that you please take a look at the Pellicle website. I am so extremely proud of everything this magazine is doing right now, and excited about the future. I’d love for us to gain more readers every month—our writers deserve it, to be quite honest. If you feel you can afford to contribute to the Pellicle Patreon, please consider this a personal request. We can’t hire great artists, illustrators and writers without the support of a passionate, engaged readership. Thank you very much.

Selling wine at the end of the world.

In the bar, I get that a lot of people are wary of ordering the wrong thing. They’re worried they won’t enjoy the wine they’ve chosen, or that they’ve chosen a wine I secretly think is bad, or stupid, or basic. Mostly these days, they are suspicious that I am simply fleecing them, recommending something costly for my own benefit.

The cost of living crisis is seeing to it that for many of us, treats are becoming more scarce and harder to justify to ourselves. Real household disposable income per will fall by 1.75% in 2022. Wages are not falling in line with inflation. This “stagflation” means, quite simply, that we have less and we are being asked to pay more.

It’s spiralling, causing more people to demand better wages—so at least one good thing might come from this. Perhaps people will be emboldened, more able to stand up and demand the money their employers owe them for their labour, demand their government do more to support them.

As much as I have tried to build a bar where the real world is safely sequestered outside, I cannot stop the economy from seeping into the walls. I am, more than ever, embarrassed and anxious to recommend a more expensive wine from the list in case I am being insensitive to a person’s individual circumstances. We have begun to cut down the number of “premium” wines on our orders in favour of value bottles we know people are more likely to choose and to afford. I have accepted that fewer people are buying whole bottles to share. We ourselves are buckling up for yet another tight period—perhaps the fifth since we opened our doors 51 weeks ago.

Bars, wine: a luxury. It’s true. But the togetherness I feel in our little haven of unreality on a weekend is something I am intensely proud of. I have taken more and more to asking people if they would like a water once they have finished their drink, just to have them stay a little longer, enjoying the escape. I do not and cannot run a charity, and our funds are stretched to breaking point, but I feel like spaces like ours are valuable in times like these. And I am grateful for every glass of wine we sell that enables us to keep opening the door.

Other Stuff

• This week, Rachel Hendry’s J’adore Le Plonk newsletter turned two. Happy birthday J’adore Le Plonk! Read about her thoughts on service v experience, and sign up because she is a shining light in the drinks industry and deserves your gentle attention.

• As we reach Pride month, I haven’t been able to get a certain artwork out of my head. “Untitled” (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) by Felix Gonzalez-Torres tugs at my heart every time I think of it. It is an 175lb pile of sweets, which you are encouraged to take from, reducing the pile and enjoying its sweetness in return. It is an allegory of his partner Ross Laycock’s life, who passed away from AIDS, and to me all these years on, a statement of society’s consumption of everything LGBTQIA+ culture affords it while giving little to nothing back to support, aid and sustain it.

• The Copa Del Sol is a sculpture on Costa Corayes, Mexico, a concrete bowl 88ft in diameter, designed to collect the sun, sea and horizon in one atmospheric place. “La Copa del Sol is a place to meditate, transmute energy or simply forget about the world for a moment.”

• Alicia Kennedy on “oyster culture,” their history, their beauty and why we are drawn to them.

“Untitled” (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) by Felix Gonzalez-Torres

If anyone can make a total lifestyle change look easy, it’s a shiny happy influencer in an 8 second clip.

I can’t get enough of food insta. I watch food programmes when I need to relax, and so it follows that rapidfire food content full of shiny sauces being stirred and salt sprinkling from up high in luxury AirBnB kitchens would capture my attention. I am captured. Here’s a sort-of poem about them.

I like the happy ones. The pretty ones. The ones who take a bite of broccoli,

awestruck.

Oh my god, you guys, this is so good.

You have to try this.

Three ingredients.

So easy. So cheap. No waste.

Plants, sunshine, clear skin, youth

No magic

Just a 15 minute meal, prepared in a spotless kitchen

Pasta, domesticity, mukbang: happiness

Other Stuff

• The Rough Stuff Fellowship began in the 1950s as a cycling group dedicated to shunning tarmac and climbing hills. It, of course began in a pub. It’s still accepting members as this piece by Tom Vanderbilt proves. Excellent photos too.

• I very much enjoyed this Instagram post by St. John about the pleasure of serving a table of one. “A table-for-one is the greatest compliment a restaurant can receive.”

• The boggy peatlands of Scotland are being restored in the name of carbon capture—they’re some of the most effective environments in the world at collecting and storing carbon from the atmosphere. It has taken no time at all for the value to be seen in saving and protecting the environment now that money can be made from doing so, and large areas of the Highlands are being bought to be registered, restored and then sold to companies who can use it to offset their emissions (like Brewdog, for example.) This piece in the New York Times asked the question: who should profit from these formerly worthless bogs?

• A film by Accessfund about climbing respectfully: Bears Ears National Monument: Respect the People, Respect the Resources

• A simply lovely piece by Lily Waite about The Salutation Inn in Ham, Gloucestershire for Pellicle.

For the past couple of months, our kitchen has become a home for putrifying vegetables. Or more accurately, it’s become a teetering collection of odd jars and bottles filled with various ingredients slowly transforming into biodomes of biocultures. I spoke about this briefly last week. Tom has become obsessed with fermenting and pickling things, and I’ve become obsessed with eating the fruits of his labour, so now every shelf in the kitchen is packed with fruit and veg, all slowly fizzing in their own decomposing juices.

So far, as I mentioned last week, his pickled turnip has been the clear favourite. But I’ve also loved the fermented green beans, his spicy, funky kimchi made with local white cabbage, his sauerkraut (which I chopped and put into omelette — delicious) and his pickled shallots, which manage to taste almost exactly like the pickled onions my nan used to make, without filling the house with the autumnal acrid scent of boiling vinegar.

The jars make me feel secure. They are slow and steady — the umeboshi made with Victoria plums and greengages (so… Vickyboshi? Greengageboshi?) won’t be ready for months, probably. They represent storing and saving and carefulness and thinking about giving yourself something to enjoy in the future. They are packed with alive things thriving in harsh, salty environments. They are delicious, and they will stay that way all winter until we eat them all. Is it annoying that I can’t get to my cookbooks anymore, the shelves being so packed with bubbling veg? Well, sortof. But having a recycled jam jar bacteria botanic garden is more important to me right now.

If you want to get into pickling and fermenting like Tom has, we can recommend the following books:

• ​Fiery Ferments by Christopher and Kirsten Shockey (who also brought out a cider book last week)

• Wild Fermentation by Sandor Ellix Katz

• The Noma Guide To Fermentation by David Zilber and René Redzepi

Other Stuff

• Please support your local food bank (or donate to the Trussel Trust), continue to speak out against anti-immgiration and anti-asylum-seeking sentiment wherever you might come across it and please, if you can, consider donating to the Refugee Council if you’re in the UK. It is frankly a disgrace that people in need are dying because of our Government’s negligence, ignorance and cruelty.

• Brian Eno’s investigaive journo skills leave every other journo’s rep in tatters. Told by ChewnZine, original, excellent piece on Brian Eno’s favourite music here in The Quietus.

• This week’s J’adore le Plonk on ordering wine in restaurants and bars is so good and helpful and well worth a read. And then because it’s so consistently good, you should sign up for the newsletter too.

• If you love beer, please sign this petition to reverse the change to Small Brewers Relief. Even if you don’t know much about the beer world, if you like drinking beer, I can assure you that these changes will affect you by ensuring your favourite smaller brewers close down. It’s that serious. So please have a read and sign it!

• When I started this newsletter I was characteristically oblivious to the bubbling scene of exceptional newsletters that are actually out there. And there are SO MANY good ones! This piece in Taste covers foodie ones specifically, and I was happy to see Vittles and Alicia Kennedy in there, but there are newsletters on every subject under the sun if you go looking for them. I recommend it.

• There have been a fantastic couple of posts on Vittles about decolonising British food criticism and food PR over the past couple of weeks, but you can only read them if you’re a paying subscriber. I really recommend signing up for it, I look forward to finding inspirational, thought-provoking articles by them every week in my inbox.

• I love Jemma Beedie’s friendly, conspiratorial way of writing like she’s talking to me, and only me, over a pint in the corner of a pub. Her piece this week for Pellicle about the hauf and hauf (and lots of other fascinating Scottish measurements and international drinks orders besides) was a cosy quarter of an hour of pubchat I definitely needed.

• Brussels Beer City is releasing a book!

• I enjoyed learning about Jakarta Records on Bandcamp this week, I’ve put basically everything on this list onto my wishlist.

My Stuff

• ICYMI: I wrote about what good changes might happen post-Covid in pubs (spoiler alert: people wash their hands after going to the toilet now)

• I’ve been working on a short story that made me cry while I was writing it so look forward to that I guess

• ICYMI: A short story I wrote about tarot readings and lockdown is in the latest edition of Counterpoint magazine

“I’ll Hauf What They’re Haufing” — by James Albon for Pellicle

Since lockdown, I’ve been getting my food from the market. It’s open air, so I’m less likely to panic about airborne particles. It’s more spacious and there are no shelves, so fewer people are there reaching directly over my shoulder for cereal boxes they just couldn’t wait three seconds for me to move away from. But over time, these reasons have faded slightly to be replaced with other, better ones.

The atmosphere reminds me of the pub, a bit. The cheese man remembers me and what I usually order. The ham and cooked meats guy let me pay another day when I realised he didn’t have a card machine. The wandering people have started to become familiar. I feel comfortable spending time here, even on days of high anxiety. But the best bit, the absolute best bit, is the vegetable stall.

Spanning ten stalls or more, at this time of year the tables are rolling with Victoria plums, are caked in muddy potatoes. The cabbages are ten-feet wide. The broccoli house whole families of jackdaws. Neatly packaged prunes (best of the season!) sit primly on slim cardboard cases that are pink and decorated fit for tissue paper and lingerie. I’ve never seen so many extravagant types of tangerines. Even the turnips are beautiful.

In fact, the turnips are the most beautiful, especially after they’re pickled. Fermented in a salt solution and sliced thin, they take on a peppery spice, their pretty pink and white hues gain a delicate translucency, they become the vegetable they were born to be.

Other Stuff

• On the top of Pendle yesterday, we wondered for the millionth time what trig points are actually for. Thank god that Ordnance Survey have actually written a comprehensive blog post on the subject. (Also, the cross section of a trig point is probably not what you were expecting)

• Antique apple parers are quite fascinating, actually.

• I went to Buckfast Abbey last week and there were surprisingly few people there with the same intentions as me. I’ve wanted to write a book on Buckfast for ages, but for now I’m going to read this great article on it’s weird popularity in Scotland by Sean Murphy for The Scotsman again.

• As a teenager I was merely a vessel for the album A Song To Ruin by Million Dead (except the first track which honestly, is trash) and I’ve revisited the song The Rise And Fall this week. It’s 14 minutes plus, and is about knowledge surging through a dark and crumbling Europe via invasion — and then the subsequent tragic destruction of that culture through war and retaliation. Plus it gets all feedback-trudgy for minutes and minutes and minutes which I also think is pretty cool.

• Ibiza sunsets every night via the 24/7 Café del Mar radio livestream. Dress me in board shorts and drape a glowstick necklace around my neck. This is all I need. (Tonight’s will be at around 7.40 UK time FYI.)

• I found this piece on self-awareness in modern literature interesting, but not because of the topic. Reading books and then discussing what they should or could have been isn’t something I do with much enthusiasm, but through the eyes of Katy Waldman here I’ve been forced to. While it was an interesting thought experiment for me, can we really ask authors to discuss sharp and complex sociopolitics when they have no background or expertise in them? Especially at a time when we’re simultaneously crying out to read books about topics that reflect writers’ genuine lived experiences?

• A week and a bit ago I was bottling The Old Man And The Bee at Little Pomona, so please read this by Nicci Peet on Little Pomona’s wonderful patch of paradise and their brilliant ciders and perries so you can feel like you were there too (although when Nicci went it was chilly and when I was there it was 30-odd degrees).

My Stuff

• Something I wrote about how things could change for the better in pubs post-virus is now available on Ferment’s website.

• ICYMI: A few weeks ago I wrote about burger vans and bike rallies for Pellicle mag.

• I’ve sent another article off to Pellicle and I’m working on the edits this week so hopefully that’ll be with you all soon.

• I’ve been working on a fair few pieces for Ferment too, so expect to see them soon.

• I’m working on the second round of edits of my book.

• I’m writing a lot of short stories and have even managed to rope a pro in to edit one so I’ll be working on that for the foreseeable too.

• A project I’m working on with Tom is coming together. More info soon.

• I’m not going to be on Twitter much for a while — it’s all A Bit Much and honestly it just fucks with my productivity. If you need me, or you just want to tell me something, find me on Instagram, or email me. I’ve also got a book-based Instagram if that’s more your thing.

Pendle Hill trig point looking towards Whalley and Clitheroe.
Photography by Lee Pilkington

I can tell the summer holidays are around the corner. This time of year feels like a fold in a page. Everything I’m doing feels like it can either be sacked off and carried over, or must be done immediately before I lose the thread entirely. There’s a natural break in the direction of my life at the moment and it’s eerily matching up with the end of term. 

I’m lethargic and I want to be anywhere but my desk. I am close to having a temper tantrum. I literally got up and had a nap in the middle of this sentence. We’re supposed to be easing back into some assemblance of normality but fundamental things have changed. The world continues to be a dangerous, unpredictable place. When my mum used to say “what is normal?” in a spooky voice I used to think it was cringey and annoying, but now that’s my constant state of being. There’s no normality and there’s nothing I can do about it.

 And I can look on the bright side too; I’ve managed to get a lot of other things done recently. But none of it is my actual job and as the weeks tick on and the days at the beginning of lockdown seem further away and more imaginary, I’m left wondering if I’ll ever have a normal week again. A normal sleeping pattern again. A steady income again.

Who knows? Sometimes all you can do to feel like you have a grasp on the situation is whinge about it. Thanks for letting me whinge at you. Now on to the good stuff:

Other Stuff

• Feeling all of the above? Try watching videos of massive forges and hydraulic presses. Makes me feel better anyway.

• This video on women smoking in cinema is really interesting and delves into the engineering of consent and the use of women’s liberation as a marketing campaign, the effects of which are still benefitting tobacco companies today.

• A conversation between a writer and a billionaire Wall Street guy. The bleakest thing I’ve read in ages, and I read a lot of bleak shit. There were a lot of comments under this online saying how pointless and awful it was for Max Abelson to be so passive, or even to have given this anonymous richo a platform in the first place. I think I was grateful to hear from a totally alien perspective, to read for myself how out of touch, ignorant and callous money can make a person. (Or were they always that way? Fascinating.)

• Shelter has been fighting for “No DSS” rental bans to be outlawed for years, and this week a judge ruled them against equality laws. Shelter genuinely do amazing work supporting people facing homelessness, fighting against corruption in housing and filing suits against disreputable landlords. If you are looking for a charity to support this month, I ask you to check them out.

• The magical story of a 4thC CE golden ring engraved with the Pagan goddess Venus found in a field in 1785.

• In the Guardian Life & Style section there is a Tree Of The Week column. I am very into this. And I particularly like this Welsh yew.

• Short story “Rule One” by Simon Stephenson read by Cel Spellman in aid of UNICEF.

• “An ode to Peckham on a Sunday evening when everyone has gone to Burgess Park”

• Is everything cake? By now, yes. I loved this investigation into the viral video of not-cakes that were actually cakes featuring writer and cordon bleu cook Olivia Potts.

• Support your local museum — buy a mask from their gift shop. And then for the love of god wear it. (There’re a lot of great links to online art exhibitions in this piece too, FYI)

• A beautiful piece on the self-made myth of Sun Ra, blackness and a search for identity by Namwali Serpell. “He’s the boy who cried wolf, he’s the wolf itself, he’s the shimmering go-between.”

• Culinary Backstreets is one of my favourite food sites on the internet, and its coverage of how cities are coming back from lockdown are really interesting and, even though I found them hard to read to start with, are actually quite uplifting. Here’s a great piece on how people are adapting Catalan culinary traditions in Barcelona rather than losing them altogether.

• Black Lives Matter is not over. Don’t let it fade. Here’s a list of petitions to sign.

• Mammoth Cave, the longest cave in the world, was first mapped by Stephen Bishop, one of the cave’s first tour guides and a slave. In 1972, computer programmer Patricia Crowther was the first person to cross the boundary between Flint Ridge and Mammorth Cave, proving its connection — something cavers had been trying to do for more than a century. It’s a fascinating read and then you also learn that her maps were coded into one of the first ever video games by her ex-husband. Oooh I LOVE reading about caving and this is a great story.

My Stuff

• I completed the first draft of my novel on Sunday. I think I’ve claimed this in error before — since then I added 25,000 words. I’m on with the first round of edits now. Only 159 A4 pages to go.

• Pre-order a copy of August’s edition of Counterpoint magazine and you’ll find me in there, writing a story about tarot cards.

• If you feel like buying me a pint, I always gratefully accept ko-fi tips. Especially since the pub is actually open now!

Stonehenge with the comet Neowise by Matthew Browne

I thought today I would write about Anthony Bourdain, it being his birthday and everything. I thought, two years since his death, that I would find it heartwarming to talk about his life and how he inspired me in my work.

But is hearing about other people’s heroes interesting at all? And what is there I can add to the constantly resurfacing bubbles of melancholic appreciation for his time on earth? As Alicia Kennedy pointed out in her newsletter this week, “there is just… too much to say“.

In a Medium post I wrote in the immediate days after he died, I wrote things I don’t think I could write now. I was shocked by how deeply upset I was at losing a celebrity. I couldn’t explain why I was so shaken. So, obviously, I wrote about it. I read the piece I wrote again this morning and started editing it, an automatic reaction, but tiding up the messy expressions of grief I’d tried so hard to communicate at that time seemed wrong. I don’t think they should be tidied. Honesty is too often tidied up and made digestible, especially in food and drink writing, critical or not. He was an honest man in his work. I felt for a while I owed him the honesty of my raw panic that a man so long past his addictions and who had lived so long and so strongly with depression, the same mental illness that I suffer with, could decide that he no longer wanted any part in the world he obviously deeply loved.

But I don’t want to remember him that way. He was, in his own word, an enthusiast. I want to be enthusiastic about his legacy. So here is an excerpt I don’t remember writing from a piece I return to every year:

There is a comfortable space inside my head where I retreat to and ask “what would Bourdain do?” I do it as I stand nervously by the steps of an unfamiliar bar, or hesitate to try the oysters, or hold my middle finger poised over the backspace button to delete a sentence that reveals too much of what’s inside. His influence on me has reached into depths of “fuck it” I never knew existed and pushed me into experiences I would never have enjoyed (or endured) without his distant goading. When I ask myself what he would do, I sometimes see him sat at a table meant for people much smaller than him, fingertips tapping a glass of beer that’s frosty in the humidity, waiting in a small moment of quiet thought for something special to arrive. He doesn’t give advice to me. He is a figment of my imagination, which I use as a tool to force myself into doing things I’m too scared to do. I often wonder what his motivation was on his darkest days.

You can find the whole messy, honest piece here.

Other Stuff

• Writers having a block at the moment might like this piece by Anna Sere about how she writes her books. It certainly made me feel a bit more optimistic.

• I mentioned it earlier but Alicia Kennedy’s newsletter this week is a great and informative read on how even the most well-meaning-seeming food programming centres whiteness and often (and definitely in this case) constant references to the capitalist American Dream.

• I supported Gender Euphoria by Laura Kate Dale on Unbound and I wanted to show you the project too — essays from trans, non-binary, agender, intersex and gender fluid people about the joy of being who you truly are.

• I’m sorry but this meme about Wetherspoons has simultaneously made and ruined my week.

• Mezcal in the lush green hills of Oaxaca, Mexico. Total escapism, beautiful pics, read it now.

• I rediscovered the album Orchestra of Bubbles by Ellen Allien and Apparat this week and I can’t stop listening to it. How it manages to sound fresh and yet already have the audacity to be 14 years old, I have no idea.

• Reclaim The Block have decided to pause requests for donations and refuse any coming in for the moment, and are instead requesting that people donate to charities and community-led organisations they’ve listed here.

• This week was the anniversary of the Empire Windrush reaching Britain. The British Library has some great resources by Black writers and artists in their Windrush Stories collection, including Back to My Own Country, an essay on racism and exploring culture and heritage through writing by Andrea Levy.

• I really enjoyed Melissa Cole’s piece Look For The Helpers in Ferment Magazine. As a barperson myself, I’m anxious about bars reopening (not that ours is, any time soon) and hope, as Melissa does, that all service industry people giving you the food and drink you’ve been jonesing for for the past four months are treated well, and with respect. And also that:
  “…once we’ve looked at those people who are happy to profit off the back of a pandemic, at the expense of the people whose blood, sweat and tears have made them their money, perhaps it’s also time to look at spending our cash elsewhere.”

• I love Otessa Moshfegh’s writing so much that for some time now, I’m worried that everything that comes out of my brain is in some way a sad reproduction of her short story collection Homesick For Another World. This critique of her forthcoming book by Rumaan Alaam says she “strives to be gross”, and as a fan, I was ready to jump to her defence. But it’s true. And this is a great review. I still enjoy her grossness, though.

My Stuff

• ICYMI: I spoke to Jaeger Wise about Wild Card Brewery, how she got into brewing beer and making beer accessible to everyone. I had a great time chatting to her and I hope you enjoy reading the interview.

• ICYMI: I like a pint of mild. So does everyone, it seems. So why is nobody buying it?

Sierre Norte, Oaxaca — Josh Smith for Pellicle

I’ve made apricot jam twice now during lockdown. It’s easy, so easy that it feels like the end is a mistake the universe has made. When I look at the glowing jars of molten amber on the top shelf of my fridge, I cannot understand how they got there. It’s as though the fruit has played a trick on me, and instead of boiling itself into jam, it became something else. A shining captured sunset.

The trick, really, is to do nothing, or at least do as little as possible. Apricots seem to prefer a quiet life. I imagine having a French mémé and her telling me so, explaining that the beauty of these soft, fragrant fruits is that they will only give up their secrets if you let them. I don’t have a French mémé though, so I’m afraid that whimsy is all me.

The trick is to rinse them, half and stone them (or quarter them if they’re particularly big), then put them in a bowl and toss them in sugar. For a 500g punnet, 350g is enough. Then, leave them overnight covered with a teatowel. Just when you think things are getting too much and you’re done with the exercise and the thoughts about lockdown are creeping back in just… leave them. Nap. Sign some petitions. Go to bed, forget about it. Then wake up, do whatever you need to do and when you feel like it, put the whole bowl of liquid-soaked sugar and juicy apricots into a pan, and bring up to a boil. Sterilise two jam jars. Turn the jam down to a low simmer and pop a vanilla pod (or some vanilla essence) in. Stir. You don’t even need to stir it often. When it’s thick enough (just guess, does it really matter? Not in this day and age) pour it into the jars. Cool on the side. Put in the fridge. You have made apricot jam. You are smart, and self-sufficient, and you have created something beautiful.

Take your jam jars out of the fridge periodically and gaze at them. Eat on white bread, or toast, or scones, or inside a cake, or by the spoonful, or on ice cream. Then put the jars back and rest, just like an apricot.

Other Stuff

• How an intricate honeycomb led to some internet sleuthing by a folklorist. The idea of folklore intersecting the way we share information on the internet isn’t something I’d heard of before this Twitter thread, but I’m now obsessed with it.

• Journalist Lee Tran Lam posted a really interesting thread about the white western image of fine dining this week. In it she linked to some great pieces including this from ABC Australia that asks “if we love Asian food so much, why are nearly all award winning chefs white?” and delves into SO MANY THINGS including the whiteness of leadership and the diversity of labour, the pricing and therefore the perceived value of cuisines, the whiteness of food writing and ALSO it has this excellent section on “culture” v “art” with Dr Jane Chi Hyun Park where she says: “They have to make their heritage cool for Western consumers…The coolness element is linked to class capital.” Really, it’s an essential read.

• Soleil Ho asks an interesting question: should we want to change mainstream food media when it probably isn’t really necessary anymore. Now that it’s been flipped upside-down and wriggling like a racist woodlouse I kindof see her point. In this piece she shares a ton of great indie food mags and newsletters to seek out, loads of which I’d never heard of. Go find them!

• Anarchism is what I call for at least twice a day in exasperation, so this illuminating, realistic piece on mutual aid in Argentina by Zoe Smith for Correspondant was a positive moment in my week. (Found via Alicia Kennedy’s newsletter, I think.)

• Right wing rhetoric isn’t fringe in the UK, it’s shaping the mainstream, says Dawn Duhaney for Gal-dem. They must be fought, and to do that, we need to understand who they are, what they want, and how they are organising.

• Why is there such anti-trans poison in the British media? Why are those who perpetuate hate speech against trans people made comfortable here? And why is the government pandering to their bigoted views by dialling back the rights of trans people? This piece by Hannah Ewens is really informative and thoughtfully-written, but fair warning: it’s very upsetting.

• When you insult Trump, don’t resort to ableist language. He is hateful for many reasons, use those instead.

• Matthew Curtis says Beak Brewery are ones to look out for, and I believe him.

• Marcus Rashford’s fight this week wasn’t just against poverty, but structural racism and classism too, writes Jude Wanga.

• Vittles, the newsletter by Jonathan Nunn, is just too fucking good. It’s just too good. And it’s out nearly every day. I can’t keep up. This on halloumi with Jenny Linford I haven’t even finished yet and I love it so much already I’m including it here.

• Hollie Stephens went to Cologne for the carnival and nipped out for beers before it all started, and because of her piece about it, I feel like I did too.

My Stuff

• All Together Now — Missing Link, Lost Pier, Rock Leopard, Little Monster and Drop Project work together to create a beer for Hospitality Action.

• I entered two competitions this week, one a short fiction, the other a “work in progress” for a novel that I loathe to call a novel. Thank you for your tips via ko-fi, they enabled me to afford the entry fees.

• Later this month I should have several more articles sent off to various editors (yes, I see you and I promise!) 

• I should also hear back from some comps

• And I’m going to send some fiction to some lit mags

Untitled, by Andy Kelly