Winter Holiday List of Links, #1
Monday, December 23, 2024
It turns out that a Master’s degree involves quite a lot of work and I fell way behind on my monthly Links and Listens posts - so here is the first of a series of daily posts with some fun distractions over the festive period. In case you need a moment away from your loved ones, you know?
We are now past the darkest days of the year! By the end of the month, sunset in London will be ten minutes later than it was at its earliest last week - and before we know it, it will be light enough to go for evening strolls and 6pm will no longer feel like midnight. Yippee!
Staying for a moment longer in ‘midwinter Glooms’, I adored this poem, Various Portents, by Alice Oswald. Rereading it now makes me think of Samantha Harvey’s wonderful Orbital* (*ad - affiliate link), which is short and beautifully written - perfect for a busy time of year.
I loved this interview with Florence Pugh in Vogue, part of the promotional tour for We Live In Time, which comes out on New Year’s Day. This section of what she said felt incredibly real to me - not in a ‘oh look - celebrities are just like us!’ sort of way, but in a ‘oh yeah, humans are all struggling with similar things’ sort of way.
“OK, so something that I resonate with is that I believe that if magic is real, then it’s falling in love. And I am someone that loves falling in love. I love looking after people. I love caring for people. I love the feeling of someone being there. I love knowing that someone is thinking about me and someone cares for me in the same way that I’m thinking about caring for them. I think in this portion of my life, I’m trying to make sure that I’m making all the right decisions so that I can have the thing that I want… which is safety, family, a home and security.”
As a stationery fan, I found this piece on The Walrus about Moleskine notebooks to be truly fascinating. I love the idea of a row of matching, filled, Moleskines - or a rainbow of Leuchtturm notebooks - on my shelf. But my head was turned when it came time to get a new notebook for my Morning Pages and I found this gorgeous one from Paperblanks* instead.
I got a lot out of this piece in the New York Times (gift link!) about the joy of seeing the kids in your life grow, even if you’re not one of the people most involved in raising them. It’s by Glynnis Macnicol, whose newest book, I’m Mostly Here To Enjoy Myself*, I really enjoyed reading over the summer.
Another New York Times piece I read with glee was this behind-the-scenes look at the “Tram Olympics” (gift link), as the European Tramdriver Championships are informally known. If you’ve never watched them, I can highly recommend putting one of the hours-long livestreams from the last years’ championships on your TV at some point over the festive period. Incredibly low-octane sport but somehow still thrilling?
Lastly for today - I’m definitely not a tidy person by nature, so I found this piece by Anita Chaudhuri in the Guardian about the ‘cult of storage’ super interesting. I have to admit, I love the idea of being the ‘hotel manager of my own home’. Sometimes I open up my bed while I’m winding down for the evening, like my very own turndown service (no pillow chocolates though).
Speak soon,
Lily