Hello!
Does it feel weird it has been only a week since we last spoke? I’m actually loving it. Keep it short, keep it regular, keep it classy. Words to live by. I hope you’ve been well though. Let me know if there is anything you want to hear about or think I should check out. At the moment I am in enjoying this period of excess. Everything I watch is amazing, everything I read is amazing. It’s all so good I am often surreptitiously wiping away tears.
I’m filled with too many ideas and I can’t follow them up. Starting is my favourite part of anything, but implementing those ideas, or god forbid finishing them. That’s fucking awful. But at least with this newsletter, there is a clear deadline. I make myself send something whether it feels finished or not.
So let’s get started.
The Content
I treat online shopping with an intensity I wish I could give to any of my other more productive pursuits. Online shopping gives me the feeling of achieving something. I can search and I can find, all from the comfort of my own home. At least that is what my brain seems to think.
Very rarely does this searching result in any buying, and when it does it’s usually from a place of frustration instead of triumph. The other day I decided my life would be eternally changed if I bought a black shift dress. I found one online but I wasn’t sure about it. But later, in a moment of madness, I added it to my cart and just bought the fucking thing. There it was - a goal achieved for that day.
Of course, I had already got partway through the process and forgotten about it once before. Hadn’t quite felt that need to follow through. So, in the end, I received two black shift dresses. Both were the same size and both did not fit me. But on the bright side, I then got to drop them off at the post office the next day to return them and that was another goal achieved for another day.
The Food
Fried bread. You heard me. Fry that bread. You take a nice slice of sourdough and you fry it in oil. Or butter. Preferably in cast iron. It makes a regular slice of toast feel and taste like a flimsy piece of cardboard. There is no crunch like that fried bread crunch. It’s changed the game for the back half of a loaf of sourdough. The half where all the fun has left the experience and you are in a race against the bread turning stale.
Perhaps I enjoy it because it is slightly reminiscent of the famous sizzler cheese toast but it has become a crucial component of my tinned fish girl dinners. The influencers won’t tell you that tinned fish straight out of the can is not a mindblowing experience. Even the expensive stuff still tastes like fish that has gone through a process focused on preserving first and foremost.
You have to give the fish the tools it needs to shine. You have to place it on a throne that elevates it. Then you have to dress it with something to bring it to life - a little lemon and a little salt. Suddenly what you have is something truly delicious.
The Social Stuff
“Can you PLEASE keep it down?!”
I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve had to bite this out over the last couple of months. Why does it feel good and bad in equal measure? Why do I, the person just wanting to sleep at one in the morning, walk away from the interaction feeling like the only guilty party?
For a while this year, there were a group of students living in the apartment below us. We knew they were students because they had energy. Every weekend my apartment just one floor up would fill with wall-rattling bass, big booming male voices and the shrill scream of the cool girl as they hosted the post-night-out drinks. Not the pre-party but the post-party.
Nothing makes an enemy faster than someone keeping you up with the noises of a party you weren’t invited to. The first few times they had a party we let it slide. An occasional disturbance I can push through. A few parties after that we had to talk ourselves up to being brave and knocking on their front door. They turned it down without ever coming out to talk to us. By the last party they had I was yelling down from my balcony that it was time to “Put the cigarette out and go. to. bed.”
Sometimes I scare myself with a level of authority that seems to come out of nowhere. I live the next few days in agony thinking of all the ways I’ve let my big mouth get me into trouble.
This time I got lucky. They moved out a few weeks ago in what my partner has deemed “the highlight of his year”. Everybody needs good neighbours, but when you’ve only had bad ones the fear is that something even worse is right around the corner.
The Miscellaneous Stuff
Here are the links you must visit:
In love with the images (one below) of the “American Abroad” via Miss Moss. Thrilled to know there is a Life image archive (and I admit now I liked The Secret Life of Walter Mitty).
Speaking of online shopping, I’m in love with this dress and very upset it’s sold out even though I couldn’t afford it if it was available. Conversely can’t think of a dress I hate more than this one.
Great house - I hope to one day be able to resist the call of “off-white everywhere" too.
A great interview with Pheobe Waller-Bridge (who kind of comes off as a pain in the ass but what can you do)
Loved this substack essay on not relating to being a “hot girl” but also not being a lil goblin mode girl either. Also, all the links to the sources were bringing my nerdy self real joy. I didn’t click any but I was glad they were there.
The picture of Octavia Butler’s goals was incredible. A manifesting queen.
Final Words
Well, there we have it. Some thoughts and some feelings in classic I shaved my legs for…THIS?!! fashion. I started writing this and then put on Season 2 of The Bear - a show which has made me cry in every episode. So hopefully some of that quality has rubbed off on this edition.
If you liked this newsletter please subscribe, or tell a friend, or even just like it which helps encourage more people to read it. I really appreciate the time you take to open this and I want nothing more than for you to find it interesting and relatable and maybe funny. Let me know if you have any tips for limiting online shopping, eating tinned fish or telling your neighbours to be quiet.