Weekend supplement
August version
Good morning! I am writing this on Friday afternoon in a sweltering room in 32 degree heat, so let’s jump straight to it. Here are some things I liked this week that I hope you will like too. We’re still doing the shorter August format, for efficiency.
Pick Your Own flowers
No flowers here in hosepipe ban droughtland, so I've been picking other people’s. To be honest I don’t always love decimating my (currently hypothetical) own beds, so this suits me very nicely. Look!
Their dahlias have only just got going and go on for miles. I was standing in the field shrieking with delight. There will be a PYO flower farm near you too, I bet, and it is THE best use of a spare hour or two.
Also I picked these on Monday and they’re still going strong, give or take a couple of cosmoses. Or is cosmos the plural too, like when people talk about going on safari and seeing lion, singular? It always makes me want to laugh. Like walking down the street and pointing out dog.
Tourist London
So many guides to London are too obvious, naff or both. This one is actively good if you have 2-3 days and don’t know the city well. Nice food recs, too.
My own guide to Marylebone here, in case you missed it. I need to go back in and add Nina, Special Guests for coffee, and M.II on Chiltern St in case you’re very rich and extremely understated.
The New York Times’s 50 best thrillers of the 21st century
Here’s the full list (gift link). Very fun to read. Their definition of ‘thriller’ is pretty elastic, but that’s fine by me - it just means there are lots of titles in there that don’t make you feel sick and haunted for weeks.
They asked various esteemed crime novelists to name their favourites when compiling the piece, and you can see those individual lists here (also gift link). I like that Gillian Flynn included her own Gone Girl, as well she might.
She also included The Murder At Sissingham Hall, the first of a series by Clara Benson that looks promising. She’s blurbed for it, saying ‘it's absolutely delightful, and I would recommend it to anyone who's a fan of Sarah Caudwell, or Agatha Christie, or anyone who loves really clever British murder mysteries set in the 20s’.
I’ve downloaded it and will report back. I hope it’s good because there are LOADS of Clara Benson books, although I don’t necessarily find that reassuring unless the author is ancient. But a rich seam to mine if she turns out to be great. I love finding a new-to-me writer with a long backlist.
Pink jeans
Easy-to-wear shape, perfect colour for the end of summer, perfect for autumn - rolled up a bit, with a really soft browny-beigeish jumper and a white shirt underneath, and a bare ankle and some heeled ballet flats, maybe - and extremely cheering in the (unimaginable) depths of winter. Jeans here.
I am writing this in my nightie-dress, fantasising about it becoming just a nightie again. I’ve started adding autumn clothes to my shop, just the odd piece here and there, so have a look if you feel the same way. I’ll do a big separate post in a couple of weeks. The one thing I would say is that this super chunky and luxey cashmere jumper always sells out (they do it every year), so if you fancy it I would bear that in mind. Mine’s a couple of years old and I live in it when it gets properly cold.
I’m also starting to add the various spring bulbs I’m considering. As ever, I like a mix of the exuberant and the sort of ‘tasteful’ that feels super-English and mildly constipated to me when there’s too much of it - like, gardens for people who never actually say what they mean. Sometimes I see a garden like that and think ‘Ah, okay, you never have sex’. I think it about certain interiors, too, hahaha, maybe there’s a post in it (joking, I wouldn't dare).
In other clothes news, Sézane is rebranding, or reinventing itself a bit, or going back to its original concept, or whatever the mot juste is - but anyway, fewer and better-made pieces, is the idea, all in better quality fabrics/yarns. Also: a deliberate move away from an endless deluge of newness, thank goodness. More considered and grown-up seems to be the general gist. All will be revealed this Wednesday, the 19th, and from the teaser images ↓, I’m going to like it.
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