Lancashire Copywriter & Content Creator
Apologies to anyone hoping to click on Valerie Kathawala’s piece on wine in Vienna for Pellicle magazine in this week’s newsletter. I’m an idiot and used the wrong URL.
You can find it here.
Thank you to Chris for letting me know about the error! Happy reading.
A fascination with medieval history that I thought I’d left behind in my childhood has been the filter through which I’ve viewed this week. While the world escapes in their own ways, I’ve dug deep into stories filled with knights and monks and detailed architectural musings on 12th Century cathedrals. Instead of dealing with… *gestures vaguely* this, I’m dreaming of ancient oak forests and ten-day travels on horseback to the nearest city; of tournaments, of banners streaming in the strong wind of a late-spring day, and of plate armour shining in the sun. I’m glad of my daily bread and beer, for it is more than I should expect as a common serf in the outer-suburbs of the lands of De Lacy.
What is it about wattle and daub, pottage and monastery politics that I’m loving so much? Because that’s all I’m interested in currently, not even the fun stuff — I want the dark ages, but no magic or dragons, thanks. Is it comforting to think about life continuing through harsh, unyielding circumstances? Do I like learning about sophisticated people from a time I can barely comprehend not only surviving brutality but thriving and shagging and learning Norman French, Latin and sparring techniques to boot? Am I finding solace in the idea that time has slogged on so far from these times and even the worst plagues, battles, fires and slaughters didn’t wipe us out altogether? Or am I envious of a time when people neither understood the importance of washing their hands nor talked about it every second of the day?
I don’t normally theme these newsletters, but since my week has relied very heavily on escapism, that’s exactly what I’m going to focus on. I tried to get a handle on the situation last weekend and all it did was make me go temporarily but extremely mad, so instead I’m in my solar, reading endless rip-roaring post-Arthurian political dramas, drinking beers with friends via video chat and forgetting to write in my journal. And occasionally doing some work until I forget how to spell. (I spelled “bulb” with an “o” yesterday. Still laughing about it. Things are not so well.)
Other Stuff
Follow Felix Quintana as he tours us through his hometown of LA via his gorgeous “blueprint” cyanotypes taken using Google Earth and scratched with his own symbols of the city.
David Hockney has been creating and sharing new artworks that in his words depict the renewal and love of the new season. The lead piece is titled: “Do Remember They Can’t Cancel The Spring.”
Find out about the families who live on the Faroe Islands via this amazingly detailed and interactive longread. I didn’t know that some of the islands were connected by tunnels! And that some were only accessible by helicopter! Be warned, there are maps here, and where there are maps there are hundreds of wasted hours of zooming in and out and snooping around, in my experience.
Author Reif Larsen did my dream job this week — he wrote a piece on how great travelling via Google Street View is for The New York Times. Nevermind, it’s totally captivating. I’ll allow it.
Related to my current Medieval obsession, this essay from The Met on the art of the book in the Middle Ages is fascinating. Additional fun: every picture at the top is clickable to find out more about the contents, and see even more of their pages filled with beautiful illuminations and calligraphy.
An excellent collection of bikepacking videos found by Tom on Bikepacking.com. Go to Mongolia. Go to The Cairngorms. Go to Canada, go to Colorado, go to Alaska and feel lucky that you don’t have to get as cold, muddy, exhausted and filthy as the people in the films. (But maybe note down some of the places for future dream trips.)
Valerie Kathawala’s beautiful story on the wine culture of Vienna is so breezy and enchanting and full of interesting facts– and I loved learning that in Austria, vineyards are there to be enjoyed by EVERYONE.
Claire Bullen’s tour of the beer cellars of the Czech Republic is as emotive and lavishly descriptive as you’d hope. It made me thirsty. And hungry. And jealous.
My Stuff
This week Original Gravity reached out to me to ask if I wouldn’t mind them re-publishing my piece on holiday lagers. Of course not! I love this piece, and I’m so proud that it was one of my first ever pieces published outside of my blog. I hope you enjoy it.
I was chuffed to be able to write a big old longread on Wide Street Brewery for Ferment Magazine. Meeting Sean and Carla was a highlight of Carnivale Brettanomyces last year and while I wish I could have been there in person to interview them, I’m glad to be sharing their unique, community-supported, communithy-supporting brewery with you.
David Hockney — Do Remember They Can’t Cancel The Spring
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:
The pandemic is not a writers’ retreat.
It is not an opportunity to work on my career (nor should I feel guilty for not doing so).
It is not a sign that I should be spending more time on self-care.
It is not possible to understand what it will mean for the future.
It is not glazed with silver linings, neither should I disregard any optimism I might feel.
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!
Idea Mist, Pretend Store
Good morning.
I won’t strain you with an exclamation mark — it’s too early for that, and anyway, I don’t want to tempt fate. Will this be a good day? Who’s to say. If I’m honest, so far, everything has seemed to be suspended in a clear, unappetising jelly. My frontal lobes, I said to Dianne (who always reads this newsletter — hello), feel like they are made of parmesan. Hard, gritty, unyeilding, probably more useful as foodstuff than as a superhighway for neurotransmitted electrical thought.
But: it’s sunny today. I saw buds on some of my favourite horse chestnut trees on Monday, shiny with melted hail. I’m well-over half-finished the first draft (hah, draft) of the book I’ve been saying I’d write for years. I will be planting potatoes soon. And a friend who was very ill, is miraculously getting better.
I don’t like wishing life away. I don’t like getting to the end of a month and realising I’ve spent its entirety hoping it would end soon. But this winter has been a bad one — no, you weren’t imagining it. I thought I’d use this week’s newsletter to tell you that yesterday I drew The Knight Of Pentacles, and of all the cards promising fortune and success, he is the best one. He keeps grinding, and bit by bit, he gets there. He reaches his destination so gradually it feels like he was always there. So today, instead of thinking about what I haven’t done, I’m looking at what I have. It’s surprising what you can achieve when you’re just doing what you can, brain on low-power, plugging away.
This is as much self-helpery as I can bring myself to write. I promise there will be no more of this for at least a few months.
Other Stuff:
First of all, read this. It’s a journey around Santiago eating amazing sandwiches with a self-made sarnie-celeb. I mean… what’s not to fucking like about it? It’s brilliant!
Lovely news from the publishing world: Elinor Lipman is (finally) getting published in the UK. Her novels Turpentine Lane and Good Riddance will be available next month. Last time I checked, this link had more info.
Behind-the-scenes footage of the recording of Disney’s Hercules aka. the best thing you will watch all week.
A sensitive look at Fleetwood from a local who moved away. Thinking about hometown guilt is something I do quite a lot. Why do we feel connected to the places we’re born/grew up in? Why do we feel responsibilities towards those places?
Take a look at the gorgeously buzzy manipulated photography by multimedia artist Liam Wong. It’s so good, I think, because looking at them feels like being in a city. Like there’s too much to see in each picture, everything’s fascinating and overwhelming, and vying for attention. (Review of his new book TO:KY:OO book can be found here.)
I loved this observation that the plane trees on Victoria Embankment might be among the most famously-painted trees in the world. It also made me think of The Buttermere Pines, and that’s always a nice thing to think about.
Nostalgia for things not yet completely gone is one of my favourite melancholy topics and this from the BBC on the split-flap arrivals boards in airports was particularly wistful.
My Stuff
I spent an evening at a student beer society club to find out whether our assumptions about young people’s drinking habits are true. TL;DR: No. We got them a bit wrong.
Follow my bookstagram if you like books and/or poetry.
Last week I was invited by Cloudwater to do two talks at Friends & Family & Beer — one with Duration Brewery, and one with the delightful Claire Bullen. While it was terrifying and WAY out of my comfort zone, I’m glad I did it and grateful for the opportunity. Thank you to those of you who came to see the talks.
While I love writing this newsletter and especially love hearing your thoughts about things I’ve talked about in it, it does take me some time and effort to put together. If you’re feeling generous, I have a ko-fi account where you can, in effect, buy me a pint or a magazine. I’m extremely grateful to those of you who have tipped me before! Thank you.
Sega, by Liam Wong
There’s always been a part of me that believes the world has discreetly ended while I’ve been in the cinema. The louder the film, the more believable this thought is. A soundproofed room, atmosphere thickened by popcorn smells and heavy furniture, Dolby Surround blasting and smashing its way around our heads, protecting me from the deserted world beyond.
I don’t know when I started expecting the world to be different once I walked out of the pictures. A couple of hours is nothing — you can’t even get a cut and recolour in two hours. Not at my hairdresser’s, anyway. There’s something about being shut off from everything, even for such a relatively short length of time, that makes resurfacing unreal. Everything has been swapped, then moved back into place, but ever-so-slightly off. Like that memory tray game. Stapler, mug, pencil, ruler, elastic band. Comb. I was always bad at it.
I don’t go to the pictures often, but we went last week to see Parasite. When it was over, I felt the same shaky sensations of the world having changed. When I walked out, things were different, just slightly, forever.
Other Stuff
Thank you to Josh Farrington for showing me this piece on the best olive oil in England, which you can find in an electrical supplies shop in Clerkenwell.
I thought this was pretty cool: Innovative home cooks are selling their meals on Facebook marketplace.
The “Your Stonehenge” looks like a great exhibit and now I have another reason to go there.
We all know that tons of the “hey look how easy it is to make these disgusting-looking Frankensnacks” videos are full of shit, but this video PROVES it, and is hilarious too.
Stories are my favourite things. Obviously. My second-favourite thing is hearing people who love stories talk about how much they love stories. Here’s Michael Rosen and Clare Muireann Murphy talking about the art and magic of telling stories, and then Clare tells a story about the first satirical poem ever written and talks about the importance of the Fool. Totally captivating.
The tale of Pivovar Kutná Hora, told by master storyteller Adrian Tierney-Jones.
A map! An amazingly detailed map! Follow this link and click “UK Soil Observatory viewer”, then change the layers to suit what you want to see. Soil erosion? Soil type? Crops? I could lose hours to this stuff.
I pledged for an Unbound book this week because it looks pretty fucking ace.
My Stuff
I wanted to know if younger people are still avoiding pubs and refusing alcohol as per an article I wrote a few years ago, so I spoke to university beer societies about how they feel about drinking in 2020.
Two siblings at Stonehenge – one on leave from the RAF – 1941
[Image: Joyce Leeson]
In 2018, I read one book all the way through. The Essex Serpent. I finished it on the last day of December while I was having a pre-NYE-night-out bath, and on New Year’s Day I re-ignited my Goodreads account and set what seemed to me an impossible target: 25 books read by December 31st 2019. By Craig David’s televised NYE 2019 BBC concert at 11pm (why did that happen, again?) I’d read 30 books.
I loved reading when I was little. I often had three books under my pillow, and would sometimes read two at a time, skipping from one to the other like an impatient channel-skipper. I wasn’t a loner, but I liked to read a lot, and rather than set me apart from the other kids, we shared our favourite books. Ever the Monica even at the age of six or seven, I suggested we write our own book reviews and stories to bring to our playtimes together. It never took off (why would it? I was essentially creating my own zine sweatshop when we could’ve all been doing cartwheels), but the idea that I could write my own stories as well as read them was exhilarating to me. My teacher at the time told me I had an excellent expressive reading voice. “You could make reading tapes for the library,” she said. This has stayed with me forever. It’s a nice thought, but why didn’t “you could be a broadcaster, or an actor, or an author!” come out of her mouth? I think about that a lot.
I stopped reading at some point during my teens. I lost interest in keeping track of plots, and the larger my educational and personal workloads got, the less time I had to force myself to sit down and engage with a book. It was far, far easier to let entertainment flash before my eyes passively. I watched the same DVDs over and over. I still do that, by the way. It’s just Netflix now instead of The Nightmare Before Christmas being started from the beginning on a DVD player that sounds like a chilling unit.
For a long time after that, I thought I hated reading. Or maybe I did actually hate reading. But I still loved writing. The dissonance between those two things was loud, and there were so many ways I knew I could improve my style and create more sophisticated worlds if only I picked up a book again. In response to this career-driven need to read, I only read classics. I didn’t enjoy myself with them most of the time. I missed their nuances and humour in pursuit of what they could teach me about the craft of writing.
In the end, it took a gothic novel about a woman set free by the death of her cruel husband to discover fossils and monsters in the mud and Pagan hinterlands to remind me that books aren’t just for reference. They can make you feel things too. They can take a flint to the long-burned out fire of your imagination and set it alight again. I didn’t hate reading. I’d just been choosing the wrong words to read. And that’s what I’d say to Sarah Perry if I ever saw her.
Other stuff
I read this piece by poet Jack Underwood as soon as I woke up today and it felt like a bolt of lightning hit me.
Beth McColl has written a piece for GBH that manages to give a totally unique depiction of depression, while simultaneously making me feel like I share with her the memories she’s dredging up from the deep.
If you love a big, wacky investigative journalism piece full of twists and turns and scams, read this on AirBnB in London. And then maybe reconsider using AirBnBs.
Italicising non-English words. Why do we do it? “What is the actual measure for whether a word belongs to a language?” asks Khairani Barokka, and honestly, it’s been playing on my mind ever since.
Jeanne Calment was the oldest woman who ever lived, and she died aged 122 in 1997 having lived her whole life in Arles, France. But there are men out there intent on revealing her whole life as a conspiracy. Was she really who she said she was? Could her DNA reveal the secret to everlasting life? This longread is immense but totally worth it (and you can listen to it using the link if you prefer.)
Please look at this hashtag — #bookillustrationofthedaybirthday2 — it’s full of gorgeous book illustrations and you’ll be scrolling through it for hours.
Some activism for you: if you like walking in the countryside in England and Wales, join this campaign to identify 10,000 miles of historic footpaths before they get wiped from the new record in 2026.
Lose yourself in In Dreams, a hugely ambitious project from Soleil Ho and Mel Tow for the SF Chronicle. A different way to create an immersive restaurant review.
Speaking of Soleil, I absolutely LOVE this piece from her about working as a critic with a bad memory, and how it’s helped her forge her own unique style.
Brit Marling is just… a hero. And her article for the NYT “I Don’t Want To Be The Strong Female Lead” skewers the prospects of women in the film industry perfectly.
A captivating profile and history of Berthe Weill and her historic and important career. Who’s that? Exactly. She was an art dealer in turn of the century Paris who championed then-burgeoning artists like Braque, Matisse, Picasso, Suzanne Valadon, Modigliani and Derain. And she’s largely never spoken about. So read this.
My Stuff
This week my piece on being part of the grape harvest at Trossenwein in Mosel was published on Pellicle. I hope you like it. I very vividly remember sitting on my bed at Rudi and Rita’s house after a day’s picking, finishing a Gulp newsletter before teatime. When I went downstairs for tea everyone congratulated me for getting my “work” done and we drank federweisser.
I’ve started a bookstagram account to keep track of my book reviews (and keep them away from my main). You can follow it here if you’re interested.
25th anniversary of Galerie Berthe Weill, 1926. © Centre Georges Pompidou.
Courtesy of Marianne Le Morvan.
Yesterday I drank a glass of wine that tasted like walking through a botanic garden. When I smelled it I imagined huge creamy white flowers opening their succulent petals, brushing me with fragrance as I passed by. Except of course, it was just a glass of wine and I was being me, cackling and slurping and enjoying the synaesthesia of flavours turning into colours in my head. I’m like this with music too. I used to write web copy reviews for a dance music downloads site, a fair few of my sentences were copy-pasted into a Music Reviews Bullshit tumblr account. I was thrilled, and checked every week to see if I’d managed to make it into a new post.
Whenever the word “pretentious” is tossed around, it’s usually meant to as a dismissal. Proof that what’s been said has no value because it’s all gussied up. Pretentiousness is bad, and you should feel bad.
Well, no. Language is one of the only luxuries we all share, and I entertain myself by making that luxury as decadent as possible.
If you like my pretentious bullshit, you’re in luck. Next week a new piece of mine is being published and HOO BOY do I wax some serious lyricals over various mundanities. See you then.
Other Stuff:
Watch this incredible upscaled video of a train coming into La Ciotat station in 1896. The sleeves! The hats! The hurrying ladies worried about not getting a seat!
I really liked this Helena Fitzgerald piece on rethinking how central alcohol was to her life and talking about the difference between hobby and habit.
This beautiful triptych of meadow photos from James Rebanks (the Herdwick Shepherd) has been saved on a tab on my laptop since he posted it, where I can easily click and see it again and remind myself that the fog and gale force fuck winds won’t be around forever.
Here’s a lovely piece about Summer Wine brewery by Matthew Curtis. They will be missed.
500 hopefuls, one dream career. Jonathan Liew on top form as he details the world of Q-School, the average person’s potential ticket into professional darts stardom.
Another great piece by Jonathan Liew — he’s great, why not — about “Brand Saracens” and the unspoken truth of money equalling sporting success.
I’m learning about wine at the moment and one term I like, but find too vague, is “minerality”. This piece taught me that people didn’t even talk about minerality until the mid-80s! And that mineral flavours are still debated by some people, and might not be due to soil types! Wine is nothing if not totally awkward. Don’t you love it?
Speaking of wine, do you want to learn more about Chinese wine regions? I do!
Mushroom experts debunking fungi depiction in art. This piece is amazing in its detail and passion for mushrooms in art and design, history and generally everything.
If you thought your last road trip to 3F for some rare bottles was edgy, get a load of the spies who were tasked by their superiors to bring Nablus tahini into Israel.
Katie Goh interviewed the makers of SPAM magazine via Google docs and it totally captured my imagination. The interview is great, but the method is inspired!
I don’t really want to read anything about climate change at the moment but this map of Ice Age Britain and Ireland/NW Europe really grabbed me. Seeing rivers flowing over Doggerland was fascinating — if anyone has a map like this but with contours, I’d love to see it.
My Stuff:
I’ve been off sick for a couple of weeks l so there’s nothing out there currently. Nothing serious, I just had to prioritise my mental health for a little while. I’m back on it now though so expect a few things being cranked out over the next month or so. Starting with the piece next week, obv.
A reminder that Dick and Cath are ace people and I loved writing about them for Pellicle.
ICYMI: I wrote about beer and lower-league football and had fun doing it.
Mushroom Motif (Black and Ochre) 2017 – Alex Morrison