Pull Up A Chair is a weekly newsletter containing all the things I’d like to be chatting about if we could hang out together in real life. Every week, I start with three things I’ve enjoyed, and then write in more detail about something I’ve been thinking about.
☕️ Caffè Nero Panettone Latte. The chain coffee shops here in the UK have brought out their festive season specials, and I think the Caffè Nero ones are the best. In particular, the panettone latte, which is essentially made with a spiced, sweet syrup (like a gingerbread latte but tasting a little fruitier), and topped with cinnamon. I have mine with just a little bit of whipped cream and it fills my soul right up. (Also, despite the fact that they’re priced at over FOUR POUNDS, you can use a Nectar voucher - which costs only £2 worth of Nectar points - to buy one).
🎧 The Everygirl podcast: The 5 Best Career Tips You’ll Ever Hear, With The Career Contessa. I know the title makes this sound a bit ‘girlboss, gaslight, gatekeep’, but I found this podcast episode really helpful, and full of really actionable work advice. Not to ‘progress’, necessarily, but to make work less frustrating and more fulfilling.
📕 Happiness for Beginners by Katherine Center. Inspired by Becca Freeman of Bad on Paper, I seem to be entering my ‘Katherine Center era’ - my Katherine Centera?? Anyway, this book is everything you might expect when I say ‘fresh off a series of disasters, Helen signs up for a wilderness survival course, and discovers her little brother’s best friend is there too’ - but also a whole lot more. This made the perfect audiobook while I was feeling sorry for myself with Covid last month. (Bookshop.org | Amazon - ad, affiliate links)
I’m specifically - still - not talking about current events this week - they’re really scary for everyone lately and I hope we can see peace soon.
One of the exercises Ella and Kate set us during the wonderful food writing course I took with them at Ty Newydd was after the poem immortelle by Rebecca Perry, in her book Beauty/Beauty. The poem starts with a description of the writer ‘at the time of writing’ and meanders back and forth from the practical to the dreamlike to the coldly pragmatic.
So I decided to use that framework to bring you with me on my current journey:
At the time of writing, I am visiting my past life.
Standing in my empty Edinburgh flat as strangers from the internet come to pick up the furniture on which I laughed and cried through five years of life.
Through first three months, then six, of lockdowns, and the uncertain time in between.
At the time of writing, I am leaning on the kitchen counter, because I have no chairs left.
I’m staring at the blue patterned tiles that have been the backdrop to the last five years of heartbreak, hopes, and dreams.
It feels selfish to be so deep in my own feelings when the world is falling apart. While it continues to fall apart.
At the time of writing, I am opening a bag of Marks & Spencer’s ‘pigs in blankets’ flavoured crisps. They smell like 2000s camping trip beer gardens, like my dad buying beers for the adults and lemonades for the kids, like bags of crisps splayed out on rickety picnic tables.
At the time of writing, all that’s left in the fridge is the bottle of Cava (Taste the Difference, thank you) I’ve bought to leave the flat’s new owners and the water I bought at King’s Cross station yesterday in case of train chaos.
Since I left in August, the wine shop on the corner has gone out of business. Correlation is not causation.
At the time of writing I am listening to the re-record of 1989, the music that saw me into my adult life, now recorded full of the hindsight I also now have.
One of the houseplants I bought in July to liven the place up for viewings is still there, stubbornly colourful and healthy. Maybe I’m better at keeping plants well when I’m 400 miles away.
I know I’m doing better at keeping myself well while I’m in my new place.
‘Bloom where you’re planted,’ they say.
At the time of writing, I’m blooming where I’ve planted myself.
Speak soon,
Lily
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I love your meandering thoughts from your old flat. Less so the idea of Panetone latte!
You had me at Panetone Latte - that sounds amazing