Sunday smörgåsbord #034 - 07.01
This week's round-up is bursting at the seams from a cultural Christmas. Featuring: Bruce Willis, Marina Abramovic, and the Three Wise Men.
Happy Sunday, and for those of you who celebrate, happy Kings’ Day and happy Orthodox Christmas. In Spain we’ve been stretching out the Christmas celebrations (and, yes, excuses to eat chocolate, cake and other glorious carbs) until this weekend. I’m ready to turn over a new leaf.. once I’ve gotten through the roscón above…
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Features & Podcasts
‘‘Millions of women are suffering who don’t have to’: why it’s time to end the misery of UTIs’, The Guardian. Two things rang out loudly from this article for me: the importance of medical practitioners looking at the bigger picture, and the dearth of attention paid to women’s health. It’s heartening (though somewhat frustrating) to see what strides can be made in a few short years - in comparison - with paying it some well-due attention.
‘Jane Birkin remembered by Charlotte Rampling’, The Guardian. A beautiful obituary by one legend about another. Rampling’s words at the end (quoted below) reminded me of my own thoughts about friendship and its similarity to waves undulating - sometimes missing one another, sometimes crashing, sometimes a brief touch and ‘I am here’.
“Ours was the kind of friendship where you hold the person in your esteem and your heart, you’re going along the same road, parallel lives, you bump into each other now and again, you chat then move on but you are always watching out quietly for each other”.
‘Five former Londoners on the regret of leaving the capital’, House and Garden. I left London eight years ago but I visit often and whilst I’m there I always wonder what it would like to move back. There are so many ‘Escape to the Country’ fantasies, it was striking to read this piece about those who long for London’s madness again.
‘Divorced at Christmas, I knew I had to find some new friends’, The Times. I am lucky to be a bit of a friendaholic, for many reasons but I think it’s also a side effect of moving abroad twice and needing to ‘start from fresh’. This is a great reminder on how to do it, for those of you thinking about widening your circle in 2024.
‘Bill Granger, renowned Australian cook, dies aged 54’, The Guardian. I was so sad to read about Bill Granger’s unexpected and untimely death from cancer, on Christmas Day. I grew up watching him and Nigella’s shows with my Mum, as if they were comfort food themselves, and his books were some of the first recipe books I owned. He also always seemed like a really decent guy, and his persona appeared the antithesis of the other male TV chefs at the time. I'm going to attempt corn fritters again in his honour, one of my favourite Aussie breakfasts.
‘Green Day: ‘If you want to experience British culture, go to see Millwall play’’, The Guardian. A fun little interview by another fixture of my teens: the pop-punk band Green Day on writing political songs in a post-Trump, post-truth age.
‘We’re old enough to know better — what not to do at every age’, The Times. This resurfaced in my end-of-year reading and I don’t think I shared it the first time I read it. A plethora of advice from writers of different ages about what they’ve learnt over the years. Much of the advice is very astute, some parts to the point that it’s laugh-out-loud funny.
Arts, Culture & Entertainment
Why didn’t they ask Evans?, Amazon Prime. For anyone whose been following this column a long time you’ll know I love a good whodunnit. And the Queen of them, Agatha Christie was my introduction, via a battered seventies edition of Dumb Witness, found in my Nanna’s bookcase. Since then, I’ve devoured most of her oeuvre, so coming across one I’ve not read before is a real treat, especially one adapted and directed so finely by Hugh Laurie. I’d heard such good things about this production that I wasn’t even tempted to open the book before starting the series. I may have struggled accordingly! It was quite a complicated plot by Christie’s standards, with so many characters and strange connections it was not always easy to keep track. Even at the end, when I knew who indeed had ‘dunnit’, I had to scroll back a few minutes to make sure I fully understood what had happened! But the whole journey was fun and easy-to-watch, with fantastic, relatable dialogue. It’s always really noticeable when you see women characters given actual personalities, and the writing for one of the main characters, Frankie Derwent, stood out as a truly three-dimensional role she could really sink her teeth into - all the better for those of us watching.
Casablanca, dir. Michael Curtiz (1942). One of the finest films ever made, and Andy finally agreed to watch it with me. Add in a bottle of wine, your favourite pizza, a big blanket and a small dog nestled under my arm, and you have a near-perfect watch for a Winter’s evening. I’m always astounded by the fact this film was made whilst the Second World War was only still really beginning, but it brings an additional poignancy and understanding to the anguished feelings felt by the cast of characters, and the difficult decisions they’re forced to make each day. Every part of the huge ensemble cast is played perfectly, though I think my favourite has to be the corrupt but charming Vichy official, Captain Renault.
Auld Acquaintance, by Sofia Slater. I raced through this New Year’s-themed murder mystery in a couple of days. It has all the hallmarks of a solid page-turner: a big old, foreboding house, on an outer Hebridean island from which no one can get off, a mysterious New Year party held with complete strangers, and a murderer picking them off one-by-one. Slater’s descriptions bring the creepy country pile to life and her main character is likeable but with just enough of an edge to make you question her too. The best part though was that I figured this one out quite early on and yes I felt extremely smug about it. Funnily enough, reading it also helped me unlock a few possibilities for my own mystery novel which I’m currently drafting.
Die Hard 2, dir. Renny Harlin (1990). People go on (quite rightly) about Die Hard being a Christmas film but for some reason everyone overlooks the sequel which, in my eyes, is ALSO a Christmas film. It’s set on Christmas, it’s about people trying to get home for the holidays, and there’s even snow. I’m partial to sequels (Chamber of Secrets is better than the Philosopher’s Stone and I will die on that hill), and this one is no different. Keep that Christmas cheer going and stick it on.
Marina Abramovic, Royal Academy. I managed to snatch up the last ticket going to this retrospective on 30 December, two days before it closed on 1 January so I’ll try not to make this write-up too envy-inducing. But wow. What a show. This packed exhibition which covers performance artist Marina Ambramovic’s long and illustrious (and in some cases infamous) career is powerful, dramatic, hypnotic, thoughtful and moving. I have to admit I’ve never been a huge fan of performance art but seeing Abramovic’s oeuvre together as a lifetime’s work really packs a punch, and well as underscores the lengths and depths she’s pushed herself to make iconic work that asks incredibly difficult questions. Seeing the table of objects she used in 'Rhythm 0’ really hit home how traumatic her experience must have been (she said it turned her hair white), and hearing the knives stabbing the floor, and nicking her hands, in the audio recorded from ‘Rhythm 10’ the physical boundaries she pushes in her work. Given her work is performance-based, the exhibition was very clever at bringing long-ago-shown works to life through video, audio, imagery, and a mixture of media. Performers trained by Abramovic also re-enacted certain works of hers, which meant no two
hours at the exhibitions were the same: life, imitating art.
A haunting in Venice, dir. Kenneth Branagh (2023). I always revel in an Agatha Christie adaptation over the ‘BeTwixtmas’ period and this year decided to put my usual canonical choices aside in favour of this new adaptation of Christie’s novel Halloween Party by Kenneth Branagh, who takes centre stage as Hercule Poirot. Personally I didn’t like his previous outings, versions of Murder on the Orient Express and - a favourite of mine - Death on the Nile, and the trailer for A Haunting in Venice did not leave me with high hopes. In the end, though, I was pleasantly surprised. For all the glamour of the Venice location, this was essentially a locked room, country-house mystery of the Christie variety, with a small cast of characters that focused your attention. As a result it felt positively ‘old school’, and the excellent acting talent on hand ensured some scenes felt genuinely scary. It’s not going to win any awards, but a great ‘Sunday afternoon film’.
Lifestyle
Sour cherry negronis. We were lucky enough to spend Christmas 2023 in the Pyrenees with - thankfully - enough snow to ski! Inspired by the sour cherry negronis I drunk at the Hawksmoor a few editions ago, I set out to make an entire bottle of them to take with us on our trip. Now, the recipe calls for five different types of alcohol which I initially baulked at (the price for all that booze was eyewatering), before deciding to splurge as a Christmas present to myself. Now I just need to drink sour cherry negronis all year. And in retrospect it was worth it: coming back from a long day on the slopes to easily mix a festive drink with minimal equipment and fuss is what I consider a good investment. I followed this recipe, including how to make the sour cherry juice, but converted it to rough millilitre measurements - included below. If you also want to make a batch, I recommend keeping the alcohol in one mixed bottle, and the cherry juice in another - don’t premix completely. Serve with a big old ice cube and a whiskey-soaked cherry.
Sour cherry negroni recipe, adapted from this Food & Wine recipe.
For the Sour Cherry Negroni
30 ml Gin
22.5ml Campari
22.5ml Martini Rubino
15ml Amaretto
1 teaspoon (5ml) acid adjusted cherry juice (see recipe below)
1 bourbon cherry (for garnish) - my way of making these was to soak canned cherries in whiskey in a separate jar.
Note: the amount of cherry juice they recommend you add in the recipe is eye-wateringly low. In the end, I tended to put in about 15ml of cherry juice, as otherwise the drink is 99% alcohol which was too much even for me. A big ice cube slowly melting does help here, of course.
For the acid adjusted cherry juice, mix:
1 teaspoon cherry juice
1/4 teaspoon citric acid
In the end I did this in bulk with a 300ml bottle of juice and about half the number of teaspoons of citric acid. If you want it sourer, follow the recipe to a T.
‘Sophie Ellis Bextor’s Kitchen Christmas Disco’, BBC Sounds. Andy introduced me to this barrage of Christmas hits via the wonderful Sophie EB. It was the perfect radio show to listen to as we cooked up Christmas dinner in our Air Bnb kitchen. One for Christmas 2024.
New Year’s hike in Bejís, Valencia. After a false start yesterday with winds that
threatened to blow us off the mountain, Andy, Londra and I found this fun, varied 12km hike in a loop around El Molinar, a funny little ‘ghost village’ near Bejís, Valencia. The Reyes Day hike was a great way to blow off the Christmas cobwebs as we traversed rocky river-beds and traipsed up mountains, and all without seeing a single soul (Reyes). From the top you could see the snow from the nearest ski resort and, in the other direction, the Med glistening in the distance. Definitely don’t do this hike in rainy season (when part of it actually does become a river), but in dry seasons it’s a hefty three-hour hike that stretches the legs and build up an appetite for…
Roscón de Reyes. I’m not a huge fan of Spanish cakes but I really love Roscón, the cake served at Reyes, which in Spain is traditionally bigger than Christmas Eve or Day. The 6 January, or Epiphany, celebrates the day the Three Wise Men arrived to visit Jesus, bring him gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. As a result, most Spanish children receive their Christmas presents on 6 January, traditionally left in their shoes, before sharing a huge dinner with their family followed by the sweet Roscón. There are different versions available but the one I have had most is a ring of briochey sponge, covered in candied fruits and filled with whipped cream. I’m actually pretty relieved it’s only served once per year or I’d be tucking into it at least every few weeks. Nestled inside the cream is one King, waiting to be found - whoever finds it is blessed with luck for the year ahead and they get to wear the crown. On the other side, whoever finds the bean has to buy next year’s cake. Four slices in and we still haven’t found either. At least when you are getting through one between two of you, you have 50% chance of finding the King!
Substacks
‘Can your decor change your behaviour?’ - Mad about the House by Kate Watson-Smyth.
This post reminded me of the one I recently wrote about whether a city changes your identity. It stands, after all, that rooms and spaces do too?
‘Mary Shelley (and a bit of Steve Jobs) - On the art of Creative Waiting’ - The Pamphlet.
This is such a fantastic opener to an essay and one which brings
‘s concept of creative waiting to life. I loved the rich detail on the legendary Lake Geneva trip taken by Shelley, her future husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron and a host of other interesting intellectuals from the Romantic period. This article was one of the inspirations for my own imminent creative waiting period… I can only hope the spirit of Mary Shelley gives me a boost!
‘An invitation to a soirée’ - Footnotes and Tangents
Forgive the repeat but I’m seven days into my New Year’s Resolution to read War & Peace and so far I’m sticking to it, thanks to
‘s wonderfully rich and welcoming group readalong. I feel like I am back at university in all the right ways, with fellow readers chipping in to share insights, ask questions, and posit some hot takes via the daily chapter chat.Once a week Simon then writes a round-up of that week’s reading, with helpful context and additional reading to go down rabbit holes on - this post is this week’s first one. It’s a huge undertaking and testament to Simon’s passion and dedication. I am sharing again as the chapters are not long (it takes me about 20 minutes a day which I do when I wake up), so there is still time to catch up! And a huge thank you to Simon and my fellow readalongers for reigniting my passion in the close read!
That’s it for this week. I hope you find something in this list that sparks joy or curiosity. If you’ve got any recommendations on articles, podcasts, Substacks or shows for me to dive into, please drop them in the comments.
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Thank you, honored to be included here! Haven't heard of Roscón before and it looks scrumptious. Sending good waves for your creative waiting