Are YOU suffering from Glastonbury/Ascot/Wimbledon etc summer event fomo? Here's the solution!

Also, I'm in love with my new curtains, an exciting new musical and a book recommendation. Plus Meghan's new rosé AND Dennis in a paddling pool.

Here’s my daily radio routine, since you haven’t asked: I tend to have Radio 4 on until 9, then switch to Radio 2, occasionally dart over to Times Radio or Matt Chorley on 5 Live in the afternoon, and then back to Sara Cox (💘💘💘) and her magnificent cheerfulness on Radio 2 again at tea time. Yesterday, there was a LOT of pre-Glastonbury chit-chat on Radio 2 because the BBC covers the whole thing, and their head of content has just declared that there’s going to be even more coverage this year. Glastonbury, he has declared, is now an annual event on a par with Wimbledon and the World Cup.

It gave me slight fomo. I’ve never actually been to Glastonbury but, as events go, it does now seem to be up there with Christmas in the way that everyone talks about it excitedly for weeks in advance, there’s TONS of coverage, our Instagram feeds will be RAMMED with pictures of it for the next week or so (‘the best place on earth’), and then it all goes quiet again until the cycle repeats itself next year. Except not next year, actually, because 2026 is a fallow year when they give the farm and surrounding fields a year off all that psychedelic wee, so after this weekend it’ll be back in 2027.

Anyway, it’s become so mega that I have fomo, despite not being one of life’s natural campers. I went for lunch at my sister’s house on Sunday, and on her kitchen floor was an enormous pile of ephemera waiting to go in the car - cool box, shoes, tent, tent pegs, bags of snacks from Sainsbury’s and so on. Also, something called a ‘whizzer’ which I thought was a hip flask but is, actually, a shewee. My sister and her husband are longggggg time Glastonbury devotees and take preparing very seriously.

I spent most of the day before lunch at my sister’s, so Saturday, lying on my sofa - sheltering from the heat on the hottest day of the year - watching Jack Draper at Queen’s. I had a diet coke in one hand (the New York Times ran a good piece last week calling diet cokes ‘fridge cigarettes’, which I was trying not to think about), and a Magnum mini in the other. The cameras kept cutting to the crowd, fanning themselves with their programmes, sweating into their collared shirts and pink shorts. I had actually looked at tickets to go to Queen’s on the Saturday since I was watching with the lovely man and he’s a tennis nut. But not very good ones in the stadium started at £600 each and went up steeply from there, so the telly it was.

That evening (and I’m getting to my point, I promise), I went to a friend’s for drinks where my pal Sarah talked about how hot Ascot was last week, but said that it was worse for the men because they couldn’t take off their jackets. Apparently there was a day a couple of years ago where it his 38 degrees and they WERE allowed to take off their jackets, but not this year. Rotten luck, chaps.

And all of the above (here’s the point!) has led me to wonder whether, given the growing heat of our summers, and the soaring cost of going to various events, whether it’s not better now simply to stay at home and watch them on the telly?? You’ll actually SEE the acts at Glastonbury and won’t have to walk several miles back to your tent afterwards. You won’t run the risk of dehydration or sunstroke at the tennis or racing. You won’t have to pay eleventy billion pounds for a glass of Pimm’s.

I had a long chat with a friend about AI images over the weekend, so to illustrate this I asked Deep AI to come up with a pic of a ‘sad woman watching Glastonbury at home with a bottle of rosé’ and, well, here we are. Artists, I don’t think you need to give up the day job QUITE yet…

Last week, scrolling through my Instagram feed, I couldn’t get over the number of people (and influencers) who seemed to be going to Ascot. And it’s not a cheap day out - if you tot up a Royal enclosure tickets, getting there, getting back, drinks, contribution to the picnic, more drinks, outfit etc, you’re running well into the hundreds and upwards. I last went a couple of years ago and swore I’d never go again because I found the crowding, the traffic, the heat, the showing off (did you even go to Ascot unless you took a photo of it for Instagram?), and the lack of a lot of people even bothering to watch the racing UNBEARABLE. The Princess of Wales presumably decided the same this year, that it would be much easier to stay at home and stick it on the telly. Quite right. Then you may actually even see a horse.

Is this all very miserable of me and entirely missing the point of live events? Is it a sign of age? Am I simply trying to combat Glastonbury fomo by claiming that it’ll be better to watch it from home, a short waddle from one’s own bathroom? MAYBE. On Sunday, my sis and I debated queuing to go to Wimbledon this year, but tbh we might as well stick it on the telly and watch it with a bottle of rosé from our sofas. We won’t get too hot OR rained on. We won’t have to fight with 372,562 others to get the District Line home again. We’ll have John McEnroe doing his sardonic thing from the commentary box. What more does one need?

Picture of the Week

LOOK AT MY NEW CURTAINS! I moved to Crystal Palace in September 2020, so nearly five years ago. That’s how long it’s taken me that long to a) decide on material for my sitting room windows b) be able to afford said material. What you can’t see here is the bay window in the sitting room, also quite big, which meant I needed 30 metres in total for curtains. My poor SAINTED mother (queen of not just marmalade-making but curtain-making too) then set about making these giant curtains while I spent a frankly unhinged amount of time on curtain pole websites. They were going to be big curtains, so I knew I needed sturdy poles (no sniggering at the back). In the end, I found a company called SP Harrison who make very lovely bespoke steel poles and were SUPER efficient to deal with over measurements etc. The poles took 12 weeks to make, but arrived a few weeks ago which meant I could finally - FINALLY - hang them up.

Needless to say, the bay window pole needs a tiny sliver shaved off with an angle grinder because it doesn’t quite fit (this is my fault entirely for lackadaisicalness with a tape measure), so that’s why no pic of the bay window here. But the nice man from Task Rabbit is coming back later this week to do that, which means then those curtains can go up too. I am ECSTATIC. If you’re interested, the linen is from the v excellent Cloth Shop on the Portobello Road (it’s essentially fabric porn, if you’re into that sort of thing, which I very much am), and the shade is parchment. I put these up on Saturday (quite a lengthy process because I kept sticking the pins in too low/too high etc while wobbling on a v high step-ladder), and then I had to keep looking back at the window every three seconds while the tennis was on, feeling a spike of pure JOY every time I did.

Last week I wanted to marry my suitcase; now I want to marry my curtains. No idea what household item it’ll be next week. Maybe the new frying pan I’ve bought to improve my tortilla skills.

Recommendations of the Week

1. Do you remember, in 2017, the story of the poor woman who got stuck hanging upside down, between two panes of glass in a window, in her date’s bathroom? She’d thrown the, um, contents of the loo through the window because it wouldn’t flush, but it turned out there were two panes of glass not just one, the poo got lodged between the panes, she tried to retrieve it, got stuck herself and the fire engine had to be called to get her out. Needless to say, it went viral across pretty much the entire internet, poor woman.

   Anyway, my very funny, very brilliant friend Jamie (Jamie of the podcast My Dad Wrote A Porno fame) is currently directing a musical based on this modern dating parable, Lovestuck, at Stratford East, and it’s had PROPERLY brilliant reviews. I’m going to see it in a couple of weeks but wanted to flag before then because it’s genuinely had such good reviews, all four and five stars, and the music is apparently ace. Finishes on July 12 so QUICK STICKS if you want tickets. Get them HERE.

2. This wonderful book:

It’s the story of an old man and his dog, essentially, which may not sell it to you immediately. He’s ageing, losing his marbles a bit, and his son is trying to take away the dog. So it’s also about family, and friendship, and what a life should or shouldn’t look like. Set in a small rural Swedish village, where they seem to have MUCH better state care for the elderly then we do in the UK (not difficult?). Initially I found parts of it annoying because the writing often meanders from present day, then back in time, to the present day again without much signposting. Actually, I settled in after a while and realised (I think?!) that this is supposed to echo the old man’s wandering thoughts as he reflects back on his life. Very atmospheric and will almost certainly make you cry. I loved it.

Nonsense Celebrity Rosé of the Week

We have an exciting new entry! Meghan Markle’s new rosé! It was announced last week and apparently has ‘soft notes of stone fruit, general minerality and a lasting finish.’ As ever, it’s called, after her brand, but I think she’s missed a trick here. Why not ‘Duchess’ to really show Dolly Parton and Kylie where they can stick their bottles of ‘Dolly’ and ‘Kylie’? (This may mean less to you if you didn’t read my league table of the silliest celebrity rosés a couple of weeks ago.)

We don’t know how much it’s going to flog for yet as it doesn’t launch for another week. It also won’t be for sale in Asda, alas, unlike Gary Barlow’s rosé. You’ll have to get it online from her website and currently she doesn’t ship to the UK. So those of us in Britain will have to await the verdict from our pals in the US. Looks the right hue to me, although I don’t think much of her serving suggestion. If I went over to a mate’s house and she opened a bottle and then scattered apricots halves over the tablecloth I’d call the police, but each to their own. I’m just delighted to welcome another celebrity rosé to the gang. Who next? Bonnie Blue? Holly Willoughby? Christopher Biggins? It seems to be a bottomless market. Dennis might as well have one at this rate.

PS. Talking of which, here he is in his new paddling pool. I wouldn’t say Dennis is an enormous fan of the heat. If he was a human being, he’d be one of those Englishmen who goes on holiday to France and spends the whole time red faced and under a panama, moaning about how hot it is and that everything tastes of garlic. And then yesterday, just as it was cool enough to go to the park in the afternoon again, he was larking about with a ball and got stung on the paw by a bee in a patch of clover. It was touch and go at first, and he behaved as if his leg would need to be amputated, but after a few biscuits the paw had improved enough that he could get up and leap all over an unsuspecting and quite elderly beagle. Also, and I’ve already asked this on Instagram, but does anyone have any tips for removing grass seeds? He came in from the garden like this yesterday morning:

Then a friend messaged saying I need to be careful because her brother’s dog got a grass seed in her nose, which eventually wormed its way into her organs, grew, and then killed her. The very idea of this practically made me weep like a young Mitford sister at my laptop. The trouble is Dennis is SO BAD at being brushed. Brushes (and the mop) are his sworn enemies. So I tugged them off throughout the day, when he wasn’t looking or paying attention, but it’s not a hugely efficient process. Any tips?

OH also this has reminded me that Mum wrote a very lovely Substack last week about her parents and family in general, and the constancy of animals, and included a pic which I’d never seen of me. In fact she dug out two of me, and in both I’m clutching small Jack Russell puppies, which seems quite prophetic now, so I’m vainly going to stick them in below. In the first one, you can actually see the whites of its eyes, poor thing.

OH SORRY FINAL FINAL THING: last week I recommended a suitcase and managed to paste in the wrong link. Sorry. If you’re after this magical suitcase, HERE you go. That is now the right link.