It’s the general election on Thursday! Let’s talk about absolutely anything else! What do you fancy?
We’ve got:
1. The fact that summer reading list season has finally arrived. This is my Glastonbury. I love seeing how many of the 100 best novels of all time I’ve read (never more than 20, but I live in hope).
I love seeing the same recommendations pop up in slightly different places each year – who gets the Cazalet Chronicles this time? Who’s doing Rose Tremain? Who thinks they’re being edgy by announcing they’re fans of Jack Reacher? And who’s nabbed I Capture the Castle as their top comfort read? Who has the confidence to recommend a genuine beach read and who cannot bear to lower themselves and pretend the lightest they go is Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead?
I like seeing books I’ve read and loved make the list – but not quite as much as I love seeing books I’ve read and hated make the list. You need some grit in your enjoyment oyster.
And of course I love taking note of new potential treasures too, and adding to my teetering TBR pile with gay abandon. And I love compiling my own suggestions too. In case this is your favourite time too, here they are: Julius Taranto’s How I Won a Nobel Prize, The King’s Mother by Annie Garthwaite, Rufi Thorpe’s Margo’s Got Money Troubles, You’d Look Better as a Ghost by Joanna Wallace and many, many more, if you send me a SAE or, you know, an email.
2. The unwarranted labour now needed to accomplish even the simplest task.
I had to book a table for dinner with a friend a few days ago. I filled in the online form with my name, the number of guests and the required time. Then the dietary requirements box (“Food”). Then the reason for our attendance (“Hunger”). Then my credit card details. Then a recent photo and utility bill so that they could come round to my house and shoot me on sight if I failed to attend. Then I replied to seven increasingly threatening reminders about where we were supposed to be and when in the countdown to our mealtime.
And then we had our meal. Then I returned home to an avalanche of emails asking me to rate our experience (food, service, ambience… Ambience! I don’t care! I’m just glad to have had an excuse to shower and get out of the house) and whether we would be likely, very likely or very unlikely to return.
And then I got an email from the company that runs the booking service asking me to comment on the ease of use of the form provided. And there I draw the line. Enough with the futile feedback. Enough pretending that you give a mouse-sized shit about anything but my money. Just take it, and thereafter leave me be.
3. Getting beach body ready. Here’s the best way: have a body; take it to the beach.
I mean, I do my bikini line in preparation. I don’t like scaring children, plus if I went swimming in full possession of everything I would quickly become waterlogged and drown. It is a matter of self-preservation rather than bowing to the patriarchy.
But you do you and if you feel best with a full depilation after six months on a diet and three weeks of intensive exfoliation and fake tan build-up, go for it. But if you are doing all this, you are probably young and, by any rational standard, already beautiful. You are trying to rip out, scrub away and cover up your insecurities, not your body – and it won’t work. Only time does that. Don’t miss out on all the beaches while you wait.
4. Whether you should get a rescue cat, kitten, dog or puppy. I think I should get a cat or a kitten. But I don’t know about you.
5. Why the fact that Marks & Spencer has remembered how to provide attractive, wearable clothes for ordinary women provides a far greater feeling of delight and optimism than the prospect of a new government does.
But we’re swerving into election territory again – away, away! (Though before we do, let us also pledge to make it known in four years’ time that we will vote for any party that promises to ban televised election debates.)
If this isn’t enough to keep you occupied til we’re out the other side of Thursday, I can recommend Louise Gluck’s Marigold and Rose, Sad Janet by Lucie Britsch and Over My Dead Body by Maz Evans while drinking raspberry gin with as little tonic in it as possible for as long as possible. Godspeed.