YES, IT’S STILL the weekend here, so to speak, as today is a holiday, but we thought we’d still bring you the Weekend Links as usual, since you might be around and looking for something to read while you’re home or at a café or pub somewhere.
WE HAVE been eating mango and coconut mochi ice cream lately (the coconut is my favourite), something to celebrate these spring days, especially since we've given up our favourite sourdough bread which we used to pick up from the local larder every Friday or Saturday morning. P has been on a health kick since last August, with no alcohol, and well, no bread.
EARLY SUNDAY morning, we quietly lost an hour to British Summer Time. We would not know about it until much later in the day, when we suddenly remembered about the clocks changing, and it all made sense why we felt so tired. Last Friday we drove up to Scotland, armed with a Victoria Sponge cake to celebrate a 95th birthday. The drive was sunny and scenic and as always, we had a lot to talk about. We stopped by the new café in the market square for two flat whites (mine, oat; his, regular) before setting off.
ON SATURDAY, near the end of a three-and-a-half hour salon appointment, my stylist’s next client arrived, an half an hour early. An elderly blond English woman, after sharing hellos and niceties with us, she was content to busy herself with her phone, that is, until through the mirror, I caught her curiously appraising me. “Where are you going tonight?” she asked.
A NEW CAFE opened in town last week, and one of the owners is an old Tuesday night football acquaintance of P's, who has opened the place with his partner, who moved up from London. It's in the centre of the village, in the place another café used to be, and they're planning on serving "typical café fare", including speciality coffee and tea, and using locally sourced produce.
P AND I WERE caught up in a long conversation about AI this weekend, and it's something that has also been mentioned here at TIG quite a bit lately. He is an early adopter for most things, while I can be a nostalgist⏤not because I don't love technology (I do), but because I can be a bit sentimental sometimes.
JUST FOUND OUT about Joanna Goddard (A Cup of Jo)'s divorce today and was completely shocked. She has been running her site for nearly as long as TIG and Alex has been a part of the narrative for as long as can remember. Thirteen and a half years and two children later, and it's all over. Began making a tally of all the bloggers I knew of who were now divorced and it's a lot. Occupational hazard? Perhaps.
ON SUNDAY morning, I ate the worst breakfast of my life. We'd left the house just after 8:30 in the morning for a burdensome road trip that would take us five hours south for business. It was an unpleasant obligation, a necessary evil, even, but the drive up was fun, just the two of us. That is, until we pulled over at a Services along the way, somewhere near Sheffield, and stopped for what would be the worst breakfast ever.
IF YOU'RE ever in Edinburgh, remind me to tell you about a new little natural wine bar that just opened in the old hi-fi shop on Haddington. We stopped in late Tuesday night of last week, after P told me at the hotel that he'd made reservations. We ate some delicious snacks and a glass of Lamoresca Rosato for me, and P ordered a homemade soft drink.
ON SATURDAY we were out celebrating something special and about 10 to 15 minutes into searching for new vinyl at the record shop, I reached into my coat pocket to reply to my sister’s text and realised that my brand new phone wasn’t there. I had left it on an outside table the tapas bar where we’d just had patatas bravas and we were a ways off by now. I found P happily browsing in the electronic section and told him what had happened. His first words were, It’s gone.
TOMORROW is already the last day of the first month of this brand new year⏤how has your new year been so far? Have you been a whirlwind of new goals and accomplishments, or have you been having trouble getting motivated? Tomorrow is also the day that a new phone and tablet are set to arrive, just one part of some life admin tasks getting crossed off the list.
THIS WEEKEND we watched Aftersun, the 2022 drama written and directed by Charlotte Wells, starring Paul Mescal, Frankie Corio and Celia Rowlson-Hall. We talked about it for quite a while after it was over, analysing what it could mean, discussing our own interpretations, processing the feeling of sadness it left in us afterward. It's about memory⏤more specifically, our memories of those we love after they are gone, the people we remember them as, sometimes as opposed to how they really were.
I SOMETIMES wonder what happened to all the people who asked me for directions. Despite not ever really knowing where I’m going (or sometimes even where I am), I am often asked for directions, especially in cities that don’t belong to me, sometimes even moments after I’ve just arrived. Perhaps some of them are still driving around, taking the wrong turns that I inadvertently sent them on.
HELLO AGAIN and Happy New Year! How were the holidays? Hope you had a wonderful time! As you know, we took some time off and it was amazing. So relaxing and nice to actually not work for a bit. (Novel idea, I know.) We even took a break from the newsletter, which we plan on resuming at this end of this week, since there were so many new subscribers while we were away.
P SENDS me texts such as How much bay leaf (I was making refrigerator pickles) or Do you want a mini quiche when he's out picking up bits and pieces at the shops. I love these texts, with their lack of punctuation and misspellings, because they very much showcase how he prefers to get things done, and get them done quickly, rather than worry about the small details when he knows I'll know what he means.
