Love stories, a digital detox and some low-key writing inspiration.

July Favourites.

Buckle up, buttercup, this month’s favourites post is a good one. A veritable feast of brilliant things that have either inspired me, brought me joy or made a notable impact on my day-to-day life.

If you’re wondering where the second half of my arse-related saga is: it’s en route. Fear not. So many of you read the first part about the enema (here) that I thought I’d been given a shout-out by someone, Ronaldo, or India Knight, but no. You all just love reading about my discomfort, apparently.

But let us not sully this post with bum talk too, lest it become tiresome: onwards and upwards, towards the light, my friends! Let us leave that particular tunnel of darkness (lol) and proceed with the favourites:

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David Sedaris, The Land and Its People

I went to see An Evening with David Sedaris a couple of weekends ago. Sedaris is one of my all-time favourite writers, absolutely masterful at recording daily observations and his own reactions to them in a way that is endlessly funny. I long ago banned myself from reading his books in public because they make me laugh so suddenly and so violently that anyone in my immediate vicinity swiftly moves away from me, as though they’re worried I might be the sort of person who is about to poo into my own hands and then daub it on the interior walls of the London Underground carriage we’re all travelling in.

So anyway, I went to see David Sedaris and came away feeling quite inspired about my writing. But not epiphany-level inspired, where you feel so suddenly driven and energised that you arrive home and dramatically sweep all of the crap from your kitchen table, thunk a typewriter down onto its surface, snort a line of Pro Plus* and then spend four straight days tapping out half of a novel that, when you read it back, is complete nonsense. That kind of “inspired” is always a double-edged sword, if you ask me. You can’t go from 0-60 in writing and expect it to be sustainable! You can’t have not written for two years and then gurn your way through most of a working week and then, when the excitement subsides (and/or the typewriter needs a new ribbon) you don’t write again for another two years. It’s pointless!

No, I came away feeling the better kind of inspired. Low-key inspired. I prefer to be low-key inspired, really. It’s less stressful. More like meh, I should really pay a bit more attention to my schedule and carve out the proper time for doing what I love most.

Or, maybe I should buy some new pens.

What I like about David Sedaris and his evening of entertainment is that he doesn’t even talk about his writing process. He just reads from his diaries and his notes and you realise, without Sedaris having to explain a thing, that he is showing you how he writes; by observing constantly, and writing these observations down in a disciplined manner. And you also realise that not only does he not mind doing this, the observing, it’s his very life-force. He loves it!

And it made me realise that I love it, too. And that I used to also write everything down, all day long. My book, How Not to be a Supermodel, was written largely from notes that I had taken throughout the noughties. Nearly every story, every anecdote, was taken from the (very extensive) notes I’d made at the time, twenty years earlier in many cases.

Anyway, I got home, immediately ordered David Sedaris’ new book (The Land and Its People) and then ordered a Collins Day-to-Page diary, which is what I wrote in for years when I was doing my writing courses and my MA. The diary has been with me for two weeks and I’ve written in it every night. Expect the sequel to How Not to be a Supermodel imminently.

You can buy The Land and Its People online here, but if you are new to David Sedaris I would highly recommend starting with Me Talk Pretty One Day, Naked and Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim.

Oh, and Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls. I could keep going.

Love Story.

On a very distantly related note, I have been totally blown away by Love Story, a Disney Hulu series that is based on the story of JFK Jr and Carolyn Bessette. I don’t know why it hit me so hard, but from the moment their (JFKJ and CB) eyes locked across the room and Kate Bush started singing This Woman’s Work, I was absolutely invested.

Disclaimer: I had no idea who either of them even were before I started watching because that entire era passed me by, in the mid-to-late-nineties, busy as I was drinking Kiwi 20/20 and smoking Benson & Hedges and frequenting terrible local nightclubs wearing flammable bodycon dresses.

I would have had not a clue about the ending had a thousand people on Instagram not replied to my stories with “such a shame about how it ended though, so so sad!” and then put two and two together with the aeroplane.

But the outfits! The after parties! NYC in the nineties! Calvin Klein! I know the execution of this series is supposedly quite inaccurate (and I do actually think it’s a bit shitty when they do this “based on truth” thing and then make stuff up, for the families and friends of the people involved) but my God. It has stirred something within me, Love Story, and I can’t shake it. Is it because I was in New York as a model a mere three years after this story finished? Is it because it all feels so weirdly recognisable? And I was about to launch into a Love Story of my very own, and it brings it all back?

The mad thing is, the nineties and noughties don’t even seem like nostalgia: they seem like yesterday. I can still feel the brutal heat rising up from the pavement outside my New York agency as I hefted my massive suitcase out of the taxi. Can still hear the crackle of paper as I lit a Marlboro Light, the feel of the window frame pressing into my back as I sat half out of the window to smoke it.

Oooph.

And that feeling of sinking into love with someone, when it’s so uncomplicated, and you have it all still to discover, and whatever that is when you have the instant chemistry that makes your entire being do a sort of jolt. I wrote about this period of my life in my book, How Not to be a Supermodel, but I feel as though watching Love Story has unlocked a load of other memories that I had buried deep down. I mean how utterly mad was it, how totally wild, that I was in New York City when I was twenty-one and I was just galavanting around the place, hanging a bedsheet up at my window instead of a curtain and also getting taken to dinner where starters cost thirty dollars. (And that was then.) I just went off and did whatever, going to the Hamptons with a load of people I barely knew, going to see a band play in a basement uptown and walking twenty blocks home afterwards, listing to Ministry of Sound CDs on my diskman as I walked. With not a soul to look out for me. I didn’t even have a working mobile phone!

Love Story sort of brought it all back. How mad is it, also, that Calvin Klein was a proper designer label, doing shows and dressing famous people for red carpets but then they started making a shit tonne out of selling underpants and now they just make this high-volume, mass-produced stuff that everyone and anyone can buy. And yeah, the waistband of the underpants is iconic, and they still do great ads for the underwear, but you can buy it from a cut-price bargain basement off the Edgware Road so it’s not exactly the minimalist mecca it was in the nineties, where red carpet looks were carefully considered and “only black paper clips” on the stationery would do.

I have to say that the Love Story itself did wear a bit thin by the time I was halfway through the series; it seemed to be 90% made up of the lovers being (frankly) totally incompatible and perhaps not really liking each other as much as you should if you have just got married, and then lots of crying and lip biting until yes, they died. Still. Loved the whole thing.

It’s on Disney Hulu here.

The Lexon Flip

I bought a digital alarm clock in an attempt to remove my iPhone from the bedroom. I am seriously trying to cut down on my iPhone usage and “before bed” as well as “the first moment I wake up” are big danger times for me - I use the phone scrolling as a weird sort of soother to ease me out of the day at the end of it and into the day the minute my eyes are open.

It’s mostly Family Wordle’s fault: I have a group with my parents and my sister and everyone does Wordle first thing and so, for the past few years, I have become accustomed to opening my eyes and then immediately, before I’ve even worked out what day it is, loading up the NY Times on my phone screen.

Terrible phone hygiene. Obviously once the Wordle is done I then have to share my results with the group on Whatsapp, and then I check all the Whatsapps I’ve missed overnight, then I look at my emails, and usually a load of Substack posts have come through to my inbox, so I click over to the app to read them so that I can “heart” them and share them or leave a comment, and then usually I get drawn into seeing some posts on the timeline that have been published by people I don’t follow…

…and by this time it’s at least twenty minutes after my alarm has gone off and before I’ve even stretched my legs out I’ve read about a woman in America who escaped an abusive husband only to accidentally marry his brother, bought a pair of socks that promise to reduce calf ache after exercising and added three things to my admin to-do list that arrived in my inbox overnight.

I mean how is this good for me?

It’s worse before bed. I scroll when I have my Current Body LED Mask on and look for clothing items that would definitely, if I had them, fix every single dressing catastrophe.

Again: how is this good?

So the idea is to remove the phone from my vicinity in non-working hours. Oh OK, so I need to look at messages from the school mums, village chat, etc, to find out what type of uniform the kids are supposed to be in and to see if any trees are blocking the route out of the village (happens) and other vital morning news, but most of the non-working hours need to be phone free. Otherwise my brain is going to melt into a weird pool of brain slushie and start leaking out of my nostrils and ear holes.

Anyway, I bought an alarm clock. It looked very stylish when I found it online, and despite it being four times more expensive than the one that did exactly the same but looked like shit, I was drawn in. I obviously have a supreme eye for design because I picked it out instantly from about forty alarm clocks and - lo and behold - this one has won prestigious awards that single it out as an iconic object.

Smug.

Not so smug about the price, which was forty pounds, but I reasoned that it looked excellent and would be one of those objects I instantly treasure because I just love the design and function of them.

Laughably small but actually a bonus when you get used to it.

But look at the bloody size of it! I laughed when it fell out of the outer box. I thought it was the little box of pavement chalks I’d ordered on the same day! I thought it would be the same size as our alarm clocks of the eighties and nineties - remember the annoying stringy radio aerial they had hanging out of the back of them that you never quite knew what to do with?

This is less than a quarter of the size. It might be an eighth of the size, when I weigh it up. How hilarious! I’m trying to think of it as a piece of tech rather than the kind of alarm clock we used to buy at Argos. After all, that Brick thing (I actually have one, it got sent to me, I got confused on the first minute and then gave up and put it in a drawer, must revisit!) costs £54 and is smaller still. And doesn’t even tell you the time!

What I loved about this Lexon Flip Classic was a) it came in a very seventies, Tom Ford-esque cool-toned brushed gold, which I am a sucker for, b) it had this large ON / OFF on either side (you flip it to turn on or off) which looked incredibly funky and c) the battery (it’s rechargeable) lasts for about six months. So not only do I not have to plug it in and have another wire hanging down off my bedside table, I can carry it with me if I travel and I don’t have to worry about it running out.

I’m already very enamoured. You just tap the top of the clock to snooze it, which I do four or five times, because there’s no Wordle to encourage me to wake up properly, or flip it over to OFF to turn it off completely. Satisfying.

And at least this one doesn’t have a radio. Nothing was more terrifying than being launched out of a deep sleep as a teen to the sudden raucous din of Our House by Madness, or Vindaloo by Fat Les. Just right into it, no warning, straight into the middle of the song. Except accompanied by shitloads of crackling, because we never knew what to do with that stringy aerial thing, so radio stations were only partially tuned in. 40% at best.

Those were the days.

I mean they really must have been because look at me! Shunning my phone for the simplest of (designer) alarm clocks. Considering swapping the washing machine for a mangle. (Joke.)

I bought my Flip clock here.

My God, why is this month’s favourites so long? Are you still here? There’s even a new bonus section for paid subscribers, called Je Ne Recommendez Pas, where I tell you about the things I’ve tried that were rubbish, which might push this post into thesis-length territory!

I’ll keep the shirt bit quick:

Seersucker Berry Stripe Shirt

Saw this shirt a month or so ago, obsessed over it daily, because who can get this image from their mind once it has been seared on:

With Nothing Underneath: Berry Stripe Seersucker

Doesn’t she look the very picture of cool and sultry? And I have wanted to experiment with this sort of colour (colours) for a while. The shirt almost reads as red, a pinkish red, but isn’t: it’s berry and pale-pink fine stripes.

Not sure seersucker is my favourite material but I do have to say that it feels quite cool in the summer sun, it seems to stay separate from the skin, almost as though it is scared to touch you, which means that you have this air pocket layer all around you and the fabric feels light and unobtrusive.

I used an intro discount code for my purchase, you can find them online (or on the home page, if it pops up) but would happily have paid full price - it feels like a special purchase, all beautifully boxed-up and with the collar cardboarded out and so on.

I bought a 10-12 (and I am a 10-12) and would say the fit is oversized. I bought mine here. Goes amazingly well with a huge variety of things, including my summer floaty trousers, all of my shorts, and thrown on over dresses and a light cover-up.

Piglet Towels

I replaced all of the towels at my holiday cottage, The Dorset Nook, and bought new ones for the new cottage, The Dorset Nest, (website incoming), all from Piglet in Bed. Which made me feel as though I was Jeff Bezos, because these towels ain’t cheap and I bought enough to fill a huge, fridge-sized box, but at the time I bought them they had a brilliant sale on and an extra 10% off on top.

I am a hound for a sale. If there’s a big purchase I know I need to make and time is not of the essence, I keep my eye on that thing (or things) for months until the appropriate discount appears. (In this case it was near enough 30%, which bought the towels down to M&S prices!)

I’m afraid they’re not in the sale at the moment, but Piglet do have a 15% intro code for new customers. When I tell you that these towels are supreme… crikey. Piglet don’t even really boast about the quality and thickness, you have to go looking for the official figure which is a whopping 600gsm, but it’s the stripe colour combos I love the most. They could jazz up the most drab bathroom, single-handedly.

Piglet towels are here.

Right. Onto the new segment for paid subscribers, Je Ne Recommendez Pas. Things I don’t recommend. (Yes I realise this French isn’t accurate.) This week we have the online clothing company I thought was a scam and a book that very sadly bored me so much that had to skip big chunks of it:

Until Sunday…

I’m editing the piles post tonight. I’m not sure there are so many laugh out loud moments as the enema story, I’ll be honest, but that’s mostly because someone went up my bottom with a glorified poker and snapped elastic bands around parts of my rectum. It’s a difficult one to get a giggle from, though I did crack some pretty good jokes while he was up there.

Jobs for you to do before you depart: press the heart button (if you’re not reading in the Substack app then why not, it’s so much better); leave me your comments re Love Story and also whether you’ve read anything by David Sedaris; tell me what you think of my new alarm clock. Don’t be rude about it, it’s my new favourite thing.