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.
🎲 Board Games… of a sort. After Monday night’s pub quiz (my team didn’t even approach ‘mid-table mediocrity’…), one of the gang was telling us about a YouTube channel, No Rolls Barred, in which a group of hosts take the basic structure of popular board games, shake them up, and come up with something new. For example: Monopoly - but communist, Snakes and Ladders - but only snakes, and Guess Who - but based on vibes. There happened to be a Guess Who set right behind us in the pub… so we proceeded to play three rounds, with questions like: ‘Would they watch Location, Location, Location?’ - ‘Can they floss? - the dance move!’ - ‘Do they use Instagram?’. So much fun!
📕 Learned By Heart by Emma Donoghue. Emma Donoghue’s 2010 book, Room, went stratospheric - but it’s her historical fiction that I think is next-level fantastic. Learned by Heart is about the chaotic events that follow the arrival of Anne Lister (yes, as in Gentleman Jack) at a staid girls’ boarding school in 1800s York. One thing that always strikes me when I read Donoghue’s historical fiction (I also adored The Sealed Letter and The Pull Of The Stars) is how ‘immediate’ her stories feel - and how much her characters implicitly feel that they’re living in ‘modernity’. That is, the books aren’t self-consciously historical - if that makes sense? (Bookshop.org | Amazon - ad, affiliate links)
🧥 FatFace Hampshire Waxed Jacket. The Tumblr girls in 2013 called, they want their clothes back. I’m so happy we’re properly into Autumn jackets-and-boots weather now, and in that perfect happy medium where it’s not yet actually cold. As part of the move, I got rid of a lot of my clothes that didn’t fit right, weren’t my style anymore, or had just been worn to death. So one of the new-city expense lines has been gradually filing the wardrobe holes I’ve created - and I clicked ‘add to bag’ incredibly quickly when I saw this jacket on the FatFace website. I went for the bigger of the two sizes I take in FatFace, so it’s big and roomy and will slip over big hoodies and scarves later in the autumn, and in the meantime it’s got that oversized ‘borrowed-from-the-boys’ feeling that all the teen fashion magazines used to talk about but which is hard to get for me as a 5’9” woman.
And now I’m going to be a bit more ‘serious’ and talk about the Russell Brand news. Obvious content warning for men abusing positions of power and hurting girls and women - and as it’s really quite personal I’ll tuck it behind the paywall. If you’d like to access paid content, but can’t afford to, do ping me an email and I’ll happily give you free access.
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