Good things
feat. dating, fake Substack posts, art, roses, etc
Good morning from the depths of my copy edit. This is the bit where the line editor says ‘are you sure about this comma?’ and ‘asterisk or bullet point?’ and every single minuscule query needs to be agreed or disagreed with. It’s quite fiddly but very satisfying.
Dating while young
On Wednesday I went to a really fun dinner at Sparrow Italia to celebrate the glory of Dolly Alderton. Filming of her adaptation of Pride And Prejudice starts imminently (Olivia Coleman as Mrs Bennet!).
I had a lot of conversations about dating, specifically the difficulty of it if you are a youngish person and trying to get away from dating apps. I am b. 1965, the oldest year of Gen X, and come from the days when dating was simple and straightforward. You met new people in the flesh all the time, in the outside word. They said ‘do you want to go for a drink?’, you said ‘yes’ or ‘no’, and off you went.
I don’t know - would it now be considered creepy to go up to someone in real life and say hello, will you come for a drink with me? Would it be inappropriate if the person was e.g. a colleague? Not that anyone goes to an office much anymore.
Or to pubs or bars. Or to ye discothèque. Just mostly to their friends’ house parties, which means picking from a much shallower pool of people. There comes a point when everyone’s met everyone else. (It reminded me of being at a single-sex school - ‘Do you have any other brothers? Are you sure? What about cousins?’). The whole thing must feel like puddling through ankle-deep water when really you just want to be knocked over by a wave.
So then people go back to the apps, where they’re in competition with the whole world. (Someone said that the reason many young women wear so much makeup is that they constantly have to look like their profile pic).
I don’t know how young people who want an actual relationship rather than a brief encounter don’t just explode with stress. Although of course sometimes the brief encounter does turn into a relationship, hooray, but still - the effort and anxiety of it all. I don’t consider any of this an evolution AT ALL, dating-wise.
Anyway: links! Here are some things I’ve liked this week.
Chelsea Flower Show
Jo Thompson’s insanely beautiful garden, I nearly died. Let’s just pause quickly to swoon:
She won a Gold medal, obviously. I absolutely loved this post about the garden and about who it is for - women leaving prison - by Lucy of Horticulturalish, who used to be a barrister. I found both Lucy’s post and the extreme thoughtfulness of Jo’s garden very moving.
Heavenly pictures
Once a month Jo Thompson’s posts are illustrated by Helen C Stark. She is having a sale of her divine, life-enhancing still lives - on paper and on canvas - TODAY, Saturday 24 May, from 12 noon BST on her website. I’d be quick (so I don’t beat you to it). She ships worldwide.
More Chelsea
I also loved Ann-Marie Powell’s Chelsea round-up. She observes that maximalism is back (in gardens as in interiors, about time, we were all about to die of boredom):
After years of gardens that looked like they’d been photographed with a muted filter, this explosion of colour feels like a welcome awakening. As a designer who’s never shied away from bold hues it’s immensely satisfying to see designers creating gardens that aren’t afraid to dazzle.
Something to read
I don’t normally recommend books until I’ve finished them, but I’m making an exception because this is just fantastically good. We share a publisher - I’m so annoyed I wasn’t on the ball enough to ask her if I could extract it. Maybe it’s not too late. Anyway: English country house novel, family dramas, you know the score, but in fact you don’t because it is completely contemporary and original. The writing is outstanding. I am loving it.
A lovely tablecloth
I really like this nasturtium tablecloth by Butter Wakefield x Birdie Fortescue (both names that should really be in a novel called Ladies Of The Cotswolds - ‘Butter, it’s Birdie, have you seen Humpty?’). It is currently out of stock but it is coming back, so keep an eye out.
Paris
Comprehensive list of Paris recommendations from Shelby Chambers, who lives there. It takes in everything from parks to restaurants to cafes to museums to neighbourhoods and is free to read, which I call generous.
The return of Wee Birdy!
Magazine editor Rebecca Lowrey Boyd’s blog launched in 2007, when she moved to London (from Sydney) and very quickly established itself as a must-read if you were interested in independent shops, clever little finds and visually literate style generally.
Eventually life and other work took over, as they do. She had a baby, went back to Australia and worked on food, home and interiors mags for years. But now she’s BACK! Her newly-launched and brilliantly-curated Substack is heaven all over again, plus she’s posted a load of content on there already. I really like the jauntiness of that bird in her logo.
Nice shoes
I like the toe and the airiness of these canvas slingbacks from H&M.
Fake super-popular Substack posts
This by Will Storr is fascinating. It’s about incredibly popular, emotionally-resonant, intimate-seeming Substack posts that are in fact written by AI. Some have thousands of likes and the comments underneath all say things like ‘I’m crying in Starbucks’ or ‘Your words touched my soul’.
I’ve had my own suspicions more than once, so I found it all deeply interesting. He’s even finessed a prompt - it’s in the piece - about what to ask ChatGPT for if you want to give it a go yourself. Come and tell our human Chat when you go super-viral!
But also, a counter-intuitive piece about AI and writing
Having said that, I find some of the pearl-clutching about AI more generally faintly absurd - I mean, ALL the horses have bolted and there is something ludicrous about people who are still gathered around the smashed up stable door going ‘we must get a better latch’. Hanif Kureishi said recently that he didn’t mind that much about his books being scraped because at least the AI was being trained on decent sentences (more of him on this topic here).
Jasmine Sun, ex-Substack, is v clever and always has thought-provoking, insightful, intellectually competent things to say about tech. Here is a conversation she had with Erin Moore last month. You can either listen or read the transcript. It’s all enlightening - it’s partly about the genesis of Notes - but if you want to hear/read specifically about how she uses AI in her writing, scroll through or fast forward to 38:41, starting when she says:
I use AI a lot now, which feels taboo to say as a writer. But I feel like people should be more open and know the capabilities of the tools. I use AI in every part of my process now.
A cookbook for your radar
Sami Tamimi, the co-founder of the Ottolenghi delis and restaurants, has a new vegetable-based cookbook out next month (his previous one, Falastin, is hugely recommended). He is also on Substack. Sample recipes here.
LA in this weird time
I loved everything about this post from Bumble Ward - the sentiment, and the expression of it.
Eyelifts
Polly Vernon on her eyelift, also fascinating - contains every detail you night conceivably want to know (paid post I think).
A marvellous cushion
I love this cushion, which is technically for children. Not for £120, it isn’t. Made by hand to order, takes 6-8 weeks.
Wrens
Big fan of wrens, so pleasingly tiny and round and so intrepidly LOUD, so I enjoyed this from Melissa Lee.
Also - good bird bath tip, although I would put a few big stones in there so birds can easily hop in and out.
A new rose
This is The King’s Rose by David Austin, premiered at Chelsea. It’s a shrub rose, repeat flowering, and I ordered three immediately because look at it.
A new sauce
This sauce is delicious.
A necklace
I like this beachy necklace that looks like sweets.
Alison Roman’s new cookbook
And it’s pantry/larder based, HOORAY. All details here - November publication in the UK, it looks like.
Tomato candles
From here, for summer dinners outside. I also love (the colours!) this little olive bowl, but they’re out of stock. Amazon has it though, if you shop at Amazon.
Look at these beautiful apple and berry baskets from willow weaver Jo Hammond. Various sizes. More of her work here.
Have a wonderful long weekend if you’re in the UK, where Monday is a public holiday, and a wonderful normal-length weekend if you aren’t. I will be back next week with book news, among other things.
This has been a rare full-length free post - do consider subscribing if you like this sort of thing, and as ever do please really kindly leave it a ❤️ if you enjoyed it. Thank you and see you soon!
PS in case you missed it: on Thursday a man in Norway woke up to find a gigantic 135m (443ft) container ship in his garden, metres away from his house. I can’t get over the pictures. The watch officer had fallen asleep.
Thank you…. I have few words left at the moment but thank you so much, India, for your lovely and generous words about the garden. Colour and atmosphere are what I’ve devoted my gardening life to, so I’m just so happy it’s starting to filter back in to the gardens at Chelsea as a whole. Atmosphere, mood, messages - considered, thought-through colour can convey them all. Lucy’s post was incredibly moving, I totally agree.
Interesting about AI. I was violently anti but used it a lot on my recent trip to Berlin. Not for recs - more for logistics. Great round-up as ever. Love that olive bowl