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

I’ve recently been doing some day-job work for a book about humanity’s future. Boy oh boy, did I need to do some very, very slow deep breathing and distant staring out of windows while reading that. It’s an amazing book, but sometimes my frustration and terror, at not only where we’ve got ourselves, but also where we are positioning ourselves for our next tomorrows, are very, very enormous. This book offers hope in the form of creativity within science which I think is a good possibility, practically speaking, but I wonder if we need more stories first, to tip our global, political and social focus. Stories to remind people of the hardships which have gone before when we’ve handed over control to those ruled by greed, fear, and hatred; stories to remind people that we all have a better time if we just try to share the fucking cake and not try to punch anyone who would also like some, please. Fewer stories about the shoes/vase/pillow/hat/protein powder/lipstick/sofa/storage solution to finally fill you with happiness. And I say that as someone who loves things, who very much wants rings and sunglasses, dog coats and plates, face creams and t-shirts and spatulas. But we just fucking can’t have everything we want, because – honestly, if we haven’t understood that yet, then what really is there to say? 

Is self-sacrifice the only flavour of tale that can change behaviour? Does it take someone losing something major, or risking something major, before people can feel or behave differently, rather than bubble-shaped lecturing bullshit like this? This was a remarkable episode of the excellent This is Criminal, covering the utterly inspiring and staggering career of Chicago TV reporter Russ Ewing, a man who endangered himself repeatedly to bring dignity and protection to black men and women surrendering to the corrupt police force of the 70s, 80s and 90s. Do we need more of these stories? Are enough people still willing to stand up for something, when they might be torn down for something completely different? 

Another interesting listen recently, on Purity Spirals – the examples within the documentary are deliberately innocuous-seeming, but the historical occurrences mentioned in this are well worth noting. It’s all well and good to pretend Cancel Culture is about speaking up and not letting Bad People Get Away With Things, but it doesn’t actually seem to be working, does it? Unless there’s a coherent moral code that your society agrees on (and of course we have neither one moral code nor one single society) then it’s just a lot of angry shouting and sharp jabbing, which – again, would love to know otherwise – doesn’t transform us into brave and self-sacrificing civil rights campaigners. But hashtag be kind isn’t an answer: it’s further gutlessness, because we’d (I’d) all rather be buying those scarves and trainers than not buying them, and then protesting outside offices and parliament, and writing piles of letters nightly to CEOs and MPs and investors, giving up time from scrolling through apps to engage critical thinking skills and hand valuable hours over to the hard work of social improvement. (The fact that I know people who do this makes it worse, of course. I have no excuse.) Abstaining from actively writing hate tweets to someone doesn’t lessen the wider destructive social effects of a) sitting on our devices all the damn time, and b) being continually fed the idea that consuming more and more is the only way to find meaning in our brief existence. And I don’t know how to unite my growing loathing of tech with the aforementioned book’s suggestion that we all need to be more science- and tech-literate to survive our future. So I’m improving at crosswords instead. 

One personal silver lining: I haven’t watched TV at all this year, barring The Great Escape during half term with one of the children – my mother-in-law and I got up at the exact same moment (when Bartlett and MacDonald board the bus) and left the room giggling with tension because neither of us can bear that bit – but now the child has learnt to mime picking something up off the floor five steps away when I say, “I can’t see a bloody thing,” which honestly is the best, and possibly only reason to reproduce. No TV has meant that I’ve read tonnes more so far, as well as enjoying all the Agatha Christie BBC radio plays I can find on youtube, and getting out for more runs and swims and all that jazz. I swam in the sea twice last week, near some seals, and fortunately survived with both hands intact. 

I promise I will write the bread recipe soon. I felt it was too hypocritical today, when I made the most beautiful loaf, with the most perfect rise, crust and crumb, and all because I forgot to put in the salt so it tastes of absolutely nothing. Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. 

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. 

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