A (completely un)revelatory travelling tip...

Also, a discussion about two films, a slightly sad Dennis, and a nice poem.

The above is a genuine voicenote I sent my sister last Wednesday, ahead of going to Spain for the weekend to see our dad (oooh, get me, embedding audio into a Substack post 💅).

Because we were only going for three days we didn’t bother paying for any luggage whatsoever - either for in the hold or a carry-on - and so, last Wednesday, Vueling sent me a threatening email about the only size of bag I was allowed to take onboard as a result: 20cm x 30cm x 40cm. I then ferreted around in 43 drawers to find a tape measure and, incredulously, sent the above to Rosie.

Do you know how SMALL 20cm x 30cm x 40cm is? It’s essentially a carrier bag. Go on, get out a measuring tape and see for yourself. Airlines, trying to squeeze every last drop from us, have come up with more and more inventive ways to do that, and now on many of them, unless you pay something for luggage, even luggage you’re taking onboard instead of shunting into the hold, you might as well pack like Dick Whittington and fling a toothbrush and a spare pair of pants into a knotted handkerchief. The below is a terrible photo I took a few years ago at Girona airport, but which still makes me laugh, and neatly illustrates the madness we’ve all been driven to by these increasingly mad bag policies. ‘IT FITS,’ the guy on the left was insisting, sweating, as he tried to pull his bag free from the metal cage.

A quick clarification before I admit to an embarrassing thing I did in November: I’m pretty low maintenance. I can be ready for anything in 15 minutes tops. I don’t have to leave the house with make-up on. If anything, I could probably do with becoming a bit more high maintenance - brush my hair every now and then, wear something other than tracksuit bottoms. Years ago, a Tatler colleague wrote a piece comparing the cleanliness of American women to the grubbiness of Sloaney British girls, declaring that the Sloane’s idea of clean knickers was to turn yesterday’s knickers inside out and slide them on. I am not *that* bad. But still, point being, low maintenance. And yet somehow, when I flew to Miami in November, I managed to arrive at the airport with a bag that weighed 26 kilos and, consequently, had to pay overweight luggage charges before even going on holiday. Pathetic.

I don’t really like going away without everything I think I might need, is the trouble. Clothes and shoes for every eventuality. And enough clean clothes, because what if you can’t wash them while you’re there? That’s why I usually check in a bag wherever I’m going, swallowing the airlines’ luggage charges because what if I need that extra of trainers with me for a walk and then I’m invited to a state banquet and I also need a pair of heels and a nice frock?

My sister, on the other hand, is different. She and her husband just went to Nicaragua for two weeks with only hand luggage. They’ve done the same travelling around India and Sri Lanka. Even when they’re given the option of a free checked-in bag because they’re flying on a more grown up airline to some far-flung part of the world, they choose to only take hand luggage. Weirdos, I’ve always thought, albeit quite jealously. How on earth can they manage that? In short, the idea of going away with a small rucksack of stuff, for me, was bewildering.

Except obviously, being forced to go away for the weekend with a rucksack was a revelation.

The above is what I texted Rosie last week just after I’d packed: two pairs of trousers, couple of tops, couple of shirts, another jumper, another pair of shoes, laptop, book, a few small toiletries, mascara, toothbrush. If I’d been invited to that state banquet I would have been in trouble, but otherwise I seemed to have plenty. And guess what? I didn’t even wear one of the shirts. I DID have too many clothes, I marvelled to Rosie, on the way home, who by this point may have been tiring of my incredulity.

Admittedly, travelling only with hand luggage is a bit of a bore when you reach security and you have to grope around in your very tightly-packed rucksack to heave out all your toiletries without accidentally pulling out spare pants or anything else embarrassing at the same time. Because security can be quite panicked now, can’t it? The scramble for the tray, the scramble to release your electronics, take your belt off, take your shoes off, the scramble to shove your tray on to the belt before the person next to you puts theirs on the belt, the queue barging for the X-ray machine and so on. Fortunately, the man in front of me last week had decided to travel in a safari jacket and spent at least half an hour patting down every one of his 98 pockets to make sure he’d emptied each one, which meant I had enough time to sort out my toiletries. Although these also included a small tube of Canesten and, let me tell you, it’s quite embarrassing to have that on display to everyone in a small plastic bag at Gatwick South early on a Thursday morning.

But what a breeze at the other end when you only travel with a rucksack! Off you get, straight past the luggage carousel and immediately on your way.

When we landed back at Gatwick on Sunday night, I reckon we were off the plane, through passport control and out again in ten minutes. I then had a slight altercation with the Purple Parking man because, naturally, I’d lost the ticket for my car and had to spend a further 20 minutes shivering in the Orange Car Park, but that was entirely my own fault.

All of which is an incredibly long-winded ramble to say if you think a rucksack would be impossible too, give it a whirl on your next trip. It’s not! It’s so easy! It’s so satisfying! Just maybe put a plaster over your tube of Canesten to disguise it! The phrase ‘life hack’ slightly makes my teeth itch, but this is definitely one of them. It’s the time of year when my inbox seems to be under siege from airlines telling me to book my summer holiday, so if you’re considering this right now, do NOT feel obliged to pay £32m to schlep a suitcase there and back. I’m never checking in a bag again.*

(*In all likelihood, I will check in 26 kilos for my very next flight.)

Picture of the week

I have laughed *every time* I’ve looked at this photo in the past three days, and I’ve looked at it quite a lot. While I was away for the weekend, Mum v kindly stepped in on the Dennis-sitting front. She made ginger cookies on Saturday and sent me this of her sous-chef. The mournful look in his eyes is laughably Oliver Twist, and a total fabrication when, as he well knows, he does extremely well on liver cake snacks.

Recommendations of the week

Right, firstly, a tentative recommendation for The Substance. This is the film that Demi Moore won the Golden Globe for last week, which made me finally watch it. I meant to watch it a couple of months ago in advance of interviewing Brooke Shields about her new book, Brooke Shields Is Not Allowed To Get Old*, because it’s a film about ageing, and I thought it was interesting and - terrible word, zeitgeisty - that both Demi and Brooke (they won’t mind if I use their first names) were addressing the subject of ageing at the same time. Then I read that The Substance was a horror film which put me off because I can’t really stomach horror.

Then Demi won the Globe and obviously I jumped on the bandwagon and watched it over the weekend.

Blimey. It is horror, and I had to keep looking away and covering my eyes since it becomes REALLY very gory towards the end, but I also couldn’t stop watching. The basic premise is: what if there was a substance you could take which gave you access to a younger, more gorgeous, perfect version of you? You can spend a week at a time as this beautiful young you, so long as you also spend a week back in older, more wrinkled you to recuperate. It’s not unlike an episode of Black Mirror, if that’s your bag, and it satirises attitudes towards ageing, and pumping ourselves full of chemicals to make ourselves look younger/thinner. Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley (Andie MacDowell’s daughter) are also excellent.

I never want to watch it again, but it’s also one of those films I’ll think about for a while. Also, Demi may now be nominated for an Oscar (the nomination announcements have been delayed because of the LA fires, and are now slated for next week), so if you watch it, you can be one of those incredibly pretentious people who boasts about having seen one of the more alternative films in the mix, because I reckon it passed most of us by when it came out in September. Recommended with caution. Trailer below.

Secondly, a poem. Do you know The Marginalian? It’s a website-slash-newsletter, quite a bit more erudite than this newsletter, which is written by a woman who largely pontificates on the meaning of life and love. On Sunday, her newsletter contained a poem which I liked a LOT, and is relevant here since we’ve talked about heartbreak a bit recently. It’s called Do Not Spare Yourself, and it’s about why those of us who are prone to heartbreak (!) shouldn’t feel so bad. Read it HERE. I also thought it would make quite a good, alternative wedding reading if anyone needs one this summer, instead of the usual dross from Captain Corelli’s Mandolin/Winnie The Pooh.

Oh, on the subject of weddings, I also have some exciting news.

Ha ha, just kidding. But I do have a question related to weddings. A few weeks ago, someone newly engaged messaged me on Instagram. Apparently I once wrote a piece which referenced a wedding reading taken from Nancy Mitford’s Love In A Cold Climate. The woman who messaged me wondered which section of the book this was, but unfortunately I can’t find this piece OR remember which wedding I was banging on about OR which reading it was. Can anyone help out? Have you come across a reading suitable for a wedding taken from Love In A Cold Climate? Can you let me know below if you have?

*if you want to read my interview with Brooke Shields, which ran in You Magazine on Sunday, you can find it HERE. I was quite nervous to be sent all the way to New York and only have an hour with her. This tends to be the standard thing these days with celeb interviews; you’re given an hour, and their PR often sits nearby to make sure you don’t ask anything that results in a remotely interesting answer. In Brooke’s case, she ended up giving me nearly four hours, there was no PR representative with us, and nothing I couldn’t ask. NOTHING. Afterwards, because of the, ahem, delicate nature of one element of the story, I had to email her to clarify a couple of gynaecological questions. It was fairly excruciating to have to email Brooke Shields and ask these questions, but it was taken with extremely good grace. I also sent her the film script for my first book, since there’s now a role for an American fifty-something ‘mom’ in it. I’m a bit worried that all the gynaecological headlines over the weekend may have scuppered my chances of Brooke wanting to play an American mom in my film, but who knows?

Nonsense of the week

Who’s been to see We Live In Time? It’s the new film starring Florence Pugh (who I love) and Andrew Garfield (who I also like a lot, I just feel less strongly about him that I do Florence, who is usually the best thing in every film she does). I went to see it last week having somehow gathered it was a romcom. Turns out, it’s not a romcom. It’s a film about cancer. There is rom, and tbf there is some com, but cancer is the main theme and therefore it’s a weepy.

Urgh, I hated it. I hated the twee way it treated cancer. I hated the clichéd tropes like the head shaving scene. I hated the way it tried to prettify a disease which isn’t pretty from any angle. I hated the way they made a film about cancer using cinematography designed to look like someone’s Pinterest board of South London - oh look, Brockwell Park! Oh look, Herne Hill! Oh look, Florence’s artful SE24 flat with its turquoise kitchen tiles and, later, their pretty country cottage complete with chickens and an Aga! Yuk. I’ve never walked out of a film, but I was tempted with this one. If you’ve had cancer, or know anyone who’s had cancer, there’s a high chance it would make you really quite furious. And so manipulative! Designed almost from the very start to drag tears from its viewers. The very first conversation about it must have gone something like this:

‘How can we make a film that has them all sobbing?’

‘We could make a film about cancer?’

‘Yeah, great idea. Cancer will get them going.’

‘Shall we throw a baby in there for good measure?’

‘Yup, good idea. Jeopardised baby. Few more tears.’

‘Should we aim for any nuance about cancer or shall we just make it look pretty and make sure Florence Pugh’s got eyeliner on in every scene?’

‘The latter works for me. And make sure her kitchen looks like something off Instagram while you’re at it.’

I don’t love crapping on other people’s work, which is one of the reasons I’d make a terrible critic. But imho this film isn’t good and says nothing. Avoid.