Golden Hour #047: Gathering

some notes from the Somerset -> Wales leg of our trip

Harlech beach, the site of many a ‘wild-wee’

Hi friends,

I’ve spent the past week in the north of Wales with my gang, a group of ex-Londoners who ritually come together in a different location each year. This time there were nine adults and a (staggering) seven children - three of whom were only born in the past six months. It was wild!

We cooked, went to some pretty glorious beaches and otherwise tried to catch up with each other as we wrangled our toddlers. I love these people; together we’ve navigated early-adulthood, a pandemic and the struggles of trying to start our families together. This week’s chat topics included: how soon should you be having sex after giving birth*? What does ambition look like in the context of new motherhood? And why is the Labour Party so crap at comms?

Toby less impressed by Barmouth beach

Do you have a group like this? I feel unbelievably lucky that I do, and that I get to spend a week each year checking in with people who know me and each other’s idiosyncrasies. There is something powerful, I think, in committing to friendships over the course of decades, and showing up in spite of whatever we’ve got going on in our lives.

Wales marked the beginning of a two-month period of travelling for us. Tomorrow we are flying out to Texas where we will spend a week catching up with friends, before heading up to Montana for the duration of our trip. It’s an eleven hour flight so I’m shitting bricks feeling a little bit nervous about just how our two-year-old will cope. Any advice or tricks welcome!

Some other things I’m thinking about:

• My sister-in-law’s new bookshop, The Reading Room, has just opened its doors! If you live in Grantham or Lincolnshire please be sure to visit. She has an amazing selection of books and a particularly great kids corner for little ones.

• We have been loving Doechii’s (four time grammy nominee) Tiny Desk performance, as well as her appearance on the Stephen Colbert show.

• For bookish people, I’m seeing a lot of blurb discourse going around at the moment. Why we hate them, why they carry little value and should be done away with. I broadly agree with these sentiments, but can’t help wondering what the alternative looks like - as I’m not sure there is one**. Here’s

  Jami Attenberg
  ‘On Blurbs’, and a slightly fresher-faced take from
  Jennie Godfrey
  talking about navigating ‘Blurbed boundaries’ as a new author.

That’s all for now!

Grace

*whenever you feel 100% ready, and not a moment before.

** maybe publishers should pay a nominal amount to authors who blurb? What a novel idea!

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