Hi lovely readers,

After writing emails together since 2016, we have decided that today’s will be our last newsletter. Whether you’ve been reading since we brought back Domestic Sluttery in newsletter form, or you’re a more recent subscriber, we want to say a massive thank you to all of you. You’ve made our Friday afternoons a joy.

There are several reasons for our decision. The way we prefer to work has changed a lot over the last year – less internet, less social media, more pen and paper. We’re enjoying writing without distraction, and working on longer projects has inevitably meant that we’re spending less time online. We’re surprised at how much we love it.

We’ve worked on some brilliant projects together over the years. There was the magazine about gin, the ill-fated travel website, the photoshoot above that accompanied a feature about writing partnerships. In 2019, Laura was even Sian’s bridesmaid. Over the years we’ve written more than 500 emails together and we probably speak to each during the day more frequently than our own partners. We’re the very best of work wives.

And of course, we wrote The Feminist Quiz Book together during lockdown, and we’re so proud of it – there’s still a flurry of excitement when our extensive knowledge of brilliant women comes in handy during an episode of University Challenge.

We’re looking forward to cheering each other on from the sidelines as we write up a storm at opposite ends of the country, knowing that the plentiful puns, the pep talks, and the pretty damn delicious recipes (keep scrolling for Sian’s swansong honeycomb cookies) will never be far away.

We’ve had a blast writing to you each week, it’s meant so much to us. Thanks for being the very best readers.

Sian and Laura
xxx

Brown butter honeycomb cookies

We couldn’t leave your inboxes without a parting gift! This gorgeous recipe makes around 24 soft and chewy cookies, and the dough can be frozen (which is why we’ve eaten a cookie a day since the start of January). They are full of love and made for sharing.

Ingredients

• Three Crunchie bars

• 50g dark chocolate chips

• 140g butter

• 250g plain flour

• 250g light brown sugar

• 1 egg

• 1 tsp vanilla essence

• 1/4 tsp salt plus extra for sprinkling

• 1 tsp baking powder

• 1/2 tsp cinnamon

• 1 1/2 tsp cornflour

• 20ml milk (if needed)

Method

1. In a small pan, brown your butter. Browning butter takes a bit of a leap of faith, but it will give your cookies an extra layer of depth. Keep the button on a medium heat until it foams up and has gone a beautiful caramel colour. It’ll smell all nutty and rich when it’s ready. Decant the brown butter into a bowl and, make sure you get all of those specks at the bottom of the pan – they’re not burnt bits, they’re caramelised milk solids and they’re delicious! Set aside to cool.

2. Meanwhile, pop the Crunchie bars into a sandwich bag and bash them up into chunks, but not so much that they’re entirely smashed to smithereens.

3. Mix the dry ingredients together in a large bowl.

4. Beat the cooled butter and sugar together, then add the egg and vanilla.

5. Now pour the liquid into the dry ingredients and mix everything together with the Crunchie bits and chocolate chips. You want quite a pliable dough, so if it's not quite coming together add a tiny splash of milk without making it too wet (if it goes the other way, just add a touch more flour).

6. Cover the dough and leave in the fridge overnight. Listen, you could absolutely get away with chilling the dough for three hours or so, but the flavours really come together overnight and we can assure you that breakfast cookies are a great way to start your weekend.

7. When you’re ready to start baking, preheat the oven to 160°C/gas mark 4.

8. Grease and line a couple of baking trays so you can get a little production line going.

9. Roll the dough into small balls the size of a golf ball and sprinkle each with a little salt. It’s easy to forget this step midway through the balling/baking process, but it makes such a difference to your cookies!

10. Bake for 10-12 minutes, until the honeycomb bits are beginning to bubble and burnish. Use a palette knife to transfer each cookie to a cooling rack. They’ll crisp up as they cool, unless you eat them warm and burn your mouth on melted honeycomb.

One last thing: Give it a Ms | menu of the day | what’s the point of rereading books? | I saw this and thought of you | everything but the kitchen sink.

Tigers Are Better Looking is free! We sometimes share affiliate links so we may make some money if you buy something we recommend or a book we love. This doesn’t cost you anything but it does keep the tigers in Dreamies.

Chilli and lime salt

We often spend November surrounded by recipe books, crafting elaborate plans for homemade edible Christmas gifts: gingerbread houses! Tiny boxes of caramels! Even mini Christmas puds in 2016 – we were feeling particularly ambitious that year. Alas, our best laid plans are usually replaced with naps in front of Christmas films. This year we share with you the simplest homemade treat: a gorgeous flavoured salt that not only looks great but is super easy to make (especially if you do it in the evening, and leave the salt to dry overnight). It’s crying out to be used on the rim of a margarita, or any crispy chicken situation you are lucky enough to find yourself in.

Makes 500g salt, which is just enough to fill five of these cute little jars.

Ingredients:

• 4 red chillies, roughly chopped

• The zest and juice of 2 limes

• 500g sea salt. Maldon works best for this recipe, treat your pals to the good stuff.

Method:

• Preheat your oven to 90°C/195°F and line a large baking tray with greaseproof paper.

• Blitz all of the ingredients together in a food processor several times until everything is combined, a beautiful pink, and the salt is a little finer.

• Spread the salt in a thin layer on your baking tray.

• Pop in the oven for about 35-40 minutes. Give it a stir with a wooden spoon after about 15 minutes.

• After 35-40 minutes, turn the oven off and leave the salt to dry overnight in the residual heat.

• The next day, stir your salt and bash any particularly large chunks with a pestle or – as we did – the back of an ice cream scoop. When the salt is at a consistency you’re happy with, spoon into little jars to give to your favourite people.

Festive feasts

When it comes to Christmas-themed cookbooks, there’s no point waiting to find them under the tree – you’ll want them in the run-up to the big day, so that you can plan and cook to your heart’s content. We’re especially keen to get stuck into Advent by Anja Dunk, full of fragrant and festive German bakes, and Kate Young’s latest, The Little Library Parties, to help us host delicious get-togethers, large and small (and we suggest keeping a copy of The Little Library Christmas to hand for inspiration from now until New Year, too).

The TV chefs know how to steer us patiently and reliably through Christmas dinner, of course. Nigel’s The Christmas Chronicles is just gorgeous, as is Nigella Christmas, and Jamie Oliver’s Christmas Cookbook is where Laura goes for her get-ahead gravy recipe every year, as well as the red onion gratin that she makes as her own personal side dish (serves 6, but that never defeats her).

For in-between days when you want wintry but not full-on festive food, try Soup Broth Bread by Rachel Allen, Comfort: A Winter Cookbook from the editors at Ryland Peters & Small, and Lizzie Kamenetzky’s Fireside Food for Cold Winter Nights.

And finally, if it all gets too much, pick up the new edition of Coping With Christmas, Fanny and Johnnie Cradock’s 1968 guide to the season, which includes a chapter delightfully entitled Slap Happy Crisis Substitutes for Serious Cookery, and is sure to make you smile no matter what kitchen catastrophes might befall you.

Do good with dal

Jaya Chandna’s Christmas DIY dal kits don’t just taste good, they do good. The proceeds from her kits raise money for Pakistan Flood Relief. The bundle of ingredients comes wrapped in beautiful Indian fabric and includes lentils, the spice mix you need to make this delicious dish and a recipe from Jaya’s grandmother. You just need to add the fresh ingredients when you’re ready to start cooking, probably four days after Christmas when you can’t remember a time that a meal didn’t come with a pile of toffee pennies and a mince pie as a starter.

The kits are just £15 and there are few dozen still available. You can also include your own gift tag message so they’re ideal for posting to loved ones you won’t be lucky enough to see in person this year. The floods in Pakistan have impacted 33 million people and left at least 6 million in desperate need of aid. This is more than just a beautiful and delicious present, it’s a wonderful cause to support this Christmas.

In a pickle

Way back in the late 19th century, Woolworths got in a pickle trying to sell imported glass tree ornaments to Americans. They were shaped like fruits, vegetables and nuts, and it seems some clever soul in their marketing department saw one that resembled a cucumber and started touting the myth that in Germany, it was customary to hang pickles on the Christmas tree. It soon became a beloved tradition in the United States for families to hide a glass pickle among the branches – the first child to spot it gets an extra present.

Berrien Springs in Michigan has gone several steps further by becoming the Christmas Pickle Capital of the World, holding pickle festivals and parades, where someone called the Grand Dillmeister flings gherkins into the crowd (Laura and Sian are tempted to plan a trip, or at least recreate it at home with a jaunty hat and a jar of Mrs Elswood).

A survey a few years ago found that 91% of Germans had never actually heard of ye olde Christmas pickle, so it was likely nothing more than a very successful sales ploy. Still, it’s rather more jolly than the pickle’s other origin story, which tells of poor little boys who were killed by an innkeeper and then stuffed inside a pickle barrel, until St. Nicholas came along and brought them back to life. Not the most heartwarming festive tale we’ve ever heard.

’Tis the season: we built this city | unexpectedly pretty baubles | hello, cookie | gingerbread blazer | Colonel Custard’s Christmas Ale.

This week, Sian’s had her nose in this brilliant book and Laura’s been making a Christmas wreath. Like what we do? Buy us a cuppa or read our book.

Dal image by Jaya Chandna @putalittlespiceonit; Christmas pickle image by Robin Zebrowski via Flickr (CC BY 2.0 licence).

Tigers Are Better Looking is free! We sometimes share affiliate links so we may make some money if you buy something we recommend or a book we love. This doesn’t cost you anything but it does keep the tigers in Dreamies.

It is a clear, crisp winter evening. You’re on the way home with half an eye on the road as you cross diagonally, hurrying to get out of the cold. Then you see it. The flash of amber, the spruce of a tail.

More than 150,000 of the UK’s 350,000 foxes live in cities, more than any other country. Our ever-expanding cities have forced them into urban spaces despite the risks to their safety.

Our relationship with foxes has never been an easy one. We have always been distrustful of them. Their cunning was cemented by Aesop – foxes are tricksters, they’ve got guile. Their reputation for sneakiness has been personified in several of Shakespeare’s plays. It’s not all undue fabrication – there was a time when the chicken dinner antics of a fox could destroy livelihoods.

The myth has been perpetuated further in more recent culture. Beatrix Potter villainised the fox in Jemima Puddleduck. Roald Dahl never shied away from the cunning nature of his main character in Fantastic Mr Fox, even though it was painted as something of a positive – Fox’s trickery wins out in the end. Disney’s position is clear: foxes are disloyal and they steal what isn’t theirs. They were given something of a reprieve in beloved children’s books and subsequent BBC series The Animals Of Farthing Wood. While author Colin Dann couldn’t overhaul their much-maligned reputation, he did address the issue of humans encroaching on countryside spaces, forcing the foxes to make their homes inside cities.

And here they are, in their thousands. There are 10,000 foxes living in London alone. Some people understandably view urban foxes as nothing more than pests. They have tremendously noisy mating habits and they tear open our rubbish bags for their midnight feasts – household waste makes up around 50% of a city fox’s diet.

Yet for many people – myself included – the sighting of an urban fox is an unexpected gift. I once lost most of a morning watching a family of cubs scamping about a southeast London garden. Now, north of the river, there’s a little fox that likes to curl up in a patio corner by our flat – I can just see the white of his pointy nose from my living room. He likes to catch the morning sunlight as it floods over the building and doesn’t even stir when our neighbours walk by. The sheltered sunny spot is clearly worth the risk. Urban foxes are by no means tame but they are willing to get closer to us than we anticipate.

That closeness has become more common in recent years. Foxes began moving into cities during the Second World War, but it wasn’t until the 1980s that they became truly settled in. Now they’re a part of city life but not quite a daily occurrence. Sightings are neither common or rare. We regard them differently to other city animals such as rats or pigeons. Perhaps the notoriety that we bestowed upon them is partly the reason. A fox crossing your path feels like a spell has been cast. That it is in the everyday makes it special. A connection to nature is a rare occurrence in a city so when it does happen, it dumbfounds us.

Mobile phone cameras are ill-equipped to capture magic. An orange blur with glinty eyes is the best you can hope for. The sighting becomes a silent, unshareable moment.

Yet it is impossible for a fox to pass without exclaiming. It is too extraordinary. Sometimes you glimpse just a dash of a tail between a row of parked cars, sometimes they continue their trot down the street. Once in a while they look right at you and it is arresting. If I was a believer in such things – and perhaps today I am – I’d be inclined to think it was a sign of something.

It is a clear, crisp winter evening. A fox takes a diagonal path across an empty road and then it sees you. It stops and stares, before slinking off into the darkness. You continue your journey home, entirely unchanged by such a remarkable event.

Tails of the city

Our urban environments are home to a whole host of wonderful animals as well as the handsome fox, if you know where to look and what you’re looking for. These brilliant books will inspire you to see those familiar streets in a new light.

In Field Notes from a Hidden City, Esther Woolfson documents the goings-on of Aberdeen’s wildest residents, from squirrels and herring gulls to rats and worms, over the course of a year. She paints a beautiful portrait of the city and its abundant nature, and delves deeper into the strange – and sometimes strained – relationships we have with furry and feathered locals. 

Florence Wilkinson urges us to get to know our neighbours in Wild City. Not Sheila at number 6, mind (steer clear, she’s a gossipmonger), but the wildlife that roams around our towns and cities and has adapted to survive, and often thrive, among the people and the buildings. Expect foxes, bats, peregrine falcons, and, um, the London Underground’s mosquito subspecies.

Her first memoir of recovery played out against the wild and wonderful backdrop of Orkney, with a huge supporting cast of creatures. In The Instant, Amy Liptrot’s second book, the writer heads to Berlin, where her hunt for love and the subsequent pain of its loss are punctuated by bouts of birdwatching, and a search for the city’s elusive raccoons.

There are around 9 million people and 8.5 million trees living together in London’s 600 square miles, which technically makes the capital a forest. London is a Forest by (in a spectacular display of nominative determinism) Paul Wood takes us on several different trails to explore these urban trees and their inhabitants.

We’ve been out-foxed: a sly sip | on the prowl | ruff and ready | fantastically adaptable Mr Fox | knit your own | he’s not impressed by your cooking skills.

This week, Laura’s been practising her Gaelic and Sian has been to her first basketball game. Like what we do? Buy us a cuppa or read our book.

First fox image by Adam Lowly via Pexels. Second fox image by Brett Jordan via Flickr (Creative Commons). Third fox image by Sunguk Kim via Unsplash.

Tigers Are Better Looking is free! We sometimes share affiliate links so we may make some money if you buy something we recommend or a book we love. This doesn’t cost you anything but it does keep the tigers in Dreamies.

All’s Well

Sometimes the best books on our TBR piles are the ones we didn’t put there ourselves. All’s Well was one of Sian’s birthday presents and she had raced through it – and half a box of florentines – by the end of Birthday Boxing Day. It tells the story of one-time theatre actress Miranda Fitch who suffers from severe but unexplained chronic pain after a stage accident. Several years on, still in pain, her acting career is over and she is tasked with putting on a college production of All’s Well That Ends Well.

If this sounds like a typical campus novel, rest assured that it is anything but. Thanks to Miranda’s internal monologue, Mona Awad’s tale is unsettling from the start. It takes a surreal and macabre turn when Miranda meets three men who make a drunken promise to take her pain away. After brushing off their conversation as foolish ramblings, she finds that not only is her pain lessening, but that other people in her life are suffering as she did – as though they can feel the pain that she has dealt with alone for years. The touches of Shakespeare become almost parody, with flashes of The Tempest and Macbeth, as well as the title play that Awad uses to address the theme of women’s pain head on, and force the reader to consider the desire to be believed.

The Whalebone Theatre

There are times when you really want a sprawling book to sink into. They’re particularly suited to incredibly long train journeys, or – before we were avoiding putting the heating on – entire weeks sitting by a pool. They’re also ideal for the glorious between bit of time after Boxing Day when time is punctuated by mince pies and Christmas University Challenge. Joanna Quinn’s debut The Whalebone Theatre is one you really want under the tree this year.

You’ll sink into the lives of the Seagrave family and get completely caught up in the young lives of Christabel, Digby and Florence as they discover a whale on the beach in Dorset. They set about claiming it for themselves and – rather unexpectedly, despite the book’s title – transform it into an open air theatre. The skeleton shapes each of their lives in unexpected ways. It’s easy to see why Quinn’s book has had comparisons to The Cazalet Chronicles, and while there’s very little in the way of a plot to hook you in – it struggled to command our attention alongside work and emails – the characters are so beautifully written. You’ll be delighted that you joined them on their journeys into adulthood.

City of Girls

Despite us telling you that City of Girls is a glorious romp around 1940s New York, some of you are still going to be put off by the Eat, Pray, Love sticker on the cover. We understand – the very same thing almost stopped Sian from reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s first novel, The Signature of All Things, many years ago. But we remain emphatic about both. Gilbert’s novels are firmly on our forever favourites list.

Vivian Morris is the novel’s elderly narrator. After getting kicked out of college at 19, she joins her Aunt Peg’s crumbling New York playhouse and finds her home there with an unlikely new family. When Vivian naively makes a mistake that causes an enormous scandal, she jeopardises the futures of the playhouse and everyone who call it home, including herself. The ramifications of Vivian’s actions impact her whole life. The novel’s glittering backdrop make for a luscious novel, and Gilbert’s central theme of women’s shame and the weight that we carry with us will stick with you for a very long time.

An Awfully Big Adventure

Don’t let the “Oh, just buy whatever’s on offer in the train station WHSmith, who cares what it’s about” covers of Beryl Bainbridge’s novels deter you – an author who won the Whitbread prize twice and was nominated for the Booker five times deserves better than this, yet here we are. 

An Awfully Big Adventure is one of hers that’s been on our list for an awfully long while, and we’re feeling inspired to tick it off over the festive season, since it focuses on the cast and crew of a post-war Liverpool repertory company as they put on a production of Peter Pan for Christmas.

Don’t expect heartwarming holiday cheer, mind – Bainbridge’s unflinching eye never shied away from portraying all the grit and ghastliness of real life, albeit in dazzling style. In this coming-of-age tragicomic tale, teenage protagonist Stella Bradshaw gets caught up in unrequited love and a theatrical affair that has an unexpected and shocking conclusion. Bainbridge was an actor before becoming a writer, and this book is said to draw influence from that time; equal parts matter-of-factly bleak and gloriously entertaining, it’s going to be just the thing for a chilly winter’s evening. 

Wise Children

It’s been about 25 years since Laura read Angela Carter’s Wise Children, and despite the pile of new books tutting and glowering at her from beside the bed, she’s decided it’s high time for a re-read. This was Carter’s last book, published the year before her death, and it’s arguably her best – though it is, admittedly, a crowded playing field.

The story takes place on 23rd April, Shakespeare’s birthday, but also the 75th birthday of former chorus girls Dora Chance and her twin sister Nora, and the 100th birthday of revered actor (and their father, though he has long refused to admit it) Sir Melchior Hazard and his twin brother, Peregrine, who is presumed dead (and presumed by many to be their father). 

This is a brilliantly funny novel of a theatrical dynasty divided in two on so many levels, from the Hazards’ natural habitat of highbrow theatres versus the Chances’ bawdy, gaudy music halls, to the complicated and confusing parentage of almost everyone in the family. Wise Children is an absolute riot: big and bold and brash; played out like a surreal Shakespearean drama and filled with memorable characters. Above all, though, it’s so joyful, and a celebration of life, on stage and off of it.

You kiss by the book: Tipping the Velvet | The Garrick Year | The Swish of the Curtain | The Rehearsal | Theatre of Marvels | The Understudy.

This weekend, Sian is making a tarte tatin for the first time and Laura is catching up with old friends. Like what we do? Buy us a cuppa or read our book.

Tigers Are Better Looking is free! We sometimes share affiliate links so we may make some money if you buy something we recommend or a book we love. This doesn’t cost you anything but it does keep the tigers in Dreamies.

Paying lip service

Despite being very good at remembering things of absolutely no consequence – the Life Mechanics cult storyline in Neighbours, what we had for dinner on September 14th 2009, the landline number to a house we’ve not lived in for 22 years – we never remember events until it’s too late. This is why we miss out on Christmas at Kew every year, or optimistically search for gig tickets the night before our favourite band is playing. We’ve also never been lucky enough to nab one of Andrea Garland’s beautiful vintage lip balms.

Every year, Andrea Garland fills vintage pill boxes with a clear lip balm (you can opt for vegan). The unique collection is only available between October and December – they’re replenished regularly, but once they’re sold out, you’ll have to wait until next October. The first drop is at 3pm today, race you to the front of the queue.

Jelly legs

In the archipelago of Palau sits a lake that’s over 12,000 years old. Jellyfish Lake is home to millions of Golden Jellyfish. This particular species has no natural predators, so they’ve evolved to become stingless – like the species that’s thrown out their Instant Pots, they simply have no need for them. You can take a swim in Jellyfish Lake if you’re in the area and fancy testing this theory.

The evolution of jellyfish has fascinated scientists for decades, because they can defy everything we know about the natural world. There’s even a species that’s technically immortal. When the Turritopsis dohrnii jellyfish senses danger, it absorbs its tentacles and basically reverts back to a younger version of itself. It can do this as many times as it likes, so in theory it could live forever. Or at least until Grey’s Anatomy ends.

They also make brilliant ceramic inspiration. This jellyfish air plant holder is made by Katie and the Jellyfish. Each one is a little different and the plant comes with your holder, presumably after a successful audition for “most tenacle-iness”. You can buy you own directly from Katie’s Etsy shop, or our friends at Cabinet of Colours.

Skirting the issue

We have entered our favourite season. Yes, yes, crunchy leaves, lattes with too much cinnamon, etc etc. But more pressingly, Sian and Laura are both autumn birthday girls. There is frequently cake, discarded wrapping paper, and the scent of a few dozen candles recently extinguished. It is also the season where we commit to the very serious tradition of buying ourselves a present.

The personal birthday gift takes a considerable amount of thought. It certainly doesn’t have to cost the earth (Sian’s previous gifts to herself have included a My Little Pony off eBay and a ceramic pear), but a great gift is often frivolous. We strongly encourage you to choose something impractical (by all means jump on that drill bit set you really want, but now isn’t the time for a new mop). And of course, like any good present, it needs to bring the recipient – you! – total joy. Sian’s choice this year is this pixelated skirt of dreams from German designer Ini Emme. It’s ticking all of these birthday boxes in one very extravagant swish.

The beginning of the cold season

Forough Farrokhzad was a trailblazing Iranian poet and film director whose work focused firmly on women. Often compared to Sylvia Plath, she dealt in feminine desire, in sensuality, in secrets and pain and hope, and she became one of the brightest stars in Iran’s literary galaxy after publishing her first poems as a teenager. The life of this remarkable, controversial, and rebellious poet was cut short in 1967, when she died in a car crash, aged 32. Her work, banned for more than a decade after the revolution of 1979, is just as bold, blistering and beloved today, and Let Us Believe in the Beginning of the Cold Season (translated by Elizabeth T. Gray, Jr.) is a great introduction to her poetry. 

Four more Iranian and Kurdish women writers who should be on your shelves: 

Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
A memoir in books, telling the story of an English literature professor and seven of her female students, who meet at her house once a week to discuss Western books.

Persepolis I and II by Marjane Satrapi
This renowned graphic memoir of growing up in Iran and then going away to Vienna was made into an award-winning film in 2007.

Daughters of Smoke and Fire by Ava Homa
A beautifully written coming-of-age tale that shines a light on the oppression and hardship faced by Kurdish people in Iran.

In Case of Emergency by Mahsa Mohebali (translated by Mariam Rahmani)
An earthquake in Tehran is no match for the turmoil and tenacity of a drug-addled mind in this satirical novel of modern Iranian life.

Pick up the check

Sometimes all it takes is a new mug to brighten our mornings and set us up for the hours of meetings, writing, and staring into space thinking about whether or not we should have fish fingers for tea (the answer is always yes) ahead. Gulping a gallon of lukewarm Nescafé from a chipped Sports Direct monstrosity might seem an innocuous enough way to start the day, but once you’ve savoured a lovingly brewed coffee served in a pretty hand-painted gingham mug with a tulip for a handle, you’ll never go back. Oh, you don’t have a pretty hand-painted gingham mug with a tulip for a handle? Don’t worry, you do now. And a cloud cup and saucer, too.

Read all about it:

• Italy’s plan to stop Venice from sinking.

• When music is torture.

• The line-up for London’s Month of the Dead Festival is really excellent. (Boffins in Coffins!)

• Let’s Do Lunch looks like our sort of cookbook (today Laura had a bowl of Toppas for lunch, she needs inspiration).

• Mallika Basu addresses the racism in The Great British Bake Off's Mexico episode.

Save the best to last: giving you a leg up | love this little monster collection | this stuff is really good | it’s well and truly pie season.

This weekend, Sian is going to see Herman Dune and Laura is exploring graveyards. Like what we do? Buy us a cuppa.

Tigers Are Better Looking is free! We sometimes share affiliate links so we may make some money if you buy something we recommend or a book we love. This doesn’t cost you anything but it does keep the tigers in Dreamies.

Set the scene

There’s such beautiful movement in Lotta Teale’s still life paintings. It appears as though someone has just walked out of the frame to pour a glass of wine or put a jumper on. Sliced fruit, half-drunk French presses, eggs in their cups waiting for their tops to be lopped off, her compositions feel like they are a part of a much larger scene.

Like all of the smartest people, Lotta is clearly very into breakfast – eggs feature heavily, so does marmalade and butter. She adept at taking the everyday things that we love and drawing focus on them, making them special. While we might not be able to splash out on one of Lotta’s original works, some prints are available at John Lewis (although they’re really deserving of nicer frames). This gin and lemons print will look great in a kitchen, and the fallen petals on this flower arrangement remind us of the scene on our desks when we refuse to let go of a particularly pretty bunch.

The Paper Palace

How long does a book stay on your TBR pile before you get around to reading it? (This is, assuming you only have one TBR pile, Sian currently has three and it’s proving to be a problem). Sometimes we dive into a new book within a week or two, but we’ve been known to leave a few languishing on the pile for years (sorry, Olive Kitteridge, it’s not you, it’s us). So perhaps it’s not a surprise that it’s taken us rather a long time to read The Paper Palace. We were missing an absolute treat.

There’s a lot that’s familiar in Miranda Cowley Heller’s debut. A married middle class white woman (Elle) torn between her husband and lover (Peter, Jonas) on a summer holiday doesn’t feel like it’s breaking much ground, however beautifully written it might be. Then somewhere around Ella getting felt up on the beach before dinner it takes a shocking and dramatic turn. It’s the flashbacks and layers that make The Paper Palace such a brilliant book. They build up to create a story that’s actually terribly sad – full of things left unspoken, hearts not mended, relationships left in tatters. There are so many almost-rans, so many ways that this story could have played out. Each one of them feels real. The connection between Elle and Jonas is undeniable, so is her love for her husband and family. You never want to take sides, there’s no good or bad, just a chain of events that has real consequences across decades. Each option that Elle is faced with feels entirely believable, right to the last page. If this one’s been on your radar for a while, but you “just haven’t got around to it yet”, cancel your evening plans and get comfy on the sofa.

It’s only natural

Joanie’s latest collaborators wouldn’t have had an inkling during their lifetimes that one day they would branch out into fashion, but thanks to the wonderful Natural History Museum collection, that’s exactly what’s happened. The work of some very clever scientists and artists now adorns dresses, tees, blouses and more.

Zoologist, entomologist, botanist and lots of other -ists Hermann Burmeister’s illustrations can be found on this creepy-crawly dress; geologist Abraham Gottlob Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours inspired the palette of a frock full of primates; tribute is paid to palaeontologist and fossil hunter Mary Anning with a shirt covered in ammonites; and though we’re not yet sure where exactly we’ll wear this boilersuit emblazoned with the artwork of eminent drawer of dinosaurs Neave Parker, we suspect the answer might be “everywhere”.

Well preserved

Never judge a jar of fermented vegetables by its label, they say, but that’s exactly what we’ve done. Happily, however, as well as making the prettiest pickles, sauerkrauts and kimchis around, Belle & Herbs Fermentary also makes the tastiest – and we’re now committed to working our way through absolutely everything they create.

You’ll find delicious gherkins and red onions and preserved lemons, as well as a whole host of intriguing flavours dreamed up by co-owners Sam and Pan. They make everything by hand in micro-batches on a community farm in Wallsend, just a few miles from Newcastle city centre. We’ve got our sights set on sour mustard greens, half sour black jalapeños, the beautiful pink mouli, kimchi sauce, and Pan’s Shan tjin – she is from Myanmar, and this is her family recipe. We can’t wait to get stuck in.

Two can play that game

Our collection of board games has grown substantially over the last couple of years, around the time we completed Netflix and finished rearranging the spice cupboard for the seventh time (yet always found four jars of ground cumin). Here are our favourite two-player games.

Card games often make the best games for two: Sushi Go remains a bit of a cult classic with good reason – it’s fast to learn and adorably illustrated. Jaipur is also a lot of fun and a big part of the reason for that is because there’s a herd of camels getting involved. The box for Cat Lady is rather unappealing, but it’s a really clever collecting game that involves gathering too many cats and have to stop them all from going hungry (a stark glimpse into our future, there).

Our favourite – Archaeology – is an absolute hit with anyone who plays it. It’s easy to pick up, and there’s just the right amount of luck involved, so even a seasoned player can quickly be at a disadvantage.

If you have a little more time in your evening, try Splendor, which is all about queens and kings and fancy jewels (for speedier royal shenanigans, try Love Letters). Sian’s in the Greek islands this week, so in between packing she prepared with a game of Akrotiri (pictured above) – use your secret maps to sail your boats around the islands and discover lost temples.

No matter what we’re playing, one thing’s for sure: our cards inevitably end up beneath the paws of a friendly feline who wants to join in, but has very little respect for the rules.

Read all about it:

• Take note, British Museum: the Horniman is returning the stolen Benin Bronzes to Nigeria.

• We cannot wait to get serious about sandwiches.

• Keep your nose in that book – the benefits of reading for half an hour every day are made evident in excellent podcast Just One Thing.

• Condolence cards for dogs.

The last word: cut the mustard | Tiny Pricks Project | flaming lovely | not to be taken.

This week, Sian’s been sampling wines in Santorini, and Laura’s been embracing soup season. Like what we do? Buy us a cuppa.

Tigers Are Better Looking is free! We sometimes share affiliate links so we may make some money if you buy something we recommend or a book we love. This doesn’t cost you anything but it does keep the tigers in Dreamies.

Two peas in a pod

Over 35,000 hectares of peas are grown in the UK every year, which equates to over 160,000 tonnes of peas. That sounds like a staggering amount, but – not counting the ones that fall off our forks and roll onto the floor – each of us eats an average of 9000 peas a year. It was Clarence Birdseye who first froze peas in the 1920s, but we’ve been cultivating them for around 10,000 years. And although we eat them when they’re green and young, there was a time when they were hard enough to wake princesses from their slumber.

The common phrase “two peas in a pod” can probably be dated back to the 16th Century, in a romance novel by John Lyly published in 1578. Euphues and His England includes the line “Wherin I am not unlike unto the unskilfull Painter, who having drawen the Twinnes of Hippocrates, (who wer as lyke as one pease is to an other).” Thanks to this phrase becoming increasingly common over some hundreds of years, we can now enjoy Minnie-Mae Stott’s ceramic pea pods, complete with two little gold peas jostling side by side.

Rock steady 

You know we adore an eye-catching earring, and this pair from Etta Gray is right up our street. They’re not as ginormous as we’d usually go for – at just 3cm long, we might even avoid an international hair-tangling incident – but they more than make up for it with their bright pink crystals and gold and pearls. Team with bold lipstick and you’ll feel at least 63% more peppy in an instant.

A shivery bite

While we work away on this newsletter every week, Laura often delights Sian by adding a random Scottish word without realising it isn’t used everywhere else (and it’s paying off: last time she was chez Meades-Williams, she was pleased to be rather pointedly offered some “diluting juice”).

Behind the scenes, the Scots lessons continue, and over the years Sian’s been introduced to the joys of “sitooterie” (a sheltered place to sit out in the garden), “bidey-in” (a live-in lover), “bosie” (a cuddle), and “shoogle” (to shake), among many others.

One that we surprisingly haven’t yet discussed is the wonderful “shivery bite” – a snack eaten after a swim. Also known as a chitterin’ bit, chittery bite, shitherin’ bite or chittering piece – as well as lots of variations in between – it’s a post-swim essential, particularly if you enjoy a dook in the chilly Scottish sea. And it can be whatever you like, as long as it gives a much-needed energy boost. Popular shivery bites include a bag of crisps, a biscuit, a jeely piece, or Little Laura’s favourite after lessons at her local baths: a poke of chips with tons of vinegar. 

We wonder if the three friends in this linocut by Marnie Baker had a wee shivery bite afterwards? Outdoor swimming is a recurring theme in her gorgeous work, and Marnie’s prints encapsulate all the thrills and tranquility the waves can bring. This one is particularly lovely, and it’s £20 from Conclave Brighton. It’s almost enough to encourage us to go for a dip, but we’ll probably just sit on the sofa and gaze at it instead.

Oil up

We are approaching “frantically oil your face like it’s an old saddle” season, and so we’re here to recommend this Biossance squalane oil, which will soften and soothe your skin when the weather turns cold. It’s £25 a bottle, but it seems to last forever, and though some reviews complain about the pump, we like getting a measured dose – it stops us getting too “chip pan” in our application technique. This is plant-derived squalane (as opposed to stuff that comes from sharks, which obviously we want no part of), and it manages to be light, fast-absorbing and really nourishing at the same time, so it’s a good choice if you still get the odd spot but want to treat your skin (and hair, apparently, but we’ve not tried that yet) to a big ol’ hit of glowy goodness.

Turn the other cheek

The most delicate cameos are carved from shells or semi-precious gemstones. Mother of pearl, agate and onyx were all popular choices. The craft process is particularly unusual – the layers of the scene’s background are cut away to raise the subject to the foreground. The deeper layers of the stone are naturally darker and they make for a striking contrast with the bust or scene that’s being depicted. It’s a process that has been popular in jewellery since Ancient Egypt and Rome.

Cameos became hugely collectable throughout the Elizabethan and Victorian eras, their value was immediately obvious which made them something of a status symbol. In Italy, petrified lava from Pompeii’s ruins were used for cameo bases sold to tourists after the ruins were discovered in 1748. There’s even an excellent cameo museum in the nearby city of Naples. Modern materials and techniques made them much more affordable and accessible to the masses in the early 20th Century – glass paste became a more common alternative.

If you’re wondering how we jumped from a cameo brooch to a cameo in a film, the literal meaning of the word has evolved into something rather lovely – much like the outline in a beloved piece of cameo jewellery, the brief appearance is little more than a silhouette of a character.

Cameo appearance: Earrings. £72, Ben-Amun. | Jane Austen brooch. £32, Tatty Devine. | Shoes. £280, Simona Rusk. | Pink ring. £149, Vintouch Italy.

Read all about it:

• Apparently birds changed their tune during the pandemic. And we don’t know if they’ll change it back again.

• The Made-Up Words Project is lovely.

• We know you’ve all been wondering: when did eggs get so fancy?

• Discover Turkey’s underground city.

• There are so many brilliant cookbooks out this week. Whizzing straight to the top of our to-be-read (and to-be-cooked-from) pile is Butter, by the ever-excellent Olivia Potts. Joining it are Spice by Mark Diacono, The Joy of Snacks by Laura Goodman, and Rukmini Iyer’s India Express.

Season to taste: end of summer cake | cabinet of curiosities | puffy stickers for grown-ups | unsure how we feel about these.

This week, Sian is headed to the seaside for one last summer ice cream, and Laura is going to see Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Like what we do? Buy us a cuppa.

Tigers Are Better Looking is free! We sometimes share affiliate links so we may make some money if you buy something we recommend or a book we love. This doesn’t cost you anything but it does keep the tigers in Dreamies.

Break from the mould

Your personal jelly history probably dates back to the bunny mould that your mum has used for every family birthday that you can remember. Sian is Team Green Jelly. Laura prefers raspberry flavour. It’s even possible that as many as two readers would choose orange as their favourite. But the history of jelly dates back much further than 1986.

The first jellies were made in the 1300s and they were really only available to the upper classes. Before it came in lurid green cubes, making jelly involved boiling down calves’ feet to make gelatine – a process that took a couple of days. To help the jellies set and cool, you needed access to ice. Early iterations were actually meat and fish flavoured – you needed sugar for sweet jellies, which was a luxury that many households couldn’t afford. We might associate it with ice cream at parties, but jelly began as an elaborate meal reserved for royal households.

The moulds have always played a big role in its appeal. Natural moulds were the obvious choice in the early days – egg and scallop shells were used by the Tudors and Stuarts, before stoneware moulds took their place. Copper moulds (lined with tin to prevent copper oxide poisoning) came along in the 1800s. It was really the Georgians who went to town with their moulds, recreating elaborate scenes in the middle of their tables. And, of course, the Victorian upper classes were no stranger to making a simple dessert an absolute bloody faff. They mastered the art of setting clear jelly around a cream centre or mousse like they were taking part in a Bake Off showstopper rather than having a light supper.

With sugar rationing and austerity after the war, there was little desire for such fanciful puds, which meant that jelly fell rather quickly out of favour. But soon gelatin became more readily available and reliable and it became a staple of British dessert treats and American salads. Little Laura was given a cube before bed every night to “help teeth, nails and bones”, and a quick search on Mumsnet tells us she wasn’t alone in this night-time treat. We’ll probably always have a soft spot for a jelly rabbit, but after spending much of our recent mornings mesmerised by Adventures In Jelly, we wonder if it’s time for the elaborate mould – perhaps in the shape of our new favourite castle – to make a bit of a comeback.

The eyes have it

We’ve long been fans of Lou Taylor’s jewellery and prints, and now we are absolutely enchanted by her collages, too. From repurposed gardening books to the sweetest paper dolls, everything is simply delightful. The lips and eyes collection might be our favourite. It brings back memories of doodling ever more dramatic eyes, complete with sweeping eyeliner and huge lashes, on the pages of our jotters at school; masterpieces which would be instantly ruined if we dared to add a nose or, indeed, the other eye. There’s also jewellery to match Lou’s collages, should you want an extra pair of eyes dangling from your earlobes. We certainly do.

Catching flies

Since we aren’t blessed in the fluttery eyelash department like the peepers in Lou’s collage, we need at least two coats of the black stuff to see us right. But something happens when we start brandishing the mascara wand about – it even happens to lovely Anne Hathaway – we cannot apply mascara without opening our mouths like we’re catching flies. The most likely reason is the position of nerve endings in our faces. The two nerves in control of the muscles that open and close our mouths and our eyelids are actually very close together. It’s likely that there’s a bit of a clash between messaging systems – when you open your eyes wider to get the best angle on your Maybelline, your jaw drops automatically. No scientific answer to how to stop poking yourself in the eye when you’re running late, though, sorry.

Recipes rebuilding lives

One of the many challenges that refugees and asylum seekers face is integrating into a new society. Language and legal barriers can make finding employment difficult, which has a real impact on mental health. Non-profit organisation Migrateful gives migrants the opportunity to host cooking classes around the UK, which not only improves their language skills, but also allows them to share their stories and culture with others. Cooking and food is often our gateway into learning about a country and its culture, and we’re particularly keen on the family style classes. Rather than having an individual station, you cook and chat together as a group, before sitting down to the dinner that you’ve helped prepare. The family style cooking classes are reasonably priced, too: £45 at the London locations, or £35 outside of the capital, and you also get access to all of the recipes so you can recreate your favourite dishes at home. Sian’s got her eye on an upcoming Nicaraguan session.

By design

The Modern Croft is filled with lots of well-chosen, stylish objects that we don’t necessarily need, but we do very much want. This lovely place in Oban firmly focuses on beautiful things made well, and it’s where we’ll be going for chic presents for elegant pals. We do like a shop that introduces us to designers we haven’t yet discovered, and there are some brilliant names to seek out here. You know we can’t resist a tiny ornamental building (from bothies to brutalism), so Rowena Brown’s gorgeous Hebridean houses are right up our street, of course. We’re clearing space on our shelves for striking espresso cups by AKU Ceramics and Alexis Basso’s simple but stunning pouring bowls. And then there are these handsome coffee scoops by GreenGrapes, which will handily double as prop pipes if we suddenly feel the need to become detectives over breakfast.

Read all about it

• What is a dumpling? Honestly, you think you know the answer to this, but then you begin to question everything.

• From penguins to stamp collectors, the Loneliest Post Office is a treat of a podcast episode.

• Terri White is excellent on the Don’t Worry Darling debacle.

• The fact remains that figs are delicious even if they have got dead wasps in them.

Before we forget: a little heart | birdhouse in your soul | we’ve got plans for our favourite blankets | new pencil case time | can’t wait to smell these.

This weekend, Sian is all about the pickle rice and Laura is peering into rockpools. Like what we do? Buy us a cuppa.

Tigers Are Better Looking is free! We sometimes share affiliate links so we may make some money if you buy something we recommend or a book we love. This doesn’t cost you anything but it does keep the tigers in Dreamies.

Say cheese!

In the early 1940s, a newspaper in Texas revealed a nifty new technique to guarantee a happy smile in photographs – no matter how many disgruntled thoughts might be going on behind the beam. The article shared a trick that US diplomat Joseph E. Davies had picked up from “a very great politician.” Saying cheese, he claimed, worked every time. Cue speculation that it might have been his big boss, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who’d come up with the idea – though it’s more likely it was a photographer of the president’s acquaintance.

A century before, it’s said that British photographer Richard Beard chose a very different foodstuff to ensure his sitters didn’t smile too much. Say prunes, he’d tell them, because broadly smiling in photos wasn’t the fashionable thing back then, and a rather more tight-lipped expression was de rigueur among well-to-do Victorians.  

Different languages around the world have their own words to get a big grin. If you’re having your picture taken in Bulgaria, invoke a cabbage. In France, a marmoset can help raise a smile. Latin American countries opt for a shot of whiskey while Moroccans go for bread. It’s apples in Iran and oranges in Denmark. Our favourite might be Indonesia’s green beans, though – we’re going to start using that one ourselves.

East meets west

Artist Sarah Kwan’s East Meets West series is such fun – a witty celebration of all the ways Scottish and Chinese traditions, legends and rituals collide. There’s the culinary, such as Teacake Dim Sum (pictured above) and the wonderful Aye & Brew; the superstitious, as seen in Lucky Cat Sìth, a mash-up of a soul-stealing Celtic fairy cat and the Japanese maneki-neko figurine that’s also come to be known as a Chinese lucky cat, thanks to its popularity in Chinatowns across the globe; and the symbolic, including Blossoming, combining the peony and the thistle. Sarah’s got prints, cards, tea towels, stickers and more, all available from the Red Door Gallery, and all absolutely delightful.

Dead easy

Talking about death is hard. Harder still, however, is when someone dies unexpectedly and as well as feeling wretchedly, inconsolably sad, you’ve got less than a week to remember whether they said they loved or loathed My Way; which photos they wanted in the order of service; and what their opinion was on serving egg mayo sandwiches at the wake.

Broaching the subject of funeral and other death wishes with loved ones can be tricky – when someone’s fighting fit, it seems like tempting fate, and when they’re ill or in their twilight years, it can feel too close to home. The Death Book means that at the very least, you can make sure family and friends know your last requests – and hopefully, it’ll inspire them to fill in their own.

In this brilliant notebook, you can write down everything from the type of coffin you want to the messages you’d like your nearest and dearest to read after you’re gone. Just put it somewhere safe (next to your will and the warranty for the microwave you owned in 1998), and remember to update it if you suddenly get a new favourite song or poem. It’s £12.50, and it’ll be priceless to your funeral-organiser-in-chief when the time comes to shuffle off this mortal coil.

Feeling peckish

Swiss-born artist Heidi Caillard began making ceramic birds in her Provence village of Lussan back in 1974. Charmed by the birds pecking round her studio, she decided to immortalise them in clay. They were an instant hit. Since 1994, her son Adrien and his family have continued her work and Heidi’s gloriously fat guineas continue to peck their way around the world. Making each bird is a lengthy process – the bodies are moulded to the correct size and shape (each of the birds is life-size), and then the glaze is applied – in an oxide combination that is unique to Heidi’s studio La Céramique de Lussan. After their glaze and enamel bath, the largest birds need eight hours in the kiln (preheated to 1240°C, lemon and stuffing optional).

The chubby little birds come in four sizes, and while it’s the guinea fowl – or pintades as they’re called in France – that are most sought-after, Sian is particularly taken with the plump little quails nesting over at Found In France.

Cream of the crop

There's a real temptation to dive headfirst into autumn as soon as the calendar flips over to September. Cool your pumpkin spice jets, there are three whole weeks of summer left and we’re squeezing out every single last drop. You’ve probably got the sticky dregs of a bottle of elderflower cordial still kicking about, and that’s really all you need for this delicious elderflower cream recipe. Mix 300ml double cream with 4 tbsp elderflower cordial and 1 tbsp icing sugar. Whisk with an electric whizzer for a few minutes (or by hand, if one particularly strong bicep is the look you’re going for) until it’s fully whipped. Serve with the last of the summer’s strawberries and eat outside, ideally with a thunderstorm brewing.

Read all about it

• We’re very keen to visit some furanchos – Galicia's unofficial restaurants.

• After reading The Children of Jocasta last weekend, Sian cannot wait for Antigone at the Open Air Theatre. It’s on throughout September.

• An incomplete taxonomy of air-conditioning.

• There are, amazingly, still tickets left for the Interesting Conference tomorrow. Talk topics include “Soil” and “Chartreuse: Tipple, Colour and Clergy”. Beside ourselves.

Honourable mentions: welcome to the jungle | best pecan pie recipe | be still our beating hearts | going to make our own | choose your words wisely.

This weekend, Sian is going on a trek for the perfect hot sauce and Laura is snooping around artists’ studios. Like what we do? Buy us a cuppa.

Smiley face image (cropped) by Jacqueline Munguía via Unsplash (Unsplash licence); Teacake Dim Sum © Sarah Kwan Artist 2022 www.sarahkwan.co.uk.

Tigers Are Better Looking is free! We sometimes share affiliate links so we may make some money if you buy something we recommend or a book we love. This doesn’t cost you anything but it does keep the tigers in Dreamies.

Lyubov Panchenko

It’s impossible not to be drawn to the playfulness in Lyubov Panchenko’s vibrant folk art. Each piece is made up of colourful blocks of fabric that together depict lively characters and animals with an array of Ukrainian motifs throughout. Her pieces are part of a much bigger story - the Ukrainian artist continued to create through a life of oppression.

Panchenko’s career in the arts had always involved textiles – first as an embroidery pattern designer for magazines, later as a fashion designer – but in the 1960s she was determined to let her art speak. She joined The Sixtiers – a political art group who strove to revive Ukrainian culture. Her activism and refusal to change her creative style meant that she was forbidden to exhibit her artwork for decades during the Soviet Era. Her first public exhibition wasn’t until 1992. Panchenko’s work was transferred to The Ukrainian Sixtiers Dissident Movement Museum in Kyiv before the war began, and when Russia invaded her hometown of Bucha earlier this year, she went on a hunger strike. She died on 30th April.

A nice bit of crumpet

There’s a lot we can get done in the time our crumpets are in the toaster: eating cheese from the fridge, completely ignoring that pan we “left to soak”, getting annoyed at the Duolingo owl when we get our Italian verbs wrong. And, earlier this week, googling the history of crumpets.

The name dates back much further than the modern iteration of our favourite 11am and/or 4pm snack. In 1382, theologian John Wycliffe translated “Crompid Cake" from the Latin Old Testament. The cake wasn’t actually that similar to crumpets, but it was cooked on a hot stone, which is vital for the crumpled edges, or the “cromp”. There’s also some similarity with the Welsh “crempog”, which is a flatter pancake, but still cooked on a hot stone.

Earlier iterations of crumpet recipes involve beaten egg, but we can thank the Victorians for our modern version: they introduced baking powder, which gives crumpets their lovely bubbly texture that soaks up all of the butter, jam and whatever else you fancy. This is also when the crumpet ring was introduced, a canny contraption that held the batter in place and made for a thicker and doughier snack.

Crumpets were widely popular with all classes – they were beloved with afternoon tea by the upper crust of society, but street hawkers made them accessible to the masses. There’s also no single origin – variation on the concept existed around the UK. The ubiquity of the snack actually helped to cement its longevity and space in our toasters.

Bridge over troubled water

When we’re in need of a holiday but have nothing but a vast expanse of work ahead, we like to take a vicarious trip around the Landmark Trust website of a lunchtime. Currently top of our list of fantasy weekend getaway venues is this chocolate-box-worthy pink thatched cottage in North Devon. One of the best things about the Landmark Trust – after their stellar conservation work and array of incredible lighthouses and castles, of course – is the fact that they often tell you a bit about who lived in each property in the past. Bridge Cottage was once home to the Hockin family, who had nine children. The most recent resident was one of their daughters: Mrs Packington, as she became, lived there until the 1970s. Nowadays, four nights at Mrs P’s old place start at £297 (though you’ll need Lady Luck on your side to bag a break that cheap), and there’s still some availability this year. Send us a postcard, please.

Rub it in

If midgies and mozzies love you as much as they love Laura, take her advice and carry a little tin of Zam-Buk around with you at all times. It’s £3.99 from Victoria Health and works a treat, soothing the itchiness and calming the redness. This magical old-fashioned ointment works on chapped skin, aching muscles and cuts, too, and if you happen to be an escape artist, Harry Houdini recommended it for sore wrists.

Hug and be hungry

Instagram is a weird place these days. We would love to double-tap your holiday snaps (your sunshine freckles are so cute!) and that cool photo of the big bumble bee in your garden, but first we have to swim through a sea of reels from people we don’t know. Just as we think of deleting the app, something stops us. That something is usually the artists and illustrator accounts that we love like Maggie Cownes, Tessa Perlow, TheJealousCurator and – our most recent Seinfeld-inspired joy – arthistoryvandelay. Last month Rubyetc shared this beautiful sketch, and dozens of people requested it as a print. Our wishes were granted and it’s available to buy for just £18. Send it to your favourite person to hug and hug again until dinner time.

Read all about it

• We’ve got a lot of time for the Italian man who built himself an amusement park.

• Jeremy Lee’s debut cookbook is out soon, and we can’t wait to get stuck in. Among the simple but sensational recipes, it also promises “the most useful jams and jellies from a Dundee childhood,” which has obviously piqued Laura’s interest.

• What working at a secondhand bookshop taught an author about literary rejection.

• Looking forward to the Richard Curtis adaptation.

Accidentally in love: top tip | it takes a village | comes in cat print, too | a perfect jug.

This weekend, Sian is headed to Bath and Laura is off to the Highland Games in Drumnadrochit. Like what we do? Buy us a cuppa.

Red Viburnum image by Lyubov Panchenko via The Ukrainian Sixtiers Dissident Movement Museum, Kyiv, Ukraine. Bridge Cottage image © Paul Grundy via the Landmark Trust (press image).

Tigers Are Better Looking is free! We sometimes share affiliate links so we may make some money if you buy something we recommend or a book we love. This doesn’t cost you anything but it does keep the tigers in Dreamies.

Pink grapefruit gimlet

At 5pm on a Friday we’re honestly just looking for the easy life. We want to shut down our computers and have a drink in our hand approximately four minutes later. Now is not the time for whizzing, muddling, or smooshing of any sort. A lot of modern gimlet recipes involve a mix of sugar syrup and fresh lime juice, so when our friend Alex suggested using Rose’s Lime Cordial in a grapefruit gimlet, we were fully on board.

It’s actually an old method popularised by a 19th Century ship master in Leith. After doctor James Lind discovered that citrus prevented scurvy in 1753, Lachlan Rose created his lime cordial as a way to preserve lime juice without alcohol (our hangovers thank him). Traditionally the gimlet is made with half Rose’s Lime, half gin – a method that even gets a nod in Raymond Chandler’s 1953 detective novel The Long Goodbye. If you happen to be showing signs of scurvy and want an extra citrus kick (be on the lookout for blue spots around your shins), a sharp burst of pink grapefruit juice is just the thing to balance out the sweetness.

Ingredients:

• 45ml pink grapefruit juice

• 45ml gin

• 25ml Rose’s Lime Cordial

• Ice

Method:

• Mix all of the ingredients in a cocktail shaker over ice.

• Shake vigorously, as though trying to rid one’s spotty ankle of a ship rat.

• Strain into a cocktail glass.

In a nutshell

If you are the savouriest of savoury snack people, and you’re in the mood for the most wonderful treat and can momentarily overlook the fact that these cost a small fortune (£4.95 for 135g!), may we enthusiastically recommend Belazu’s truffle and pecorino nuts. They are just so delicious and umami-ish and we’d wager they’d be delightful with Sian’s cocktail above. Trying them is a bit of a risk, because you’ll likely want to eat them every day for the rest of your life. We’ve already crossed that bridge, and are happy to report that 1.35kg bags are available.

Seasoned professionals

Sometimes we stumble on an ingredient so brilliant that it immediately gets promoted to The Special Section of the cupboard. The little collection of spices that actually get used and stay in one spot, rather than becoming part of the mass that makes an inevitable rotation to the back of the cupboard waiting to be discovered when you move house three years later. Tajin is Sian’s latest discovery of utmost happiness. After buying it on a whim because it sounded like something that might taste good in a Bloody Mary (and hoo boy, it really does) it’s since been used on chicken, avocado, eggs, and – in a fit of homeworking lunchtime desperation – a crumpet. The combination of lime, chilli and sea salt is perfect. This is an ingredient for those times when you want to feel like you’ve cooked without actually putting any effort in at all. And if you’re thinking it would taste delicious around the rim of your grapefruit gimlet’s cocktail glass, you’d be absolutely correct.

Pour your heart out

Picture the scene. You’re sitting in the back of a beige Volvo, a coolbox full of Kia-Ora digging into your side. From the front seat, a sandwich wrapped in tin foil is proffered, cut into quarters and filled with Heinz Sandwich Spread and sliced cucumbers. The bread’s a bit soggy but every mouthful is tangy and delicious and crunchy. There’s the sound of contented chewing and rustling and the crunching of crisps; that Ralph McTell song about the streets of London comes on the car stereo and you all sing along between mouthfuls. You roll down the window a bit and the rain makes polka dots on your sleeve. Then a flask appears, and the coffee smells strong and hot and good, and everyone has a little cup with their KitKat. Snap, slurp, aaah. Wiping the steamed-up glass, you look outside at the wet trees and the heaving Scottish sky and you don’t imagine for a moment that one day, you’ll pay £30 to relive this feeling.

Reader’s Digest

Our inbox has begun to resemble a hotel breakfast buffet, such is our love of a food-themed newsletter. Here are some of our favourites that might not be on your radar.

• Lickedspoon. How much do you fantasise about running away to the south of France to eat bread and cheese? Food writer Debora Robertson has done exactly that, and her newsletter includes recipes and missives, and a weekly collection of her haul from the market.
  

• The Welsh Kitchen. There’s something hugely comforting about Ross Clarke’s newsletter. Sian grew up on the Welsh border, so reading it on a Sunday evening always feels like home, and there’s always something interesting in this regular appreciation of a little-explored area of British cuisine.
  

• The Goya Journal. A semi-regular (maybe monthly?) newsletter that takes us all over India and South Asia, inspiring us to cook something new while exploring connections to food and community. We learn something in every issue.
  

• Buzzing. If you’re looking for something completely different, check out Emilia Filou’s Buzzing, which explores the growing use of insects as food. It’s such an interesting read about food politics and sustainability, even if you’re not even slightly tempted to add crickets to your shopping list.
  

• To Vegetables, With Love. Hetty Lui McKinnon makes magic with vegetables. As well as an original (and delicious) recipe in every newsletter, you’ll also find links to the recipes she’s published elsewhere each month. Whenever you’ve reached your limit of beige food and want dinner to be all green and fresh and zingy flavours, she’ll see you right.

Set the table: Wibble wobble | we’ll have the scallops | all our favourite things.

This weekend, Sian is going to hang out with some ring-tailed lemurs and Laura’s making meatballs. Like what we do? Buy us a cuppa.

Tigers Are Better Looking is free! We sometimes share affiliate links so we may make some money if you buy something we recommend or a book we love. This doesn’t cost you anything but it does keep the tigers in Dreamies.

Extinction rebellion

There was a little wardrobe moment six or seven years ago, when everything we owned was covered in a quirky print. Dresses and tops adorned with whales, BBQ tongs, submarines, books, toolboxes, cocktails, hotel room safes. There wasn’t a fabric that didn’t have some sort of cute motif on it. Of course dinosaurs featured heavily. If you’re wondering what actually happened to the dinosaurs, perhaps the real extinction was the big charity shop clearout that we had in 2016.

We truly loved the prints, but we’ve since come around to the idea that a bit of white space can be a good thing. Then we spotted this super cute top £36 (was £49) from Sugarhill Brighton. So taken were we with the coral embroidery that we almost didn’t notice the little brachiosaurus having a natter on the neckline. Topics of conversation might have included: where they’ve been on their holidays (terrible queues at Terminal 4), what it’s like working as an undercover dinosaur, the new Pret that’s opened down the road. Welcome back to the wardrobe, chaps. We’ve missed you.

Lessons in Chemistry

What was the last really funny book you read? There are few books on our shelves that really make us cackle. And certainly none of them as funny as Lessons in Chemistry, which made Sian do a snort-laugh so loud it caused several people on the fast train from Kent to look over. Just in case they didn’t happen to make a note of the book that caused so much glee, we’re telling you about it now. The book dives into the life of Elizabeth Zott in 1960s America – a chemist who becomes host of a TV cookery show – and she is a marvel. She’s drawn in such a warm and kind way that you feel like you’ve known her your whole life, yet everything that she says and does is a surprise. It is a book you cannot predict.

Bonnie Garmus’s debut is so much fun that it falls into a rather small category for us – books we’re pleased we bought in hardback. There’s even a wonderful dog who almost steals the show entirely. The book is so busy being fun that when it does hit you right between the eyes with sexism, misogyny and tragedy, it’s all the more heartbreaking. Although the ending was a little too neat for our liking, Lessons In Chemistry was one of those rare joys: a book that you want to race through because it’s so wonderful, but you don’t, instead you savour it, holding on to those last few chapters for as long as possible because you don’t want it to be over.

Snip of a thing

We cannot imagine the strength it takes to continue to create art in a war zone. After fleeing her home in Kyiv earlier this year, Ukrainian paper artist Eugenia Zoloto and her family recently returned to the capital and she is making art again.

The delicacy and ethereal quality in Zoloto’s work is remarkable. Each piece is cut by hand, a painstaking process. The pieces in her dress series are life-size. Her garden box looks like something from a museum.

Talking to My Modern Met recently, she said “I felt so much mental suffering, so I decided to create more positive art… only kindness, only love helps us not to be stuck in war and hatred”. Her recent work has been directly inspired by the war – one piece has the caption “we are all trying to breathe even if it is so hard” alongside it. It’s this green woman, with her beautiful butterfly, that we are particularly drawn to and many more of Zoloto’s pieces are available to buy directly from her Etsy shop.

Hedge your bets

Foraging is a lot of fun, but if you prefer to enjoy the fruits of someone else’s labour, we know exactly who to call. Macclesfield-based Fruits of the Forage – aka brothers Fred, Bert and Archie and their mum, Claire – make wild preserves, pickles and cordials using foraged ingredients from hedgerows and abandoned orchards, as well as surplus produce from farms.

They go beyond the usual blackberries and elderflower (though they do make an appearance, of course) to bring us unexpected flavours. This dandelion syrup is a good honey substitute for vegans, but really it’s a delicious addition to ice cream, roasted vegetables and salad dressings for everyone. The intriguing curry chutney includes hogweed seeds, and their pickled wild garlic buds are great with a hunk of sharp cheddar. We’ve got our eye on the damson breakfast sauce to try next – it’s an alternative to bog-standard brown sauce that we’re sure is going to transform our bacon butties.

You say tomato

It took a long time for Laura to finally enjoy an unadulterated tomato (thank you for your help, Italy), but nowadays she’s all-in. Claire Thomson’s newest cookery book is, as its name suggests, devoted to them, and it’s filled with recipes to turn even the staunchest tomato naysayer into a superfan. Tinned toms get a look-in, too, so you’ll be cooking from this all year round. There are salads, soups, sauces and stews galore, and if you fancy a taste of what’s in store, these gorgeous recipes will whet your appetite. Claire’s food never fails to impress, and this is destined to become one of our favourite books of hers.

Gladiators, READY: happy kitchen helpers | pad of butter | there go our deadlines | guaranteed to make even the most chaotic hair look amazing.

This week Sian’s headed to Dorset to do absolutely nothing and Laura is doing absolutely nothing in Dundee. Like what we do? Buy us a cuppa.

Tigers Are Better Looking is free! We sometimes share affiliate links so we may make some money if you buy something we recommend or a book we love. This doesn’t cost you anything but it does keep the tigers in Dreamies.

Victoria Topping

One of the joys of collage as a medium is that the resulting image takes on the depth and meaning of the materials it uses. Whether that’s archival prints, fashion magazines, or newspaper cuttings, every single choice made by the artist is a deliberate one. This is perhaps one of the reasons why Victoria Topping’s work sings so much (we’re also big fans of her Grace Jones series). Topping often uses materials from her previous works, and in the work above – Mother Nature – she used only images of flowers that she had grown in her allotment, as a personal celebration of nature. Each collaged piece is deeply personal for the artist and holds in it something special. The materials become resonant throughout the process as well as in the final piece.

Rosanna Webster

You might well recognise visual artist Rosanna Webster’s work. She is hugely popular in the world of fashion and her work graces the covers of magazine and advertising campaigns full of bright young things. Dior, Givenchy and Nike are among her clients and it’s easy to see why her work attracts attention. It’s striking and impactful, yet there’s also a delicacy to it – florals feature heavily in her pieces. Nature plays a significant role in modern collage across a variety of artists – the theme of recreation is a common one. Webster’s work also graces the hardback edition of Edward St Aubyn’s Double Blind, about three close friends during an extraordinary year of transformation.

Sharon Walters

In her ongoing series ‘Seeing Ourselves’, London-based artist Sharon Walters explores the underrepresentation of Black women and creates pieces that encourage “Black women to take up space”. Her mixed-media collages are created using images from women’s magazines, as well as photographs that she’s taken herself. Each new work depicts a Black woman and is a personal and public celebration of natural beauty and afro hair. Her provoking pieces reframe the visual role of Black women, and offers an alternative role of empowerment while at the same time questioning traditional beauty standards and oppression.

Olivia Pilling

Rather than sourcing different materials for her collages, Olivia Pilling creates her own. She starts by painting pieces of paper in different shades and uses those as her palette, letting herself be guided by the array of tones and brushstrokes that jump out at her. Then it’s a case of “making sense” of each piece – a process that she likens to a jigsaw puzzle. As she cuts and builds her pieces, a depth and richness begins to form in her designs. The shadow and light that comes out in the layering is particularly noticeable on these red and white radishes.

Christine Hodson

It’s not easy to make a popular landscape look fresh and modern, but Kent-based artist Christine Hodson really nails it. Her work really makes you like twice – at first it looks like it’s oil painting using heavy brushstrokes, but they’re actually a mix of collage, pastel and oil paint. They’re placed over one another to create bold depictions of the Kentish coastline. With “elements of street art and punk ethics”, Hodson’s unique method creates movement and richness, giving classic scenes like the white cliffs of Dover a brand new look.

Pull shapes: a cut above the rest | take a seat at Mimi’s table | multi-layered magazine | classic of the genre | fragments of avant-garde genius.

This weekend, Laura is going to the seaside and Sian is getting the sausages on for her first-ever barbecue. Like what we do? Buy us a cuppa.

Tigers Are Better Looking is free! We sometimes share affiliate links so we may make some money if you buy something we recommend or a book we love. This doesn’t cost you anything but it does keep the tigers in Dreamies.

We’re relying heavily on tried-and-tested traditional coolers during this heatwave. Plunging our feet into bowls of ice and running water over our wrists; googling LACY PARASOLS NEXT DAY DELIVERY and readying our freezer drawers for damp flannels. And though we stop short of falling for all that hot drink nonsense (try Sian’s iced tea instead), we are fully on board when it comes to the folding fan – useful not only for creating a breeze, but for sharing our innermost feelings, too.  

Hand fans date back millennia. Tutankhamun’s tomb contained eight of them – one simply can’t risk being uncomfortably warm in the afterlife – and most hot weather cultures developed their own fan styles and customs. We have Japan to thank for the portable, foldable fans that have helped refresh our sweaty commutes and beach holidays.

They’re thought to have been invented some time in the 7th century, and these beautiful, breezy accessories eventually caught on around the world, where they became a part of courtship as well as cooling.

It’s said that someone called Fenella wrote the first “fan language” in Spanish in the 18th century, though there are suspicions that this was all made up decades later by a Parisian fan manufacturer as a marketing ploy.

On this side of the Channel, however, Georgian women were already firm fans of proper fan etiquette, and the Victorians – no strangers to elaborately silly clandestine communication methods such as the language of flowers, postage stamp flirtation, and conveying messages through cutlery – added the official gestures to their repertoire.

Whether or not any of this flapping and snapping actually worked is another matter entirely – imagine holding your fan the wrong way and then realising you’d accidentally invited the boring nose-picking man across the room to kiss you?

Nevertheless, it’s fun to learn some of the sassier signals as we weather this heat. Drawing your fan through your hand means you hate someone, touching your left ear with it is silently telling them to poke off, and resting it on your left cheek means “no”. They might not understand, but there’s a certain pleasure in secretly telling that damp, annoying person on the bus what you really think as you nonchalantly fan yourself.

All of a flutter

Monarch butterfly fan. £68, Khu Khu | Orange lollipop fan. £12, Toast | Toucan Fan. £38, Alice Acreman Silks | Love fan. £4, Temerity Jones.

Into the fold

Framer’s Law: the closer a museum or gallery is to your house, the less likely you are to have visited.

We might have the best of intentions when it comes to visiting the cultural destinations on our doorstep, but the reality is very different. “They’re right there! I can go any time!” you think to yourself as you merrily get on three buses and a train to visit an entirely different gallery. This is how – despite living in Greenwich for a decade – it took Sian almost seven years to visit the Fan Museum.

Student Sian was really missing out. The Fan Museum is such a delightful space. It looks like something straight out of the pages of World of Interiors – somehow modern and still timeless. Rather than feeling like you’re in a museum, it’s like snooping around an elegant home that just happens to have an incredible fan collection – it’s the only one of its kind in the world. There’s a small permanent collection, but the exhibitions change regularly and feel like they could be housed in the V&A. The current show – A Bouquet of Fans – has a floral theme and features pieces that date back to the 16th century. You’ll find us trying to cool down with one of the upcoming fan making workshops and promising never to sleep on our local galleries again. They’re full of treasure.

Ready to open up: brooch the subject | Sian’s dream dress | desk fans.

This week, Laura has been gripped by Gaslit and Sian has discovered that vegan Magnums are delicious. Like what we do? Buy us a cuppa.

Fans image (brightened) by Chris Parker via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0 licence); Woman Standing, Holding A Fan by Mary Cassatt via Wikimedia Commons (public domain); Fan Museum front door image via the Fan Museum.

Tigers Are Better Looking is free! We sometimes share affiliate links so we may make some money if you buy something we recommend or a book we love. This doesn’t cost you anything but it does keep the tigers in Dreamies.

There’s something truly special in an author that can make you want to read their entire back catalogue. To put every book on your holiday reading list, to ask for the latest at Christmas. To even consider breaking your firm “no hardbacks” rule for. For me that author is Sarah Moss (pictured above). Her entire collection lines a shelf by my desk, I don’t think there’s a living author I admire more.

Moss’s books have been nominated for the Wellcome Prize three times. Her novel Ghost Wall – about a 17-year-old girl’s relationship with her violent father, who has an unhealthy obsession with the Iron Age and human sacrifice – is perhaps her best-known work. It was longlisted for the The Ondaatje Prize and the 2019 Women’s Prize.

There is an art to holding her in the place she is entering now, on the edge of the water-earth, in the time and space between life and death, too late to return to the living and not time, not yet, not for a while, to be quite dead.

Ghost Wall

Family dynamics and remote communities are something that Moss plays with a lot. She expertly juggles both in Ghost Wall, taking an unusual situation and heightening the tension, which makes for a great introduction to her work. She shines in brevity – Ghost Wall is enormously punchy for a book that’s only 150 pages long.

Where Moss really excels is her piercing portrayal of women. Even in The Tidal Zone, which is narrated by a man who wakes to a call telling him that his daughter’s heart has stopped, female voices are still prominent throughout – in their silence, their actions, their missingness. In Summerwater, a novel set on a holiday park in Scotland over a single day of torrential rain, a woman goes for an early morning run (“feet pattering, heart and lungs surprised, labouring. Cold water on bed-warm skin”), and an internal monologue lays bare her entire life. In it, mundanity comes alive.

Every detail is pulled into the fore. In the midst of her beautiful prose, Moss has an uncanny way of telling the truth. It stops you in your tracks and makes you scan back so you can enjoy it again. “Stories have endings; that's why we tell them, for reassurance that there is meaning in our lives”, she writes in The Tidal Zone. Moss puts the smallest things under a spotlight. She doesn’t make them bigger than they are, she makes you notice things that were always there. Even a silver bracelet becomes so much more.

While The Tidal Zone and Summerwater are standalone books, three of Moss’s novels make up what could be called a loose trilogy. Bodies of Light, Signs for Lost Children, and Night Waking all involve a Victorian family, namely sisters Ally and May Moberley. Each book is wildly different, set at various points in history, but their common themes – the inner thoughts of women and their place in the world – brings them together. And throughout, Moss never veers far from the landscape, always connecting her characters to nature and earth, something bigger than them.

“The lightening of her very bones, the slowing of her dancing heart as the air of this place fills her lungs and her blood. The wind off the sea, the watery colours of a summer night in the far west where nightfall is postponed almost until morning.”

Signs for Lost Children.

Despite their beauty, Moss’s books can be hard going. They’re dense, even when short. Rather light on plot. I’ve never finished Night Waking – where Anna Bennett is sleep deprived from looking after her two young boys a remote Scottish island, as her husband prioritises his own research over his family and his wife’s career. Reading something so acute about motherhood and its impact on a woman’s identity can feel a bit like pressing on a bruise. Even when Moss is writing the past, she is every bit the contemporary novelist, shining a mirror up to society – and frequently women’s position in it – sometimes I want a lighter train journey read.

I can understand why even avid Moss fans might shy away from her latest novel, The Fell. A book about the pandemic feels, perhaps, too soon – I suspect it’s one that people will return to in a couple of years. It’s actually familiar territory for Moss – her debut novel Cold Earth was about a group of researchers on Greenland cut off from the world as a pandemic spreads. Against The Fell’s backdrop of the Peak District, there are few authors who could write about so deftly about the need for “a sip of outside”. Moss has talked a lot about the lack of compassion around lockdown and instead she focusses on community. The book is one of real empathy.

While Moss might be drawn to rather bleak topics, there’s always a gentle wit and warmth in her books (“looking as always for food and mischief”). The common thread throughout her work is exploring how people might react when they are pushed to their limits. Claustrophobia, the brink of death, unrelenting rain, a debilitating lack of sleep – Sarah Moss’s remarkable skill is in toying with that tension, letting her characters teeter on the edge.

And sometimes, they fall.

A rolling stone: Names For The Sea | These Our Monsters | Scott’s Last Biscuit.

This week we’ve been to the seaside! Sian has been hanging out in a beach hut in West Sussex and Laura has been playing on the penny falls in Norfolk. Like what we do? Buy us a cuppa.

Sarah Moss image via Picador.

Tigers Are Better Looking is free! We sometimes share affiliate links so we may make some money if you buy something we recommend or a book we love. This doesn’t cost you anything but it does keep the tigers in Dreamies.

Row, row, row your boat

Stockholm’s rower-women, or roddarmadammer, ran their own water taxi service from the 15th century onwards, transporting passengers around the capital’s islands and Lake Malären. By 1638, they had joined the Swedish ferrymen’s guild, and these self-employed women were often the breadwinners of their families.

In the 19th century, the rower-women fought to rule the waters despite the unwanted arrival of private companies with faster, better boats. They demanded the right to raise their rates and petitioned the Chamber of Commerce when rivals threatened their livelihood.

Wearing weather hoods that looked a bit like something out of The Handsmaid’s Tale to protect them from the elements, these formidable women turned the air blue with their lively language, and cared not a jot for ladylike manners – a special code of conduct was even written up in 1759 that called for the rower-women to be sober and courteous at all times, though there’s no proof it had any effect whatsoever.

Boats were often passed down from mother to daughter, and this all-woman profession carried on right up until World War I, albeit with dwindling numbers. Roddarmadammer are now remembered as an important, vibrant and inspirational part of Stockholm’s heritage.

Miss Unsinkable

When RMS Olympic collided with a warship in 1911, she somehow escaped a maritime catastrophe. The crew and passengers were unscathed, and the ocean liner managed to return to port without sinking, despite two great big holes in her hull. Stewardess Violet Jessop probably thought that would be the one and only Big Sea Drama she’d get caught up in during her career, but she was wrong.

The following year, she moved to the Olympic’s sister ship, RMS Titanic, and set off on her maiden voyage to New York. You don’t need us to tell you how Titanic’s story ends, but Violet survived. She was handed a baby to take with her on the lifeboat, snatched from her arms by (hopefully) the child’s mother when Violet was finally rescued.

This ordeal didn’t put her off heading back to sea during World War I, however. After training as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse on dry land, Violet joined the hospital ship HMHS Britannic, which – you guessed it – sank after hitting a deep-sea mine. Violet badly injured her head, but after the war Miss Unsinkable, as she had become known, was out on the open seas once more.

In her retirement, she received a phone call from woman, who asked if she’d rescued a baby from the stricken Titanic. When Violet told her she had, the woman responded with a laugh. “I was that baby,” she revealed, before hanging up. Even more intriguingly, Violet insisted she had never told anyone about the incident before then…

Ahoy there!

Londoner Mary Read and Irishwoman Anne Bonny ended up on the same ship in the Caribbean in the early 18th century, and have gone down in history as two of the most notorious pirates of all time (although Chinese pirate leader Ching Shih gives them a run for their pieces of eight).

After falling for pirate John Rackham, better known as Calico Jack, while living in the Bahamas, Anne ran away with him when Rackham rather boldly – and, it turns out, misguidedly – offered her husband money to divorce her.

Instead, she joined his crew, disguised as a bloke. On board, she met Mary, who also dressed as a man. She had been brought up to pretend she was her dead half-brother so that payments from his grandmother didn’t dry up, and coincidentally, Anne had also grown up wearing boys’ clothes for reasons of parental subterfuge.

Mary had been a sailor, but became a buccaneer when the ship she was on was captured by pirates. Some speculate that Mary and Anne may have become lovers aboard Rackham’s ship, though the facts are hazy. What’s certain is that they were fierce and fearless, no more so than during their final battle with pirate hunters. When most of the men were too drunk to help, Mary and Anne fought to the bitter end. Sentenced to death, they got a stay of execution because they were both pregnant, though Mary later died in prison. No one knows what fate befell Anne, though it’s believed she was eventually set free after giving birth.

Sail of the century

Hélène de Pourtalès was the first woman to win an Olympic gold medal when she took part in the 1900 Games in Paris. American-born but with dual citizenship that meant she could represent Switzerland, Hélène was among the 22 women who made history that year by being the first to compete in the Olympics.

She took part in the 1 to 2 ton races with her husband and his nephew, sailing her way to gold and then silver aboard Lérina. We rather hope she did it all in this fabulous get-up, but we suspect she opted for something a little less flamboyant.

Long before Hélène’s Olympic victory, another amazing woman was causing ripples in the male-dominated aquatic world, this time as a rower. In 19th century Cornwall, Ann Glanville became a river worker, or waterwoman, so that she could support her many children after her husband became seriously ill.

Alongside her job, Ann also formed a women-only rowing team that proved hard to beat at regattas around the country and further afield – some claim that they effortlessly defeated ten of the best male crews at a competition in Le Havre. Ann was dubbed “champion female rower of the world” by the press. Puts our greatest boating achievement – namely, managing not to capsize the pedalo on holiday – to shame.

This week, Sian and Laura have been hanging out for the first time since 2019 – and we’ve been to see Alanis Morissette! Like what we do? Buy us a cuppa.

Rower-women image by unknown via Wikimedia Commons (public domain); Violet Jessop image by unknown via Wikimedia Commons (public domain); Mary Read and Anne Bonny image engraved by Benjamin Cole via Wikimedia Commons (public domain); Hélène de Pourtalès image by Levitsky of Paris via Wikimedia Commons (public domain).

Tigers Are Better Looking is free! We sometimes share affiliate links so we may make some money if you buy something we recommend or a book we love. This doesn’t cost you anything but it does keep the tigers in Dreamies.

Feast your eyes

At first glance, Kathleen Ryan’s giant fruit sculptures are anything but peachy. They’re decaying and covered in mould. Then you get closer and they become something entirely different. Rather than rot and fungus, they’re covered in crystals, gemstones, and shells. Their unappetising surface adornment is built up to look almost industrial, quite like a scientific metropolis. Ryan creates something that is both real and otherworldly – there’s a juxtaposition between nature and the modern world and she plays with scale in a way that makes us really look twice at her creations. Her transformations allow us to question our ideals about nature and beauty. It’s so much more than just a peach.

Kathleen Ryan has a brand new exhibition – Red Rose – at the Josh Lilley gallery in London. It’s showing until 5th August.

Cherry picked

When the real world proves too exhausting, we whizz off to our imaginary holiday home in Parisian artist Nathalie Lété’s wonderland of whimsy for a bit of R&R. There are lots of cats there, though they don’t bother the birds, who devour the fruit on the cherry vase-tree in the garden, but kindly leave us all the ones round the back so we can eat approximately 350 in a very hot bath while staring at a wall. Great place, you should visit. We’ll save you some cherries.

Four of your five a day

Peach print dress. £48, Trouva | Apricot tie top. £20, Collectif | Orange pocket dress. £49, Nobody’s Child | Orange tie dress. £24, Tu.

Peach and Apricot Iced Tea

If you are a fellow tea drinker trying to push through the hot days, we can only sympathise. A morning caffeine fix from can of Coke just isn’t the same. After stubbornly beginning the day with a proper brew, Sian switches over to iced tea laden with fruit. It’s not quite the same – you won’t “oooh” as you sit on the sofa, it won’t bookend your to-do list in quite the same way – but it is utterly delicious in its own right and will keep your perkiness levels up until after that Zoom meeting you were hoping would be cancelled. Of course you can use fresh fruit for this, especially when it’s in season, but tinned has the benefit of the extra juice which adds much-needed sweetness to the strong tea. Besides, “ripen at home” fruit could take anywhere from the length of an episode of Sewing Bee to a week to get its act together. We cannot wait that long for joy.

Serves 4

Takes 10 minutes to make, 20 minutes to cool and then some time to muddle – make an hour before you wish to serve.

Ingredients:

• 750ml strong black tea. This is probably the size of a good teapot, otherwise make up a measuring jug with two teabags.

• 1 tin peach slices in juice

• 1 tin apricot slices or halves in juice

• 2 tbsp apricot jam. We are firmly in the Bonne Maman fan club.

• A few mint leaves, roughly chopped

• Ice

Method:

• Make up your batch of tea. It needs to be a little stronger than you’d probably make for a normal brew – steep for five minutes, even if you’re usually a three-minute dunker. Remove the teabags and leave to cool for a little while.

• Meanwhile, slice your apricot halves if needed – anything the size you can pick out from your glass with your fingers/the spike of a cocktail umbrella is good.

• Add the tea, fruit and jam to a large jug and mix well. Leave to mingle together for around an hour. If your jug fits in the fridge, so much the better.

• Top up with ice and stir in fresh mint leaves just before serving.

• Leave on your desk and make your way through the whole jug throughout the afternoon. The last few glasses taste excellent with sparkling wine and any leftover fruit is delicious with yoghurt for breakfast the next day.

Peaches and cream

You might think that a BBQ recipe book is an unlikely place to find an abundance of fruit recipes, but LIVE FIRE is a veritable fruit bowl. Helen Graves’s debut cookbook is packed with your five a day: peaches and nectarines feature heavily, so do cherries, apricots and even grapefruit. It’s a unique element for a book that we had anticipated to be rather heavy on the meat. Of course meat plays a big role (we’ll be making Adana kebabs and the jerk chicken very soon), but vegetarians are definitely catered for and it’s the unexpected fruity numbers that we’re most excited by: the jammy peaches and cream with ginger nut biscuits pictured above, or the backyard-style apricot-glazed pork ribs. There’s even an upside-down nectarine cake. Fruit is plentiful in every section – in the salsas, the dips, the pickles, the chilli sauces – and the book feels so fresh and zingy for it. LIVE FIRE is seasonal, so you’ll be tempted to fire up the grill in December and it’s full of tweaks and suggestions if you’re not blessed with outdoor cooking space. Peppered throughout are interesting and thoughtful essays about live fire cooking from grilling experts. There’s nothing one-note about this lovely book – it’s as far-removed from a long-life bun as you could imagine.

Pit your wits: Forgotten Fruit | peachy keen | oranges are not the only fruit | strawberry hooray | we put these on everything | a sticky situation

This week, Sian has been eating buffalo wings and drinking hugos and Laura has been to see Sharon Van Etten and Phoebe Bridgers. Like what we do? Buy us a cuppa.

Peaches and cream image by Rob Billington for LIVE FIRE: Seasonal Barbecue Recipes and Stories of Live Fire Traditions Old and New, published by Hardie Grant.

Either/Or

“What if I could use the aesthetic life as an algorithm to solve my two biggest problems: how to live, and how to write novels? In any real-life situation, I would pretend I was in a novel, and then do whatever I would want the person in the novel to do. Afterward, I would write it all down, and I would have written a novel, without having to invent a bunch of fake characters and pretend to care about them.”

Elif Batuman’s Either/Or is the much-anticipated sequel to her debut novel, The Idiot, in which we tagged along as Selin, the Turkish American narrator not dissimilar to the author, navigated her first year at Harvard with equal parts youthful naivety and Ivy League smarts while obsessing over literature and language. Now she’s back, she’s in second year, and she’s still over-thinking everything and managing to find endless parallels between her own experiences and the books and characters she encounters.

This time around, Selin seems hell-bent on pursuing the aesthetic life rather than the ethical life – pitted against each other in Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard’s Either/Or, this novel’s namesake – and we can’t wait to get properly stuck in to find out how that works out for her.

A shot of pure (sometimes uncomfortable) nostalgia for those of us who crossed over into adulthood in the 90s, these are so much more than coming-of-age campus novels, however – each of Batuman’s beautifully written books is a droll and knowing study of reading, questioning, storytelling, and finding your way.

Further reading: Once you’ve finished The Idiot and Either/Or, find more Batuman brilliance in her first book, The Possessed. This memoir – subtitled “Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them” – was the precursor to the fictionalised version of her university life. And if Selin’s love of language strikes a chord, try Eley Williams’ fantastic The Liar’s Dictionary, with its rogue lexicographer who makes up fictitious entries. For another literature-centric campus novel, look no further than The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides.

The Plot

“I’ve always thought there was a kind of beauty to it, the way narratives get told and retold. It’s how stories survive through the ages. You can follow an idea from one author’s work to another, and to me that’s something I find powerful and exciting.”

It’s no surprise that the subject of plot-nicking pops up every now and then in novels – after all, authors spend a fair amount of time worrying that their idea isn’t original, or fretting that they might leave their secret-filled notebook on a train. Jean Hanff Korelitz’s take on the theme isn’t the sort of book we usually gravitate towards – we don’t often pick up psychological thrillers – but the, um, plot of The Plot sounded too gripping to ignore.

Creative writing tutor Jake – who was tipped for literary stardom after his first novel, but has been struggling to make waves since then – listens as a cocky student tells him he’s come up with a potential plot that will turn him into a bestselling author overnight.

He’s right – well, half-right.

It actually turns his teacher into a bestselling author. A couple of years later, Jake discovers that the student has died. And so, he decides to “borrow” his brilliant idea for a novel. He writes the book, Crib, and it’s a huge success. He thinks no one will ever discover his secret.

He’s wrong – completely and utterly wrong.

Jake is contacted by someone calling him a thief. Cue a pacy cat-and-mouse tale and a story-within-a-story (we get to read excerpts from Crib along the way). The Plot is twisty and turny and tense, with a dose of satire mixed in to temper all that suspense, and a really brilliant oh-my-god ending.

Further reading: Plagiarism rears its ugly head once more in A Ladder to the Sky by John Boyne, while in Austin Wright’s Tony and Susan, a woman is creeped out by her ex-husband’s crime manuscript (do watch fashion designer Tom Ford’s film adaptation, Nocturnal Animals, too). The Wife by Meg Wolitzer tackles literary lies and marital sacrifices, and The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris is a sinister, unsettling story of racism and white privilege at a publishing house.

Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life

“I am aware that, every time I have a conversation with a book, I benefit from someone's decision against silence.”

Yiyun Li’s memoir is a reminder that a good book can be not just a salve, but a saviour. This volume of essays, thoughts, and recollections was written over two years while she was in the depths of suicidal depression. Reading kept her company, perhaps even kept her alive. An award-winning author of short stories and novels, Li counteracted her temporary loss of interest in writing fiction by instead seeking solace in the lives of those she met wandering around other people’s books.

She ponders everything from familial friction – her controlling mother looms large – to her decision to write in English, not Chinese, and it’s all stitched together with the unbreakable thread of reading for comfort and for cheer.

It’s often not an easy book to read, and if the overarching theme of mental illness is too close to home for you, tread carefully. There is, of course, a lot of pain in the pages of Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life, but it’s also reflective, wise and so gorgeously written. Ultimately, hope and gratitude prevail.

Further reading: More memoirs that revolve around books are No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy, Mark Hodkinson’s account of growing up as a voracious working-class reader, and All The Lives We Ever Lived by Katharine Smyth, a moving tribute to her late father, and to the book that helped her make sense of her grief: To The Lighthouse. Or relive your childhood reading memories with Lucy Mangan’s Bookworm, a warm and witty celebration of children’s books.

This week, Sian’s been baking wedding brownies and Laura has bought a flouncy orange dress.

Tigers Are Better Looking is free! We sometimes share affiliate links so we may make some money if you buy something we recommend or a book we love. This doesn’t cost you anything but it does keep the tigers in Dreamies.

Making a splash

While we’re very on board with the latter half of holiday planning – choosing which books we’ll read while sitting by the pool with a fruity drink that’s mostly rum – buying a swimsuit is rarely ever fun. If the top half works, the bottom half inevitably digs into your thighs or vanishes up your arse. If the bottoms are staying where they should, then the top is giving you a serious amount of side boob.

Swimwear brand Mor Swimmy might be the answer to all panicked holiday purchases. It turns out that our dream swimming costume involves a lace back and red velvet heart and looks like a costume from a Meatloaf video. The suit is made in the UK but the fabric is actually recycled nylon from discarded fishing nets sourced from Italy.

The two-woman team behind Mor Swimmy – Emily and Magda – live in Penzance in Cornwall and are big fans of leaping into the sea at every opportunity. We like everything from their inclusive sizing and recycled fabrics, to their donations to good causes and plastic-free packaging. The mermaid duo have created a brand that not only looks good, but feels good, even if we only do a bit of splashing about before going back to our big piles of books.

In a pickle

Laura and Sian have long shared a belief that all meals can be improved with pickles (yes, even breakfast, get creative). Last year Sian popped a jar of Aloha 65 Detonators (£4.50) in the post for Laura’s birthday – no card, just pickles – and then promptly walked back to the shop to buy herself a jar. These brilliant little chunks of pineapple are spicy from scotch bonnet and just the right amount of lip-puckering sour. We often have grand plans for them – they’re brilliant in tacos, and we really want to try them in a margarita. Laura puts hers in toasties so we’ve also got a hunch they’d be very good with ham on a pizza, if that’s the sort of thing you’re into (no need to write in). However, what inevitably happens is we help ourselves to a spicy little snack straight from the jar while we’re waiting for the washing machine to finish. The fridge door pickle buffet might be our favourite meal of all.

Down the garden path

As design inspirations go, Minnie-Mae Stott’s are pretty eclectic, as well as being very relevant to our interests: the British seaside, Greek mythology, Italian kitsch and the history of London all feature heavily in her gorgeous ceramics and homewares. But it’s the tableware adorned with floral motifs that we love the best, particularly the way they all tell a story from Minnie-Mae’s childhood. A bunch of mimosa given by her Granny Anne; the way the golden light hit the William Morris Willow Boughs wallpaper in her great-grandmother’s bedroom; walks in a bluebell wood; and her fascination with fairy flowers (or to give them their grown-up name, forget-me-nots) when she was little. Her pieces are so beautiful, and this platter could only be improved by a towering pile of roast potatoes.

Puff piece

We have an odd relationship with Oliver Bonas. On one hand it’s a good place to buy a birthday card for someone you’ve met twice, or grab a last-minute gift on your way home for Christmas (really sorry about all the monogrammed ceramics in 2017, everyone). On the other hand it’s often a failsafe for our fave skincare brands, including Korres and Soapsmith. So it’s been declared “better than Pret” in the list of places to kill time in a train station. However, while we were busy doling out glowing compliments, we noticed a shift recently: they’ve gone all in on the puffy sleeves. And they’re doing it brilliantly.

Our love of a puffy sleeve is strong. They are just the right amount of ridiculous, and make you look like you bothered far more than you did – it’s really a new flavour of “jeans and a nice top”.

Perhaps we’ll always be a bit cynical about OB, but this summer they’ve definitely upped their game and shifted away from the inexplicably backless tea dresses. And, in the case of Sian’s excellent blue and white striped choice above (was £55, now £36), it’s pleasingly gone a little bit milkmaid meets Mamma Mia. How could we resist?

Hangers-on

There comes a time when, no matter how hard you try to resist it, rattan manages to wheedle its way into your world. It stems, perhaps, from believing that you could, one day, be the sort of person with an enormous, squishy bed covered in crisp white linens, who props themselves up on 27 pillows while reading the Sunday papers, eating a ginormous croissant – just a single, adorable flake on the chin, mind, and no more – and balancing a full cup of coffee on the duvet with no repercussions whatsoever.

It is always sunny, of course, except at night-time when moonlight bathes the room in silver. Beside the perpetually open doors to the Juliet balcony, two ethereal dresses – unearthed in a vintage store in Los Angeles – waft in the breeze. They hang on handsome handcrafted hangers, which just happen to exist in real-life: Hastshilp’s rattan beauties are £12 each, and luckily look just as lovely styled with an old Boden frock and a broken sash window.

And don’t it feel good: two for one | bubblegum and shoe strings | catch some rays.

This weekend, Laura is cosmic dancing and Sian is hoping to be 90% pork puff by Sunday. Like what we do? Buy us a cuppa.

Tigers Are Better Looking is free! We sometimes share affiliate links so we may make some money if you buy something we recommend or a book we love. This doesn’t cost you anything but it does keep the tigers in Dreamies.

I want to have a rummage around your kitchen, if you’ll let me. Which spatula is your favourite? Which is your go-to saucepan? How does your best mixing bowl feel when you’re beating egg whites into stiff peaks? When we talk about good food, we wax lyrical about buying the best ingredients and we make our favourite recipes the star of the show. We don’t often shout about the backbone of our own kitchens: the equipment. A much-loved spatula or pot is more than a means to an end, it’s key to the whole process. That’s why when you’ve got a pile of teaspoons to choose from and a dozen dangling saucepans, you still reach for the same one each time.

My favourite kitchenware is a deep saucepan that can feed a dozen without question. It cost me less than a tenner in a southeast London Asda nearly two decades ago. You don’t own much in the way of kitchenware when you’re a young adult, it’s cobbled together from university and flat shares, where you realise you own five sieves between you but no-one has a potato masher. My saucepan wasn’t passed down to me, it isn’t valuable. But of course, it is. It’s moved house with me no less than 11 times and has cooked me through celebrations, arguments, countless dinners, my first ever freelance job, my first book deal, grief, and more than one heartbreak.

I think I know who I am when I cook food in that pan. I am not a speedy cook, however hard I try to make friends with my wok. I am easily distracted and I like things to simmer while I read books and get caught up in writing. So when I taught myself to cook, this pan was where I started – with curries, stews, chillies and ragù – a huge pot of food bubbling away was soothing. It’s how I learnt to taste as I went along, to adjust, to trust in the process. There’s no doubt that I like the feeling of control when I cook, and this is why I turn to my favourite pan so often. Even when I’m making it up as I go along, I feel at ease.

The comfort isn’t just in the final plate of food, there’s a solace that comes in the cooking itself – the methodical chop-chop-chopping, meditative stirring, browning, melting, smooshing. Feeling it all come together. Perhaps this is why some people don’t feel hungry after they’ve cooked a delicious meal, it’s already filled them up in a different way.

The kitchen is often where we connect with the people we love, and in her essay collection Home Cooking, food writer Laurie Colwin talks about the long thread of generations involved in cooking:

“No one who cooks, cooks alone. Even at her most solitary, a cook in the kitchen is surrounded by generations of cooks past, the advice and menus of cooks present, and the wisdom of cookbook writers.”

In a similar way, I think many people feel an attachment to their kitchenware, especially those bits that are passed down through generations. When I asked Laura about her favourite cooking equipment, she told me about an abundance of jars and casserole dishes that she has a connection with. She also has a favourite butter knife. And a teaspoon that was erm… “liberated” from a British Airways flight in the 1980s.

“I have so many favourite pots and precious utensils, most of which I’ve inherited from my mum’s house. Those wonky pan handles are my Proustian madeleines, and every dent brings back fond memories of helping out with the cooking in my childhood kitchen. I can taste my mother’s shepherd’s pie when I use our old potato masher; the creak of the orange Mouli grater reminds me of our extremely enthusiastic cheesy baked potato phase in the 90s. There’s no sadness in my kitchen cupboards. Every night it feels like she’s there, stirring and laughing by my side, and I love that.”

I also asked pals on Twitter for stories of their culinary hand-me-downs, and the response covered everything but the kitchen sink.

Kavey’s response in particular sparked something in me – that curve could only be made by the hand of one person, much like a well-used fountain pen. We get to know the objects we use regularly. Their weight, shape and texture. Over years, we build a relationship with them. The trust we place in our own bodies continues through to our tools. This is discussed at length in topics of art and creativity – pens, paintbrushes, potters wheels – yet the same is rarely acknowledged in the kitchen.

As Ruby Tandoh wrote for Heated, Your Hands Are Your Greatest Kitchen Utensil. Our kitchen tools, I think, become an extension of our hands. Cooking is physical, but it cannot always be done by hand alone. We still need a knife to chop, a masher to mash, a pestle to grind. Is there anything that brightens a day quicker than the zesting of a lemon?

Despite the love of KitchenAids and food processors, it can be the most basic of implements that have the most impact on our day-to-day lives. In Consider The Fork, food writer and historian Bee Wilson extols the virtues of the humble wooden spoon:

“The wooden spoon is a quiet ensemble player in so many meals that we take it for granted. We do not give it credit for the eggs it has scrambled, the chocolate it has helped to melt, the onions it has saved from catching with a quick twirl.”

Kitchens mean different things to different people. For some cooking is arduous, others little more than a necessary task. It took most of my twenties for it to become a place for me to experiment and find joy. When energy prices are soaring, playing and experimenting is becoming less of a priority for many. It’s the quick twirl of a spoon that reassures us. Those familiar pieces in our kitchens comfort us and bolster us when we need it. Whether we’re a bit nervous about trying something new, or we’re piecing ourselves back together, the utensils and pans that we repeatedly turn to when we cook give us a little bit of bravery. They can make us feel a little less alone and they can buoy our spirits. Every day, they shape our lives.

This week, Laura’s been to see Kim Gordon, and Sian’s getting ready for her talk at Stoke Newington Literary Festival. Like what we do? Buy us a cuppa.

Tigers Are Better Looking is free! We sometimes share affiliate links so we may make some money if you buy something we recommend or a book we love. This doesn’t cost you anything but it does keep the tigers in Dreamies.