January Scrap Book

The month so far...

Julia, round glasses, big smile, probably a couple of feet from tea and a book.

Scraps of things, torn from things but not yet pinned to a cork board, litter my mind like tokens in the Crystal Dome - start the fans please. I’ll stick them down here before they blow away. I might make the Scrap Book a monthly thing.

Christmas was great because it was small and cosy and we didn’t go anywhere much. I read a lot. Luxuriously under a blanket, with tea, like people do on television. I looked at my phone less. My attention span got longer.

We bought an alarm clock, marking the end of being awoken by a warble from one of our phones. What were we thinking? Being dragged from sleep by the little vandal that opens the portal to hell before breakfast. No more phones by pillows. There has to be a room where this stuff can’t get in. It already feels like relief.

Among my reading pile was a book called Bitter Sweet, hoovered while the decorations were still up, an early proof from the writer Hattie Williams. It’s about a young publishing assistant who falls for the charms of a much older man, an author she’s admired since childhood. I inhaled it all in a day and a bit. I’m always glad to read toxic romances but particularly now I’ve written one of my own. And particularly ones like Hattie’s which freely mines the internalised shame such relationships produce. In the women, of course. Never the men. It seems, as more 2025 proofs arrive, to be a bit of a theme this year. Or maybe I’m just being sent them because I talk about the subject on social media.

Some excellent things I’ve been reading.

Still, I’m heartened by the growing number of stories by women wanting to expose covert abuse to the light. That’s all it is - someone, somewhere, turning on a light. The men look up, ashen-faced, certain they’d never have to explain themselves. Looking forward to more light in 2025.

I’m still furious about Kaos being cancelled. Charlie Covell’s unique reimagining of the Greek gods and their interactions with the mortals was, unquestionably, the best thing uploaded to Netflix in 2024 (or indeed any other year). Covell had so much more to say and, although it finished quite beautifully, like Olga Korbut landing a dismount, it is one of the few drama series I’ve seen in these recent, sequel-obsessed times, that so clearly could have grown and bloomed into something even more sumptuous. The imagination and clarity and delicacy of it quite took my breath away.

And I’m not just cross to lose something in its prime, when I was so invested. I’m angry because of what that says about the drama they think we want now. The modern Netflix show is pacy and plotty and barrels from A to B like a brake-less train but the words and the feelings are thin and anchored in nothing.

Misia Butler in Kaos (Netflix)

I like daft as much as the next person. But I also want to be treated like my concentration is a required part of the bargain. I don’t want someone to make TV for me to watch while I scroll eBay for crockery. I’ll look for pasta bowls on my own time.

I don’t even look at my phone during Traitors, back for another gothic skulk in a Scottish castle, saving us from a January of long nights and low temperatures. Despite a delicious parade of knitwear (Claudia’s) and a brilliantly-cast bunch of people, it’s starting to wear at the elbows in one vital aspect. Three series in, why haven’t the Faithful clocked the last two people coming into breakfast? They are always - ALWAYS - the ones on the Traitors’ murder shortlist. So they must be faithful. Do they say it aloud and then get edited out? I must know.

When are we getting season 3 of Hacks? I’m taking this personally. Jean Smart won another Golden Globe for her performance at the weekend and thanked co-star Hannah Einbeinder. They had a 6am call the next day because they’re filming season 4. Seriously, when do we get series 3?

I keep finding myself browsing big earrings, even though I never wear them. But I can’t stop looking. Jewellery mostly annoys me when I’m wearing it, but I like the idea of statement earrings even though I’m unsure what I’d actually be saying with them. My ears are STRONG.

Timoclea Kills the Captain of Alexander the Great by Elisabetta Sirani (1659)

I read about Timoclea last week: a feminist icon in Plutarch’s Life of Alexander who killed her rapist by pushing him down a well. When the fall didn’t quite kill him, she finished him off with a rock. She was arrested and taken before Alexander the Great or whatever, and she argued her way out of it. Got off Scot-free.

My book (impressive not to have mentioned it until now) will be serialised on The Pigeonhole, starting on 24th January. If you download their app and sign up (free) they’ll let you read Don’t Make Me Laugh in 10 instalments, released over 10 days. It sounds lively and modern and you can interact with the book and me while you’re reading. I imagine I’ll pop up in the margin and ask, “How does this bit make you FEEL?” Other authors seem to have loved it. I’ll report back. Or come and join us there.

I was on the BBC’s 6 Music radio yesterday, talking to Nick Grimshaw about the book’s release in just over a month. Lots of nice messages afterwards. I have to practice talking about it concisely and calmly without giggling or going off at tangents.

I was over-excited but I’m looking forward to the publicity to come.

If you’d like to pre-order my book, all of these people (see image) would deem you a person of good taste and impressive empathy because everyone knows writers love pre-orders but only the truly empathetic do anything about it.

Until next time.