Weekly Meander #11: My cup runneth over

Friends & family, pride & patriotism, culture & cake

Hello! Thanks for joining me on a weekly meander through my week just gone – with a focus on my working life (a way for me to document a time of professional transition as well as a little shot of motivation and accountability to keep me pushing on!) And in case you're new here and wondering who on earth I am, do check out this post. TLDR: I'm a documentary filmmaker coming to the end of distributing my debut feature doc and currently exploring/expanding into new professional avenues whilst also navigating parenting & perimenopause. Some balls may be dropped!

I'm still quite new to Substack and really enjoying finding my way around so you'll also find my recommendations of great reads I've seen in the past week. If you enjoy it, do feel free to leave a comment. And of course I'd love it if you would consider subscribing to get all my posts delivered straight to your inbox.

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It was bound to happen sooner or later. I battle to overcome it with my battalion of digital and analogue planning tools, but at this point I've largely accepted I'm just one of those people who's always taking things right down to the wire. Generally I do hit all my deadlines despite the mad rush that precedes them. This piece from

Michaella Parkes

perfectly captures the affliction – or is it a superpower?!

This week though, I fell at the last fence. So after 10 weeks of getting these weekly posts published before the stroke of midnight on a Sunday, this one's coming at you on a Monday. Still, it's a bank holiday Monday (at least here in the UK), so we're all pretty chill, right. And honestly, I'm grateful to you for reading my words any day of the week.

And what a week it's been!

I had an unusually large number of activities, professional and personal, in the diary (on top of the regular merry-go-round of school/nursery/kids’ activities etc). A few months ago, I'm pretty sure such a packed schedule would have wiped me out. But this week, I felt energised by the chance to drink in culture - in physical spaces and online - and spend quality time with family, friends and colleagues.

I don't know if it was recalibrating to being back home after my Lincolnshire childcare adventure, or the first few proper glimpses of warm spring weather, or maybe it was just my HRT finally kicking in! Whatever the cause, I was glad of it. I'll talk about the work side of things in a moment, but on the personal front, the real highlights came over the weekend just gone.

There was a 40^th birthday party in a pub – where I played scrabble (of a sort!) with my 4 year old daughter and a couple of brilliantly confident 6 year olds, whilst shouting to be heard over a very loud live house band. Plus this amazing cake.

There was tea and more cake with a mum friend and her gorgeous, resilient, neurodiverse tween, whom I've watched grow up from a tiny baby ❤️

There was a book event at the Brighton Festival¹, with outgoing Green MP Caroline Lucas and this year's Guest Director, children’s writer (and co-creator of the London 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony) Frank Cottrell-Boyce, attended with another friend.

And there was the House of JoJo.

In his own words: “Camp as Christmas” 🏳️‍🌈

It's fair to say my mum and I don't have a huge number of interests in common. But we do both love Strictly Come Dancing. So when she asked me if I'd like to go with her to watch one of the breakout professional dancers from the show, Johannes Radebe, at the London Palladium no less, of course I said yes. And it was – to quote another Strictly legend – fab-u-lous!

JoJo and his troupe of ten dancers and two exceptional singers created a virtuoso stage experience running from the most flamboyant high camp to quiet tenderness, celebrating the African diaspora, JoJo's love of movies – and a special appearance from his most recent Strictly dance partner, retired tennis player Annabel Croft.

For those who don't know him, Johannes, or JoJo, is a black, queer dancer from South Africa who's blazed a trail for LGBTQI+ dance and visibility on one of the biggest prime time Saturday night entertainment shows in Britain.

There was a lot of casual bigotry around when I was growing up in the 80s and 90s. So hearing JoJo talk about the deep acceptance he has found here in the UK – and looking at the audience of predominantly older white women in their 60s and 70s, just like my mum, who all adore and celebrate him, was truly joyous.

At the Caroline Lucas event, there was much discussion about the political and cultural divisions that have riven the UK and arguably only deepened since Brexit and the pandemic, with the political right having captured a lot of the narrative around it what it means to be English, in particular. Her new book, Another England – which is definitely on my reading list now – strikes a note of hope for a different vision of how we might talk about and fight for a kinder, more inclusive country.

Sitting in that auditorium at the Palladium and watching JoJo communicate a very similar message, both through his dancing and directly in his words, certainly gave me a feeling of hope.

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WORK WINS THIS WEEK

This has been an ‘all-nuclear-all-the-time’ kind of a week. As I've previously written, all my years spent making my debut feature documentary on the political history of nuclear energy have given me an ongoing fascination for the complex landscape of atomic culture. I'm enjoying giving myself time to explore many different facets of this vast topic and it so happened that this week I had several opportunities. I definitely plan to share more in this area here on Substack over the coming months. In the meantime, here are the highlights from the past week.

1. 'Curating Nuclear Futures: Decolonising the Nuclear Anthropocene': online talk from the EU's Joint Research Centre SciArts Project in Italy

Dr Ele Carpenter is a curator and researcher specialising in nuclear culture whose work I first encountered early in my research for my film and whom I finally had the pleasure of meeting in person at a nuclear history conference last summer.

From her university base in Sweden, her research takes her far and wide, engaging with artists, the nuclear industry and broader research community to ask important questions around deep time and nuclear colonisation, looking at speculative nuclear imaginaries and nuclear cultural heritage and asking whose materials, processes and communities might be being omitted from the dominant nuclear narrative.

I was delighted this talk was opened up for people to join online as well as in person at the JRC and, as I expected, the art works and comments Ele shared were inspiring and thought-provoking. If you're interested in getting a feel for the scope of her work, this is a good place to start. Or you could check out this book she edited:

2. 'Art in the Nuclear Age' book group & author Q&A, with Philippa Holloway

I first met Philippa Holloway at another conference, before my film was released, back in 2019. She was then working on her debut novel, The Half-Life of Snails, about two sisters on either side of the nuclear divide, set partly in North Wales and partly in the exclusion zone at Chernobyl where she did on-the-ground field research. We stayed in touch and following the book’s publication in 2022, I was thrilled to host my own online event to discuss the book with her last summer.

So it was a no-brainer for me to join in this online reading group, organised by Art in the Nuclear Age, a really interesting online hub which aims, per their website, to “facilitate critical, creative and caring discussions about the impacts of living in the nuclear age”. It's a wonderful novel so do check it out if you get the chance.

3. Cinema screening of 'The Atom: A Love Affair' in Suffolk

I mentioned this a while back and this week it finally rolled around. It was a bit of a special one, partly as my aunt who was one of my small investors in the film, was able to attend. But also because it was co-organised by one of my contributors, former Greenpeace UK campaigns director, Pete Wilkinson (pictured). It was a shock to both of us to realise it's nearly 9 years since we recorded his interview for the film!

The screening was well attended – perhaps not surprisingly as this part of Suffolk is just up the road from the site of the next large-scale nuclear power slated to be built here in the UK - and there was a great discussion afterwards.

It was also pretty cool to be sandwiched in between Jimi Hendrix and Nell Gwynn on the arts centre's poster for this month…

Director on tour 🤩

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WHAT I'M LOVING ON SUBSTACK THIS WEEK

London's First Vegetarian Restaurant

I've been a vegetarian since 2007. And I love a bit of hidden social history. So this piece from the always-wonderful

Londonist

on the surprising and quirky history of the first vegetarian restaurant in London was right up my alley. And I guffawed at the 2009 vegetarian Christmas lunch pic – all round to yours eh

Matt Brown

😄

Selling 'Ghost in the Shell'

I'm loving the serendipity of Substack. I actually just watched Ghost in the Shell this week as it was about to disappear from Mubi and was one of those titles I'd heard of but never seen. So it was excellent to read more about how this era-defining anime came about and hit the big time internationally, especially on VHS, back in the 90s.

We are made of stories.

Keeley Rees

is another new find for me on the platform. With my nascent life stories business still taking shape, this beautiful post – and the beautiful, tactile piece of art it describes – really spoke to me. Looking forward to diving more into Keeley's world.

Maybe we should ban suits

Finally, if you need a chuckle today, make yourself comfortable and have a read of these letters to the editor. You'll never look at alphabetti spaghetti the same way again.

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Watch my film on Netflix (in Europe) or Vimeo (everywhere else) - or see trailer, reviews & bonus content HERE

Find me on X /Twitter & at LinkedIn

Life stories website – coming soon...

1. England's biggest annual arts festival, and the second biggest in the whole of the UK after the Edinburgh Festival – stay tuned for more on this over the next couple of weeks