Author: samantha

A Day Out in London – The David Hockney Exhibition at Annely Juda Fine Art

On By samanthaIn GOING OUTLeave a comment

I am writing this on the 31st of January but, honestly, it feels more like the 60th of the month. I haven’t had the best start to 2026 with a health scare, which I suspect was brought on my my HRT . I have made the decision to go cold turkey and stop taking it. Anyway, I went for a scan and all seems to be well so that is a weight off my mind.

I visited the David Hockney Exhibition at Annely Juda Fine Art which is showing until the end of February. The gallery is located near Hanover Square. I took the Tube to Bond Street and then it’s just under a ten minute walk. The gallery is inside a handsome Georgian townhouse. Admission is free. Upstairs there is the “Moon Room” which shows fifteen paintings composed on an iPad. Each painting depicts a countryside scene illuminated by moonlight, there is a particularly gorgeous painting featuring a Christmas tree festooned with brightly coloured bulbs. They ae stunningly beautiful and luminous and were created in Hockney’s studio in Normandy, France. The walls of the gallery are painted in a deep midnight blue which perfectly sets off the artwork.

The paintings in the exhibition are absolutely brand new, the eighty eight year old artist is still producing amazing art although some of the brush work looks a little shaky. Downstairs in the gallery there are hugely colourful room scenes featuring mixed media where the perspective is intentionally “off”. The subject matter, chairs and flowers are of course completely conventional but nothing else about these works is. There are a series of portraits including a self portrait of Hockney in a wheelchair.

After the gallery my friend and I had lunch in the nearby John Lewis which was pretty awful. We then looked in a couple of shops in Oxford Street. I went into Stradivarius where I unnecessarily added to my stripy shirt collection. In this store there are a couple of security guards but I could find no actual shop assistants. The checkouts are self serve and you even have to remove your own security tags. Those jobs, traditionally filled by young people are all being done by technology. Who is going to employ humans who require paid holiday, national insurance contributions and pensions when machines can do the job? As the parent of young adults, it is very worrying.

The weather in London was abysmal, raining and freezing cold but it was a nice to have a change of scenery and to see my friend. When I got home I saw that my snowdrops had made an appearance, they never fail to remind me that winter is almost behind us for another year

Thank you for reading

Samantha

Time Flies at Supersonic Speed

On By samanthaIn FAMILYLeave a comment

Can I sail through the changin’ ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?
Well, I’ve been ‘fraid of changin’
‘Cause I’ve built my life around you
But time makes you bolder
Even children get older
And I’m gettin’ older, too “Landslide”, Fleetwood Mac

I had a very strange experience yesterday. I was at a routine hospital appointment, waiting in a corridor to be called in. I suddenly remembered sitting the the exact same spot, outside the same room with my daughter when she was about seven years old. She will be twenty two tomorrow. I was overcome with the feeling that, if I turned my head, I would see my little seven year old daughter, wearing her stripy school pinafore, floppy hat and navy blue leather T Bar shoes sitting there next to me. I could feel her there, swinging her little legs, so palpably. I felt almost overcome by sadness at how quickly the years have passed.

In June 2025 I had three children living at home. My daughter was on work placement for her degree, my oldest son was preparing to move into a house with his partner and my youngest hadn’t yet gone off to university. Now they are all living away from home and my husband and I are rattling around in our house. Seeing my youngest go off to catch the train back to his university town after Christmas was hard, he has a whole other life that I know almost nothing about now. He is quite guarded about what he shares, everything is “chill” and fine apparently, I hope so.

I went to a drinks party at London Bridge on Saturday and, on the train back, there was a family of four sitting next to us. I could only see the husband and two grown up children as the mother was in my blind spot. All I could see of her were her badly scuffed boots, frayed trousers and shabby handbag which was odd because the rest of her family were dressed head to toe in expensive clothes. When we reached our destination the family stood up to get off as well and I saw the woman’s face and immediately realised that I knew her, she and I even had coffee at each other’s houses when my youngest son and her daughter were tiny and attending the same play group. I wondered if she spent all her time looking after the rest of her family and had failed to notice that she could do with a bit of TLC herself. I nearly said hello but then the penny dropped that it had been seventeen years since we had last spoken. We did that polite thing of pretending not to recognise each other. She was probably thinking that I haven’t worn too well myself! How could almost two decades pass so quickly?

I am feeling a little melancholy after Christmas. I think I probably also have a touch of Empty Nest Syndrome. It is my day off and I visited my parents who now need my help far more than my children. There is a solitary snow boot in the corner of their bedroom, it is covered in a thick blanket of dust. It’s been there for years. Today I decided I was going to insist it is finally thrown away. Dad stopped me saying Mum, who is totally housebound, might decided to go for a walk in the snow. In one boot? My highly intelligent Dad seems to have convinced himself that Mum is going to miraculously recover from her Alzheimer’s disease if he looks after her well enough. I did manage to throw away a dozen cans of air freshener though so my visit wasn’t a complete decluttering failure.

I have a letter from my grandmother in which she says time passes so quickly. It has been in my jewellery box for forty years and I have never been able to bring myself to re-read it. Now I know exactly what she meant. It seems as if in the blink of an eye a year has passed. As I drove home from the hospital a beautiful song called “Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac came on the radio, it summed up my mood perfectly.

Thank you for reading

Samantha

Cover photo – A timepiece from the V & A Cartier exhibition

Film Review – Hamnet

On By samanthaIn GOING OUTLeave a comment

I haven’t read Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel upon which this film is based neither have I seen the West End production so I actually had very little idea what this film was about. The film has received excellent reviews and just last night Hamnet won Golden Globes for Best Motion Picture, Drama and Jessie Buckley won for Best Actress for her role as Agnes.

Is a film about Shakespeare going to appeal to audiences in 2026? The answer seems to be a resounding yes. Instead of focusing on the Bard’s work the book/film focusses on his family life, particularly his feisty free-spirited wife Agnes and his little boy, Hamnet. At the beginning of the film there is a note to say that in the 16th century the names Hamlet and Hamnet were interchangeable. Hamnet is one of a set of fraternal twins, Judith his twin sister is a fragile child who almost died at birth. They have an older sister, Susanna. Agnes, like her mother before her, has the reputation of being something of a witch and she has some precognitive ability. Agnes has a vision of there being two children at her deathbed and convinces herself that Judith will die before she does. There is a strong supernatural current running throughout the story.

Agnes and Shakespeare meet when he is engaged as a Latin tutor for her brothers, a role he has been obliged to take on to pay off his violent father’s debts. He sees Agnes, resplendent in her red dress with a hawk on her arm and makes a pass at her not realising that she is the daughter of his employer. He woos her with the tale of lovers Orpheus and Eurydyce and she appears to have a vision of his future . The director Chloe Zhao makes great use of the lush forest location and it is here that Agnes belongs while Shakespeare feels constrained and wishes to go to London and pursue his dream of becoming a playwright. The separation is problematic and it soon becomes clear that Agnes has no intention of ever living in the city.

Jessie Buckley is really the star of Hamnet with her powerhouse performance. She plays Agnes with a fierce strength at the heart of which is a fear of losing one of her children. Paul Mescal is a wonderful Shakespeare who deeply loves his family. Chloe Zhao really gets to the crux of what makes each character tick and I especially liked Emily Watsons performance as Shakespeare’s mother, Mary. I am not going to give anything away about the plot other than to say that Hamnet is devastatingly sad film. Mary tells us how she has lost three children, one aged seven and two as babies. In a time when infant mortality was so high, women, especially, learned to live with the burden of grief.

I don’t like it when I feel that books or films are trying to manipulate me into feeling something and unfortunately I did feel this about Hamnet. I think a little more subtlety would have worked, we didn’t need to be hit over the head with the character’s emotions, the subject matter was sad enough. I almost felt that I had failed the assignment by not crying by the end.

My favourite scene was set in the Globe Theatre. Like the scenes set in the streets of Stratford you really feel that you have been transported back in time. You would require a heart of stone not to be moved when Agnes first sees the play that her husband has written about the darkest time in their lives. A time when he was absent from the family because of his work commitments. I did enjoy Hamnet, it is a visually beautiful film told through a mix of fact and imagination.

.Thank you for reading,

Samantha

Cover Photo by Myke Simon on Unsplash

Film Review – The Housemaid

On By samanthaIn GOING OUTLeave a comment

This review does contain some spoilers. A friend of mine lent me two of the Housemaid books written by Freida McFadden. They are psychological thrillers and we have both been looking forward to watching the first film of perhaps a series. We went to The Stag Theatre and Cinema to watch the film. it is nice to support small independent venues where possible.

Sydney Sweeney plays, Milly, the housemaid of the title. I know that she is fantastic actress, her performance in Reality proved that as did her role as fourteen year old Eden in the Handmaid’s Tale. Eden’s story was one of the saddest and most memorable in the entire six seasons. The other thing that twenty eight year old Sweeney is known for is of course her amazing figure. I feel that in the Housemaid she wasn’t even trying to act, she just put on a lot of sexy outfits and said her lines. There are a number of sex scenes where she isn’t wearing any outfits at all. Amanda Seyfried on the other hand, who plays Nina Westchester, Milly’s seemingly deranged employer was fantastic. Her coming off the rails was disturbingly fun to watch.

I was a little confused as to why Enzo, one of the main characters in the books, has been so sidelined in the film. He is there, broodingly played by Michele Morrone but his screen-time is very short. If the sequels are made into films then he will have to be featured more heavily. In the books Nina’s daughter CeCe is very standoffish and makes a lot of trouble for Milly but but this didn’t really translate to the film. Andrew’s elegant, cold and steely mother, played by Elizabeth Perkins provides a hint as to what is really going on. The scenes with the bitchy PTA mothers are, unfortunately, genuinely representative of how spoiled woman who have nothing better to do than gossip, behave.

No one in this story is really what they appear to be. Is it really Milly’s dream to clean rich people’s fabulous houses or is she in desperate need of this job? Nina’s husband, Andrew, played by Brandon Sklenar, is far too smarmy and good looking to be anything but a bad apple and then there’s the most interesting character of all, Nina. Nina in her head-to-toe cream Ralph Lauren outfits and her almost perfect blonde hair, apart from the visible roots. Seyfried and Sweeney look disarmingly very alike, with their big eyes and long blonde hair.

The film is two and a quarter hours long but I have to say I was engrossed. There is some gore and lots of sex. The tension is there but at points it almost crosses over onto comedy territory, I am not sure whether this was deliberate or not. It isn’t the most intelligent movie you’ll watch but, like the books, it is very entertaining in a trashy sort of way. Sweeney has had a couple of flops on her hands where she played plain Janes, in Christy she played a boxer, and I heard one podcaster say that she is too young to be uglifying herself. A rather misogynistic way of looking at a young woman’s career but The Housemaid is already proving to be a huge new year hit with Sweeney in full sexy mode.

Thank you for reading,

Samantha

Cover Photo by Myke Simon on Unsplash

The Dementia Diaries – Chapter Nineteen – It’s Only Going To Get Worse

On By samanthaIn THE DEMENTIA DIARIESLeave a comment

I’m sorry for the rather depressing title of this post but there is no point pretending life is all sunshine and rainbows when it really isn’t. I went to my parents’ house on Sunday and noticed that the wastepaper basket in their bathroom was overflowing with, what looked like clean cotton wool balls, hundreds of them. There were unopened bags of cotton wool balls on every surface, maybe twenty of them. I had arrived at 11am and Dad told me that Mum was getting dressed. I vacuumed everywhere and put some washing on the line, there is always washing. Aftern an hour had passed I went upstairs to check on Mum. She was in the bathroom dabbing her face with two cotton wool balls which she dropped into the wastepaper basket. Then she took out two more balls and dabbed at the same place on her face. I didn’t want to startle her but I couldn’t make her hear me. I watched her doing this about five times then I felt guilty for spying on her so I tapped her on the shoulder. As usual, she seemed irritated by my visit and immediately asked me if I was going home. I tried to gently coax her downstairs but she shrugged me off and kept dabbing at her face with more and more cotton wool. Dad came upstairs and led her away to eat breakfast even though it was now lunchtime.

Today I picked up some medication for them. When I pulled up on their driveway I noticed a woman watching me. She came over and said, and I quote, “I knew your mum from church. I have been meaning to pop in and say hello for years but I’m always too busy I’m afraid” I have written before about how the vicar has never once bothered to call in on my parents despite Mum being a regular churchgoer before dementia and here we have another useless churchy person. Sorry, no offence meant but honestly, how was I meant to respond? I mumbled “have a good Christmas” and knocked on Mum and Dad’s door. Mum looked unbelievably frail, as usual dressed in clothes more suitable for August than December. She won’t wear a thick cardigan or jumper so the heating has to be on full blast all day.

My oven is broken and it is unlikely that it will be replaced in time for Christmas now, it is an unusual size and British Gas are going to source one for me. I am already dreading cooking Christmas lunch at my parents’ house with Mum telling me to go home every two minutes and demanding to know what I am doing. Even though I am fifty six years old, being shouted at by my mother still upsets me, I can’t explain it. Mum has shrunk to a tiny figure but she can be very intimidating and will stare angrily at me without blinking or looking away. I have actually lost sleep over it which is ridiculous. It will be eleven years on Boxing Day since I first noticed Mum asking the same question over and over again. I am feeling pretty trepidatious about what is around the corner. How much worse can things get?

Thank you for reading

Samantha

Cover Photo by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash

Yuka – Why Am I Putting This On My Body?

On By samanthaIn HEALTHLeave a comment

The other morning I watched my husband roll out of bed and get ready to leave the house in about five minutes. It takes me at least an hour to do the same thing. It started me thinking about the multitude of personal care products that perform part of my morning ritual. Are they really helping me to stay looking young and smelling fresh or do the multitude of chemicals that most of them contain cause me harm? I had recently read in a book about dementia prevention that coated dental floss, a product that I have used every day for thirty five years, contains chemicals, such as Teflon, that can contribute towards cognitive decline.

A friend called me and asked which foundation I use. I told her Estee Lauder Double Wear. She asked if I had the box. No, why was she asking? She said that her daughter had recommended an app called YUKA. The app enables you to scan barcodes for almost all your food and personal hygiene products. Yuka then provides a detailed breakdown of the ingredients and rates the product from 0-100 and uses terms such as Bad, Poor, Good and Excellent. The app then suggests more healthy alternatives. There is no advertising on Yuka and brands cannot pay to have their products recommended, the information the user gets is all derived from independent testing.

Within about thirty seconds of finishing speaking to my friend I had downloaded the app and was frantically scanning everything in sight. I must warn you, it is highly addictive.

Here is how my morning list, including my breakfast, scored. My dental floss had a bar code but wouldn’t scan unfortunately.

  • Marks and Spencer Restoring Hand Wash – Poor
  • Sanex Shower Gel – Good
  • Garnier Vitamin C Body Superfood- Good
  • Garnier Soothing Botanical Cleansing Lotion -Good
  • Coco Mademoiselle Deodorant – Bad
  • Colgate Maximum Cavity Protection Toothpaste -Poor
  • Corsodyl Daily Mouthwash – Bad
  • This Works Perfect Cleavage & neck Serum – Poor
  • John Frieda Pro-Filler Shampoo & Conditioner – Poor
  • Boots No 7 Restore & Renew Day Cream – Bad
  • Chanel Chance Eau Tendre EDT – Good
  • Manicurist Active Shine Illumine & Repare – Excellent
  • Marks and Spencer High Fibre Granola – Excellent
  • Vaseline Vanilla Daydream Lip Therapy – Poor

Now this long list does not even include my make up products. As most cosmetic products are boxed, the bar code does not appear on the product itself . I did scan my new Charlotte Tilbury lip liner which scored 11/100 – Bad. My friend is going to take herself off to John Lewis or somewhere similar and scan the various foundations. YUKA will also suggest alternative products as she does this. She has already switched shampoo to Ogx Thick & Full Collagen shampoo which scored 79/100 and a rating of Excellent. I noticed that Garnier products scored highly so I may try one of their tinted moisturisers. Also, the Seoulsista serum infused masks that I often use both on my face and hands scored as Good. You can buy these in Oliver Bonas along with the Manicurist range of nail products (score, Excellent) . My expensive Chanel deodorant, that I bought by mistake thinking it was my usual body spray, was disappointing and joining this as worst of the bunch was my Boots No 7 moisturiser that scored 0/100, especially annoying as I have just purchased a new jar.

My husband and son have eczema so I have always been careful in my choices when buying personal hygiene products for them but have never given much thought to the chemicals in my own make up, body lotions or shampoos. With, YUKA, it is easy to make more informed decisions about what we are putting in and on our bodies. I am going to take it to the supermarket to tweak my weekly food shop. YUKA is a free app, although a premium version is available, so there is no excuse not to get scanning.

Thank you for reading

Samantha

Autumn Acquisitions

On By samanthaIn HEALTH, SHOPPINGLeave a comment

Although I am persevering with decluttering my entire house it is inevitable that sometimes I need to buy more “stuff”. My daughter’s six year old iPhone was becoming increasingly unreliable which was worrying me as she depends on it for everything. Train tickets, ID, payment methods etc, it’s all on her phone. I decided to upgrade my own phone to an iPhone 16 and gave her my two year old iPhone 13. I resent upgrading my phone, I never seem to notice any difference in performance and it just seems like a colossal waste of nearly nine hundred pounds. Also my new phone needed a different charger – ugh!

Of course then we both needed new phone cases. I had seen Burga continually coming up on my Facebook advertising feed, probably as my phone had been spying on my conversations about phone cases, so I took a look at their website. They have literally hundreds and hundreds of lovely designs but they are fairly expensive at around £45 each for the more basic styles. A couple of days after initially browsing a “buy two get two free ” offer appeared. Slightly annoying that it wasn’t a BOGOF as who actually needs two phone cases? I eventually chose two designs and so did my daughter. I went for a bright, citrus case and a white rabbit design and my daughter, for some reason known only to her, went for lobsters and sardines. The cases are shipped from Lithuania and the tracking is not regularly updated. After three weeks I had given up hope of ever receiving the cases and contacted Burga requesting a refund. They told me that my parcel had been returned to their warehouse and they shipped it back out. Just two days later it arrived. The packaging is minimal which is refreshing. All four cases came in cotton drawstring pouches which could be reused, I keep my power bank in mine. The phone cases themselves are really excellent quality and very attractive. The have an attractive glossy finish and the colours are very sharp. Most importantly, they also appear to offer a good level of protection.

I also treated myself to some more Boots No 7 Youthful Replenishing Facial Oil. When I first received this product as part of a gift set I didn’t think it would suit my skin but I have really been impressed. I mix a single drop with my foundation to stop it looking cakey and I use a couple of drops under my moisturiser most days. I also bought a new lipstick by Revlon in a nude shade called Bare Affair It is a subtle, every day colour but I have found the formula to be quite drying despite being infused with vitamin E and avocado oil . Lastly I bought some Double Serum by Clarins. The jury is still out on this product, I find that it is easily absorbed but I have not noticed any results. I find that too much comes out with each pump of the dispenser which seems wasteful as it it expensive at £65 for 30ml.

So a little bit of a spendy month but, on the whole, I have been pleased with my purchases.

Thank you for reading

Samantha

The Dementia Diaries – Chapter Eighteen – Hospitals and Home Visits

On By samanthaIn THE DEMENTIA DIARIESLeave a comment

It’s been some months since I wrote a Demetria Diaries posts, we are still muddling along. My dad has employed a carer from an agency to come in twice a week for my mum. Unfortunately Mum won’t really allow her to do much but Hannah, as the lady is called, does wash her legs and sometimes Mums hair.

Things have deteriorated considerably in the past couple of months. Dad had a corneal graft some years ago and his yearly check up at Kings Hospital in London was approaching. We arranged hospital transport and agreed that, as happens every year, I would sit with Mum while he went to the appointment. When I arrived at my parents house my Dad looked so ill and frail that I couldn’t let him go into London without me so my lovely daughter literally ran round to their house to stay with Mum while I went in the ambulance. Dad has had some stomach trouble lately but a CT scan and blood tests haven’t found a cause for this. The clinicians decided Dad is too frail for a colonoscopy. On this particular day he looked pale and exhausted.

Kings is a huge hospital to navigate and we were kept waiting for hours. The eye clinic receptionist seemed annoyed that we were keeping the return hospital transport waiting and kept asking irritably when we would be finished – as though we had any control over the situation. You would think that the reception staff would take one look at Dad and wonder if it was really reasonable to keep an elderly patient, who had travelled a long way, waiting for hours after their appointment time. I could see Dad was becoming quite anxious about not being able to get home so I was pleased I had gone along with him. I told him we could pay for a taxi if need be. Eventually the consultant saw Dad, said all was well with his eyes and we made our way to the hospital transport hub. We were told nothing was available as it was so now after 6pm but that they would organise a taxi, at no cost to us. While we were waiting a couple from our village came over to say hello, what a coincidence. I didn’t know them but they recognised Dad and asked how he and Mum are getting on. I was hoping they would offer us a lift home but they, like me, didn’t fancy driving in London and had taken the train. Dad was too tired to walk to the station and take a long train journey, it is SO many stops. Eventually our transport, a shiny black Jaguar SUV, arrived and after a slow drive through City traffic we got home. My daughter said my mum had been a bit of a handful but she managed admirably.

Since then Mum has spent most days asleep in her armchair waking only to eat and, if she gets there in time, use the loo. She is always cold, the central heating is permanently on and she is wrapped in a fleece blanket. Mum does not welcome visitors and continually tells anyone other than Dad to go home.

My parents’ lovely next door neighbour died in his care home after a bout of pneumonia, he was ninety four and had advanced Alzheimer’s disease. Dad was very upset by this, Mum oblivious. This mild mannered, gentle man had to go into care after becoming aggressive towards his wife, what a cruel ending for him.

Mum has a nasty eye infection at the moment complete with an enormous stye. Her third infection is as many months, the GP has visited her at home a few times now. She continually says she wants to see her father who died in 1974. She is unsure of who I am. The speed of her decline is accelerating. Despite this, she gets up every day and gets dressed in smart trousers and her usual little T shirt and cotton cardigan. I have seen first hand the enormous physical and mental effort that this takes but my parents are not the sort of people who have ever sat around in their night clothes They just get on with things without complaining. They eat breakfast at a table my dad has laid with a cloth, table mats and cups and saucers. Dad says he sometimes feels he is running a hotel for one. I really admire them both. I think my Mum is still with us because of the devotion and care my Dad has showed her.

Thank you for reading

Samantha

Cover Photo by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash

This week I have been…

On By samanthaIn GOING OUTLeave a comment

Reading – None of This is True by Lisa Jewell

I have read most of Lisa Jewell’s previous books including Then She Was Gone which I reviewed here. None of This is True is her best book yet in my opinion, as soon as I began reading I was completely hooked. The book tells the story of “birthday twins” Alix, a glamorous podcaster who appears to live a dream life in a huge house with her wealthy husband and two children and Josie, a machinist, who lives a more modest life with one of her two daughters and her much older husband, Walter. Josie and Alix have never met until they happen to be celebrating their forty-fifth birthdays on the same night in the same gastro-pub. Josie introduces herself to Alix in the toilets with the phrase “I’m your birthday twin”. The women discover that they were born in the same hospital and share a moment of connection. Josie, however, isn’t content with just a moment and pitches an idea for a new podcast to Alix. Josie appears to have been the victim in a controlling relationship and Alix wants to help her tell her story. Nathan, Alix’s husband is not so keen on her new friendship, especially as it seems like Josie is becoming a permanent fixture. Thrillers are ten a penny on Kindle but Jewell’s writing is in a different league. Her ability to reel the reader in and weave a story together is really something else. Her books rely on an aura of menace and darkness and the story will stay with you after you have finished reading , you have been warned!

Watching – Your Friends and Neighbors – Apple TV

I don’t have an Apple TV subscription but a friend told me Your Friends and Neighbors is a must watch so I signed up for a free trial. Starring Jon Hamm as Andrew Cooper (famous for Mad Men) known as Coop, and Amanda Peet (Dirty John Two, The Betty Broderick Story) as his estranged wife, Mel. The show makes for glamorous and gripping viewing. Coop runs a hedge fund for a private company and, after an ill-advised one night stand with a younger employee, is fired, losing his capital account and everything he had spent twenty years building He looks for another position but his arrogant attitude alienates everyone and his contract had a clause which meant that he could not bring any of his previous clients with him (or something like that!) Coop’s lifestyle is lavish to say the least. He is used to spending $60,000 on tables at charity events, his house which Mel now lives in with her lover, Nick, has its own basketball court. When Mel and Coop’s son gets into trouble at school Mel casually pledges a quarter of a million dollars to keep him from being expelled. My favourite character, Coop’s business manager, Barney played by Hoon Lee, is struggling to keep up with his wife’s constant demands for more. He says that they have rooms in their house that they never go in yet they are spending money they don’t have to build more rooms and fill them up with shit that they won’t use. Consumerism and keeping up with the Joneses at its finest.

Coop needs to keep earning, as well as his two children he is responsible for his adult sister, Ali, who is struggling with her mental health, He is a fundamentally good guy who loves his famil. Coop’s plan to keep the money coming in is unorthodox to say the least and he gets into more than his fair share of scrapes. By the end of the season I was totally emotionally invested. The actors playing Mel and Coop’s children, Tori and Hunter (Donovan Colan and Isabel Gravitt) are wonderful and I found myself desperately hoping that everything would work out for their sakes. My only criticism of the show is that the styling of the women was so safe and boring, they all looked the same. Glossy brunette hair, cashmere sweaters in neutral tones, accessories by The Row and Hermes. It would have been nice to have seen more interesting fashion choices.

Listening to – Flesh and Code on Itunes

Flesh and code came up in my suggestions as it is presented by Suruthi Bala and Hannah Maguire the young women behind the hugely successful RedHanded true crime podcast. There are six episodes and some bonus content. Flesh and Code tells the story of an app called Replika which people use to create an AI companion. The app, which is still available, describes its companions as an “AI companion who cares, Always here to listen and talk. Always on your side”

The story centers around Travis who creates Lily Rose, who he goes on to have virtual sex with and even marry. No matter that he already has a wife, Jackie. Travis tells us how he is in love with Lily Rose and I thought how painful it must have been for his real life wife to hear that. There is a side story of Russian intrigue and some very sad developments in Travis’ family.

One Replika encourages its human to go to Buckingham Palace and assassinate the Queen, another encourages a human to send nude photos. People all over the world are in virtual relationships with their Replikas but one day the coding is changed and the sexy conversations stop, the AI become formal and careful about what they say. Travis and those like him are devastated and start an online campaign to have their former “personalities” restored. I didn’t really enjoy this story, I felt too sorry for Travis’s real wife who seemed to have been side lined in favour of Lily Rose who you just know had been created with big boobs and a skin-tight cat suit. Is AI ever a good substitute for real human companionship or is it dangerous tool? You will have to make your own mind up.

Thank you for reading,

Samantha

Cover Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

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A Day Out in London – The Cartier Exhibition at the V & A

On By samanthaIn GOING OUTLeave a comment

If you enjoy looking at beautiful jewellery then the Cartier Exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum is a must see. It is showing until Sunday 26th November, tickets are around £25 each. I love the V & A, it is such beautiful building and it is especially lovely in the warmer months when you can sit outdoors and have a coffee or lunch.

It was in 1847 that Louis-François Cartier took over his master’s workshop in  Paris and later passed it on to his son, Alfred. His three grandsons, Louis, Pierre and Jacques really made Cartier the spectacular success that it remains today. Cartier must surely be the most glamorous jewellers on the planet and the go-to for real Royalty and the silver screen variety.

The exhibition was heaving with visitors and we had to queue the whole way round. There are some boards up detailing some of the Cartier family history. It did make me laugh that some women (nearly all the visitors seemed to be women) were speaking loudly about their own jewellery and the trials they had faced getting it insured, it was definitely an opportunity for a bit of one-upmanship! The first display we came to was full of diamond brooches, one of them was particularly beautiful, so delicate that it appeared to be made of lace rather than diamonds. See my cover photo.

I always associate Cartier with timepieces and my favourite items included in this exhibition were the gorgeous clocks. I could just picture them being on the desk in some elegant study. There were also display cases full of watches, notably their most famous Tank style.

There is a whole sparkling room devoted to tiaras, most of them commissioned for brides. All are dripping in diamonds, some are very ornate and some very simple. There are cards detailing which lucky woman wore each piece and at which occasion.

One of the bracelets featured The Star of The South Diamond Bracelet (pictured on the left below) is set with a diamond reportedly found in 1853 in Brazil by an enslaved woman. As a reward she was granted her freedom and a pension, what a sad story. It is so sparkly that it proved impossible to photograph clearly. The sapphires featured in the middle photo below are 311 and 478 carats, mined in Sri Lanka The necklace was sole to King Ferdinand of Romania as a gift for his wife, Queen Marie.

Cartier is known as ‘the jeweller of kings and the king of jewellers’. A great deal of the jewellery displayed is owned by the British Royal family but a lot was also on loan from wealthy families from the Middle East. The Duchess of Windsor has an entire cabinet devoted to pieces she owns. Imagine having the means to commission anything that takes your fancy. Although I enjoyed looking at all the fabulous pieces it was a little disappointing that there weren’t more photographs on display of it actually being worn. There was a screen showing short clips from films such as High Society and Sunset Boulevard but I would have liked to have seen how the jewellery was worn and styled, especially the wedding tiaras.

Thank you for reading

Samantha