Weekly Meander #26: French fancy, nuclear nightmare
Cherishing friendship & revisiting the apocalypse. Plus, a tweak to a more streamlined read
Thanks for joining me on this weekly meander through my week just gone as I navigate a time of personal and professional reimagining. If you’re new here, do check out this post for a bit more about me. TLDR: I'm a documentary filmmaker coming to the end of distributing my debut feature doc - about the history of nuclear power - and currently exploring/expanding into the next steps of my working adventures, whilst also navigating parenting (including a newly received autism diagnosis) & perimenopause. Some balls may be dropped! If you enjoy my writing, do feel free to leave a comment. And of course I'd love it if you'd consider subscribing to get all my posts delivered straight to your inbox or the Substack app.
Salut tout le monde!
Yes, I've been to France. And more specifically to Lille, which after a delightful 5 days I now know as much more than just the first Eurostar stop on the way to Paris or Brussels.
The ancient capital of Flanders, the city of Lille has been fought over for centuries, passing variously from Flemish to Burgundian to Spanish rule, before being claimed for the French by Louis XIV in the mid-17th century. It's a beguiling mix of French and Flemish culture, with amazing architecture and history – and beer to match that across the border in Belgium (in the opinion of my expert tastebuds anyway).
It's also only a stone's throw from Roubaix, which the cyclist fan in me got very excited about as it’s the end point of arguably the most legendary - certainly the most punishing - one day bike race in the pro-peloton's calendar, Paris-Roubaix. If you've any interest at all in bike racing, you'll understand why this sign got me all a-quiver.
It was actually more by accident than design that we were there at all. The trip was with two of my very dearest friends from university in what has grown to become an annual tradition of the three of us going away together for a weekend, without partners, without kids and with nothing in particular on the agenda, other than spending a few precious, concentrated days together.
These trips grew out of us going a few times over the years to the annual Cambridge alumni weekends, held in late September every year. But then one year, we didn't get our act together in time and couldn't find any available accommodation in the city for that weekend. So we just decided to go somewhere else instead.1
Since then, as well as going back to Cambridge from time to time, we've visited a bunch of different places across the UK. But this year, we decided to really push the boat out and take a longer than usual trip down to Lyon in the south of France. The Eurostar tickets booked as far as Lille, we awaited the release of the TGV tickets to take us the rest of the way to Lyon – only to discover they were much more expensive than we'd anticipated. So we thought, what the hell, why don't we just stay in Lille?
And boy, I'm so glad we did.
It turned out to be the perfect place for just idly pootling about, stopping off in cafes and bars for beer (and cheese, such good cheese), but also with enough places of interest to give some distinctive shape and colour to each of the days we were there.
We went up one of the 56 UNESCO World Heritage belfries in northern France and Belgium; strolled through the sun-dappled woodland around Louis XIV's defensive citadel, not far from our AirBnb and now home to the French army’s Rapid Reaction Corps; wandered around the imposing Gothic Revival cathedral with its striking contemporary facade; and took the Metro out to the aforementioned Roubaix, where we visited an extraordinary art gallery in a converted art deco swimming pool, in which elegant marble sculptures sit poolside and striking ceramics and textiles adorn the old changing rooms and shower cubicles.
We even saw a Sphinx with a very prominent pair of breasts. Nope, I’ve no idea what that was all about either?!
We talked deeply, as we always do, about so many things – about challenging family situations, parental frailty, loss and illness, about new transitions and life stages for our children, about work, retirement (well, not me – I'm freelance so I'll be working forever, right!) and our changing midlife bodies.
And we laughed, the joyful, bone-shaking laughter of friends who've known each other since long before our proper 'grown-up' lives began. Honestly, I'm not sure anyone can make me laugh quite so much as these two can. And I love them to bits for it. And for everything else.
The whole weekend was a gift – and a reminder, should one be needed, that in the end it's the people you know and love that make life truly worth living.
It was also, for two of us at least, immensely mentally relaxing, since we only had rudimentary or very rusty French, compared to our third musketeer's impressively fluent skills (she lulled us into a false sense of security telling our AirBnb host she could only understand 'un petit peu', before proceeding to conduct a lengthy and quite detailed conversation with him, almost none of which I could comprehend!)
She thus took charge of every verbal interaction, as well as all the navigating, allowing us to avoid expensive roaming charges (thanks, Brexit) by keeping our phones' data switched off and using them merely as fancy cameras when we were out and about. It was a bit like being a kid again, getting to enjoy all the fun stuff on holiday, without having to handle any of the boring logistics. Only even better, since you know very well what those logistics you're swerving actually are.
But of course, as good things must, our trip all too soon came to an end and we waved goodbye to Lille, leaving the blue Flandrian skies behind us (yep, we had great weather on top of everything else).
As soon as I walked through the door at home, I was back in the glorious, messy melee of family life. But the spaciousness and gratitude I carried with me after just a few days of full-focus friendship are still lingering even as the trip itself recedes. And we're already plotting our travels for next year – bring it on, 2025.
WORK WINS THIS WEEK
Another shorter week this week due to my Gallic gallivanting, but not a fruitless one by any means. Though a fairly emotionally harrowing one once I got to number 3 on this list...
1. The third class in my Boost Your Documentary Productions with AI course
Week 3 and we finally got to the audio tools. I was a lot more impressed with these than with the video tools we looked at last week, which I generally found uncanny and still quite unconvincing. The music and voice generation capability really is astounding – this whole area is definitely the most 'we're living in the future' development I’ve ever encountered in my career.
There are undoubtedly questions, both moral and legal, to be answered around creative ownership and copyright. But the potential uses are exciting and I’m definitely thinking about ways I might incorporate some of these tools into future film projects.
2. (Belated) quarterly review/planning
Having missed it live I watched the replay of the Female Entrepreneur Association's quarterly review session. This was a pleasantly grounding exercise for me as I looked back through July, August and September and saw in black and white how little dedicated work time I actually had over the past three months, what with the school holidays, transition from nursery to reception, secondary school application and autism-related appointments for my son.
I still mostly feel like I'm moving forward at a glacial pace, but it's also good to see and celebrate what I did achieve in the time available (creating my Summer Memories Keepsake workbook, starting to build my new business website, kicking off my A-Z of favourite documentaries essay series to name a few things). It also prompted me to play around a bit with my Substack posting cadence - on which more below.
3. Read about & re-watched Threads (aka the most horrifying film I've ever seen)
I've saved it till last but this really did feel like the stand out feature of my working week. I plan to write more about it in a post to be published in the next week or two, and am also hoping to host an online event soon to discuss it with a special guest. But in the meantime, for those who don't know it, Threads is a British TV movie first shown on UK screens back in 1984, at the height of the Cold War and repeated for only the third time ever on the BBC this week, to mark its 40th anniversary.
It's an absolutely terrifying piece of realist drama, unflinchingly depicting the nightmarish and enduring impact of a nuclear weapon strike on Britain, specifically on the small northern city of Sheffield. I've got so much more to say about it but for now, I'd love to hear from anyone else who watched it this week, or who's watched it in the past (and big thanks to
who already sent me her impressions following my call out on Notes). Do comment below or you can reply via email.I think I can safely say it's something you definitely won't forget if you have seen it! I'm honestly still recovering. And if you missed it, and can steel yourself, it's still available on the BBC iPlayer (and widely available on various streaming services in other territories as far as I can tell). It's an extraordinary and incredibly important work and one I would strongly encourage you to watch, whilst being aware of how tough an experience watching it will be.
A SMALL CHANGE
Lastly, as mentioned above, I've decided to try something slightly different with my Substack posts. I'm mindful of the fact that these weekly meanders can end up running very long by the time I've reflected on the week just past, run through my main working highlights and then shared some of my favourite Substack reads.
And so for the next little while I've decided to strip out my recommendations for great Substack pieces from my weekly posts and instead compile them into one round up post at the end of each month. I'll try this for a few months and see how it feels.
Looking slightly further forward and as I start posting more atomic and documentary-related content alongside these blog-style updates, I may look at the settings to allow subscribers to toggle exactly what they want to read (ie just nuclear, just documentary, just the weekly meanders, or some combination of all three).
For full transparency, I haven't actually figured out how to do this yet, but I do know it's possible so if you feel like you'd enjoy the option of curating what you receive from me, then be assured that feature is on the horizon.
Meanwhile, as always I'd like to say a huge thanks to all of you who read and respond to my words. Starting to write more regularly has been hugely rewarding and I'm excited about what more I can bring to this space as we move towards the end of one year and on into the next.
And so, over to you:
Have you seen Threads?
Have you ever been to Lille?
Do you know what’s going on with the ample-chested sphinx??
Let me know your thoughts and till the next time,
Merci beaucoup et à bientôt!
Vicki x
Proudly taking part in the Sparkle on Substack 24 essays club – this is post number 23.
Watch my film on Netflix (in Europe) or Vimeo (everywhere else) - or see trailer, reviews & bonus content HERE
Life stories website – coming soon...
We chose Bletchley, as it was roughly equidistant between our respective homes in Sussex, Gloucestershire and Yorkshire, and it was FANTASTIC. If you get the chance, I highly recommend a day immersing yourself in some extraordinary code-breaking history.
Loved this travel post - thank you so much for taking me 'with you' for the trip! Lille sounds brilliant!
Hello from Australia. My husband and I have Threads on DVD & we watched it again last week. I think I've seen it three or four times and it has the same effect on me each time. It is fascinating, informative, and terrifying!