february 2023
Continuing with my resolution to write something - anything - about every month.
A blurred and compact four weeks, film photography thwarted by clouds and quarantine. I sat by the sea in Brighton (Haniah ran), saw some good art and some less good art, took a lot of pictures of food on my phone. (A lot of pictures.) Spent many evenings inside the four walls of our flat with winter mists to the first spring sunlight pressing itself up against the windows.
One of my new year’s resolutions is to visit three new countries. Latvia was the first of 2023, and I liked Riga’s bitter cold and excess carbs. I distilled some lines about it from my notes app here, with a caveat of all my memories blurring together through the COVID I caught on the plane over.
“I have a hard time seeing my life for the lovely and beautiful thing it really is, so Instagram actually helps me ritualize that kind of appreciation.”
I held two in-print author portraits of 2023 this month: Imo’s in her first novel Deep Down and Laura’s in her paperback edition of Tell Me Everything. Imo’s book has been doing the rounds in the press and I’ve been intrigued to see which portraits get picked up by which papers - all shot during a September golden hour which feels like a century ago.
some favourites this month
book The Kingdoms by Natasha Pulley, gripping me with historical fantasy and reigniting my lighthouse obsession film Vittles’ various short food films, a wonderful medium to convey food writing television we started The Crown and I don’t know why we waited this long podcast Normal Gossip - in particular hearing guests’ many definitions of what gossip means to them personally, fascinating and frankly validating art M.K. Ciurlonis on my quarterly visit to Dulwich Picture Gallery, where I learned a lot about Lithuanian folklore and why people move to south east London newsletter The Fence’s weekly round-up leading me to take the plunge and buy my first magazine subscription since my teenage years of devouring NME and the BJP