Happy ‘Almost’ May! Can we all agree that the last few months have been an absolute blur?
10 things of interest
I never read or watch Harry Potter growing up. A few months ago a local charity shop was selling the first three books as a bundle. I binge read them and I finally understand the obsession thousands of people had with J.K. Rolling’s writing. I’m about 220 pages into the fifth book. No spoilers!
- and I have kicked off our letter exchange. Missed out? Read letter 1, letter 2, letter 3. My response is coming soon.
Caroline from
wrote about rule breaking, the paths we taken and the people we could’ve been in Regrets Only. She has a great quote that I’d like to share, “In another life, I might’ve settled down sooner. Lived in a different place. Embodied some unrecognisable version of me. But I always come back to the positives. As I type this: my dog’s warm body against my foot, the blossoms outside the window, the sound of a choir echoing from a nearby church. If you change one brick, everything around it shifts.”Maya Kosoff from
on the Wegovy ads in Central Station does a great job of ripping apart Ro, the the company behind the Wegovy injection ads and their reasoning behind it. Spoiler: they want to sell drug to “de-stigmatise obesity as a condition” by forcing weight-loss.One of my favourite writers on substack, Helena Fitzgerald from
wrote about the arrival of spring. She has an incredible way of describing things that are exactly how I imagine them to be. I’ll share this quote with you: “In the warm air, every risk is worth taking, and nobody can come up with a good reason to go home. Why not leave the house, and laugh at the joke, and say yes, and walk instead of taking the subway, and decide that any person you find attractive might look like the rest of your life? Optimism is terrifying, but there’s nothing I can do about it.”I’ve made efforts to write more often this month, even if not for publishing eyes, and I stumbled across
Essay Camp, a week long, daily writing exercise. It’s been great exercise with encouraging prompts and reading assignments at the end. One of them being a sample of writing from Samantha Irby, who, if you don’t know, is an American comedian and writer of a number of essay books. For something funny to read, try this: The Terror of Love.Early on in Alexander Chee’s essay collection How to Write an Autobiographical Novel he writes about The Curse - An essay about what it means to belong, and how sometimes others’ perceptions of whether you belong come from the way they see you.
I’ve never understood the fascination with Paddington Bear. I can only define it as being a very British obsession, but after being struck down with food poisoning, B and I took the opportunity to binge the first and second film. I think the greatness from the film comes from the fact that it’s just a heart-warming, sweet, comedic movie about a bear who wants to find a home, who loves marmalade sandwiches and is incredibly kind.
This perfect orange loaf that I’ve already made twice this month. It’s a moist, lightly crumbly cake - not sorry for using the word ‘moist.’
One of my absolute favourite things watch on Youtube are quiet cooking videos. I often find them on Korean or Japanese channels. Here is on how to make Levain Bakery-style chocolate chip cookies, which I’m dying to bake next. Gooey and chunky.
“Asking for a Friend”
I think the fact you've managed to avoid Harry Potter spoilers for your entire life needs to go down as one of your special skills - that's impressive 😂
Have you come across Her 86m2 on YouTube? They're not all cooking videos, but they're so beautiful and soothing
So much to explore here - thank you! 😊