Hello every people!
This week my youngest kid turned 6, which was pretty cute—she requested a first aid kit for her birthday, and is now so desperate to use it that I wouldn’t be surprised if she started ‘accidentally’ tripping over her friends, knifing her sister or setting a grandparent a little bit on fire just so she has an excuse to whip out the bandages. She has been unusually interested in human anatomy since she was about 2 and I’m fairly certain she’s going to grow up to be either a neurosurgeon or a serial killer. Possibly both? I guess girls can do anything they want these days.
TV
Lately, like everyone else, I have been watching The Last of Us, which is definitely the best show I’ve seen about a fungal infection causing the end of human civilisation. Who knew athlete’s foot and vagina candida were harbingers of the apocalypse?? Not me!!!!
On the whole I am not a fan of scary or gloomy TV, mainly because being scared and miserable is not a pleasant recreational experience for me (it’s more of a vocation!). Is it not enough that we must go through life knowing that we, and all the people we have ever loved, are simply inconsequential specks of pulsating matter whose lives will inevitably be snuffed out by accident, violence, disease or time itself, only for our atoms to be immediately subsumed into a vast and uncaring universe? Do I really want to come home after a big day of relentless existential dread only to relax in front of a show about a cannibal serial killer or a brutally misogynist dystopia or a depressed British person looking at rural homes slightly outside their budget? I do not!
Despite this, I have been enjoying The Last of Us—at least, as much as it is possible to enjoy a show which has the following structure for every single episode:
Show: Hello there.
Me: Yes, hello
Show: Would you care to meet a complex and interesting new character?
Me: Shit yeah, that’s my favourite type of character.
Show: Great! In that case—here’s X. Do you like X?
Me: I love X! They’re so well-drawn, it’s almost like I know them in real—
Show: FUCK YOU, WE’RE KILLING X. WATCH X DIE.
If I made a zombie apocalypse show it would be much nicer and more chill, like, the zombies would be extremely low energy, just completely unmotivated, and the show would just be about, IDK, a family of surviving humans having a nice time living in the countryside without any traffic.
Books
I’ve just finished listening to the audiobook of Stephen Fry’s Troy, which was so juicy and confusing and entertaining. It had 1000 characters! Everyone is horny for everyone else! There is an excessive amount of slaughter! But listening to Stephen Fry read it was remarkably pleasant, like being a student in an old-timey boarding school with Stephen as your jovial history tutor. This particularly appealed to me as when I was a child I had a hardcore Enid Blyton obsession and an associated longing to go to boarding school. I see now that this was comically misguided, given that I found even single night sleepovers away from my family unendurable—I simply had no idea how to be around other people. I mean, I once had a bath while having a sleepover at a friend’s place and stayed in there for over an hour, until the water was freezing cold, because I was worried that it might be considered rude in her family to get out of the bath before being explicitly invited to? Meanwhile, her whole family were out there wondering with increasing concern whether I was okay, and if I had perhaps drowned. Why was I so weird!!
Luckily as you see I grew up to become COMPLETELY NORMAL and PERFECTLY SOCIALLY FUNCTIONAL and NOT REMOTELY FUCKED IN THE HEAD.
Other things
I highly recommend this newsletter by JP Brammer on things he does not like hearing. Intensely relatable, particularly his hatred of 'friendly reminders’:
I have never read the words “friendly reminder” and not imagined that person seething, incandescent, smoke blowing out of their ears like a hot kettle, just absolutely furious.
This is correct, nobody has ever sent an actually friendly reminder. I have no problem with people reminding me to do things I don’t want to do, and I don’t mind people wishing to be friends, but it is just not possible to do both things simultaneously. If you are reminding me to review my monthly bills or update an excel spreadsheet, you are not currently my friend.
That is all for now darlings. Hope you are all living your best lives or, if you are a bee, hiving your best hives. I am always looking for stupid interesting distractions so please let me know if you have any recommendations for new and merry ways to waste my time which don’t require any intellect or hand-eye coordination.
xoxo Eleanor
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