Books
The Husbands by Holly Gramazio
So, this is what it’s like to live in West Norwood. I’ve only whizzed past on the Southern train to Brighton en route to my (humblebrag) walk to Eastbourne but it sounds exhausting. At least for our protagonist, Lauren, who comes home a little tired and emotional from her best friend’s hen do, only to discover her husband on the landing. Trouble is, she’s not married. Cue Eastenders outro drums.
It’s a good news/bad news situation. It transpires that her attic is a little bit magical, in that each time her husband enters, a new one — equally convinced that she is his wife and with the wedding photos and WhatsApp messages to prove it — re-emerges.
Good news, because Lauren can send back the ones she doesn’t like. Bad because — I mean, do you think this represents a positive development in one’s life.
After some inevitable expository throat clearing (🙋♂️), the book goes exactly where you expect it to and is all the more delightful for it. There are plot holes, obviously, but this is not science-fiction and the author, much like the continuous band of husbands, never outstays her welcome.
Ungovernable by Simon Hart
Something of a nothing burger. I’m not entirely clear who this book is for. Nothing against the author, plucked from relative obscurity (backbench MP) into total obscurity (Wales Secretary under Boris Johnson and then chief whip to Rishi Sunak). But the book is curiously lacking in critique of how and why the Conservative Party became ungovernable or, most egregiously of all, juicy revelations.
As it happens, I worked for a whip in a previous life and it mainly involved being shouted at and sending texts on their behalf because they were too lazy to do it themselves. That said, I have a lot of time for the convention of whipping, which is ultimately about getting the government’s business through.
Hart comes across as a decent chap and the Tories would be better off if they had more of his ilk in their ranks but the diaries, like a lot of election manifestos, over-promise and under-deliver.
Video
I’ve watched Arsenal’s double-winning, 1997-98 season review roughly 700 times, but never before had I seen the Spurs equivalent from that season. No spoilers, but it is deeply, deeply amusing.
This, from You’ve Got Mail, is by some distance, the greatest musical scene in film history. The willing adults in the audience, the arm gestures at the end… perfection.