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

This week’s wonderful & worthwhile things:

[All links repeated at the end]

1. Our kitchen ceiling caved in, due to a major leak from the bathroom. But there’s nothing like children dancing around in helpful excitement to make a small catastrophe feel like a minor adventure. (It’s only when a secondary leak floods the initial repair that I cry.)

2. The courgette seeds we planted have become fat leaves on dark stalks, budding again and again. I’m currently debating whether I need to cancel all trips away from the house, so I can be here to care for the tiny kitchen garden of sprouting herbs and craning, fur-bedded vegetables. I feel like a god. I started with a bag of soil & seed compost, an old tupperware box, and seeds; accessible to lots of people, I hope, and I cannot recommend it enough. 

3. It’s difficult to measure love, and it’s irresponsible to discount the effects of our parents’ inherited trauma. I can safely say, however, that I have never once felt loved by my mother. I disliked her through my childhood and teens with the kind of gut-instinct a child has for grinding quotidian injustice, then found a peace with her in my twenties. Friends with similar parents had said over and over, ‘It’s just about accepting that they’ll never be who we need. We just have to decide whether we want to have a relationship with who they actually are.’ And I did, so we saw each other frequently, and I swallowed that sense of always being manipulated and unheard. (When I told her news of my job redundancy, or my pregnancies, or my cavernoma, I was cut off each time with more pressing anecdotes of her own. It was almost funny, in the way family jokes are, except for all those times when it wasn’t.)

Last summer, four years since the cancer treatment and death of my father — appointments and notes and visits, my efforts to ensure distant family were kept informed about each change in condition, each suggestion from the care team — I had a similar nerve-wracking few weeks with my mother, this time in a French hospital. This time I couldn’t visit, but found myself the initial point of contact, responsible at first for telling her neighbours, siblings, and my sisters, as well as calling her and the hospital each day for updates. Some weeks after her return, I received a typed letter informing me that I was subsequently being removed as one of her executors (my sisters though would remain) as well as having my power of attorney revoked. I have never uncovered why. She didn’t contact me on my birthday, nor on Christmas Day (I, like all children in these circumstances, still contacted her on her birthday and at Christmas. We always want to prove that we’re better than they’ve told us). All of this wormed inside my brain, constantly, painfully, until sudden clarity hit: Jackasses Gonna Jackass. (Before I was declared the Most Terrible Person, my sister held the title; before her, my father; before him, my uncle; before him, probably me again. This realisation also helped.) 

As my children grow older, my anger returns. As they grow past milestones I remember from my own childhood — the age I was when calmly told to choose what I was going to be hit with after some behavioural infraction; the age I was when she stormily cut my hair from past my shoulders to a boy’s dull, savage chop (I wept throughout — my father tried to intervene — she insisted afterwards that it was what I wanted); the many, many ages when she consistently told my embarrassed visiting friends to ignore me as I was ‘just showing off’ – such a trivial slight! such a shaping of my feelings about keeping her away from people I valued! –; the years and years where I wrestled with my unfathomable unhappiness in this nice, middle-class home where I was bought presents and taken on holidays — it seems horribly simple to avoid these things. Don’t humiliate your child. Don’t terrify them. Don’t constantly repeat the witless truism that you ‘love them, but don’t like them.’

I find it easy to admit making a mistake. I apologise freely and with thoughtfulness to my children, my partner, friends, because I am not perfect, because we are all human. Part of growing up is the difficult realisation that your parents are human too, and they make mistakes. But sometimes it’s even harder to accept that you really haven’t done anything wrong – at four, at seven, at 10, at 37 – and that you, like everyone else, deserve better. 

Anyway, when I vanish down a Lucille Bluth-flavoured hole of anger and hurt, I remember that exercise helps everything. And it does! Do treat yourself to some, if you can. Also, I read this book while camping recently and it is wonderful. Dodie Smith writes with such understatement that I could read her books twenty times and come away with something different each go.

4. This programme (part 1 of 2) about Jeremy Hardy is so utterly wonderful. It also contains clips of brilliant Linda Smith and Humphrey Lyttleton, and I realise I spend vast portions of my time watching, listening to, or writing comedy because it’s how I understand, process, and communicate my own feelings to the world. (If that’s not turning your lemons into lemonade, I don’t know what is.) 

5. I finally order prescription sunglasses, after years of balancing normal sunglasses over my spectacles, on the pollenous days I can’t hack contact lenses. Continuing my Squash And A Squeeze philosophy of life, it feels like a gift, delighting me at least six times a day.

6. Although repetition has somewhat rendered athletic ads featuring everyday girls and women a cynical trope, there’s nothing like watching a large group of girls play a sport they love. The variety of body shapes, the support they offer one another, and the sheer enjoyment of it. Really, don’t all joys boil down to enjoying our bodies while we can? 

7. The day is bright today, and I took the dog on a longer walk than usual; watching that dog trying to run out a greyhound was hilarious, the sleek fool. At the time, I was listening to this episode of The Cut on Tuesday, on the topic of Spring Horniness and the weird trash we get hot over, which contains the immortal line “The bud is breaking through. But the soil that nurtured the bud was all fucked up, and now the flower is weird.” Also, the final line of the episode made me do an actual out-loud bark of laughter. 

8. It’s several years old now, but I love how both Bad Neighbours 2 and this review scratch an itch in completely different ways. I love the film for everything it undoes of the first one, plus the sheer charm of Efron and furious optimism of Chloë Grace Moretz; also, Rose Byrne, who might be one of the most underrated comedic actresses of our time. But the review offers something else, and sates the library-card-carrying part of my brain that wants to read a thousand think pieces on Magic Mike XXL and Parks & Rec and The Windsors. I hope you enjoy both.

1. When Jeremy Hardy Spoke to the Nation here

2. The Cut on Tuesday – I Want to Put My Mouth on That here 

3. Little White Lies review of Bad Neighbours 2 here 

My oldest friends come over for a Christmas meal, and things tumble in that December way so that it becomes only the men who can make it. At one point, they sit around the table with my husband and cheers each other, while I’m standing at the other end of the kitchen, preparing our food. I say, Are you fucking kidding me? and we all laugh, but I feel for a moment like I’ve slipped into some kind of parallel dimension, or a time warp to twenty years ago where I wouldn’t have said anything because I love them all so much. 

I go to bed so early the next night that every time I wake up and realise it’s still dark, I tumble back through the blissful blackness like I’m falling with no danger of impending impact. I feel human in the morning, so much so that I go to see Star Wars again, taking the eldest, and cry so hard at the final forest scene that I frighten the two teenage boys next to us. I realise at the climax that this film is exactly what I needed in a month of constant, expected, unnoticed emotional and physical labour, and I squeeze my daughter in the dark of the cinema, and feel such joy that she can see a world where the heroes look like black men and young women.