Hi team,
Welcome to the twenty-first installment of Furloughed. Maybe it’s a newsletter about things I’m doing while furloughed, things you can do, or both.
When I was little I loved to read. I got really into Greek myths at one point and brought some home from the school library. Then there were a series of books from the 70s from the same library. The series was called Tim and the Hidden People and the book I loved was called Tim and Tobias: Magic in the Wind. It’s about a boy and his cat who go on magical adventures.
I read and read and read. And then, at secondary school, novels became something that wasn’t magic any more. They were to be analysed. They were to be carved up and dissected using the middle class code of emotional detatchment and intellectual and muted engagement with culture.
How books made you feel no longer mattered. They were to be used against you instead, to examine how well your brain could spit out what some **** from Cambridge University thought about them. Now novels made me have panic attacks. Novels made me angry. Novels traumatised me. I renamed Enduring Love —which we were forced to read and analyse the shit out of — ‘Enduring Ian McEwan’. I HATED it. 0 stars. And it felt extra personal because I’m from Bristol and we have the Balloon Fiesta and his stupid big balloon comes crashing down on a wanky picnic and I hated it. Hate, hate, hate. There. Now I’m allowed to say how I feel because I’m an adult. I can be as childish as I like. So there. Fuck Enduring Love. It is shit. Shallow, obvious crap. Crappity crap crap crap. You’d think, at 34, I’d be over this injustice of a force-feeding. I am not. I have hated the book for 34 minus 17 years. THAT is enduring. It was the final straw book. The final laceration from which there was no return. Novels, which I had once gotten so much comfort from, were now menacing. I turned to movies instead. To television series’.
But my Mum is right about stories. They will save us. BUT (and it’s a big but), as I’ve read all this intellectual stuff about race, gender, and class these past few months and she has at times said, “why don’t you read a novel instead?” I wondered if I wasn’t reading a novel because reading a novel would be using up time that could be spent reading all the critical theory I should be reading. Or whatever the hell the intellectual description of intellectually engaging with literally everything is. But actually, the answer is much deeper than that (or a bit deeper and I’m just being overly dramatic) and much simpler.
The reason I haven’t read a novel instead is because I can’t.
I mean I can physically read a novel. But I am always fighting against trauma to do so. I have to read novels very s-l-o-w-l-y. And they have to be so exciting, and so full of humanity all the way through, so connecting… that I am able to finish them. Some examples of novels for adults I have read since my A-Levels nearly broke me are:
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
The End of Mr Y by Scarlett Thomas
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
Everything else is snippets or half-finished things. I’m grateful to have read novels like To Kill a Mockingbird and 1984 before I was no longer able to. And I am currently very slowly reading Beloved by Toni Morrison. And I did slowly read Crime and Punishment after my A-levels aside from the last few pages. Take that tension, I’m an anarchist.
So — coming out the other side of all the non-fiction reading — this week I thought about a book I really, really, loved that spoke to my heart — Skellig by David Almond. The part that stayed with me was the little girl in it who is home-schooled because her parents think school is damaging and she can read William Blake at home instead. (Despite having studied William Blake at A-Level I still love him. Phew). David Almond is really onto something here.
I think schools should have classes that are book groups. Not English Literature. Just a space where stories are read aloud and kids can talk about how they made them feel or, if they don’t like talking, they can just listen. And nobody will have to sit an exam. Nobody will be measured. Nobody will be judged. They just get to have their souls filled with stories before carrying on with their other classes.
Things to watch
Short things
“You have this extreme paranoia on the part of people who used to feel quite comfortable with their place at the top of the table leading the country’s conversation and are now feeling a bit threatened by the fact that audiences can talk back.” — Ash Sarkar
(Double Ash for you today.)
Series
Mainstay recommendations are City of Ghosts and Waffles + Mochi. And We Are Lady Parts.
We started watching Feel Good because my baby sister (Happy Birthday!!! XOXO) tweeted about it. It’s great. With actors from Fresh Meat/ Ghosts, Umbrella Academy and more.
Comedy
I identify as Bo Burnham now. We watched his Netflix special Inside this week and it pretty much encapsulates our collective millenial scream of this moment. See also his White Woman’s Instagram from the same special with lines like, “a goat cheese salad” and, “incredibly derivative political street art”.
It also felt like a good place to shrug off all the toxic stuff from the past few months, draw a line under it and turn over a new leaf.
Documentaries
I had a cry at the guy who studies coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef having a cry about the bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef on the new David Attenborough documentary, Breaking Boundaries.
Films
Last Saturday, on movie and homemade pizza night, we watched Hancock. I can’t believe I hadn’t seen it before. It was fun.
Things to read
The introduction to the Blackwell’s catalogue that I literally opened after I’d written my story about books above…
“I’ve been thinking a lot about what makes a community the past year. What collective responsiblity we share for our surroundings. In a time where globe-shifting events make us feel helpless, unable to change anything, what we can do is think about our communities and what makes them thrive. I firmly belive that all communities should have access to libraries and green space, to art and culture and to fresh air and nature…
I remember the first independent bookshop I ever went in to, on Pinner High Street. I had Book Tokens I had won from school, and I needed to feel smart. Mum wouldn’t let me go for what I really wanted, a Star Wars novelisation. Instead, I opted for Crime and Punishment. I was 12. As we took it to the counter, bear in mind, this is the first book I’d ever bought, up until this point mum had taken us to the library and that was my access to books, the bookseller smiled at me and asked why this book. I smiled and said I knew it was one of the greats. He nodded and said it is indeed. Then he said, ‘Do you know who would give Dostoevsky a run for his money? Brian Jacques.’ My mum was horrified. But I had a few pounds left over on my token and the bookseller let me get both Redwall and Crime and Punishment. They were the first books I ever owned. And I stared at them for years, so very proud that they were mine. And I have an independent bookseller to thank for that.” — Nikesh Shukla
Reports
An intergenerational audit for the UK (2020)
92% of journalists come from white ethnic groups, a higher proportion of than across all UK workers (88%)
Journalists are more likely to come from households where a parent works/worked in a higher-level occupation, one of the key determinants of social class. 75% of journalists had a parent in one of the three highest occupational groups, compared to 45% of all UK workers.
Studied neutrality has three key dimensions:
1. A particular received pronunciation (RP) accent and style of speech
2. Emotionally detached and understated self-presentation
3. An intellectual approach to culture and politics that prizes the display of in-depth knowledge for its own sake (and not directly related to work) Those from low Social Economic Backgrounds find this code alienating and intimidating but one which they must assimilate in order to succeed.
Books
I am reading the beginning of Life of Pi again (I never finished the novel but saw the movie) because I like the bit about the kid going to all the religious communities looking for community.
And I’m reading pieces of a thousand other things.
“If we, citizens, do not support our artists, then we sacrifice our imagination on the altar of crude reality and we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams.” - Yann Martel
Feel good
Afrominimalism Offers a New Vision for Black People
Things to listen to
Podcasts
Mainstay recommendation is this Blindboy podcast with Emma Dabiri.
This week, I said on Twitter I was uncomfortable reading Rivers of London because the author writes a character he doesn’t have lived experinece of. A friendly Tweeter recommended this excellent podcast episode, Culture Wars And The Untold Story Of Lyndie B. Hawkins, about a white author who was going to write an Asian American character in her novel but made the character white in the end because she felt she didn’t have the lived experience to write the character in her original form.
Music
Join a union and find your local mutual aid
Millions of people who should have access to furlough do not.
You can join a union to help protect yourself and others. Another thing to join is your local Mutual Aid group. If the database is TMI, Google where you live + mutual aid and yours should pop up. I’m in Oxford. This is Oxford Mutual Aid.
“Despite mounting evidence women have been disproportionately furloughed or made redundant while absorbing more of the unpaid work associated with the pandemic, we were concerned we weren’t seeing policy changes to reflect that, particularly ahead of the third lockdown,” said Clare Wenham, co-author of Why We need A Gender Advisor on Sage. — UK government ‘failed to consider gender’ in its response to Covid pandemic — Hannah Summers
Sustainable Suppression
Avoid the three Cs - Confined. Crowded. Close-contact settings. Mask up.
Independent SAGE has continuously put forward strategy to help us build back equal.
Here’s last week’s Independent SAGE briefing — I will update when the next briefing has happened on their YouTube channel tomorrow. And their vaccinations FAQ if you or people you know have vaccine questions.
The five pillars for Independent SAGE’s ‘Sustainable Suppression’ Strategy for Keeping Society Open are:
Vaccination for the entire population (including children once approved)
Widespread testing as part of Test, Trace and Isolate system organised through local public health
Practical and financial support to enable all sections of the community to self-isolate
Ensure COVID-safe environments in work, educational, and public environments
Robust international travel measures
Here’s a video on how to ventilate a room, which has a fun club track and cool use of lighting.
And, After two million deaths, we must have redress for mishandling the pandemic
Pushing back – tackling the anti-vax movement
People to listen to
Things to do
Send me any fun things to do or look at you see so I can include them!
Join the Algorithmic Justice League in the movement towards equitable and accountable AI
Sign the petition - Do not restrict our rights to peaceful protest