Some things I've been enjoying recently (November 2024 edition)

Sophie Koonin

30 November 2024

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A roundup of fun things and projects.

TV

I mentioned to my husband that I'd never watched Life on Mars, so we're watching it all the way through, and it's brilliant, obviously. I'm horribly annoying when watching things that have been filmed in places I know because I will a) announce where it is and b) complain if a character goes from one place to another in a way that isn't geographically possible. For example, the most recent series of You involved the main character walking home from his place of work – the campus of Royal Holloway – through Spitalfields market, which is a 9 hour walk. Anyway, Life on Mars is set in Manchester in the 1970s, so there are about 4 streets in the Northern Quarter/Ancoats area that pop up repeatedly (Dean Street always shows up in films and TV when they want 'early-to-mid century-looking street'), as well as a courthouse I'm fairly sure was the university humanities building where I had a lot of lectures. James is a patient man.

He'd never watched Look Around You (which my university housemates and I were thoroughly obsessed with) so we've been re-watching that as well and I'm happy he's enjoying it. For the uninitiated, it's a parody science programme – the first series parodies 1980s educational programmes and the second series is much like Tomorrow's World, with presenters (including Olivia Colman) and bizarre scientific inventions. Featuring cameos from such icons as Simon Pegg, Edgar Wright, Nick Frost, Mark Heap and Harry Enfield. Series 1 is probably better, but nothing tops the actor Kevin Eldon singing Machadaynu.

I've also been persuaded to start watching Arcane, and though I've only watched one and a half episodes so far I really like the art style!

Food

I absolutely haven't kept up any kind of recipe sharing habit recently because, well, life, but here are a few bangers I've cooked (relatively) recently:

Roast chicken with tomatoey bulgar wheat from "Greekish" by Georgina Hayden – this is the roast chicken recipe I will make for the rest of my life. The chicken isn't even the best bit. The bulgar wheat gets cooked in the juices, and is incredible. The whole book is great, but this is a standout.
Cochinita pibil – great to feed a crowd, and absolutely divine. I bought a ton of tiny corn tortillas from mexgrocer.co.uk.
After 35 years I've finally decided I like aubergine, and it's all thanks to this pasta alla Norma recipe (good old Ottolenghi).

Games

La Mulana is a fiendishly difficult Metroidvania puzzle platformer set in ancient ruins, where you play an archaeologist searching for the secret of La Mulana. I've never persevered with a game this much, ever, and managed to make it about 95% of the way through – beating some really hard bosses! – until I got to a really difficult horrible jumping puzzle over some spikes that kept killing me, and decided I couldn't be fucked. I really love a puzzle though, so still rate that game even though I had to play it with the hint guide open because it really is impossible. Give me Metroidvania, secret passages and things hidden in plain sight, and I am guaranteed to be a fan. I've just picked up the sequel in the Steam autumn sale.

I also really enjoyed Heaven's Vault: described as an "archaeological science-fiction adventure game" (all exciting words), you play Aliya, an archaeologist on the hunt for a missing roboticist in a strange futuristic nebula in space. You slowly build up a vocabulary of the language of the Ancients, and begin to understand more about what came before. I loved it so much I've put it on my all-time favourites list. Puzzles, adventure AND linguistics! I particularly loved starting to recognise different morphemes and understanding which ones indicated negation, verbs, nouns etc., so identifying the script became a lot easier as the game progressed.

Screenshot from Heaven's Vault: the player is invited to guess at the meaning of a word in the ancient script at the Base of the Giving Goddess.

The protagonist from Heaven's vault is a woman in a hijab with a nose piercing and a brown skin tone, She is walking through a desert surrounded by rocky cliffs, followed by a robot companion. She's saying 'there's something here...

Finally got around to playing Disco Elysium several years after everyone else. It's a story-based game – it's pretty much entirely walking around, exploring and talking to people at length – but your dialogue choices and actions affect who you are as a character and how the other people around you perceive you. I'm being a good character because I am physically incapable of being an arsehole to people in video games, but I would like to play it again and be the absolutely unhinged lunatic. It's very funny and the world-building is incredible.

House

We've well and truly settled in to our house, and I love it so much. Especially now that we've nearly finished painting over the previous residents' questionable colour choices. I've got my own office, which has made working from home an absolute delight.

A photograph of my office, painted a peachy-pink colour. There's a light green armchair with two cushions: a black abstract one and a beige one with stylised foxes on it. Behind it is a framed print of the Brick Lane Beigel Bake, and a riso print of a dog catching a frisbee in various positions. There's a tall grey-green IKEA drawer tower with a candle on top, next to a tatty desk with a covered sewing machine and a hand-painted advent calendar on it. Above the desk is a framed movie-poster from Beyond Tellerrand with the title 'this website is under construction - a love letter to the personal website'. There's a healthy looking monstera plant next to the desk, and behind that is a leaning bookshelf covered in trinkets and plants.

A photo of my desk in the evening. I have a monitor with a lo-fi style purple and blue illustration of a telegraph pole, a desk fan, and a space themed desk mat with a pastel coloured keyboard on it. THere is a mug with some different types of computers on it. I have an Elgato key light air behind my monitor and there's a leather-bound notebook on the desk. Behind the monitor are some pictures (an illustration of the indo-european and uralic language families as a tree, two risograph prints of illustrations of the Barbican conservatory, and a framed print of a caterpillar that says' I do not care, I will write whatever I want and post it online') and a framed cross-stitch sampler featuring the international phonetic alphabet. Next to the desk is a set of framed prints that are just propped up on a set of drawers.

It's amazing to have enough space to leave craft stuff out on its own table, and I've had a great time finding prints to put up on the walls. There's still a handful to put up but I'm waiting to find a big one to go in the middle of the gallery wall behind my monitor.

Craft

Having space in my office for crafts means I've actually done a bit of sewing recently, though still haven't picked up dressmaking since the early days of the pandemic. A few of us in my choir decided to make a banner in the style of the hand-sewn ones women traditionally made for protests and campaigns (suffrage, peace camps, etc), that we could display at gigs and performances. After brainstorming a few ideas we decided to keep it simple and create a banner with our logo on it. I could probably tell you what podcasts I was listening to while painstakingly zig-zagging edges. It was a joint effort between about five of us, which makes it really special, and I think it came out really well.

It absolutely needs an iron, but it takes a lot more than a blog post to persuade me to get the iron out.

I also decided it'd be a GREAT idea to DIY an advent calendar this year. It is definitely not cheaper than buying one, but it was a fun little project. I'd had lofty ambitions of filling it with non-edible things, but it turns out that gets very expensive very quickly, so I gave up and it's mostly treats. I'm not the greatest painter, but good enough – I think it looks cute!

A wooden advent calendar with 24 various-sized drawers. The drawers have been painted red, gold, silver, green and white, and decorated with christmas motifs such as trees, tinsel, wreaths, candy cane stripes and the smallest drawers have been painted to look like presents.

Art

A couple of months ago I went to see Fragile Beauty, the exhibition of Elton John & David Furnish's photography collection at the V&A. I've always loved photography – specifically portrait and documentary photography – so this was a delight. And there was so much of it! I hadn't really known what to expect, but was amazed to see some prints of iconic works by David Avedon, Cindy Sherman and Nan Goldin amongst others. Each room had been expertly curated and I could've spent hours in there. It's on until early Jan 2025 but I think it's been doing a bit of a world tour, so if it pops up near you I highly recommend it.

Two drag queens sit in the back of a taxi. One of them is wearing a tight metallic tank sleeveless top and has a short, choppy blue wig; she is wearing large silver heart-shaped earrings, thick dark eyeshadow and deep crimson lipstick. The second drag queen is wearing a long-sleeved ripped white fishnet crop top under a metallic bra, with a curly blonde updo wig, very pale face powder with dark eyeshadow and dark red lips. The straps of her bra are hanging off her shoulders. — *Misty and Jimmy Paulette in a taxi, NYC*, 1991. ©️ Nan Goldin

Books

Continuing my habit of alternating a good book with a trash book. One grown-up book, one fantasy romance book. Like main course and dessert.

Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky: a sci-fi set in the far future where we've gone and trashed earth so they're trying to populate a new planet with primates and some virus to fast-forward evolution, only it doesn't quite go to plan. Not for arachnophobes. The second one didn't grab me quite so much but I'll finish it at some point!

I've been reading plenty of fantasy-romance books as well, like everyone else in my immediate sphere. I've ticked off some of the big series: Throne of Glass, Crescent City, From Blood and Ash, etc. They all blend into one at some point, but are still completely unputdownable. I read one recently called Paladin's Grace (by T. Kingfisher) which was quite a nice change: the characters were over the age of about 25, and the male protagonist was a paladin who likes to knit socks for people. It was a nice break from all the brooding and snarling.

I also enjoyed Yellowface by Rebecca F Kuang – an excellent story of a white author who takes credit for her Chinese-American friend's work – and it took me far too long to realise she is also R.F. Kuang who wrote the brilliant Babel (linguistics! magical realism! colonialism!). So, an author to follow.

Garden

Finally, the garden! It's wonderful and immensely overwhelming having a garden – well, two actually, as we have a front garden as well – but we've made such a difference in it already. I swapped out the summer planter for a winter one I put together myself, featuring some gorgeous ornamental brassicas (the cabbagey plants), a spiky blue grass and some other foliage for some texture, and gorgeous berries for colour ("Christmas cherry" apparently, though highly toxic which is not very Christmassy!). I love it, and so far the slugs have stayed off.

A planter within a larger raised bed. It contains a bushy plant covered in bright orange and green tomato-like berries, a tall spiky blue grass, three cabbage-like ornamental brassicas that are purple and white in the middle, some mossy looking blue grass, a little bit of green foliage spraying out the front, a white cyclamen at the back — The rose stems are to dissuade foxes from digging up the newly-planted heucheras around it...