The Awkward Girl's Guide to the Week | In Which There Are Pancakes

(And also quite a bit of over-thinking...)

I made pancakes this week. This might not seem like a big deal to you, but it was a very big deal to me, because I NEVER make pancakes. Or anything, really. Well, other than toast, Pot Noodles, and there was that one time in university where I made bacon sandwiches which were only a little bit carcinogenic, and not “totally lethal”, like my flatmate said they were.

Anyway.

Making pancakes was a big deal to me because I Do Not Cook. My husband is the cook in our household: a fact that caused quite the scandal when his mum’s friends found out about it. “She’s one of those flighty, modern girls who wear trousers and think women should go out to work,” I imagined them saying. And, I mean, they didn’t actually say that, obviously — or not to my face, anyway — but it was the kind of thing they might have said, because that was the way they thought.¹

But I digress.

These are not my pancakes, obviously, it’s a stock image. Can we talk about why there’s a full-to-the-brim cup of coffee precariously balanced on a BED, though? Seriously, who DOES that?

The thing that made the making of the pancakes seem like a good idea to me was not just the fact that then we would have pancakes, but the fact that I would then be able to write about how I’d made the pancakes, overcoming decades worth of self-doubt about my ability to do Real People things in the process. Not being able to cook would be my misbelief, and I would take you, my readers, on a hilarious, madcap journey which ended with some kind of profound life-lesson about how we are all capable of so much more than we think we are — or something else that I hadn’t worked out yet.

“I could tell the story of The Cheese,” I thought excitedly, remembering how, in my first year of university we’d had a shared kitchen for the entire floor of the dorm I was in, and everything you put in it would immediately be stolen. As a Non Cook, all I had to put in the communal fridge was a single block of cheese², and after my cheese had been stolen and replaced a few times, I took my NEXT block of cheese, carefully bit into each of its surfaces, then put a post-it note on it saying, “I have licked every single inch of this cheese: do NOT steal it.”

The next day, the cheese was gone.

In retrospect, it’s not THAT great an anecdote, really. Or even particularly relevant to the story. But I was still working it up, and it was going to be a GREAT post about cheese me finally cooking something from scratch, like a REAL person (“I’m a real boy, Gepetto!” I would say delightedly at the end. “I’m a real boy!”), I swear to God.

Then, as I was waiting for the pancakes to cool down, I had a quick scroll through Twitter, which was consumed with the news from Israel and Gaza, and suddenly the pancakes didn’t seem worth writing about any more. Actually, nothing seemed worth writing about any more, because how can you think/write/breathe/exist when there are things in the world that are so terrible you can’t even find the words for them?

This… is not a post about pancakes, needless to say.

It also IS a post about pancakes, though, because there’s nothing I can say — and maybe nothing I should say — about the events of the past week that will change anything, or be any different from the things everyone else has been saying. This is why I normally choose to say nothing at all at times like this. Because while I know we live in a time where we’re expected to perform compassion or it will be assumed that we have none, I also know that absolutely no one is waking up in the morning thinking, “Hey, I wonder what Amber thinks about Israel?”

But, all over Instagram and Twitter (Which I deleted from my phone this week, because not even the urge to find out what Taylor and Travis have been up to can make up for the sheer horror of that platform now…), normal people like me were releasing carefully worded statements, as if they’d been asked for an official comment, which would be the lead item on the news.

“Maybe I should say something, too," I thought. “Because if everyone else is posting about this incredibly serious, heartbreakingly-awful series of events, and I’m posting about my freaking pancakes (Which were “nice, but really runny³,” according to Max, just in case you’re wondering…), I’ll look like a complete dick. And that’s not really fair, because although I can, on occasion, be a complete dick, this is not one of those times. I follow the news (Well, I did, until this week, when I realised my mental health wasn’t really up to it, and had to start getting Terry to just give me the broad strokes). I have been thinking about it constantly. My heart is breaking for everyone who’s affected (and especially the people we know who are currently waiting for news of loved ones). But I still post photos of my desk on Instagram, and will this week be filming a few fashion Reels for a brand collaboration, because that’s my job, and it’s what I do.

And, of course, I make pancakes now. And maybe write a bit about them, too.

It feels very frivolous and redundant, to be honest, and I considered just not sending the newsletter at all this week because of it, but, honestly, it’s all I’ve got. And if, like me, you’re currently in need of anything at all to distract you from the awfulness of the world right now, here are some recommendations for you…

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WATCHING:

Wilderness

“What have people been talking about on the Internet?” said Terry, as we scrolled through Netflix last week, looking for something to watch now we’ve finished all 10 seasons of Benidorm AND the special episode with the cast interviews.

“There’s this thing called Wilderness,” I replied. “I’ve seen LOADS of people mentioning that.”

It was only as the opening credits rolled that I realised the REASON I’d seen so many people talk about Wilderness was because I hang out almost exclusively on the Taylor Swift section of Twitter⁴, and there’s a Taylor Swift song in the credits. (It’s Look What You Made Me Do, in case you care.) But it was OK, because Wilderness stars Jenna Coleman, and we generally like stuff involving Jenna Coleman, so we decided to forge ahead anyway.

Wilderness starts out with recently-married Liv and Will relocating from the UK to New York, where they will (naturally) now live in a gigantic loft apartment with a roof terrace and those floor-to-ceiling windows you can stand in front of, staring out moodily at the city skyline, ideally while holding a glass of wine. Because they live in New York now, there are lots of shots of Liv running through Central Park, or along that bit of the river that has the amazing views over to Brooklyn, just to remind us that the setting of this show is New York, OK?

Liv runs a lot in New York: and when she runs, she thinks about her husband, Will, who’s been having an affair with a woman he works with. It’s OK, though, because Liv has a plan to deal with this betrayal, and it’s to go to Arizona (Cue lots of shots of The Road, and the blue Mustang convertible they — obviously — hire), and kill him. Yes.

(Side note: KILL WILL would have been an excellent alternative title for this show, although I expect the fact that there’s already a Kill BILL probably nixed that for them…)

Does she do it?

I’m going to let you find that out for yourself, because I’m either too nice to post spoilers, or too lazy to write any more about this. You decide.

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READING

OK, so, I’m still reading The Secret Life of an Uncool Mum, which I started last week, and this has promoted the decision to retire the WATCHING/READING?WHATEVER ELSE section of the newsletter for now at least, mostly because I realised that:

a) I don’t watch a whole lot of TV, really, and, when I do, I tend to binge-watch entire seasons, which means I’m effectively watching the same damn thing for weeks on end.

b) The only time I get to read more than one book a week is if I’m taking a long-haul flight to somewhere with a really good kids club, and that’s not likely to be happening in the near future either, which means I’m just stuck repeatedly going, “Yeah, still reading that same book, how ‘bout that?”

Worry not, though, the TV and book reviews will still be here, but I think I’m going to make them a monthly feature which will be separate from the weekly roundups, so I can spend a bit more time on them, and not feel under pressure to watch/read things just so I have something to write about in the newsletter.

In the meantime, as it’s Friday 13th, in the month of October, here are a couple of vaguely spooky things I’ve written in the past for YOU to read:

The Ultimate List of the Best Modern Gothic Novels

The Ten Scariest Movies Ever, According to Me

My Bedroom is Being Haunted by a Mysterious Voice, and I’m Not Quite Sure What to Make of It, Really

And that’s all I have for you this week folks: until next time,

[BUY ME A COFFEE]

1. One of them DID once tell me I was “too pale”, though, and that I’d “look a lot better with some colour in my cheeks,” only she addressed the comments to my mother-in-law, not me, even though I was sitting right next to her at the time, and — crucially — can hear perfectly well, thanks.

2. What did I do with it, though? Did I have it on toast, or did I just, I don’t know, bite into it, like it was a block of chocolate? Either of these is possible for me…

3. It was the blueberries I’d put in them that were “runny”, btw, not the mixture itself. They were properly cooked, I just got a bit ambitious with the fruit…

4. Or I did until I deleted it, obviously.