Issue №45 | 26 May 2020 | ‘Virtual Insanity’
Issue №45 | 26 May 2020 | ‘Virtual Insanity’
Hey lovelies. We hope you’re all doing ok. Apologies this is a day late. It was all ready to go but our brains are broken and we forgot to schedule it. It’s just been sat there in drafts for days on end, the poor love.
This week has seen Dominic Cummings questioned over his endless gallivanting across the UK while the rest of us are stuck at home watching repeats of Holby City. We’re trying not to feel too bitter about the whole thing, but it’s tough: Alex’s skin is almost translucent from lack of sunlight and Freya is starting to turn into a walking, talking brie thanks to the gargantuan quantities of fromage she is consuming out of sheer boredom.
How have you been staying sane? Whether it’s checking your horoscope five times a day, bingewatching The Durrells until the wee hours of the morning or analysing every inch of Marianne’s fringe in Normal People, we want to know. Hit us up with any of your lockdown discoveries. Alex and Freya
What Freya has been up to this week: Did a virtual wine tasting, organised by Bristol-based wine bar KASK. Her personal favourite was the 2018 Muscadet les 2 Terres Cognettes Clisson, Nantes Melon de Bourgogne, in case you were interested. Crisp. White. Organic.
What Alex has been up to this week: Aside from numerous home improvements, he’s been ferociously editing a new recording for the Ashatones. A Lizzo medley is incoming. Brace yourselves.
Hear
An album…
Carly Rae Jepsen — Dedicated Side B
We bet you’re thinking this artist’s name sounds familiar. Yes, Carly Rae Jepsen was the voice behind the insatiable earworm ‘Call Me Maybe’ eight years ago, but since then she’s continually released brilliant pop records.
Although this release is a collection of B sides from sessions from her 2019 album, it doesn’t fall short of delivering pop grooves. Alex
Jeff Rosenstock makes catchy, angsty — and always socially conscious — power pop tunes. A force to be reckoned with live, he injects this energy into this collection of songs that he dropped by surprise last week.
For the past decade, he’s blazed a trail for punk music and underground culture, with his record label the first to offer a pay-what-you-want model for new releases in the mid-noughties.
Great guy. Great music. Give him a try.
Standout tracks: Nikes (Alt), State Line, Ohio Tpke. Alex
A podcast…
You’ll Do: Single Life with Joe Lycett
You’ll Do is hosted by comedians and real-life couple Sarah Keyworth and Catherine Bohart, who interview various couples about what happens after you ride off into the sunset. There are no #couplegoals here, it’s real life.
Episodes feature Deborah Frances-White and Tom Salinsky, who discuss the complexities of marriage and monogamy, Joel Dommett and Hannah Cooper, revealing how they met on Instagram, and Nish Kumar and Amy Annette on living together as a couple.
My personal favourite episode, however, is with Joe Lycett. Sans partner. He discusses single life and the judgment he receives from couple friends. His story about going on a spontaneous holiday to Paul Chuckle’s villa in Greece with a woman he’d been on three dates with is absolutely iconic. Freya
Read
A poem…
I’ve been getting into a lot of poetry during lockdown because I’m an English graduate with illusions of grandeur.
This week’s recommendation comes from actress Emilia Clarke, who’s been asking iconic British actors to read from a collection called The Poetry Pharmacy: Tried-and-True Prescriptions for the Heart, Mind and Soul.
They are all worth watching, but my personal favourite is Helena Bonham-Carter reading Wild Geese by Mary Oliver, the American poet who died just last year. It hit me like a tonne of bricks, leaving me weepy. It’s a beautifully relevant poem to read during lockdown and remind us to be kind to ourselves. She reads it with such reverence and stillness. I’m going to leave the poem here for you to come back to and read. Freya
Wild Geese
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to our imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things
Listen to Helena Bonham-Carter read the poem here.
Do
A TV show…
Glow Up: Britain’s Next Make-Up Star on BBC Three
Think Next in Fashion crossed with The Great British Sewing Bee and Ru Paul’s Drag Race and you’re getting pretty close to Glow Up. Now in its second season, the BBC show pitches amateur make-up artists against each other in challenges focusing on everything from theatre and costume prosthetics to completing flawless looks for London Fashion Week.
Despite the slightly irritating catchphrases from Stacey Dooley and the two judges, Glow Up is a compulsive watch. The craftsmanship is unreal and you’ll find yourself racing to complete the perfect ombre lip in under two minutes before you know it. Freya
Dates for your Diary
A round-up of upcoming virtual events to do from home…
Ongoing:
The V&A’s hotly anticipated exhibition ‘Kimono: Kyoto to Catwalk’ is now available on the gallery’s YouTube channel in a series of curator tours.
Gillian Anderson and Vanessa Kirby star in Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire, which is the National Theatre’s production available to stream until Thursday. STELLAAAAAAA!
Today (Monday):
6.30pm: Author Ali Smith is appearing at the Hay Digital Festival with a ‘meditation on continuance’ with accompanying cinematography. The finale of her seasonal quartet, Summer, is out in August and we cannot wait. Free, registration required.
Wednesday:
3pm: If you’re thinking now might be the opportune moment to finally sack it all in and go freelance, journalist Anna Codrea-Rado is hosting a workshop on ‘How to Grow a Resilient Freelance Business’. Free, registration required.
Friday:
5.30pm: Actors Helena Bonham-Cartor and Dominic West join the Hay Digital Festival line-up for readings of some of Shakespeare’s best loved and lesser-known sonnets. If you enjoyed Helena’s reading of Mary Oliver, this’ll be worth tuning in for. Free, registration required.
Cribs of the Week
With 2.65 acres, this eco-friendly retreat could tempt us Stateside. You’re guaranteed to have no irritating neighbours marching out passive-aggressively at 7.58pm every Thursday for the NHS clap with their loudest pots and pans.
Despite being assembled in two days, this house built from shipping containers is both majestic and spacious. Result. Imagine how much of a reality TV icon you’d look walking through that glass walkway.
The Oast House, Tunbridge Wells
An ‘oast house’ is a building designed for drying hops as part of the brewing process. And now, you can live in one too.
#Capitalism
Are Hawaiian shirts in? If so, Alex wants this one.
Freya wants this hat so she can channel Tilda Swinton in A Bigger Splash.
Odds and Ends
These oceans in California look like an acid trip.
Iceland had the best anthem of Eurovision and it never had the performance it deserved. Until now.
Every person in every Q&A ever.
