This has been an incredibly difficult week for many women all over the world, and in particular for the friends and family of Sarah Everard, who vanished last week in London doing something we should all have the right to do: walking home. We’re also thinking of all our UK readers and friends now grappling with not only lockdown but feeling fearful outside their own front doors. If you’re a man reading this or you know a man asking how to support women, we highly recommend this episode of the BBC podcast Positive Thinking.
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Not sure what we’ve done to deserve this but there’s another wonderful piece of Ann Patchett writing in the world. Vanessa absolutely devoured this piece in the New Yorker about the impermanence of our possessions and reckons you will too
If the Earth was for sale
An absolute rollercoaster of an Instagram post from start to finish (and here’s a direct link to the Spotify account they mention)
This is powerful and incredibly helpful: How to cope when sexual assault cases make the headlines
The New Yorker has ranked the best film performances over the last century and whether or not you agree, it’s an excellent list to bookmark and revisit when you feel like you’ve streamed literally every show on the planet
What it’s like to be a woman over 50 who feels like she’s out-lived her usefulness
Love the idea of a family cookbook
After following flocks of starlings for months, Irish photographers James Crombie and Colin Hogg captured the most phenomenal video of the flock as it swelled into an enormous bird-like murmuration and oh my god it’s totally mesmerising
Sleeping with a baby
Even if you’ve sworn to never read anything about Meghan and Harry again, we beg you to make an allowance for this absolutely RIPPER piece in the Irish Times by journalist Patrick Freyne, who deserves a slow-clap build to a standing ovation for writing gems such as “Having a queen as head of state is like having a pirate or a mermaid or Ewok as head of state”, and “The queen of the Britons has laid just four British eggs, and one of those is the sweatless creep Prince Andrew, so it’s hardly deserving of applause.”
Beautiful writing about pandemic anniversaries and how maybe we’re not going to go back to The Before Times at all
Read this love letter to the microwave in the New Yorker, and then cook one of these 17 recipes in the Guardian that heroes the humble microwave
We’ll have one of each of these tiles please
It’s TikTok time! Vanessa wants ya’ll to watch these series of videos posted by NY apartment dweller Samantha Hartsoe who LITERALLY FOUND A WHOLE OTHER APARTMENT BEHIND HER BATHROOM MIRROR (start with part 1), and Lizzie has loads of gold for you, including this truth bomb, this cute Irish guy reviewing stone walls and also reviewing hedges (sensing a pattern here), and this video which honestly can’t be described
