Pass Me Another Swan

Habitat, 80's nostalgia, Billy Crudup and Naomi Watts, albumn lyrics, Maxell ads with Peter Murphy, Spitting Image

Hello!

A minor breakthrough on the reading front: I’m on p.130 of Nina Stibbe’s ‘Went to London Took the Dog’, which reads like a menopausal Adrian Mole’s Diary - swimming at the ponds, coffee at Gail’s, fannying about with authors etc. - and has made me snort twice in public so far. Just in the nick of time according to James Marriot, whose long read predicting the end of civilisation due to a reading drought has been restacked on here so many times I feel giddy!

The Morning Show S4 has just dropped on Appletv+ (at the elevated price of £9.99 p/m - sneaky!) and apparently centres around AI, deep fakes etc - yawn. Still, I’m tempted to sign up just for Billy Crudup as Cory Ellison; the charming but flawed network exec.

Sidenote: obsessed with Crudup’s marriage to Naomi Watts (her Oscar de la Renta dress and white shades outside the NYC courthouse!) and his gallant reaction to her being in early menopause: ‘if it makes you feel any better I’ve got grey hairs on my balls’. Swoon.

Elsewhere, I’ve been enjoying a deep dive into 80’s Habitat interiors - oh how I miss their hefty print catalogues and actual stores - so in homage to possibly my fave era, this bulletin is about random 80’s stuff (rest assured they’ll be more to come from me on this topic).

Right, small pleasures aplenty below; on we go…

interiors

Found on ebay for approx £40: a mint condition vintage Habitat cobalt blue glass lamp (owned by moi in the 80’s). Remember these? I felt compelled to track it down after noticing an identical one when re-watching Amelie…

Also on ebay: this little Braun number, selling for around £30 - pretty sure everyone I knew owned one in the 80’s, but it’s now considered a ‘design piece’. Tempting, as I’m in the market for a bedside clock. I can still hear it beeping now!

And finally, brand new from the Habitat/Argos franchise: the exact same foldable chair I had in my teenage bedroom - a snip at £12! Check out the image below - you’d be forgiven for thinking it was 1985 not 2025!

worth a listen

The 80’s were all about tape recorders, the Maxell cassette tape being the coolest by a country mile - Maxell even made a super slick ad featuring Peter Murphy from Bauhaus which still stands up today:

I’ve started listening to whole albums again (for lyrical inspo); my Top 5 80’s offerings below:

Talk Talk, ‘The Party’s Over’ - pure pop perfection. Fave track - Mirror Man, fave lyric from said track -'see the state she’s in’ (hard relate).

Terence Trent D’Arby, ‘Introducing the Hardline According to Sananda Maitreya’ (he’s renamed himself - wtf?) - an underrated 80’s icon so soave he could have been Sade’s funk soul brother. Fave track - ‘Who’s Loving You’, in which he sounds like a cross between Sam Cooke and Michael Jackson. Seriously, have a listen!

Lloyd Cole & the Commotions, ‘Rattlesnakes’ - chokka with pretentious lyrics and literary refs, eg: ‘she looks like Eve Marie Saint in ‘On the Waterfront’/ she wears Simone de Beauvoir in her ‘American circumstance’. Fave track - ‘Forest Fire’. Goose bumps.

Bruce Springsteen, ‘Born in the USA’ - it’s deep connection to the Vietnam war was completely lost on me as a teen, but I get it now. Fave track - ‘I’m on Fire’, fave lyric -‘At night, I wake up with the sheets soakin' wet/ And a freight train running through the middle of my head’. Heaven.

The Smiths, ‘The Smiths’- so sharp, so literary, such choice lyrics. Fave track - ‘Reel Around the Fountain’, fave lyric - ‘You can pin and mount me, like a butterfly’. Thank you, Morrissey.

worth a watch

In keeping with all things 80’s, Spitting Image makes its long awaited return with ‘The Rest is Bullshit’ on YouTube. Hallelujah! Let’s hope it doesn’t get ‘Kimmel-ed’.

The first episode serves up Paddington (aka ‘Pads’) hoovering up the Peruvian marching powder, Trump and ‘Chuck’ getting chummy at a Windsor banquet (‘pass me another swan’) and Keir Starmer fudging Mastermind (‘you’ve barely started - now you’re finished’).

See you next time :)