#55 Plan_C - Greatest Hits
I forced a bot to read 54 issues of this newsletter and this is what it said...
If you haven’t read the past 54 newsletters don’t worry you haven’t missed much at all. However to help get you up to speed on the archive, I have compiled a sort of Greatest Hits of Plan_C for all of the topics I return to again and again so you can be caught up and prepared for even more of the same to come your way.
French women look nice don't they?
Basically, if you are a French woman in a cardigan - the chances are very high that I have admired you. This is of course very on-brand because of that time I wore a beret in two cities and now anyone who has the termity to google me for work reasons is met with a lot of information about wearing a hat and a buzzfeed article about it.
I love the unbearable chicness of the French women. Their artfully unstyled hair, their smudgey eyeliner, the mannish brogues with a slip dress and an oversized le smoking - all of the things that would make me look like I was having a breakdown if I wore them - I am entirely beguiled by.
Look at this dreamy knitwear and/or denim dress
I am objectively obsessed with denim dresses. I can also confirm that I recently purchased another one (long sleeve, short, puff pleat on the shoulder, absolutely nowhere to wear it). It is a sickness. A lifelong sickness that I have to manage. I won’t compare it to diabetes because that would be too much but just know that you could say it is my very specific Type 3 denim diabetes. I reckon I have linked to at least 10 denim dresses and 150 million jumpers or cardigans.
There are some honourable high-count mentions:
corduroy - that was a wild 18 months of obsessing over cord. This has lessened a bit but it is sill an excellent look to me and it always catches my eye
checked dresses - I just bought a pink and red one from Kitri to hang next to my red one. which is hanging next to my khaki one. And the short one I used to wear for work. And the one I am watching on Ebay.
coats - I really wang on about coats as is correct.
I quite like halloumi and Joshua Jackson
Did you know this about me? I mention it somewhat regularly. I am fine with this. I am happy to mention both of them a lot more. I think these are unproblematic faves and lifelong loves.
Clean sheets
I properly love clean sheets and these are brought up in about 27 different ways over the previous 54.
I always want clean sheets that smell of soap and fabric conditioner. This is one of the reasons why I know I would have to be one of people killed in the first wave of a zombie apocalypse. I simply don’t want to live on in a world where I couldn’t sleep on clean sheets. Just poke me straight out the window to the hoards of zombies, you absolutely don’t need me on your quest for survival. You may use my cardigan collection to make hammocks or whatever it is you need, you have my written permission here.
Just be nice yeah?
A recurring motif is me just reading the news, pasting some nice quotes of other people’s words and then concluding - bloody hell, can’t we just accept differences and get the fuck along? In conclusion, I am a unique thought leader obviously and the world would benefit from my philosophy and politics.
I am not very good at writing and grammar.
Yeah. There are many erroneous, inconsistent and frustrating instances of terrible writing and grammar throughout. I will plead stylistic choice for sake of saving face but mostly I am simply a div.
This is a fair summary of my pal’s inbox when this newsletter turns up and maybe yours if you are also signed-up for job alerts for project manager vacancies with competitive salaries.
I am obsessed with Cat Cohen, the poet, comedian and thoroughly modern gal about town and her sexy little emails. In this interview, to coincide with the publication of her new poetry book, she is both heart-wrenching and beautifully amusing.
Cohen’s writing deftly walks the line between insightful and TMI, dropping vulnerability bombs like, “I’m finding quarantine to be an amazing time/to revert to the basest, most vile/version of myself I’ve worked years/to outgrow,” and “I wish I were smart instead of on my phone.”
Interview here
I just spent £4.80 on Elle magazine because I just love glossy magazines even though print media is dead and I have probably inadvertently killed a beehive by purchasing plastic-coated paper - such is life in 2021.
I always fancied myself as writing features for glossy magazines in my idle teenage daydreams. This started with J17 and the journalist Sarra Manning, who was my hero, and dreams of tapping away on one of those colourful boxy macs that I so longed for. Surely there must be a shop on Etsy where people have re-commissioned these in to fish tanks or something? I am interested if there is.
This piece has confirmed that I would probably not enjoy working for a women’s magazine after all. Read some really joyous bits of candour on the behind-the-scenes glamour and how getting things never quite eradicates the stewed in sense of feeling like an outsider. It is also funny.
The walls in the front of the office were painted matte black, split up by a mirrored, moodily lit “selfie wall.” There was a bookcase with all of its books organized by color, and doughy white leather couches that none of the employees were allowed to touch. I think the vibe was supposed to be orderly yet fun, like Reese Witherspoon’s vagina. But really, it all just looked like a place where a senator’s daughter would buy ketamine. It was a hell of a thing to look at first thing in the morning, especially if your morning was starting at 11:45.
Article here.
I have always loved agony aunt pages (J17 really does have a lot to answer for in my adult preferences) and Dolly never disappoints with her thoughtful replies to the friendship and relationship woes of the readers of Sunday Times Style. This one was nice because it wasn’t a finger-wagging, channel Beyonce type call-to-arms that the world would have you believe is appropriate - but a simple, yes that will hurt and this is the pragmatic way you will need to think about that to get through, but no false hopes.
I call this kind of thinking, “mind-physio” in that it can be painful and slow but if you do the exercises everyday it eventually accumulates in to something healthier and better that you can walk on again.
Column here.
I’ve said it before in this column, but I’ll say it again, because it is one of the most important things I’ve learnt about men: they are almost all incapable of being single. This is particularly confusing when so many of them claim they want to be single. But the male definition of being single and the female definition of being single should have two separate places in the dictionary. I know a lot of women who have spent long stretches of time on their own — really on their own — to focus on their career or self-improvement or to recover from heartbreak. I know hardly any men who have done the same. How many times have I heard that a friend’s boyfriend dumped her to be on his own, only to see him on Bumble the following week. How often has a male friend told me that he’s “enjoying being alone” when what he means is: “I’m enjoying compulsively sexting a female colleague who sleeps over and spoons me once a week on Domino’s Two for Tuesday.”
As with every sudden wild enthusiasm I partake in (and there are many of them), I am embarrassingly on-trend with whatever the marketing people want me to do. I have been retraining myself to cook again, something that I used to do and then stopped somewhere along the way. It has vastly improved my ability to assemble meals and reawakened a sad little hobby of mine of arranging things nicely on plates. This article gives some insight in to how making dinner is helping to separate work from home which I will take right now.
An interesting read on the pressures of social media and how self-cancelling -a term that literally does not need to exist because we have one already - deleting your account.
The social media landscape of today feels far less comfortable and more anxiety-inducing than the one that brought many of us to the platforms in the first place. Aminatou Sow said recently on Haley Nahman’s podcast, "The terms on which you show up are not the terms in which you are currently living." What brought people to these platforms can still be found but access has been clouded and corroded by an understanding that you are being watched, always.
Article here.
I know we’ve passed peak Shrimps Antonia pearl bag madness - but I have been very seduced by the black beaded sister with a handle of Perspex joy. I can’t help but imagine nights out and all of the beautiful things I will wear and how I could clonk this down on sticky bars in my beloved Dalston and regret it instantly but be too caught up in inebriated nonsense to notice until Sunday morning and have to rinse it under the tap. Wistful sigh.
Although. I would settle for just being allowed to get dressed-up and go to work at the minute. Oh how I miss wearing shirts! I remarked to my colleague the other day, “Remember when I wore a leather pencil skirt and pointy-collar shirt to the regulators office in Victoria with you? I would love to do that again.” to which he replied, “No, of course I don’t.”
It has been a bit of grim time in the old self-esteem brain asylum of recent, a combination of working a bit too much and not moving a bit too little has rendered the meat skeleton that I heave around, on the unwanted chubbier side of things again. Sometimes this makes me feel like a big, old, fat failure again but it is always nice to be in the same vibe as comic and word genius, Victoria Wood. I don’t have Latin anything though.
These are the alternative images I had for the header because I just couldn’t pick.
You tell me if I made the right choice. I still don’t know…
C x