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

What Is To Come

1. We do not know what is to come. We know it doesn’t look immediately good, or at all good if nothing changes – I mean! our free time is increasingly gobbled up by our all-connected devices, which harvest our thoughts and our data to strengthen the wealth and power of international companies! our wages are weak against our cost of living, with employment rights potentially being weakened further after our exit from the EU, so we do whatever we can to get whatever we can! we are encouraged to spend our leisure time side-hustling and girl-bossing because it a) gets us extra and b) reduces our time to think freely, so it’s encouraged as a positive thing by those who benefit from this! we volunteer to be sold to, constantly, relentlessly, as a hobby and a citizen, and those ever-growing companies are delighted because the more we want, the bigger their profit, and the more we want, the less we’ll fight for everything they take from us in return! inequality is rising! divisions are growing! we are all, in the words of Mitchell & Webb, looking like the baddies! – but the fact is this. Something has to change. 

It is literally not sustainable; either we go, or dramatic change must come; unfettered capitalism cannot maintain itself when soil is barren and air is unbreathable, I think; things will be bumpy, at the very least, and all we can do is hold on tight to what we believe makes humanity worth battling for. Art, and humour, and story, and discovery, and creation, and sharing, and forgiveness, and responsibility: community and togetherness, if you like, or privacy and peace, if you prefer. And of course those things have historically been used in dark ways sometimes! Of course everything has a middle path! And this isn’t even a recent thing, more a tipping point we’re at right now; in Matthew Sweet’s 2001 book, Inventing the Victorians, he talks of the Victorian era as a time when “crudely speaking, work patterns shifted from those following the rhythms established by families and communities to those timetabled by managements keen to optimise the productivity of their workforces. At the same time, traditional leisure pursuits were being undermined… There was a switch from locally-generated activities and community-based entertainments to increasingly officialised ones: national cricket and football leagues, public swimming baths dance clubs, museums, exhibitions, arcade games, ticket-only entertainment events.” I know, right. I know. So it’s not as if all Olden Days were a utopia – we’ve made progress in so many ways, and that’s the progress we’ve got to keep fighting for, that general direction of so many things, but we have to find a new way of fighting that isn’t going to end with the whole world blind. 

And it is necessary to remind ourselves somehow, somehow, that our children don’t need iPads as a human right, and maybe we’re all doing ourselves more favours if we remember that adults also need to go for walks, or make bread from scratch, or listen to something positive on the radio as a group, or discover more about our local trees or birds, or learn to sing a song together, or make a zine, because not everything has to have a goal of building a career or becoming a giant success or being acclaimed, sometimes just doing something quietly is great, and yes, I also know that some people don’t have the time to do those things, the freedom, or the headspace but my god, what are we doing propping up a society where almost everyone I know logs several hours a day on their phone, minimum, but we don’t have time to make eye contact and volunteer and actively be with people, rather than just tapping our screen and being “connected”. What is it we truly need? 

A v gloomy recent Salon piece which, honestly, I can’t even link to here because it set off heavy panic in me, did at least end with some useful suggestions, about actively being with people, and attending marches and writing and creating, because staying online basically just makes us all melt down, and who is a better consumer than a panicking, deeply unhappy one? “Action is the answer”, it said, because those people and organisations that like complacency and an easily controlled populace rely on our inaction. 

So please, please, please. I want so much better for the future of humanity. Please share the actions we can take. Please put your devices away and give yourself the gift of a life unlogged. Please work together for change. 

2. Most of this all came about because January was spent without a TV, but with plenty of books, running, radio plays and puzzles (both jigsaw and -book versions) instead. I was struck as I always am in these instances, how much better I feel when I’m not mindlessly, automatically slumped in front of a screen, how valuable and rich my hours seem, how many more thoughts I have, how much more varied my input is, yet how much calmer my brain is. (Having said that, I did miss my usual Mad Men January watch, because it is the best television ever made, and also because the crippling January depression I usually get didn’t come this year; and I do still want to give everyone access to the Watchmen TV series, which I watched at the end of last year and haven’t been able to stop thinking about, and I have also been to the cinema four times since the start of the year, and also stayed up one night watching all of Adam Driver’s SNL sketches on my phone which yes, is very much a cheat, and no, I don’t regret it.) I understand the gross lolling privilege of my position recommending bread and Radio 4 as the cure for all ills, but I suppose my point is that we should have the freedom to choose those things if we want them, and I believe our economy, our society, and our deliberately addictive technology undermines both the chance to make those choices, and the ability to make them. 

3. Some podcast recommendations: 

• Two excellent episodes of Desert Island Discs: Daniel Kahneman (who said his passion for economics developed from listening to his mother gossip, and understanding the power of narrative) and Lemn Sissay (I think I’ve recommended this elsewhere, but it keeps popping into my brain and I love it) 
• This episode of Heavyweight, which generally always makes me cry, but this tale of soul mates divided — or not? — is, somehow, both devastating and utterly beautiful and warming. But really, every episode is brilliant. 
• While I disagree with lots of what he says, this episode of Seth Godin’s Akimbo is quite interesting, on the Gift Economy as an alternative to the Private Property Economy. 
• I love Jenny Slate’s description of her twenties as a ‘surprise second adolescence’ in this episode of the sadly defunct The Cut on Tuesdays. That’s so accurate, and it’s staggering looking back that as twenty-somethings we are just let loose in the world to work and breed and live alone and vote and everything. We don’t know anything! I’ve been thinking so much about how we find the balance between fresh, new, innovative ideas to kick against defunct traditions, and ceding an ear to experience and wisdom. Old people aren’t always wise, I know, and young people aren’t always inventing the newness they think they are, but I see more and more the importance of experience and the dangers of binning something because it comes in a particular package. (I know I am entering middle age because I’ve started rolling my eyes at some of the drums I see teens and twenty-somethings banging. Please don’t invite me to your parties, I wish I was more fun.) 

4. Next time, I promise: recipes for sourdough starter and a sourdough loaf, and a blood orange cake that will blow your mind. 

Over the summer, my quite-old-but-not-that-old phone ate all my text messages and became almost thrillingly unreliable. Ever since then, I pick it up not with the usual subconscious rat-excitement, but with something like dread — it’s so clearly an addiction to something which, beyond podcasts and the camera, offers me far more hassle than pleasure or use, as is the way with anything one becomes addicted to. (Oh, and maps, occasionally.)

I absolutely loathe it, and once I’ve submitted this current big project, my next fairly dull task will be to try and wean myself off it almost entirely. Keep it in the office, plug the landline in somewhere more accessible and use that more, not have to check before I leave one room and walk into another than my phone is in my hand. God, it’s horrible. (Yes, also, music on the phone, also good. Christ.)

I realised the other night that my own anxiety and weariness comes from a sense that absolutely every choice I make these days feels like a battle for my soul. (Ugh, and the period-tracking app is useful. UGH.) It doesn’t feel like merely existing, it feels like living, heavy with some kind of extra-gravitational moral weight: did I turn off the lights/should I turn on the heating/is this food environmentally damaging/can I recycle this/are the children growing up to be vocal about the right things/but not so vocal that they increase division in society/it feels right to keep them off the internet/but will they be prepared when they are free-range on there/it’s great they’re all keen readers/but modern popular children’s books are almost universally awful. This isn’t parenting, or being an adult. This is living in an era where we are facing mass extinction either through climate change or mass conflict, fuelled and fired by those agencies which benefit from conflict and fear: arms manufacturers, politicians, media companies, product-makers, internet figures fashioning themselves into products.

If you are the product, what does that do to your soul? If your daily life, your family, children, friends and colleagues are the backdrop and the context for your self, sold and packaged to consumers or employers, do you gain more than you lose? If your most passionate conversations and throwaway jokes are all equally public, equally up for scrutiny, how does that ensure a fair life for you? If everything you ever say can come back and bite you — my primary reason to wish all children and teens weren’t ever allowed to say or write or do anything on a screen — how does that shape your life?

If you are a female MP, trying hard to improve lives around you, do you deserve to get hundreds upon hundreds of messages describing brutal sexual assault and violence against you and your family? You’re a public figure! That’s the price! If you’re a beauty journalist, having months of harassment and bullying by vicious internet trolls, how do you find the strength to speak up in a moving instagram video?

But. What if the source of that latter bullying seems to be — unless the source mentioned was not correct, unless something else is going on, which is of course more than possible, because nothing can be trusted on the internet — fairly calm critiques of your working practices both on- and offline? What if the trolls who have attacked your children in fact only mentioned them once, in the context of you promising never to use them in your social media? What if those board users were asking questions about your transparency and correct use of Ad and Gifted tags, and only when you set the internet against them does that board start screen-grabbing your own systematic and extremely public bullying (sometimes over long, long months) of other women in the media, attacking their looks, abilities, work and parenting? What if all your friends suddenly start deleting their old tweets (as you have already done) because your accusations have shone a bright light on a forum that at worst, matches tonally exactly the conversations you and media friends have on twitter, and at best are supportive spaces discussing dementia, cancer, cleansing routines, and their own experiences of bullying and unpleasantness at the hands of blue-tickers?

How does that make those female MPs feel? How does that make the women and men, boys and girls who have been harassed, doxxed, bullied and intimidated feel? I wonder what that does to your soul, when every mistake is so public? 

Running to the river now is in the dark; even when we climb out we do so by torch light. I hope you can all find something like this for yourselves, something calm and quiet and personal and fulfilling.

I come home and peel off my cold wet clothes, and look forward to more moments without my phone. 

1. I really, really loved this essay on introducing hope back into a nihilist world. It captures my own struggles with the messiness of everything – if this, then that, so which is worse? – and how everyone seems to be struggling with genuine, literal existential crises. But hope! And weight-lifting! I’ve been doing weights since the start of the summer and every time I lift it’s like a fucking joy injection. If you can start lifting heavy stuff, I massively recommend it. 

2. I want to post a link to the Pop Culture Happy Hour review of Todd Phillips’ Joker film, but I also want to be a better person than that, so I won’t. But Ready or Not is great fun, so maybe watch that instead! 

3. Here are some excellent children’s books series, if you want them: The Dark is Rising series, His Dark Materials, The Murder Most Unladylike books, The Sinclair’s Mysteries, the Tiffany Aching books… is that it? Always looking for more suggestions if you have them, please. 

4. Next time I get an invoice paid I am 400% getting this for the pup. The cold is mean to these feeble, speedy hounds. She is extreme excite. 

The river was cold this morning, although my leggings are thick enough that I didn’t realise until I was rib-deep, by which point I had to start swimming as hard as I could back and forth across the river while the others got in just to keep the blood flowing to my hands. Neoprene gloves and socks will be needed soon, sooner than we’d all hoped, I think. But I don’t mind that cold yet, when we pay that to enjoy silent herons overhead, a still dawn, and ducks beside us, unseeing of their company until a dog runs by on the bank and they flap away, naark naark naark. 

I found a chunk of Richard Hoggart’s The Uses of Literacy when I was tidying my room recently, and he foresaw so much of our current cultural situation – TV and film and music and books as comfort, as trash, as distraction, as manipulation – that I am forcing myself to be a tougher reader, viewer, listener. I can’t bewail the kids liking Pokemon (fucking Pokemon) (…*Pokemonnnn*) but then watch only those things that make me feel safe and amused, never challenged or horrified or upset. I mean, as with everything, it is grey areas, and middle grounds, but I can’t live forever in a Michael Schur-flavoured cloud of good faith and optimism, however vital I believe those to be. I also need to absorb and contain those truths which are less pleasant, because that’s what all of us need to face right now, to be able to think about, and talk about, the hard work we can do to right those wrongs. 

Speaking of which, this excellent old episode of Desert Island Discs was repeated on my feed recently, with Judith Kerr. Her story is devastating for what she escaped, for how narrow the escape was, for her remembrance of all those who weren’t as lucky, for her gratitude and positivity after everything. I tried to sing along to her choice of Bud Flanagan’s Who Do You Think You Are Kidding Mr Hitler as I made a packed lunch for school this morning, but I started crying halfway through. How are the children not used to my collapsing weeps, yet? It’s a wonderful episode, though, with wonderful music. And (I think) I want to know what makes a country fall to fascism and what makes a country fight it, and welcome in refugees with genuine open arms, not imprisonment of children and exploitation of adults; what makes our better impulses stronger than our worst ones. 

And speaking of that (and Michael Schur, actually), as part of my ‘making myself read things when even the headline terrifies me’ campaign this is very good: “The End of the Roman Empire Wasn’t That Bad”, in which James Fallows discusses how when governments fail to function as they should, community government often picks up the slack, helping people around them on a day-to-day basis to access homes, education, healthcare. One interviewer “suggested the situation was like people fleeing the world of Veep — bleak humor on top of genuine bleakness — for a non-preposterous version of Parks and Recreation.” So that’s nice? 

Finally, speaking of things that make me feel safe and amused, I got up this morning with actual intercostal pain from how much I laughed at Stath Lets Flats most recent episode last night. (I had tried to watch the series before and hadn’t even lasted through the first episode. We watched the whole of the first series in a couple of nights this summer at my second attempt, and my GOD it’s brilliant.) If you watch them all, and don’t find the closing line of ‘A Battle of Our Lives’ funny enough to make you laugh through the whole credits, and then again every time you remember it, then please find something that does because it’s such a great feeling. 

1. The Uses of Literacy here – staggeringly, written in 1957 and as searing as ever. Perhaps writing something about it in October will be my reward for meeting my big September deadlines.  

2. Sue Lawley talks to Judith Kerr on Desert Island Discs here. 

3. “The End of the Roman Empire Wasn’t That Bad” here, which is genuinely worth reading before you gather your spirits about you and sashay into helping people locally, however you can. 

4. Stath Lets Flats, which, truly, is the gift that keeps on giving (and this review, while it does describe many of the best jokes, also captures much of what makes the programme so very, very excellent.) CLAP, YOU BLOODY EGGS