Hi! I don't have a lot to say to you this week. I'm very sorry about that. Well, I mean, I do have an essay below, due to the whole format-of-the-newsletter thing, but honestly I don't know that I have tons more to give currently. It happens.
I did read a good piece recently and I'm not going to pretend it's going to be for everyone but, on the off-chance that it could be your thing - here are, I would say, roughly 4,000 words on John Updike, by Patricia Lockwood. She actually wrote the piece a few years ago but I only got to it recently, as I finally read my first Updike and, presumably like every woman before me, found myself in urgent need of Thoughts About Updike And Women, ideally written by a woman. That really hit the spot.
If somehow - somehow! - that doesn't feel like your jam, I also enjoyed this short but v compelling little piece on Lobsang Rampa, the man who pretended to be a Tibetan lama, with limited success. It's really fun.
That is all. Thank you. I will now show you some posts. Good bye.
A column
For a long time, being a young or new journalist meant doing the jobs no-one else wanted to do in the newsroom. You'd tackle the really minor news stories, go knock on the doors of recent widows, all of that. It probably wasn't pleasant, but I wouldn't know.
For my generation, being a young or new journalist meant being a clickbait monkey for a while, or possibly forever, if you couldn't escape. I worked at a few different places in my early twenties, back when the internet felt bewildering to execs and editors. I was hired to write pieces that would "go viral" - a novel concept, at the time - and I was pretty good at it.
In practice, though, it was awful. There was this one website I worked at, which I won't name, which needed us to write seven articles a day. We were never told not to make any calls and do any original reporting per se, but we didn't have the time to do it anyway, so it was a moot point.
Instead, we were sent links to MailOnline stories, sometimes from other places too, and our job was to rewrite those pieces, using words and sentences that were different enough that we couldn't get done for plagiarism. Again, that last bit was never said out loud, but we knew. We weren't stupid.
It was, in a way, quite an interesting intellectual exercise. In retrospect, I wonder if it made me a better writer, purely by accident. Spending eight hours a day trying to swiftly come up with synonyms is quite good practice, especially if English is your second language. In any case, I ended up jumping out of that particular ship after a year and a half, and got myself a job which actually felt and tasted like journalism. My clickbait monkey days started in 2013 and ended in 2015, and I've not returned to them since. What a beautiful decade it's been.
That doesn't mean I never think about those months, even now. Soul-sucking jobs tend to burrow under your skin, and you just can't quite get rid of them. I was so bored by the end: so bored! I felt like a sad little robot, probably because the job I was doing could have been done by one.
Sorry, it’s been ages. I had a massive depressive jag and it’s been hard to keep going with everything let alone write stuff, plus the pub’s been getting busier (good!) so I am, how you say, knackered.
Knackered and full of rage. Living in a country where a billionaire who wrote a series of books where a hat decides if you’re a main character has meaningful influence over politics is, frankly, fucking embarrassing. And cruel.
The UK has long been twisting itself into a mean little contortion of a country. Happy to see its own children starve if it means Amazon doesn’t pay taxes. Removing every protection and assistance that ever lifted people up. Outright racism and lies spreading hatred in the press. Thousands upon thousands of articles written screeching about trans people - a group that, in a YouGov survey just a few years ago, the general UK population overwhelmingly supported until they were lied about every single day in national newspapers and on TV news.
The UK media has created this wave of hate from nowhere. It didn’t exist, as recently as 2018 British people had no concerns about trans people, correctly. It’s a smear campaign directly funded by the US right wing and which far too many “journalists” (one of the most prominent ‘gender experts’ these days is a former novel reviewer) have realised there’s a fantastic paycheck in.
Well, you not only don’t have to write lies to drive hate against a group of people, you ought to be writing truth to elevate them. Otherwise you end up with a situation as bent as the one we’re in now where outright lies are taken as gospel because they’ve been regurgitated by someone on talk radio.
I was down the Bird & Barrel in Barnehurst last night, Bexley brewery’s taproom. In a professional capacity, just tasting ales, you know. Definitely not moving on to a rather strong perry and making poor life choices. Was having a lovely chat with some of the regulars until someone randomly brought up that they thought this EHRC ruling was good to protect women’s sports.
Was he a woman? No. Did he watch women’s sports? Also no. The first thing he had clearly heard about women’s sports for some time was that “two boxers who were genetically men” were in the Olympics. Even though both Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-Ting passed IOC testing and were proven to be women, the pernicious lie from the (dissolved and barred for corruption) former International Boxing Association has somehow taken over the narrative.
“Well I haven’t heard anything about that” he said. I explained no, because it was better outrage to repeat the lie. That the only trans athlete in the Olympics was a male boxer. That intrusive tests to prove gender are sexist and limiting to women in sports or any other context.
Then I had to go back to my pub to sort some things. And think about whether I’m doing enough to
Yes, my pub is a safe space for trans people. I’m aware many of my regulars may not understand trans people because they’ve never met any but I’ve tried to put in the groundwork conversations to make sure everyone would be polite. That they’ve got the chance to be decent or get barred and they understand the terms of that.
Had a fun one a few weeks ago when a regular was trying to claim that having any list of “right-wing extremists” in the UK was ludicrous. Because when had you ever heard of a right-wing extremist attack? I said really recently, you know when all those hotels were being attacked and people were trying to burn them down with kids inside. There was a pause. Then a weak attempt to argue that actually wasn’t right wing. Then another pause and finally we all had to concede that perhaps there was a point there. And that not everything is automatically true just because Neil Oliver (of all people) said it.
That’s the thing about pubs, everyone in them is a real person. Suddenly both the GB News-pilled bigots and the woke lesbian landlady are real people who have to deal with each other not the concepts of each other. And not to invent some sort of magical thinking but I think that’s a very important space, in a world that’s badly lost its way with a lot of made-up things, in forums better suited to online roleplaying than political debate.
Anyway, fuck this and fuck the EHRC. Trans people (and anyone else) is welcome to use whatever toilet they want in my pub, although I’d probably advise the ones round by the pool bar when it’s raining since the back roof’s pretty dodgy for leaks. And when we’ve finished our current fundraiser for a big dog’s cancer treatment we’ll be fundraising for London Trans Pride.
I might only be able to control my (admittedly big) pub’s space about it but if everyone in it goes and has the same conversations with people chatting rubbish around them then a small ripple effect is better than sinking further into the depths.
Which reminds me, pubs getting busier: a good thing, during a horrendously uncertain time for the industry. And even in a relatively small house you can do an absolutely roaring trade if enough punters show up. The pub I think about most often when I’m trying to work out how to pull mine up by it’s broken bar stools is the Dog and Bell in Deptford.
I used to live in Deptford Creek. As in, on a boat literally in the Creek, next to the Bird’s Nest pub. We tended not to go in there too much because the place was a bit of a hole in a sort of nice way but also we were already several points towards becoming Noted Local Eccentrics and everyone recognised us in there.
The Dog and Bell was a longer walk away by about 15 minutes (compared to err, 30 seconds including the time to open and close a gate) but we went there because it was a bit run down and always quiet. A lovely old couple ran it but it had clearly seen better days and when three of us showed up we were often doubling the number of people in there.
It looked, in short, like it was set for the list of pub closures. Some new people took it over and it’s been years and years to actually do this but they turned it round. It’s now still very much what it always was - a boozer that runs and annual pickle festival - but also a popular hot spot for people keen to support an independent local in an area that’s increasingly barren for that.
If the changeover had happened now, when I’m trying to do a similar thing a lot further out and with less immediate resources, would it have worked? I don’t know. Partly because it obviously wasn’t me what did it so I’m not sure how precarious the whole thing was but also because times are getting tougher.
Pubs are, ostensibly, a frivolous industry. The whole hospitality sector is kind of a luxury in that you don’t technically need it for survival. Arguably, the sector costs the NHS billions of pounds a year so why should it benefit from any tax breaks to survive? I haven’t actually seen one of these articles yet but I can easily imagine the snotty opinion column that says pubs are dying and good riddance, after all they’re just dingy hellholes selling shit beer and wine you wouldn’t clean a toilet with over the tinny sounds of a malfunctioning juke box.
Christ knows, my pub’s a shithole. The building isn’t exactly falling apart everywhere but is quite badly in a few places. There is no gastronomic or intellectual justification for what it does, craft beers are not gently reviewed here. Some of the clientele are outright scumbags and it’s got a manager who’s ex-Spoons. It’s an unhinged columnist’s dream in terms of tickbox savaging.
But I love my pub. Lots of other people love my pub. A big Newfoundland dog loves my pub so much he got a bit depressed when his owners were ill for a week and couldn’t bring him in. And we love him, which is why we’re fundraising for him all this weekend.
I think anyone mean-spirited about pubs is someone who can’t see the purpose of all that interaction. The quiet people who barely speak and sit in the corner but come out to be sociable for awhile, in their way. The loud groups of randoms. The people who’ve never met anyone like each other but get on.
It’s particularly sad that the ladies’ loos has become such a nasty battleground. The ladies’ is a location of profound sisterhood, where anyone will try to fix anything for you and the drunkest women you’ve ever seen in your life will tell you you’re absolutely gorgeous and your outfit is slaying even if you’re in your pyjamas having not washed for four days. It’s also absolutely vile in there and anyone who’s ever cleaned toilets can assure you it’s not sacred ground, except to the church of very, very drunk girls. Who would never demand to know what genitals you have because no one normal cares and drunk girls are very much more normal than angry billionaires and columnists.
Duncan snaps Jimmy out of his brooding with teasing affection, reminding him of their bond and shared life. As they enjoy a rare weekend alone, they plan to spend it reconnecting—emotionally and physically—wrapped in warmth, humour, and love.
A moment some months after Jimmy and Duncan have bonded.
Hi! So I tried really very hard to like Mad Men and I watched around a dozen episodes of it recently but unfortunately I couldn't do it. Some people gently yelled at me on the internet and told me it gets better after the first season but I asked them if, by "better", they meant "with fewer instances of horrifying, casual misogyny" and they said "oh lol no, not that", so anyway I'm done with Mad Men.
I'm sure some people can put that stuff aside and focus on the plot, or see that stuff as actually important to the various plot points, but, sadly: not me. I've managed to build myself a life which, I will say, is actually really good on the "levels of misogyny experienced daily" front, and I don't want to end every evening by injecting myself with a little dose of misogyny instead. Thank you so much.
I also wonder if maybe Mad Men was easier to watch when it came out originally, because back then it felt like things were maybe, finally getting better, and it's easier to look at footage of broken legs if you don't also have a broken leg. There's a lot of woman-hating about at the moment! The women haters are having a great time! It's just that much harder to watch a show that's rife with sexism and think "ah but it's alright, we know better now". Do we?
Anyway - that's actually not what I wanted to talk about here. I got briefly carried away. My point is that I stopped watching Mad Men partly because I found it too slow for my restless brain, and so I followed it up by watching The Residence on Netflix. It's a Shondaland show and involves a murder in the White House, except that all the suspects are the non-political staff. It's a classic whodunnit, in a place that just happens to be the residence of the American president.
The concept is pretty good and the first couple of episodes were fun. It's fast-paced and quite quirky, and you can tell that the cast had a great time working on it. Uzo Aduba, who plays the weird and endearing detective, is great in it. For a little while, I really thought it was exactly what I was in need of, after a few hours of dour shots of obnoxious guys slowly drinking whisky.
By the fourth episode, though, I realised something felt off. I couldn't put my finger on what it was at first. Something was…wrong. In the end, it clicked when - no spoilers, don't worry! - the detective and her assistant interview a suspect and that suspect tells them lie after lie after lie. In the next scene, the assistant recaps by going through every single lie the suspect told, one by one.
It's a very weird scene, and it stopped me in my tracks. What was the point of it? We were there as well, two minutes ago. We know what the suspect said and, crucially, we know none of it was true. Why repeat it nearly verbatim, straight after the fact? Eventually, I realised what they were doing: they were making sure that even people who'd zoned out during that interview scene could still follow the plot.
Once I'd twigged that, I saw that same trick play out everywhere. What originally felt like whimsical directing choices - repeatedly showing us small clips from past episodes, for example - was, it turns out, entirely about making people who'd been doing something else catch up. The Residence is a whodunnit aimed at people who want to find out who did it, but probably while sitting on their phone, and/or doing the ironing, and/or making dinner, maybe somehow all those things at once.
The whole thing feels incredibly dissonant because it's a quick, pacy show but every single plot point gets repeated, again and again, ideally thanks to someone Saying The Things instead of merely showing them, as Netflix is catering to people who are probably looking at another screen. How grim!
I finished that episode then I googled the rest of the plot and decided to leave it at that, even though I'd been vaguely enjoying myself. It made me feel conned, and like a stupid chump for assuming that watching a TV show meant watching a TV show. It made me think of Johnny Rotten's "ever get the feeling you've been cheated?". I definitely felt like I'd been cheated.
I also don't really have a conclusion to this whiny little intro. I'm just annoyed and I really hate modern culture, I think. I don't like feeling patronised. I don't like thinking of creatives being told to dumb down whatever they're doing as people aren't going to care all that much about it anyway. I worry it's pulling us into a downward spiral, as watching a boring, repetitive show will make you more likely to scroll on your phone while doing so, and the more people do that, the more boring, repetitive shows we'll get.
Woo!
A column
I didn't want to write about it because I think it's embarrassing but clearly I can't write about anything else this week - believe me, I've tried - so I guess the only way out is through. You'll probably think of me as hideously self-centered and I fear you will be right, but today it is, I'm afraid, this or nothing.
It just feels so unfair, is what I keep thinking about. It's so unfair that I spent two months in New York last year and I built a little corner of life for myself in that city and now it's all gone up in smoke. I had my friends and my dive bars and the museums I loved and the ones I tolerated and there were some subway lines I enjoyed taking and others that made me want to die. I had spots I'd go to by myself, like Tatiana's in Little Odessa which, as it happens, ended up featuring in Anora, and I had spots I brought all my friends to, like that one horny goth bar near Carroll Gardens.
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