The Weekend List: No. 8

This latest edition of The Weekend List has been put together on the 9.07 Manchester to Bristol train service. I got onto the train and found myself, as I often do, with a reservation on one of those seats that has a big, white chunk of plastic wall where the window should be. Instead of a pane for watching Manchester make way to Cheshire and great heffers in fields and deep deep green there is large sticker locating the nearest fire extinguisher. This really is one of my pet hates in life. The regularity with which this happens is so often that it's almost funny. Almost. I wonder if it's an occurrence designed to make me a more patient person, somebody with less pet hates. My love of train journeys and of the view from the window always triumphs though, along with my irritation.

Onto more positive notes. This week I have been mostly listening to Sharon Van Etten's album 'Are We There'. I particularly like the jarring way she delivers the lyric "I washed your dishes but I shit in your bathroom" in the middle of the Every Time The Sun Comes Up, such a gentle and meandering song that the mention of shitting in a bathroom is quite unexpected and all the better for it. This week I also tried navigating the best way of spending lunchtimes so that you can get out of the office, and move around and rest your mind without having to spend money. I always find it easy to linger at my desk reading articles online as I eat and I'm trying to get out of that habit. Yesterday I walked the short distance to the train station and spent the hour sitting on a bench people-watching and reading. The day before I went to the library and at the start of the week I took my book and sat in the grounds of the Manchester Cathedral. I'm still working through Olivia Laing's book Echo Spring slowly, slowly.

Now I have a week off and will be spending it in Bristol with family and catching up with my Granny. My Granny who has long been chronicled on this blog as a very important part of my life. Collage-influencer, Sex in The City-introducer (I can still hear her helpless guffawing as we both watched one of Samantha's particularly graphic upside-down sex scenes with her gym instructor. I love that we watched this together) fantastic writer of letters and advise-giver. A cheerleader, except in thick-rimmed glasses and knee high boots. Granny is unwell and it looks like this will be our last chapter of gallivanting together. I'm hoping we can spend the week together, eating food that's good for the soul, and maybe guffawing more about sex, if I can find get my hands on a copy of Scotty Bowers's memoir Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars which I read about in Sadie Stein's Paris Review column and sounds fantastic. A tome dedicated to who was shagging who in the Golden Age of Hollywood.

For now, here are some tasty reads and listens for the weekend. Have a good one.

Culture

"Success is when you can buy any book you want without looking at the price and you never have to be around assholes." John Waters on fans, shocking parents and pushing limits. 

"She was strong yet humble, serious yet hilarious, both teacher and student, and in my mind, the physical embodiment of life itself." Danielle Pender on Deborah Sussman.

This sublime canal boat in Little Venice, London. Who would have thought it possible to fit in so many modernist chairs, jukeboxes and vintage shoes? *Tongue hangs out*

An interview with Omar Sosa and Nacho Alegre, editors of Apartamento magazine.

Style

"I like the idea of an aesthetic and a style as not just something that applies to clothes, but something that's consistent throughout all your choices." Sheila Heti interview in Rookie.

A big pink coat and trainers. A good 'throw this on, it's the weekend' outfit via Canned Fashion.

Food

Breakfasts in literature. "If somebody is having toast and marmalade this morning, it is a safe guess that they had it yesterday and that they will have it tomorrow as well. For this reason, breakfast is the ideal barometer of normalcy, the meal that tells us who a person really is."

A love letter to the $1 ice-cream sandwich.

Listening

The Map That Made New York  

Groovy downloadable mixes from Manchester

Dance to this! Ask Me After Midnight by Glowing Palms

And some extra snacks

Too lazy to be ambitious.

Truth-bombshell from Durga Chew-Bose

Herb Lester's round up of Old New York.

This wonderful Tumblr, From There. 

Striking photographs of women tanning themselves.