A few good things

Stuff I've watched, read, bought this week

Not the longest one this week because I have been away, which means I am chasing my tail in all the usual ways plus my garden has exploded, mostly with weeds.

I was in Dubai this week. Or rather, I was in a hotel in Dubai. Three days and nights, and pretty much all I saw of it was the view from the poolside terrace. I was there with my husband, a work thing, and there wasn’t much in the way of spare time but even when there was, it was 40 degrees! Too hot even to go in the shadeless pool. It’s an odd place, Dubai. Its focus seems to be on luxury, which is not a word that excites me and also feels somewhat passé, don’t you think? Light shows, Swarovski crystals, gold plated taps and enormous cars. It’s Mars for billionaires, not a place I want to be.

ANYWAY. All good but it means a briefer Substack from me this week. Here are some things I’ve been enjoying.

---

I bought nothing in Dubai. The very last place on earth I wanted to go was a vast shopping mall with nothing but familiar, enormous brands. But before I went, I’d done a quick nip to M&S, and ended up buying this red skirt (£39.50). I love it! Very flattering, with a nostalgic 80s puff-ball skirt element. Their online hack drama is over [update: apparently not!] but be warned: M&S has gone a bit Goldilocks in its sizing. I tried on size 10 jeans and some were far too big, others I couldn’t even do the zip up, one pair was perfect (I bought them, the Sienna Straight). I bought this skirt at a size 10 (I’m a size 10-12) and I’d say it’s true to size, maybe a tad on the narrow, but I like a skirt that fits quite high, so it looks as if it’s my waist, when it’s in fact the narrowest part of my rib cage. Cheating.

BLEWBURY CERAMICS
It’s Art Weeks where we live. A few weeks when artists all over the county, amateur and professional, open their houses and studios for exhibitions. My friend, Julian March, makes wonderfully bold, pop art ceramics. I have a set of striped bowls from last year (in green) and I would like the pink striped plates to go with them (£50 each, so will have to build that collection slowly). Or maybe a two-toned jug, or a vase, the shape based on the Didcot power plant chimneys that sit on the horizon near us. Ceramics, but not twee, all handmade to order.

---

MOVIES

SING SING

Based on a true story about a theatre group in New York’s infamous Sing Sing prison, starring many of the actors from the real-life troupe, as well as the magnificent Colman Domingo (he gave good outfit at the Met Gala, in a long Valentino cape). Domingo won an Oscar nomination for his role in this film. I missed it totally before, someone told me to watch it on the plane. I mean, he got an Oscar nomination so I assume there was some noise but…Did you know about it? It’s a good one for everyone to watch, family-viewing style (well, children over 10 maybe).

A REAL PAIN

This I knew about. Mainly because of all the furore around Kieron Culkin reminding his wife that she had promised him another baby if he won the Oscar, which he did. I enjoyed this film ­although it is pretty much an extended joke. Culkin plays a guy who is ‘a real pain,’ suffering real pain, on a tourist trip of real pain (a Holocaust tour in Poland). But it works, is gently amusing and moving in turns.

SMALL THINGS LIKE THESE

Beautifully made film, based on the extraordinary Clare Keegan book of the same title. It’s set in Ireland in the 1980s, and I recognised a lot of the background detail. It’s not a comfortable or easy watch but it’s rewarding on so many levels. Cillian Murphy should be too handsome for the role but you believe in him. The film is stolen, for me, by the immaculate (and terrifying) Emily Watson, even though she is only in it for probably less than fifteen minutes in total. When one knows what one knows about how far Ireland has progressed in the last twenty years, it’s extraordinary to remember just where it was before that, in politics, society and religion. If you want to hear more on this, this episode of the Empire podcast is good.

---

TELLY BOX

FOUR SEASONS
I’ve been really enjoying this but I suspect you have to be over 50 and in a long-term relationship to find this as funny as I do. Stellar cast though. Tina Fey, Steve Carrell, Colman Domingo. The only bit that annoys me is that Tina Fey’s husband doesn’t match with her. I feel she’s downgraded her character in the wrong ways – she plays a woman who’s too much fun, too witty and enjoys her margaritas too much to be married to a man like that and wear beige slacks. But if you can get over that, you’ll chuckle away. On Netflix.

FRIENDS AND NEIGHBOURS

I feel like there should have been more noise about this, or have I missed it? It’s got a faint air of Desperate Housewives about it – plinky theme tune notes that break up scenes, lots of privileged families cheek by jowl in the neighbourhood, all of them keeping secrets about love and money. Jon Hamm is excellent in it, and fanciable, even though a friend of mine sat next to him at a dinner and said he was disappointingly dull and unflirty. Sigh. On Apple TV.

---

BOOK

Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall. At last year’s London Book Fair (the place where all the big deals get done), this book was the one, my agent tells me, that was causing the most noise, selling to 30+ countries, and I think it’s been picked up by Reese Witherspoon, too. Fun fact! Clare Leslie Hall has written two other novels under a different name. I’ve noticed this happen a few times, where writers effectively relaunch as debut authors with a new surname. I don’t think CLH has particularly switched genres because although this is more romance than crime, it contains elements of the latter. It’s more, I suspect, to do with giving marketing a ‘new’ author rather than a thid-time-around one. Lucy Foley and Paula Hawkins did the same trick to great effect, so there’s no denying it’s a smart move. (I thought my standalone novel, The Best Friend, should have been published under a pseudonym, because it’s so different to my crime series, but the publisher disagreed.)

Broken Country is a page turner, astutely plotted, and I shed a few tears at the end. (A caveat: there isn’t a high bar for this, I’m a blubber.) Set in England in the 1960s, lots of good rural detail and tension between the characters. Leslie Hall deals with big emotions here, which is hard to write without grasping for tropes, but she pulls it off.

---

And now it’s time to get out in the sunshine…

If your limbs need a helping hand, I recommend HIGHLY the fake tan by Coco & Eve (£19.50 from Boots). I’ve gone back to it for five summers now. They say to wash it off after two hours but I leave it 24 hours – put it on in the morning, it’s not too dark to have on that day, and won’t leave any marks on your sheets in the night. Gorgeous natural colour.

(And if you’ve read all this, thank you, and if you’re a new subscriber, THANK YOU! There’s a lot more of you this week, thanks to the extremely kind largesse of India Knight, Lisa Dawson, Natasha Poliszczuk and Laetitia Maklouf sharing my recent post.)

Happy Sunday all. Jxx