Does anyone else feel a *tiny* bit sorry for the Coldplay couple?

Also, London's most expensive main course, Dennis helps (sort of) in the garden, some summer book recommendations, and am I making tea all wrong?

Well, it’s certainly going to make for an interesting Halloween, isn’t it? Who will couples dress up as: the pair from Salt Path, or the Coldplay kiss cam duo? Both solid choices. Both relatively easy costumes.

There aren’t many moments that I miss Twitter, but last week I did a bit because I bet the jokes about the Coldplay couple were good. In case you missed it, although there can hardly be anyone now who doesn’t know about them, a couple were at a Coldplay concert in Boston last week when the ‘kiss-cam’ swung to them, only for both to immediately hide their faces. ‘Either they’re having an affair or they’re just very shy,’ joked Chris Martin. Except he was right - they were having an affair, and within hours the whole world knew about it. Instant meme.

In the worldwide frenzy over this viral video, various personal information has spilled out. Turns out, he - Andy Byron, the CEO of a tech company - has a wife and two children. First I read that she, Kristin Cabot, head of HR for this tech company, was separated, then another account saying that she was married to her second husband. No children of her own, supposedly, although a picture of Kristin with her second husband’s children is doing the rounds on the internet. Andy’s wife supposedly removed him from her Facebook profile before taking the profile down altogether. The tech company, Astronomer, has since released a statement saying that Andy’s stepped down. A statement from Andy himself which also went viral was later revealed as a fake. Companies including IKEA, Tesla and Aldi have jumped on the bandwagon, making jokes about it via their own social media to advertise their products. If it comes out later this year that there was a mysterious dip in worldwide productivity in mid July, this’ll be why.

Serves them right! Cheaters get everything they deserve! Play stupid games, win stupid prizes, the internet largely seems to have decided. That last one actually came from the woman who uploaded the video, Grace Springer, who’s been on breakfast TV saying she doesn’t regret uploading her clip from the concert, but she does feel bad for the families involved.

Me too! But I also can’t help feeling sorry for the two protagonists at the heart of this monumental screw-up. Look, just to be clear, cheating is bad. Finding out that your partner/parent is having an affair this way would pretty devastating. But being so utterly and completely EATEN ALIVE by the internet must also be very, very uncomfortable at best, and really quite damaging at worst.

I’m not saying it’s exactly the same, but I’ve had two fairly shaming dunkings online. Both after writing columns. In 2019, I wrote a column saying that, in short, people should stop fiddling with their thermostats so much and put on a jumper if they were cold, which led to one ‘cancellation’ on Twitter. Last year, I wrote a column about the Gen Z work ethic based on various conversations with friends, a particularly inflammatory headline was stuck on it, and the next day I was trending on Twitter. In a bad way. This experience was even worse, and led to a good few of weeks of abuse and the odd death threat (which is why I came off Twitter).

As I said, it’s not *quite* the same in terms of scale. But by a certain point with these episodes, and certainly by the point you’re trending on Twitter, I’m not sure it matters. You feel like the whole world is pointing and laughing at you, the village idiot in the metaphorical stocks for the day/week/month. You feel a hot sense of prickly shame that makes you want to avoid the internet altogether, lest you look online, see something else and it stings you like a wasp all over again. You feel more ashamed at your core than you probably ever have done before. It’s grim. In neither case would I take back what I wrote, but the jeering and laughing and sheer amount of abuse definitely made me wonder, for a brief spell, whether I was maybe everything that was being said about me. If you’re going to put yourself or your writing out there, these days, you have to be prepared for the flak, I get it. But should you have to be prepared for quite such a level of vitriol? My skin is definitely a bit thicker, these days. But it’s not bullet proof.

AGAIN, the couple in this story have had it much, much worse, but that’s why I can’t help feeling some sympathy for them. They’ve now had five days and counting of abuse and jeering. He’s lost his job and presumably his wife. It may be the same for her. They did a silly thing. No, they did a deeply hurtful and stupid thing. But becoming the laughing stock of the world, being bullied, essentially, by the rest of us - is that fair punishment? I’m not totally sure that it is.

Pictures of the week

Exhibit A: the most delicious plate of monkfish at the River Café on Friday evening. With grilled peppers and courgettes and I think anchovies on top? An old friend and editor took me as a work thank you, which was extremely generous of her because the monkfish was £68. A main course for £68. SIXTY EIGHT POUNDS. Which is what most of the main courses at the River Café now seem to cost. And starters are about £40. ‘Have whatever you like,’ Jackie said sweetly as we perused the menu when we sat. And then she ordered pasta for a main course, which cost more like £40, but I really wanted the fish and as it was on a company card I thought ‘Well, why not?’ But £68 for a main course is…going some, is it not?

Obviously, being the River Café and being a lovely sunny July evening, it was heaving. And it IS a truly gorgeous spot, sitting outside there beside the river as the sun sets. But how are so many people affording this? I keep seeing chefs on Instagram talk about how brutal the restaurant trade is atm, and reading more generally about restaurants closing, given how expensive labour, energy, rents and supplies all cost, these days. But then you try to make a booking in a London restaurant and they tell you they’re full until Christmas. Is London such a bubble to the rest of the country? Is that a silly question? I mentioned this to my dad over the weekend and he said it was immoral to eat in such expensive places given what’s going on in Gaza, but I don’t think it’s that simple. To be clear, I’m not grumbling about being taken out to a lovely, expensive restaurant. It was a HUGE treat and I loved every morsel. I’m just sort of in awe that places can charge £68 for a main course and people are still flocking. But possibly that’s because the River Café operates in a bubble all of its own?

Exhibit B: I am delighted to announce that Dennis and I have entered our gardening era. I have had a very lovely and I think what’s called ‘established’ garden for nearly five years now, ever since I moved to Crystal Palace. The previous owners had been here for something like 50 years, so there are shrubs and trees around the edges, and what I call ‘the lawn’ in the middle of them, but this is probably a bit grand given that it’s currently a very scrubby, scorched patch of earth. And two or three times a year, I book someone from Task Rabbit to come and hack it all back when it becomes too overgrown. But apart from that I’ve done nothing to it.

‘It’s quite an old-fashioned garden, isn’t it?’ my friend Matt said once, when he came over. Is it? I don’t really know what that means. But every year I tell myself I’m going to get to grips with it, take out some of the things I don’t like (a spiky plant at the back, something that shoots orange flowers), and plant some new things I do. And every year I have failed. UNTIL NOW. In the past few weeks, I’ve been out there myself, hacking things back and weeding, and I’m almost at the stage where I’m going to bed with a seed catalogue to plot what I’m going to plant this autumn. It’s one of the seven stages of women, isn’t it, the secateur-and-gardening-gloves stage? Have I reached it a bit early? Maybe I’ve skipped over the children phase and reached it ahead of others? Either way, Dennis and I pottered about so happily on Sunday afternoon. I had a cushion for my knees, a hand fork and a podcast on about Trump and Epstein; he was less into the podcast and more into sniffing at snails and trampling all over the newly liberated soil. But it was heaven. There was a story in the papers over the weekend about the king losing 11 of his 12 gardeners in the past three years. Trouble at Highgrove, apparently! The reports said Charles gets very involved with the gardening side of things (hasn’t he always been v involved in this, I thought?), and sends notes to his gardeners in red ink expressing either delight or annoyance at the progress of various shrubs. But I think I quite like a man who knows his delphiniums. At this rate I might be quite up for working there myself. I’m still not absolutely sure how to prune properly, Your Majesty, but I’m a quick learner. So long as I can bring my terrier with me?

Recommendations of the week

A couple of months ago, someone on here or maybe Instagram said could I do a list of summer reading recommendations, and while my ego was thrilled by this, and while I have been meaning to get round to it, I’m also a bit hesitant. I kind of hate the way summer reading lists in papers and magazines make you feel like you *should* be reading a certain book. Like you have to read the it-book, the hot new release, over anything else. And quite often these lists all recommend the same books, and other books don’t get a look-in, and sometimes I pick up one of these hot, new, recommended books, because I feel like I ought to, and then - whisper it - it’s not actually very enjoyable. The Spectator summer reading list always makes me laugh because it’s full of very important people saying they’re taking the latest 900-page biography of Napoleon on holiday with them and it makes me want to scream ‘Oh for GOODNESS sake just read a John Grisham like everyone else.’

But then book snobbery, like all forms of snobbery, is mean and horrible in the way that it can make you feel small for what you like. Read whatever you want to, I always say, and stuff whatever anyone else thinks about it. Because the thing is my book choices might not be to your taste at all, but one of the many joys of books is that there are LITERALLY millions of others if you want to read something else.

My other hesitation over compiling my own list of recommendations is that I’m being very slow at reading atm. I go through phases. Maybe we all do. Sometimes I’m reading a lot; other times less. In France a couple of weeks ago, I kept lying back on the sunbed, meaning to pick up a book, only to realise half an hour later that I’d been dicking about on my phone watching mindless videos. I’m ashamed to say my phone use is v bad atm and I’ve got to find a way of reducing it (leaving it charging in the kitchen at night, for example, which I always say I’m going to start doing and yet never do). It’s eating in my reading time and I want to change that, but, oh look, another video of a chef making some sort of giant dish in a massive wok with 93 egg yolks!

All that said: I have loved the following in the past year or so if you DO want a few suggestions. Some old, some newer. Some which I’ve mentioned on here before. (And also a couple which I’ve added even though I read them over a year ago, but remembered how much I loved them while scanning my bookshelves for this yesterday.) But really, read what you like!

The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden - Quite an obvious one given that it recently won the Women’s Prize, but I loved it so wanted to include. A novel set (mostly) in a rural patch of the Netherlands, about two very different women. I know that isn’t much to go on, but I don’t want to say anymore and give the story away. Very atmospheric, quite a lot of sex, if that isn’t (or is) your thing.

I Regret Almost Everything by Keith McNally - the autobiography from the man who created Balthazar, Pastis and various other mega restaurants largely in New York. But it’s about so much more than restaurants. It’s about life and love and regrets and illness and family and also, as I think I said a couple of Substacks ago, he has a terrific knack for one-liners. Eg. ‘There are few feelings of relief that compare to the first gulp of night air after leaving a dinner party prematurely.’ Took him six years to write and a stroke in 2016 meant he had to type it very slowly using his left hand. A brilliant feat.

The Husband Hunters by Anne de Courcy - a non-fiction romp about the dozens and dozens of rich American women who married penniless British toffs in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Aka the dollar princesses. It came out in 2017 but I picked it up a few months ago for research (writing research, not husband research, just to be clear). It’s a riot, this book. You cannot believe the money they had - the jewels, the dresses, the parties, the aggressive mothers who make Mrs Bennett look like she was on Xanax, the houses - practically palaces - they built in New York to try and outdo one another. Also, there’s currently an exhibition at Kenwood House of various women mentioned in it by John Singer Sergeant, which I keep meaning to go to, but Hampstead Heath takes about nine days to get to from Crystal Palace. It’s on until October though, so we have time.

Three Wild Dogs by Markus Zusak - I picked this up earlier this year having read a very good review in The Sunday Times. Probably more for those who are into dogs than not, but it’s wonderful - a memoir about three dogs (as the title suggests) by the Australian author of The Book Thief. Funny and very moving at the same time, and I knew I was going to love it quite early on when he writes about taking one of his dogs, Reuben, for a walk. ‘We were outside the bus depot when Reuben let go on the footpath, and how do I put this mildly? At best, it was like someone just dropped their milkshake. At worst, it was something monsoonal.’ Told you it was probably more one for dog owners. Would also make a good present for someone who loves dogs.

(TALKING OF DOG MEMOIRS, HAVE YOU PRE-ORDERED YOU KNOW WHAT? The Year of The Dog, my dog memoir, coming out in October. Pre-order it HERE which means you get it the DAY it comes out. I was going to give you a week off today and try not to mention it, but as I’m writing about books, I’ve decided to shoehorn it in anyway. Cover reveal next week - EXCITING! Special shout-out to Jill Mansell, Daisy Buchanan and Andrew Hunter-Murray who have given me lovely quotes for it. ‘This made me laugh like a drain on a packed Underground commute, and I haven’t even got a dog,’ is Andy’s quote, which I like very much because it makes the point that you don’t have to be bonkers about dogs to read it. At the time of writing, I am yet to hear from the Queen, but remain optimistic!)

Basically anything by William Boyd. I read Gabriel’s Moon, his most recent, while in Spain last month. It was perfect. A spy thriller but not so fiendishly clever that I couldn’t understand it.

Precipice by Robert Harris - The totally totally gripping story of the affair between Herbert Asquith and Venetia Stanley as Europe slid towards WWI. He was the prime minister; she was a young toff, and he should have been concentrating on the international situation instead of writing love letters, the silly old goat. Features particularly brilliant cameos from Churchill. Astonishingly, all the letters by Asquith that Harris quotes are real. Sadly, Venetia’s replies were destroyed. A novel which reads like a thriller based on a true story.

The Five by Hallie Rubenhold - Including this a) because I listened to a podcast which reminded me about it the other day b) I spied it on my shelf. It’s a very brilliant page-turner about the five women killed by Jack the Ripper, with a particularly moving last chapter about why we should remember the women, not him, and why this sort of reporting regarding murders of women is still a problem today. Which makes it sound very dry and worthy I KNOW but it really isn’t. Rubenhold is a properly brilliant historian and it’s one of those books that you’ll read and want to tell every else you know to read it too. OK, not your typical sun-bed read, but I find that expression quite annoying. What is a sun-bed read, anyway? It might be Napoleon to some or a rom com to others.

The Wedding People by Alison Espach - I was alerted to this book’s existence by Helen Lederer’s brilliant competition, the Comedy Women in Print prize. Last week, they announced their longlist and this was on it, and since I hadn’t heard of it, I thought why not? I haven’t finished yet, but I’m galloping through it because it’s funny and sharp - an American novel about a woman whose husband leaves her, so she books herself into a hotel to kill herself (this isn’t really a plot spoiler, you find out on about the third page), only to find the entire hotel has been taken over by a wedding party. Also currently 99p on Kindle, and don’t we love a Kindle bargain?

So there you go. Some things I have very much enjoyed semi-recently.

Also, it’s not a book, but this week I would additionally like to recommend this focaccia:

Behold, my Anna Jones’s focaccia!

Regular readers (hi!) may know that I’ve attempted a couple of focaccias in the past few months, but I haven’t been that happy with the results. (Have I ever written a sillier sentence than that?) Well, I’m very happy to say that the Anna Jones caper and fennel seed focaccia recipe is the best so far (there we go, an even sillier one). I don’t like sticking recipes in here unless they’re already online as I feel like it cheats chefs out of book sales, so this is in Anna Jones’s Easy Wins book, and it IS easy. I didn’t attempt to make anything bready for ages because I was a bit scared of it. What the heck are we supposed to do with yeast apart from stick some Canesten on it, amirite girls? Except it turns out you don’t have to be scared of yeast and it’s not that difficult. You stick the lemon peel on at the last minute with this one, and I’m not sure it added that much, tbh, but the focaccia itself was dee-licious.

Nonsense of the week

An important question: how do you make your tea?

We have wars about this in my family, because Mum, Dad and my little brother like the milk in first on the basis that it ‘cooks’ the milk and makes the tea taste better. I’ve always sloshed it in afterwards. If I’m at Mum’s, I have to remember to put her milk in first while the kettle boils, because if I forget and do it afterwards when I slosh the milk into mine, she can tell. Honestly, she knows.

Anyway, the milk in first or afterwards is an old thing that snobs bang on about and it’s very boring. But a new argument over tea has recently revealed itself to me, and that is: is it weird to slosh milk into your mug if the teabag is still in the water?

Look, since you didn’t ask, here’s my tea-making technique: I boil the kettle, I fling a teabag into the mug, I pour water over the top of it, let it sit for 30 seconds or so, slosh in a bit of milk, fish out the teabag after another 30 seconds. Perfect cup of tea, imho.

But when I did this in Whitstable last weekend, the man I’ve been seeing caught me at it and made noises of real revulsion. I couldn’t put milk in the tea if the bag was still in there, he claimed, that was disgusting. But I don’t think it is, is it? I think it means that you can control the strength of your tea more easily, because if you accidentally slosh too much milk in, you just leave the bag sitting in it for longer??

And that’s probably enough about tea for now. But I am genuinely interested: have I been getting it wrong all this time, or is my technique quite normal?

Although it could be worse. There was a story in yesterday’s Mail saying that Gen-Z are making tea in the microwave. Another schism for the generations to squabble over! ‘Almost two-thirds of under 30s admitted to making a brew in this way,’ it said, reminding me of those Tiktoks that Americans make to troll us:

@jchelle36Americans making hot tea 🍵 #americanintheuk @mleemaster10

Tiktok failed to load.

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