Sunday Smörgåsbord #047
Sixties' spy thrillers, spooky short stories, and a very special gig.
NB: [PW] signifies a paywall, though some providers allow you to read a set number of articles for free.
Hello friends,
It’s been a busy week but it feels like Summer is finally here! Partly thanks to Spain’s sunny days and long, languorous evenings, but possibly also because of a certain football tournament on at the moment. Will you be watching the final tonight?
Along with all the football matches I’ve been watching I’m also noticing a switch to more summer scheduling with the arrival of outdoor gigs, festivals and films in parks across the UK and Spain. This weekend I’ve been in Madrid again at Mad Cool festival (more on that next week), and last Sunday I made it home to the UK for a special Bloc Party reunion (see Lifestyle, below).
Is there anything better than watching your favourite bands with your favourite people, pint in hand? I think the only thing which might beat it is England winning the Euros tonight…
Happy Summer Sundaying,
Emma x
🍳 Recent servings, in case you missed them…
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📰 Features & Podcasts
‘Family feud: the mixed households torn between Spain and England’, The Times [PW]. It’s coming home. But to which one: England or Spain? I’ve been rooting for both across this tournament never thinking for minute they’d be in the final together. If Spain win, it will be fireworks in the town square tonight. If England win, I’ll be 9 again, watching the Southgate penalty, and cheering for him as well as us. Sounds like a win-win situation to me. (But come on, England!)
‘Alice Munro knew my stepfather sexually abused me as a child, says Nobel laureate’s daughter’, The Guardian. I felt so sad reading this, another reminder that even those we put on pedestals make devastating choices. It’s also testament to how sexual abuse remains so pernicious, and the bravery of victims to stand up and claim their narrative.
‘School shooting victim ‘silences’ gunman by gaining rights to his name’, The Times [PW]. Speaking of claiming narratives, this approach by one school-shooting victim to his attacker is fascinating and a novel way for survivors to take back some level of control over what happened to them. It’s long been advocated that we should starve mass-murderers of the infamy they so desperately crave (in 2019 Jacinta Arden refused to name the perpetrator in the Christchurch terrorist attacks). Antony Borges, the most gravely wounded in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in 2018, has gone one step further by winning the rights to his attacker’s name with the help of his lawyer, Alex Arreaza. Any interviews, articles or Netflix documentaries about the attacker (and no, I’m not naming him) will have to be signed off by Borges, setting an important precedent for future victims.
‘‘We’re writing history’: Spanish women tackle Wikipedia’s gender gap’, The Guardian. Studying another language has helped open my eyes to the implicit biases (and privileges) of speaking English. One such example: Wikipedia. I never thought about the fact that Spanish wikipedia is much smaller than English Wikipedia, or that women and other underrepresented communities have fewer pages on the site than men. Wikiesfera work as a collective to redress the balance, researching, adding and editing pages on notable women who have been overlooked. Hopefully this English-speaking coverage only expands their volunteer base (I’m sure similar is needed for the English-speaking site). What I love about this type of activism is that it feels both feasible and meaningful, I’d love to give it a go myself one day if my Spanish is up to scratch.
‘World's oldest cave art found showing humans and pig’, BBC News. My brain can’t compute just how old these paintings are: the latest found date back at least 51,200 years. What beautiful reminders of the power of storytelling through time. This article features some of the oldest discoveries of ancient art. The hand paintings of the Sumpang Bita cave in Indonesia stopped me in my tracks, and reminded me of these lines by Pablo Neruda:
¿Cuánto vive el hombre, por fín?
¿Vive mil años o uno solo?
¿Vive una semana o varios siglos?
¿Por cuánto tiempo muere el hombre?
¿ Qué quiere decir ‘para siempre’?
//
“How long does a man live, after all?
Does he live a thousand days, or one only?
A week, or several centuries?
How long does a man spend dying?
What does it mean to say 'for ever'?Pablo Neruda
🎨 Arts, Culture & Entertainment
The Ipcress File, Len Deighton (1962). At the beginning of May I took myself off to Mallorca for a few days’ solo rest and relaxation at a yoga retreat. Little did I know how much future Emma would be thanking past Emma for that decision. I had half a mind to read something worthy whilst I was there - make a dent in a personal development book or two or some-such. At the last minute, I threw a Len Deighton paperback I’d bought on a whim in the Foyles on Charing Cross Road, and I’m so glad I did. The classic spy story, which was famously adapted in 1965 with Michael Caine (with a 00s remake - my next weekend’s watching sorted?), is that perfect mix of louche irreverence and intelligence. Essentially you have to take it seriously to follow the story, but you’ll still have fun doing it.
The Summer People, Shirley Jackson (1950). To me Shirley Jackson will always be the Duchess of the Creepy Short Story (my ‘Queen’ being the often-overlooked Daphne Du Maurier who wrote both Don’t Look Now and Birds). I’ll never forget hearing The Lottery for the first time - I had it downloaded to listen to on a plane via a random New Yorker fiction podcast and put it on in the background. As the tale reached its terrible denouement I couldn’t believe what I was hearing: she nails that feeling of inescapable dread that marks a technically brilliant piece of short fiction. It’s here again in The Summer People, a seemingly innocuous story about an older couple who decide to stay out in their country cottage after everyone has gone back to the City. Really it’s about the unspoken rules which govern our environments and the relationships we build with the ‘supporting cast’ of our lives. And yes, it’s also very creepy.
📺 What have you read, watched or listened to lately which you’d recommend? Let me know in the comments.
🍹 Lifestyle
Bloc Party, Crystal Palace Park. I was equal parts elated and terrified to see that Bloc Party were performing at a special gig Sunday 7 July to celebrate twenty years of the band. Elated because their 2005 debut Silent Alarm was the soundtrack to my University experience, and terrified because that means said University experience was an objectively Long Time Ago. As soon as Kele stepped up to the mic and struck up So Here We Are, so there we were again, three Uni friends, nineteen, swaying in a crowded nightclub, holding onto one another. Favourites, as ever, had to be Helicopter, Blue Light, The Prayer and Flux. It was over way too quickly: let’s not wait twenty years to see them again.
💌 Substacks
‘what i'm doing about alice munro’ - sweater weather
This is a nuanced and important read on the terrible news this week about Alice Munro’s devastating denial of the sexual abuse of her daughter (see news section, above) and what this says about her as an artist (and indeed mother). Though I believe you do need to take into account an author’s biography and beliefs when engaging with their work, I do think simply labelling and dismissing Munro as a monster overlooks what this story teaches us about the insidiousness of family sexual abuse.
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. Until next time!
❤️ Thank you for reading. If you liked this post don’t forget to hit the heart to let me know and help others find my writing.
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Good to have you back Emma and on top form! X