1. I had dressed in my swimming kit this morning with the briefest and most unusual sense of Ugh, another time loop morning. But by the time we got to our spot, the sun was low and bright, blazing gold, and the mist on the river was so thick I thought it was smoke from a hidden bonfire. Once in the water, gilded terns flew over us, and the temperature was noticeably warmer — too cold to be cool, even, but warmer than early spring. On the way back to the bank, the sun reached through the trees in misty glowing fingers onto the surface of the river, and small fish leapt ahead of us. I said, stupidly, ‘Are we in a Disney film?’ Sumer is icumen in (just about), as they say. 

2. I always like Pop Culture Happy Hour, and I’ve really enjoyed their coverage of the Oscar nominations this week; firstly, for their recognition in Thursday’s episode of Best Song nominee ‘Husavik’ as the only contender that actually fits the brief, and secondly for mentioning today the sheer, visceral joy that is Tom Holland’s old Gene Kelly/Rihanna appearance in Lip Sync Battle. Two summers ago my instagram feed was just hourly screen grabs from this routine, which looked like I was having a breakdown but felt waaaay too good for that. If you know anything hotter, then, honestly, good for you. 

3. Speaking of Husavic, I imagine anyone who would watch Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga has already done so, but if you haven’t, may I recommend it? Over this strange previous year, it’s been a baffling bit of delight and comfort, the only film I’ve watched three times over the lockdowns, and an oasis of optimism and gentle silliness. Silliness gets such a bad rap, but I’d take physical comedy and magical elves any day over the po-faced dumbness of a Breaking Bad or a Killing Eve, programmes so convinced of their own holy importance that they end up as over-budget soaps. I gave up watching the real Eurovision when I quit twitter, but my goodness, the Song-A-Long still makes me beam every single time, and Husavic still makes me cry every single time. As for Dan Stevens’ Lemtov — he’s great. Utterly, utterly marvellous, heart-breaking and heart-warming at the same time. Is it a perfect film? No. But it’s perfect for now. 

4. I’ve never counted myself as a huge Patrick Kielty fan, but after listening to his Borderline stand-up special on Radio 4 a few weeks ago, I very much am. Whenever I brush up against the news I find myself panicking about how awful people can be, how countries turn against themselves, how civil wars happen, how we take peace for granted until it’s too late, how ridiculous divisions can be and the terrible, unnecessary price we pay for them. Patrick Kielty covers all this, in his 28-minute look at the Troubles, with wit and intelligence, grief and anger, but above all with insight and with hope. Please listen while it’s still available. 

5. I am old, Father William, as the poem doesn’t go, and it’s most noticeable when I despair at Radio 4 presenters. I really really really miss Sue Lawley and Kirsty Young, Mariella Frostrup and Eddie Mair — presenters who made me feel like there was an adult in the room. I’m all for Young People Having Astounding New Ideas, but sometimes it’s nice to make eye contact with people who have lived longer than a decent pair of shoes, and silently share the wistful memory of a time when it seemed that just believing in something could make it true, or useful, or correct, and things weren’t a thousand complex shades of right and wrong; or even better, have an adult express that feeling with clarity and grace. So I am old. Advantages: I can enjoy a great deal of time spent rearranging my seed packets, or finally learning some bird calls, or not being quite so swayed by fashion, or laughing. Disadvantages: the unstoppable march of time and the ever-chilling hand of Death. All this is to say: David Sedaris, in the passing of years, has turned more to the subject of death and ageing, and I love him even more for it. Like his most recent book, Calypso, his latest Meet David Sedaris series is full of gloom and endings, but somehow all with a lightness and humour that makes them thoughtful, rather than bleak. Another one ideal for this odd moment in history. 

6. The housemates and I have taken to only watching sub-90-minute films recently (see: unstoppable march of time). Shirkers is a wonderful slice of memory, loss, beauty, ambition and the power of young dreams; The Barkley Marathons shows human determination at its most pointless and yet most joyful; Rope beautifully displays James Stewart being the father I always wanted, and contains some of the most pleasing cinematography I’ve seen for a long time; The King of Kong is blood-boiling and ludicrous and well worth googling the aftermath once you’ve watched it; The Life of Brian has some questionable moments but even more hilarious and sharply-observed ones. ‘A touch of derring-do?’ ‘Ah — about eleven, sir.’ (Who can ever explain the mysteries of what any individual finds funny?) 

7. If you want to read my latest book in ebook, it’s out now, otherwise the paperback will be out in July. It’s not a hard read, but it is quite a nice one. 

1. The waters are so high that we are soaked mid-calf even before we get to the swimming spot, our feet freezing in our trainers, and we change, and wade in knee-high and suddenly I am terrified of stepping off the bank I can’t even see. It’s the coldest we’ve ever felt, we agree, and all thoughts of Wim Hof vanish from my mind as we dash almost straight out again, hooting and gasping. 

2. Richard Flanagan is very interesting on Open Book, talking about how we’ve ‘come to an end point of a certain sort of individualism’, and how some societies seem to be focused inwards, in a chaotic shuffle of self-fixated individuals, while others are focused outwards, each member understanding themselves to be a part of a community that needs each unit to participate. I’m sure there are benefits to each — perhaps an individualistic society enables more leaps in developments and creativity? — but in tandem with Adam Curtis’s interview on Kermode & Mayo’s Film Review in which he discusses the idea that we’ve forgotten to dream about the future, it’s clarified why aspects of our current society make me feel so drained and low. 

We have plenty of dystopian visions, Curtis says, but apparently so few plans for how we might make things better, since everything can seem so insurmountable. Shortly afterwards a friend sends me an uplifting poem about learning to love yourself and fuck everyone else, and we discuss that the first part is so important, is vital to empathising with others, but the second part is a message on which we need to turn the volume down, that life is about compromise, and doing things we sometimes don’t want to; that you can love who you are and still quieten bits of yourself momentarily for the good of society; that there is a wide, wide gulf between being an abuse victim and having to do things that aren’t in our perfect day, and yes there are plenty of grey areas and difficulties and most people don’t have free choice about doing things they shouldn’t have to do and don’t benefit them in the slightest, bar just keeping them slightly alive, but my god, self-care has been joyfully co-opted by capitalism because if we’re caring about ourselves we’re a) not thinking of others, so we can’t unite to make meaningful change en masse, and b) we’re giving our money away for more shit that’s destroying the planet and filling our homes and distracting us from the hard work of discussion, and questioning, and listening, and learning, and apologising, and uniting with people with whom we might disagree. I remember the feeling of righteousness on twitter at the start of the 2010s around turning our backs on people when we thought they were morally wrong, be it about Brexit or general elections or shopping choices or careers, but I think I may only be left with my magical electric blanket if I solely hang out with those who agree with every single one of my strongly felt opinions. I am trying to ask more instead, and to listen. (Speaking of which, this is a hopeful episode of Cautionary Tales, featuring an extract from Tim Harford’s latest book, which suggests that curiosity is the glue that will bring polarised groups back together, and allow forward action to occur.)  

3. I talk with a friend in advertising about a report that shows our culture at the moment is in a left-brain phase of its cycle: our music is dull and catchy and repetitive, our books middle-of-the-road, our visuals the same safe social media shades and shapes, our celebrities and interviews flat and PR’d to an inch of their bland lives (I miss Popworld so much, and this interview with Miquita Oliver is great), our adverts literal and unimaginative. For all the progress we’ve made in some areas, it makes me want to watch half an hour of weird 90’s ads, like this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this. 

4. Speaking of gaming, I’m so strongly not a gamer that I feel second-hand embarrassment for adult gamers — something I’m fully aware is ridiculous, hypocritical and utterly unnecessary — but this beautiful podcast, Unplayable: Disability and the Gaming Revolution, had me crying like a tiny baby. Good on everyone who works to make the world better. 

5. I’ve been reading this recently, which is so very good (besides the usual compulsory every-five-pages typos which seems to be the norm with some big publishers these days, and makes me weep for the author) and in googling some of the shows mentioned in it found this interesting Salon piece from 2011 about Galliano and what happens to someone with effectively limitless power in their field. It also contains this line, which if I was a hacker/dickhead I would leave in place of all current Instagram pages: “The Tibetan Buddhists view grandiose self-regard as not just a poor way to live and horribly embarrassing, but as a klesha: literally, a poison.” 

6. This week I made this marmalade, and these lamb meatballs, and this exceptionally easy lemon ice cream. All are 100% worth it.  

7. After a small Imbolc feast, one housemate asks if I want to do some Lego, and I am so flattered by the invitation that I do, and we build the ground floor of an excellent house, including swimming pond (complete with octopus) and a kitchen table littered with ice lollies. As we work, we listen to the lockdown playlist I started collating almost twelve months ago, and I discover that the housemate now knows most of the words to TLC’s Waterfalls and Florence + the Machine’s Jenny of Oldstones and Elton John’s Tiny Dancer and Buzzcocks’ Ever Fallen in Love, and, while waiting for me to finish one section of the house, sits and solves a Rubik’s cube over and over again, and I feel the luck of it fill up my whole torso until it almost tips over into panic. 

1. It’s the first time that, even with neoprene gloves on, my fingers become frozen within seconds. The water is cold enough that we had to crackle through the frozen swollen edges before easing down into the river itself, and although I recite the winter swimming mantra within a stroke or two (‘Hey, it’s not too bad’) both hands are already sharply cold to the bone, and dressing afterwards takes a lot of huffing into cupped hands to allow me to do up my laces, stuff everything back in the bag. It’s been worth it, this winter, ditching my wetsuit jacket and just swimming in summer kit of running leggings and sports bra — I like a lighter backpack, and the sense that I’m really feeling the cold of the water, as much as I feel the warmth in June and July. And this winter in the river has given us so many pleasures already: the Geminid meteor showers filling the still clear sky in mid-December and reflecting in the water; a shooting star streaking across Christmas morning, in a silent dark rushing world empty even of the usual occasional early worker; a New Year’s Day hushed gathering, knowing at any moment such a cluster would become illegal; floods that mean we wade shin-deep towards the bank edge, and lower ourselves into the small bay, swimming hard to stay in place against the current. 

This morning we run back through hard, bright snow, our footsteps loud, my feet numb. I run to my waking house down a street where only a handful of months ago I would circle the block on my bicycle, round and round and round at this same hour, the light pink and orange, the doves and pigeons cooing at my damp hair, the air already warm enough to send me back to sleep, not wanting yet to wake the house, not wanting yet to end this coral-coloured silence. 

2. The main soundtrack of the last year has been John Finnemore: either his Souvenir Programme or Cabin Pressure, at least one of which is playing at any given time in the house on any given day. Between him and Kate Beaton’s comics, I feel like at least the housemates are getting some education in classics, history, politics, literature, geography, and comedy. When not molding impressionable minds with my own tastes, I’ve been listening to Tim Key’s Late Night Poetry Programme and In and Out of the Kitchen on headphones, escapist little windows into a different life. Diverse my listening may not be, but brilliant, amusing and comforting it very much is. 

3. Can I recommend this particular episode of Reply All? I very much like Alex Blumberg’s clear and constructive riposte to Alex Goldman’s climate defeatism: we are not done yet, but there’s hard work to do and we need to crack on. Hope may be tiring, but it exists for a reason. Speaking of which, this episode of Soul Music is food for the spirit. 

4. A housemate has made this a few times since receiving the Simple book for Christmas, and my goodness it’s good. 

5. I hope you’re all well. Keep writing to your MP about environmental concerns, NHS concerns, schooling and jobs and housing and the flawed legal system and data collection and employee rights and all of this country’s major inequalities. Courage, mes braves. x

How are you? I wish I had something more incisive to greet you with, but the speed with which everything occurs means it would be irrelevant, distasteful or a viral punchline a few hours later. 

I have been to the cinema for the first time in six months, and continued my regular habit exactly where I’d left it by attending a first-thing-in-the-morning screening of Tenet with only one other person in the cinema, sitting miles away and also on their own (the only way to watch a film, I say). Fucking Tenet, though. I mean, I have really missed going to the cinema, partly because I love films and partly because there’s such a small-scale decadence to occasionally going there solo at 10am on a Tuesday morning, and those tiny pleasures (which, of course, are currently no longer tiny) are just the things to keep me going.

But the film. Oh god, the film. I wish… I wish I could collate my thoughts into something which doesn’t just rapidly descend into a frustrated scream. I wish success didn’t mean people couldn’t say no to you. I wish I liked Nolan’s Batman films, for a start, since so many seem to get so much from them (see also: Breaking Bad, Killing Eve and Line of Duty), but I’ve always found them silly, really dumbly written, and badly made — I can’t hear much of the dialogue, and the action sequences are frequently shot with so many cuts and movement that’s it’s impossible to follow, something George Miller could teach him about so beautifully — and they’re so bloody solemn. Gotham is a grim place, but there’s a boring pomposity in fetishing that one-note grimness, and Nolan has it nailed. Having a character genuinely laugh at something doesn’t render your film light-weight; it creates contrast, and human engagement, something these serious (but sci-fi)/serious (but fantasy)/serious (but adult man dresses in a cape) films too often lack, as if a strained, one-note way of speaking will cancel out the frivolous, actually enjoyable genre aspect of the film. 

That lack of humanity is shared by Tenet. After a certain point, I simply don’t care. Is the nuke going to explode before Batman can something something something? *shrugs* Will the Tenet team manage to stop some sort of bad thing happening? Yes? No? Don’t mind, fine either way. Is Tenet nice to look at? Yes, but in a sort of “Christ, are we still holding up billionaire oligarch lifestyles as an aspirational thing at the moment?” very pre-2020 mood. Does it make sense? No, but that alone doesn’t mean it isn’t good — some great films, and some great Nolan films, take several goes to fully enjoy, and some are more enjoyable with every watch. Do I give a single fig about the outcome of the film or for any character after 20 minutes? Nope.

One major issue is that Nolan has made Inception, a masterpiece of film-making meta-commentary. How, once you’ve watched Cobb and Ariadne discuss the leaping-about way of conversations in films/dreams (stopping and starting in completely new locations) can you take the same thing seriously between Neil (Neil. Neil.) and The Protagonist? (I would like to see how many women read this screenplay along the way and just gave a small, inner sigh at the main character being named ‘The Protagonist’.) As their boring expositional chats chop between pavement and public transport and plaza, one can’t help remembering how well Nolan previously pointed this out, yet has reverted to that self-conscious device to no benefit at all. It’s like he’s never seen his own films.

Similarly, the much-lauded aeroplane scene is completely without the necessary ingredient of tension because we’ve already been shown what happens, not just in other films but in this one, about fifteen minutes before. It’s like Bill & Ted promising they’d do whatever it was they needed right now, but in the future, and their momentary problem being solved by a loose sense of timey-wimey future self-ness. There’s nothing at stake at the airport, and between us being shown what happens and the scene beginning, nothing has happened for us to even hope the mission isn’t completed. It felt like the criminally underused Himesh Patel was in an instructional video for fuss-free plane-borrowing; compare it to the similar scene in Casino Royale (perhaps the only modern Bond film worth bothering with) and the flatness and mechanical nature of Tenet is all too apparent. The twists of the film, such as they are, are likewise foreseeable for even the least Pauline Kael among us. Who could it be under the mask? WHO COULD IT POSSIBLY BE? 

The Prestige, an earlier film of Nolan’s, is such a contrast to this that I’m stunned I didn’t watch it the moment I came home to clear my brain out. It’s smart, logical, moving, tense, engaging, and if there are plot holes (probably) I didn’t care because a) I really, really cared about what happened to each person, each of whom spoke and behaved like humans, not AI script-bots, and b) it gave this household a v useful shorthand nickname for anyone who wanted something one day but completely inexplicably changed their mind or denied it the next. I recommend it. I do not recommend Tenet. 

Of course, I feel guilty for caring so much about this, and writing about some fucking multi-squillion-dollar film with everything else happening. I am feeling extremely, crushingly ineffectual presently, and have completely come off all social media which from time to time would remind me of the efficacy of protest, of letter-writing and petition-signing and contacting one’s MP, so change feels hopeless and November’s blows seem inevitable. I am trying to knit my mind back together before then with small acts of body-work: cooking and running, drawing and swimming. I worry that I will drown in guilt and fear if I stop for a moment. It is pathetic, but I am still breathing, for now. 

My cynicism-filter is also at its finest mesh, because it cannot cope with the reality of our leaders and the UK’s political discourse: only small-fry stuff gets through, the Sali Hugheses and Jack Monroes, small-time fantasists who manipulate and virtue-signal to build lives of back-slapping consumerist celebration and Twitter Power Leader Boards. I’ve listened again to The Purity Spiral, and also to Desperately Seeking Sympathy, and wondered how many intelligent, kind-hearted people waste time supporting these innocent, victimised mini-Trumps just because they use the right buzzwords and also appear to hate the Tories. 

I wish I could give you some of the lights in my heart that keep me going — the occasional pure moon-eating delight of the people I live with — but here are more feasible treats instead.

1. Mike Birbiglia’s podcast Working It Out is a treasure, particularly the first episode with Ira Glass, which I think everyone who works in a creative field will listen to and wish they had an Ira Glass to critique their work. I like the idea of documenting works in progress, and not carrying any shame when things don’t work yet.
2. The Rose Matafeo episode of The Horne Section podcast, because I love her and I love stupid and brilliant songs. Several housemates have discovered Taskmaster too, which makes this a nice bridge.
3. Sarah & Duck, the BBC programme for tiny children. We never really used kids’ TV when they were little, but this now functions as a salve for when we’ve watched something truly terrifying like Poirot or a Marvel film, and besides the fact that Duck is absolutely fucking hilarious, the animation is staggeringly beautiful. The Islamic geometric patterns of the garden hedge; the soft blue-green hum of the “glow” section of the library, filled with lamps and luminescent books; the motes of dust caught in the sun-rays of Scarf Lady’s window. It’s a balm. 
4. Thanks to two housemates becoming great cooks over lockdown, I’ve rediscovered lots of my cookbooks and found 2015’s Simply Nigella to be a real corker. The rice with sprouts, chilli and pineapple, the drunken noodles and the Thai noodles with cinnamon and prawn are worth the entry fee alone. It’s quite chicken- and pomegranate seed-heavy, but even if you don’t like those, it’s extremely nice to be eating something that isn’t on our usual five-meal rota (and is also extremely delicious).
5. I was solo for some of the summer, and managed to watch a few excellent films, including BlacKkKlansman, The Peanut Butter Falcon and Love & Friendship. Cannot recommend these highly enough (*whispers* particularly the latter because it’s as painfully sharp as Austen should be, and we’d made the mistake of watching Emma. and I’m still so cross I’m not sure I’m ready to discuss everything that was wrong with it publicly yet).
6. I read Esther Williams’ memoir, The Million Dollar Mermaid. Perfect for anyone who loves that period of Hollywood, and full of juicy (as well as some pretty traumatic) episodes from the swimmer and actress’s amazing life. To give you a sense of it, chapter one is called “Esther Williams, Cary Grant, and LSD”. Super good. 

I hope you all keep well, pals x