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

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. 

I’ve spent the last few months entirely off social media, months that I’ve been instead using for reading, writing a screenplay, grieving a pal, listening to podcasts, going outside, walking, hanging out with my friends and family, picking apples, going for runs, writing cards, writing lists.

It’s been bliss.

Here are some thoughts that have begun to coalesce in my mind during that time:

1. Instagram seems like the least hostile social media app, going by who I follow, but when I’ve opened it recently I’ve felt like my disgruntled old white dad™ complaining about The Youth. “But why are you taking a photograph of your food? Your blanket? Your train journey? Who cares about it? Why can’t you just enjoy your holiday? Who are you writing this to?” 

2. I think one of the reason it bothers me is that so many of the people I follow who talk about anxiety and mental health issues are also the most prolific posters, particularly of selfies. I wonder if we’ll look back on this era of internet-use and marvel that it wasn’t obvious, a direct correlation between filming/photographing yourself and waiting for comments and likes, and anxiety and mental health issues. 

3. In the first episode of Morality in the 21st Century, the much-discussed and critiqued author Jordan Peterson talks to Rabbi Jonathan Sacks about how we now put far too much emphasis on Happiness, way beyond Responsibility. How fulfilment and the pleasure of life comes from accepting and handling responsibility, not chasing constant ‘happiness and rights’. Peterson also says kids shouldn’t be told they are perfect and that they should love themselves unconditionally because self-esteem is so important, but instead that they are full of potential, and have a responsibility to tap into that infinite potential to grow into the best possible version of themselves within and against the problems and issues they’ll come up against. I dig this. 

4. I try to raise our kids to be like Paddington. Open-hearted, hopeful, adventurous, curious, moral, questioning, kind. I don’t know if it’ll work. But it helps to have a plan. 

5. I want to side with my generation and younger. My optimism says that young people have fresh ideas, open minds, new ways of understanding old bigotries are no longer acceptable. Young people shouldn’t be dictated to about what is and isn’t acceptable by older generations who don’t understand and haven’t grown up with technology in the same way. But for all that optimism, I realise I’ve thrown out the idea of Wisdom. If anyone older than us says anything we don’t agree with, it’s way easier to say, “OMG the 1800s called and want their ideology back.” But maybe they know something. Maybe it is super rude and disconnected for a family to sit together on a sofa all on separate tablets and phones. Maybe it’s not acceptable for everyone to have their phones out on the table when they’re out for dinner. Maybe we should be able to unplug and walk outside in the fresh air without having to take seventeen pictures of it, select our favourite, caption it, publish it, then check and respond to comments. Maybe living a life through images and captions isn’t how our human brains work best. 

6. (Maybe it also makes you a little bit boring.) 

7. I still grieve for Twitter — even though even glimpsing four tweets on my feed now makes my heart pound and race at the sheer teeth-bared ferocity of it — but I miss the memes and the humour, the people I met there and the opinions I discovered. I love that it gives previously silenced people a vital platform. That’s so important. I can’t say that enough. That’s SO important. 

8. But! Of course, but! Having a platform for everyone means that everyone has a platform. And actually, I feel that’s less good. But I don’t know how to fix that, or run it better. Gatekeepers aren’t the answer. Moral responsibility? “Do I need to post this?” Does it make the world better? Is calling someone trash when they’ve done something ‘wrong’ the right way to live? Do you ever worry that one day it’ll be you? 

9. I do, loads. The more that people are deleted for their errors — a word, a tweet, a joke, a routine, a casting decision, a drunken error — jesus christ, when I think of all my drunken errors and jokes and god, all my mistakes, my god — the more I wonder how anyone dares use social media. (I will shortly be crowd-funding my family’s move to a signal-less home on a hill in beautiful Wales.)

10. This makes me feel like all the people we used to loathe and make fun of, in my Twitter days. Just don’t be human garbage! The rules aren’t hard! But they really, really are. 

11. Do you remember when we disagreed with things and said to people or companies, “Do you think you might -” or “Please could you consider -”? It feels — and I haven’t crunched the numbers! I don’t know if this is nonsense! I hope it is! — that we go full-throttle straight to SIGN THIS PETITION TO GET THIS SHUT DOWN. I like it more when we talk about things. We all need to be challenged.  

12. This is an excellent programme on the vital importance of Dialogue. While I’ve been offline I’m been meeting so many people to just chat and hang out and it turns out it’s great. We should do that more. (*extremely high pitched suggestion voice* And maybe not put that we did it on social media??)

13. These apps are engineered by the top engineers to be addictive. It doesn’t mean they fulfil you. 

14. I, like most late-twentieth-century babies, went through an anti-religion phase. Now, most of the religious people I know are the ones I feel best after seeing. Their quiet charity. Their humility. Their morals. It’s not a sword they use to strike people, it’s an umbrella they offer to hold over those who want it. It’s pretty nice. (And I’d love to discuss with people who have greater expertise than me about whether the fact that almost all religions across the last few thousand years have said vanity/self-indulgence are Not Good Things is suggestive that maybe we should avoid those for our greater benefit, or whether those taboos have been tools of oppression. Both? Probably. I would like to learn more, though.) 

15. Getting paid and credited for your work is important — god knows, I try to make my living in a field where anyone who speaks English is convinced they can do it NO YOU CANNOT — but entering an Instagram space where everyone, always, bangs their own drum is so tiresome. I know I can unfollow them. But how much can that behaviour be repeated and normalised before we forget it’s not the way to shape a pleasant society? And yes, I am also a bitter writer who is not yet rolling in my own Scrooge McDuck coin vault so that’s probably part of it. I don’t even remember the original question asked here, but I think about paragraphs 11 & 12 of the answer all the time. When did ‘building your brand’ replace being an actual person? And I know I’m on thin ice here, I can already hear the retorts, and yes, I am 187 years old, thank you for asking. 

16. I am so, so, so worried about the planet. Everything else kind of feels like small fry, in a way. Please stop encouraging people to buy so much shit. It might be your living but we are literally, literally destroying the only place we have to live. I just don’t get why this isn’t the only thing we are all working on, all the time. (I mean, I get why, but also, WHY?) That Morality podcast I mentioned earlier has an interesting discussion on the value of capitalism that utterly fails to reference the fairly pressing point of “it’s basically ending humanity with its poisoning of water, air and land”. 

17. If I’m not writing, I want to spend my time making things with my hands. This podcast posits that the thing that makes humans happiest to hold is a wooden object. Fuck you, Apple designers! Lol. Anyway, I could believe it. I want to carve wood for a useful purpose and make things from clay and repair things with beautiful stitches and fix objects so they are useful and gorgeous. 

18. Picking and forming teams seems dangerous. It means the other teams are your enemy. That they can’t understand you, that you don’t get them, and that ultimately you aren’t on the same side. 

19. Someone disagreeing with you is not your enemy. It is not a weakness nor an act of aggression to say, “I’m not sure about this. I feel this way at the moment, but I’d like to know more.”  

20. I think if we talk a lot about Fear and Hate and Catastrophe it’s hard to see around those words to what we can do as individual people, rather than being stuck on one side or another of them. It doesn’t mean we ignore those issues: maybe we just try to listen to people we disagree with more. 

21. When I was young, books and films and culture told me that you know less as you get older, not more. Ha! Boy, did they have that wrong! I learned more every day! 

22. Up to a point. Now I know almost nothing, except that at the moment I believe Paddington to be a suitable role-model for my kids, and that there is almost never a clear right answer to anything. 

23. I don’t know how much of this is right. 

Here are the podcasts I’ve mentioned: 

Hidden Brain, Our Better Nature 

Morality in the 21st Century, episode 1

Hidden Brain, The Cassandra Curse 

The Persistence of Analogue 

Double-Talk - I’m really sorry, this isn’t available to download. Darn it. But if you meet me in a caff you can listen to it on my headphones. It’s worth it for the price of a £1.80 latte. 

Instagram is my sole 21st-century vice these days, keeping me in touch with friends and far-off family. It lacks the wicked humour of Twitter, but it does shield me from Twitter’s apoca-rages of public shaming and vibrating despair at our hurtling handbasket of a world; the strangers I follow on Instagram are generally more calmly constructive about Next Steps (‘here’s how to get in touch with your MP’/‘here are some alternatives to the products that might be v v bad for the environment’ etc). My vice within that vice are lifestyle bloggers, ranging from fashion to interiors, food to fitness, travel to parenting. And while we’re all distracted by the gnarled new shapes current external pressures are forming us into, a couple of things are super noticeable right now. 

1. Boy oh boy, do these guys make me want to never buy anything ever again*. Every new pair of sunglasses, new sofa, new dungarees, new phone cover, new coffee pot and enamel plate and blanket and trainers and paint – I think of the unlikelihood that these products are 100% recycled, or not made by exploited workers somewhere along the production chain, or aren’t costing us clean air, clean water, vital forests, unique habitats. (Spoilers: no, we’re still mostly treating our planet like we can get a new one from TK Maxx once this one’s broken) 

2. The replacement of meaningful, tough – and perhaps flawed – spirituality with that of the god(dess) of Self. Fine, many of us might not believe in a bearded man up in the sky/(insert appropriate variation), but the endless search for self, for improvement of self, for the soothing of self seems not just pointless, but actively bad in these quick-fix forms. On one blogger’s Instagram story today, a company had sent a free product along with some boosting text: “Give yourself permission to say no/make a list of your achievements today/get a full night’s sleep/go outside, move your body/indulge in your sensitive side” and topped it all with a large card bearing the text “Put yourself first and everything else will follow”. Now, for all I know, these cards could have been the final words in a package consisting of 400 pages of campaigning notes for intersectional feminism, workers’ rights and environmental protection, but it does staaaaart to feel like what was once a thoughtful Tumblr hashtag to support people with mental health issues has become 99% of the world behaving as though they’re recovering from a deep PTSD. Which they probably are, fuck it, look at us right now. hashtag literally all recent elections

My point is: there’s a reason major cultural organisations throughout time (aka religions) put humility, charity and selflessness way up there on the Thumbs Up scale. (REMINDER: Donna and Tom celebrated Treat Yo Self Day once a year, guys, not every time they connected to the internet. ONCE A YEAR.) Yes, I need to get good sleep and breathe some fresh air and carve some space out for myself in my busy life. But jesus, do you know what generally makes me feel better than all of that? Helping someone else. 

You’ll meet new people! You’ll gain amazing skills! You’ll actually have specific jobs to do, so can more often than not feel like you’ve made the world slightly better with only a single hour or two from your week! 

Here are some good places to start – if anyone wants to send me any more (supporting immigrant families? mental health? sexuality? wider conservation?) I’d be delighted to add to the list: 

The Samaritans Great training, varied shifts, listen to someone other than the anxious voice in your brain. 

Home Start Full training to support families with young children for a couple of hours a week. 

Age UK Offering visits, phone calls or day service support to older people who may be suffering from loneliness. 

Contact the Elderly Tea parties! Who doesn’t like tea parties! Driving guests to the parties once a month, or hosting in your home. 

Rethink Good training to support people suffering from mental health issues (or their families) across the UK. 

The Woodland Trust Count seeds, guide some tours, speak at schools. I <3 trees. 

Canal & River Trust Hang out with Good People as you litter-pick, de-weed, check boats and welcome visitors around the waterways. 

Guides/Brownies/Scouts/Cubs/whatever I don’t feel like I could actually do this one for all the brownies in the land (PUN INTENDED) because I am frightened of children I can’t legally call Maggots and carry around by their ankles, but every volunteer I’ve met in these fields was just the nicest. We love you, brave people. 

Please send more, if you have any suggestions. Charity shops, community centres, religious centres, even assisting local councillors, if you don’t like what’s happening in your area with schools/hospitals/parks/housing…  

Good luck out there. It can feel pretty sweet. 

*not legally binding