Weekend supplement
free edition
Good morning! First things first: thank you very VERY much to my paid subscribers, whose support means I get to write this newsletter. It is my favourite thing to do. Also whenever I meet any of you, which is now quite often, I just really like you as people. I always feel like we could just hang out, chatting away, having a lovely time. This is the dream situation for a writer, and I think it’s quite rare. I am extremely lucky to have you. Really, thank you.
(Aren’t all the Substack worlds on that list fascinating? Tech and finance, in particular, are HUGE. I’ve literally never read a post in either category).
I write these posts for paid subscribers once a week, and for free subscribers once a month. This is a FREE post. All the other posts like this one are here (loads). The entire Home Archive currently contains 373 articles, on all sorts of topics, and is available to paid subscribers.
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Art, weed and cars
On Thursday we went to the Cotswolds and back (7 hours!) to collect a painting I’d bought. It was with a stranger who had kindly brought it back from the south of France.
In the curious way of these things, the man lives in a tiny village I used to know as a teenager because my friend’s parents lived there, in a house straight out of Jilly Cooper. In fact this friend and I got expelled from boarding school because we were caught smoking the weed her mum grew in the garden (for her own use, obviously - my friend had nicked some).
Headmistress: ‘You are in very great trouble. Where did you get THE MARIJUANA?’
Me: ‘Annabel’s mother.’
Pearls were clutched. Actually we mostly got it from a man in a pub, but that seemed worse to admit to because it involved escaping from the grounds after dark, a heinous crime. Imagine getting expelled for smoking weed now. It seems adorably quaint, like wearing bonnets or dancing quadrilles.
When I was sent home, my stepfather tried to give me a bollocking but made the mistake of asking exactly what we’d been smoking. When I told him, he went ‘pfffft,’ got a faraway look in his eyes and started reminiscing about the really amazing weed - ‘very tight buds’ - he used to smoke in Vietnam (he was there as a journalist), which I felt rather undermined his argument. We had lunch with him after the painting collecting on Thursday, in fact. No one smoked any weed, though he’s 86 now, which strikes me as a good age to start again.
Anyway - the random stranger who had the painting turned out to be extremely interesting and nice, and he had the most beautiful vintage car I’ve ever seen, a Packard from the 1930s, postbox red with a darker cherry-red trim, conker-coloured leather seats and lots of polished wood, including the luggage rack at the back. The insane Old Hollywood glamour of it! He also had a 1920s American fire engine. I find cars so boring, but only because they look like they look. This car was a piece of art. He said he sometimes also drove the fire engine around just for the fun of it, dinging the bell.
Win the audiobook of The Calamity Club
I’m a bit more than halfway through this and it is literally bliss. BLISS - the sort of book that you completely lose yourself in and never want to end (review here, gift link). The one issue is that, at 600+ engrossing, hilarious, heartbreaking, deeply satisfying pages, it’s quite a heavy thing to cart about with you.
Happily, the audio version is fantastic, and I say that as someone who is deeply picky about audiobook narrators. These people - January LaVoy and Jenna Lamia - are perfect. I have FIVE codes that will let five paid subscribers download the audiobook for free. Tell me the most calamitous - funny-calamitous, not tragic-calamitous please - thing that has happened to you in the comments, and I’ll pick five of my favourites on Monday and message the winners with the codes.
(Yasmin, check your messages - you won a copy of Receipts From The Bookshop and haven’t claimed it yet. Everyone else has got theirs!).
Also:
A free book extract about living in the country with your dear friends
A free book extract from Lisa Jewell’s new psychological thriller
Obligatory football detour
I am very tired from watching the football, a sport I am completely uninterested in except during World Cups, and very occasionally the Euros. It’s funny how these things seep in - any knowledge I have is purely due to osmosis over the decades, thanks to my sons, who have been football-mad since they were tiny. I used to glaze over, but clearly some of it got absorbed.
Isn’t it strange how you can admire some games in a very detached way, but not feel them in your heart? I suppose that’s true of everything - certainly there are people whose work I admire without having any interest in engaging with it. So Spain are clearly outstanding, but I don’t feel anything watching them. Kane and Bellingham, though, I love with something quite close to maternal love. They move me to near-tears, as did the sight of the team and the England fans singing Wonderwall at each other after the DR Congo game.
Compare and contrast with Spain barely cracking a smile after their win against Austria on Thursday, and then just walking off back to the changing room. I’m sure this is very disciplined and focussed and indicative of their special talent, but there’s nothing to grab on to emotionally, and so it left me cold.
Almost my favourite bit of the games are at the end, when the winning team pats and hugs the losers, one man jubilant, the other completely crushed. I appreciate that it’s because so many of them play with each other in their non-national teams, but still. I find the fraternity of it really beautiful.
Here are some other things I liked this week.
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Suzanne Cooper
I’m showing you these because there’s an exhibition of Suzanne Cooper’s work - Ravilious/Bawden-adjacent but also very much her own thing - at the Aldeburgh Gallery, 143 High Street, Aldeburgh, until July 8. Let me just nick her bio from that website:
Suzanne Cooper, 1916-1992, was a painter and wood engraver, and one of the rising stars of British art in the 1930s. In 1935, when she was 19, she became a student at the Grosvenor School of Modern Art in London, where she was taught by the master print-makers Iain Macnab and Cyril Power.
Over the next four years she exhibited her oil-paintings and wood-engravings to great acclaim in the press. But then came World War II, when she volunteered as a nurse and cut short her career, and then she got married, had three children, and never produced another big painting, though she did carry on working in pastels and chalk.
I love her work. The Mainstone Press has made really high-quality, beautiful prints of much of it - you can get them here, or buy them directly at the exhibition. There is also a beautifully-produced and written book.
Little House on the Prairie!
I can’t even express how passionately I loved Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books as a child, or how glued I was to the original tv version. I don’t know anything about this Netflix remake but every iota of my being is here for it. Premieres July 9.
This dress
And also its siblings - they’re great dresses to live in all summer long. The above one is this one, and is the one I’ve pre-ordered, though I also really love it in indigo ticking. Sarah O’Keefe (one of the co-founders, with Sam Robinson, of the legendary The Cross in Notting Hill) sells the easiest, most wearable dresses and shirts, at accessible prices. She photographs them on herself and her friends, which I really like.
Davina McCall’s podcast
This is really good. Davina, who has herself lived a lot of life (a prerequisite for an interviewer, imo) is an excellent interlocutor. I’m working my way through the episodes but strongly recommend these two: Amanda de Cadenet, here - I find her so admirable:
And Jojo Moyes, ditto, on starting again in her forties, here:
These trousers
Have we had enough of thin trousers yet? I haven’t, quite - I’m still delighted to find yet another pair. And here it is: thin, nice cut, flattering, classic, easy to wear, majorly useful. They’re here.
This tomato tart recipe
Yes please.
This mesh bag
Look at this! £36 from Marks & Spencer, thank you very much. Punches way above its price tag.
This lovely post from Christina Patterson
She very kindly mentions this newsletter, but that’s not the point - it’s such an uplifting read, and obviously I am 100% behind the sentiment.
Relatedly, this quote.
This kaftan, and kaftans more generally
I love the 70s-ness, the colour and the fringing. So glam. You’d sort of want to be Talitha Getty-ing it on a rooftop in Marrakech (but with a happier ending).
And this piece about kaftans
For lunch:
Today, this, possibly on the side of the tomato tart above, or maybe just loads of it by itself because our first courgettes have arrived:
And tomorrow, this chilled tofu with peanut sauce (gift link). Involves no cooking whatsoever.
For dinner:
I’m going to treat this as a main course, due to my very great love of Hispi cabbage.
Tablecloth of the week
What I love about this one is that it looks amazing on a table outside (I have seen this with my own eyes) BUT that there is something about it that means it’ll be great indoors in autumn and winter, too, as per the pic below. It’s from here and also exists as a runner. The same company also do really nice embroidered napkins.
This other dress
I don’t need another dress, let alone another yellow dress. But maybe you do? Just look at it, it’s so lovely and so summery and zingy and fresh-looking, like lemon granita, really just a lovely thing to wear without making you look like you’ve bust a gut trying. From Rixo, here. I’ve just noticed it’s completely sold out in every size - no wonder, frankly. But you can get on the waiting list for when it reappears.
This vinegar
We already know that Isle of Wight tomatoes are the best tomatoes. But this absolute NECTAR, my God - I can’t even tell you how good it is. It is incredible, sweet and smoky and so, so moreish that I could eat (drink?) it with a teaspoon. A tiny little bit of this plus some olive oil and some salt on ripe, sliced tomatoes (with good bread for mopping) is so intensely delicious that you won’t feel like eating anything else all summer. Good present to take to people, too.
These shoes
So nice in summer, but also so nice in autumn and possibly even winter, weather depending. In the same way that ginger animals are the best animals, red feet are the best feet, especially if the rest of your outfit is relatively plain. These are a particularly good red, and a lovely shape.
What to wear when you want to wear nothing
Nothing to buy here, but is so visually beautiful.
This piece about ‘the cool girls’ 🙄
I’ve started thinking of it as the cool girl tax: the premium you pay, not for the product, but for the temporary relief of feeling included. It never shows up as a single line item. It shows up as a wardrobe full of things that don’t reflect who you are, but rather signals to your inner child that you belong.
I’m so glad I’m old. Also I think I’ve said this before, but using the phrase ‘the cool girls’ automatically makes me assume the writer/speaker isn’t one.
In brief
an apology to the wardrobe that was waiting for a life i wasn’t living
Happy 250th 4th of July! Here’s a view from the UK from Dominic Sambrook and Tom Holland from The Rest Is History.
And that’s it for today. Thank you for reading! Do please really kindly leave this post a ❤️ if you enjoyed it, thank you, and have a marvellous Saturday. Please let me know what you’re doing in the Comments because I love to read about it. I’m going to start with a ton of very overdue gardening and tying in/ staking before lunch. Technically this should be a weekend of many quite boring tasks. Hmm.
PS Hen update: all good. Turns out this hen, Stripy Hen (they have quite basic first names and their surname is always Hen; you have to use both parts, so Stripy Hen rather than just Stripy) likes to roost in a tree. We - well, one of us who isn’t me - have to capture her at bedtime and put her in the coop. We should clip her wing I suppose, but I don’t like the concept.
PPS This is old but I was showing it to someone last night and it made me DIE laughing all over again - the Freudian horror of it - even though it’s about the 50th time I’ve watched it. I also love Ryan Gosling completely losing it.
Thank you, India, for another great post. I love the look on Stripy Hen’s face: she looks very content, happy hen!
As to what I’m doing this weekend, it’s a lazy-ish day of pottering and a few light chores today. But tomorrow, I and seven other ladies from Laycock and District WI, average age 55ish, are running (‘running’) the Oxenhope Straw Race, up here in the Pennines, West Yorkshire (Haworth-adjacent, Brontë fans). It’s enormous fun, we’ll be dressed as the queens from Six, plus Henry VIII and the executioner, and between each pair we carry a half bale of straw - surprisingly heavy.
There are 6 pubs en route and each team of two has to drink half a pint of beer between them, which doesn’t sound much but gets rather sloshy when you’re trying to lug half a bale up the hilly streets of Oxenhope. What I particularly love is that we’re competing - ha! - against elite triathlete Alistair Brownlee, and lots of hulking lads and lasses who can a. run and b. shoulder a straw bale like it’s made of cotton wool.
This is the third year we’ve done it and it just gets more fun every year, plus it’s for some lovely local charities including Sue Ryder Manorlands hospice at Oxenhope, and Haworth Riding for the Disabled. My bale partner-in-crime is my sister Penny, also a subscriber to your marvellous Substack. Please think of us tomorrow lunchtime, running (plodding) up that hill, looking like the wrath of God in our fancy dress and having a tremendous time.
Oh god I love Graham Norton so much - and that clip is one of the greats (it’s also why having the British comics next to the American A-Listers is just the most perfect format ever)