35: So Metaphorical

There's always been a part of me that believes the world has discreetly ended while I've been in the cinema. The louder the film, the more believable this thought is. A soundproofed room, atmosphere thickened by popcorn smells and heavy furniture, Dolby Surround blasting and smashing its way around our heads, protecting me from the deserted world beyond. I don't know when I started expecting the world to be different once I walked out of the pictures. A couple of hours is nothing -- you can't even get a cut and recolour in two hours. Not at my hairdresser's, anyway. There's something about being shut off from everything, even for such a relatively short length of time, that makes resurfacing unreal. Everything has been swapped, then moved back into place, but ever-so-slightly off. Like that memory tray game. Stapler, mug, pencil, ruler, elastic band. Comb. I was always bad at it.I don't go to the pictures often, but we went last week to see Parasite. When it was over, I felt the same shaky sensations of the world having changed. When I walked out, things were different, just slightly, forever.Other Stuff

• Thank you to Josh Farrington for showing me this piece on the best olive oil in England, which you can find in an electrical supplies shop in Clerkenwell.

• I thought this was pretty cool: Innovative home cooks are selling their meals on Facebook marketplace. 

• The "Your Stonehenge" looks like a great exhibit and now I have another reason to go there.

• We all know that tons of the "hey look how easy it is to make these disgusting-looking Frankensnacks" videos are full of shit, but this video PROVES it, and is hilarious too. 

• Stories are my favourite things. Obviously. My second-favourite thing is hearing people who love stories talk about how much they love stories. Here's Michael Rosen and Clare Muireann Murphy talking about the art and magic of telling stories, and then Clare tells a story about the first satirical poem ever written and talks about the importance of the Fool. Totally captivating.

• The tale of Pivovar Kutná Hora, told by master storyteller Adrian Tierney-Jones.

• A map! An amazingly detailed map! Follow this link and click "UK Soil Observatory viewer", then change the layers to suit what you want to see. Soil erosion? Soil type? Crops? I could lose hours to this stuff.

• I pledged for an Unbound book this week because it looks pretty fucking ace. 

My Stuff 

• I wanted to know if younger people are still avoiding pubs and refusing alcohol as per an article I wrote a few years ago, so I spoke to university beer societies about how they feel about drinking in 2020.

Two siblings at Stonehenge – one on leave from the RAF –  1941[Image: Joyce Leeson]