I have officially been 45 for a week and I feel … the same as before. I don’t know about you, but I find it takes me a while (sometimes months) to come to grips, emotionally, with changes, milestones, and the like. For the time being, 45 is a just a number – one that I rarely think about.

I had a lovely birthday weekend and got lots of quality family time. Our flying visit to Calgary was fun, if a little rushed, and the best part was visiting all our favourite secondhand bookstores. I say “our” but I really mean mine, my daughter’s, and my husband’s; my son is the odd man out in a family of book-lovers. I find it so fascinating because, in many ways, he is so very like me … and then in others (like bookish disposition), he couldn’t be more different. Parenting is, like, the ultimate ‘blind bag’ game where you wait for years and years to see what kind of person your kid ends up being. And if you have more than one, you definitely get to see that nurture is only part of the recipe.

Work this week was intense, as I was covering for my boss who is on holiday (and we are a two-person dream team, so there’s no one else to pick up the slack for us), but I managed to drag myself to the finish line – huzzah! Somehow, and don’t ask me how, I also managed to squeeze every spare minute into finishing a round of edits on my WIP, and sending the manuscript to a couple of my trusted beta readers. I’m tentatively hoping to start a (very slow) rollout of my next query in September. I’m still working on my strategy, and I’ll probably end up making a separate post/update on that soon.

There wasn’t much time for anything else this week, except I did binge Amy Odell’s biography of Gwyneth Paltrow. Here’s my quick review. It reads like a Vanity Fair celebrity profile, which is my favourite flavour of celebrity memoir so that was a plus for me. If you’re interested in 90s and early 2000s gossip and/or celebrity culture nostalgia, the book delivers some juicy tidbits. But here’s the thing: Gwyneth did not collaborate with Odell, and neither did her inner circle (presumably at her direction), so there is actually very little “inside track” information on Gwyneth’s private life since the 2000s. The book offers little insight into her marriage to Chris Martin, and almost nothing on Brad Falchuk. Like, seriously, that man is mentioned maybe a dozen times in total, and I know no more about him now, after reading book, than I did before (which is to say, I know nothing, lol!). So if you’re looking for that, you’re out of luck. I think Odell had better access to pre-2005 sources, so the first half of the book that covers Gwyneth’s early life is much more interesting, from a psychological, as well as gossipy, perspective. The second half focuses primarily on Goop. I found certain aspects of that story fascinating, but after a while it got a bit boring – it’s all, questionable “guru” after questionable guru, gimmicky product after gimmicky product, lather, rinse, repeat.

All told, I enjoyed the book a lot, but I am still hoping for Anne Helen Petersen to do a deep-cut analysis of Gwyneth’s pop culture persona and the intersection of that and 90s celebrity culture.

I’ve been in a real slump lately with thrifting, and I think it’s because I am really starting to see their decline in action. The stores are as full as ever, but there is so much more trash to wade through to find anything remotely quality, which is slowly de-incentivizing me. I have less patience and motivation, and my tolerance for crowds is at an all-time low. My favourite part of thrifting now is the time I spend with my daughter. Her running commentary is priceless. I’m thankful that we’re basically the same size (clothes and shoes), which makes it easy for us to share pieces and make the most of my existing closet as well as the increasingly rare finds.

Fewer new purchases means less closet turnover, which is not a bad thing at this stage of my life. I am a strong believer in the idea that we owe a duty of care to our clothes (and the objects in our life, in general) which requires an investment of time and energy. These days, between work, family, and my all-consuming writing obsession, I simply don’t have the same amount of time or energy to devote to other things, including stuff like taking care of my closet. Less stuff coming in means that my current ‘workload’ remains steady rather than increasing, and that suits me fine.

I also find that, as my creative energies are getting redirected into writing, personal style is becoming less important to me as a creative outlet. That’s not to say that I’ve become a Functional Clothes Wearer overnight, but I have definitely moved closer to the middle of the spectrum between creative and functional. That being said, I always get extra excited about clothes with every seasonal change, so I expect that, come fall, I’ll get a boost of creative inspiration with my outfits.

Have a great weekend!

I recently (re)watched all three seasons of Victoria [2016-2019] and was reminded that Tom Hughes (i) is extremely handsome, and (ii) has never been featured in my Period Drama Boyfriend series. This oversight is especially egregious because Hughes is one of those actors who’s done more period dramas than contemporary roles, so I knew I had to rectify it immediately. So I did my, ahem, homework and I present:

Birthday: April 18 (Aries)

Middle Name: None as far as I can tell — and can I take a moment to say how rare it is to find another person who (like me) doesn’t have a middle name? Especially a British person. Just an observation.

Posh: No, which is also rare for a British actor. Though he did graduate from RADA, which is a fancy drama school, afaik. Fun fact: he was the guitarist in an indie band at one point. Also seems to have a decent singing voice, judging from a snippet in Victoria.

Height: 6’1 (according to Google)

Fave period drama: Hughes has a small but pivotal supporting role in Dancing on the Edge, but he’s brilliant in it and the mini-series itself is also brilliant, and full of incredible performances (Chiwetel Ejiofor, Matthew Goode, Anthony Head, Jacqueline Bisset, Joanna Vanderham, and more). It tells the story of a black jazz band in 1930s London, its rise and downfall thanks to a series of tragic events. It’s one of my fave period dramas set in that era, and I’ve rewatched it several times.

Sexiest period drama role: Prince Albert in Victoria (especially Season 1), hands down. Surprisingly, it’s one of his few “swoony” roles, although Albert is too complicated a character to consider a straightforward romantic hero. [I actually thought the series did a decent job of showing the complexities of a marriage, and how there’s no ‘good guy’ and ‘bad guy’ only multifaceted, flawed humans. That’s not to say that it was an accurate historical portrayal necessarily, only an interesting portrayal of a marriage based on Victoria & Albert’s.]

Interestingly, Hughes has tended to play a lot of characters with a dark side — not straight up villains, but not conventional heroes either. There’s a sort of slippery moral ambiguity he nails really well, where you can’t be sure, when he turns up on screen, whether his character is going to end up doing the right thing, or something that’ll break your heart. Based on some of the interviews I’ve read, I think he enjoys exploring morally grey characters, which has undoubtedly influenced his career choices.

I’ll add an honourable mention here to The Laureate, in which Hughes plays poet and writer Robert Graves during a period of his life when he was recovering from PTSD (WWI) and became involved in a complicated relationship with two women. [Which resulted in a major scandal in the 1930s. I had no idea Graves’ life was such a rollercoaster. I’m def on the lookout for a biography now.] The movie isn’t sexy/romantic as such, but it’s a very broody role and an excellent performance.

I also think his character in The Game (a Cold Era spy thriller series) could be a contender in this category but, alas, I have not managed to track that down to watch. Yet.

Austen adaptation: None. It came down to timing, I think. Hughes was too young during the 2000s era of Austen adaptations and he’s now probably too old for all the new ones being rolled out. Ten years ago, I could have seen him playing Willoughby easily.

Murder mystery cameos: Hughes played Michael Rogers in the “Endless Night” episode of Marple, and he was brilliant in it. That episode stayed with me for a long time. It’s definitely one of Christie’s darker stories, and I love it. He was also in The Lady Vanishes, which is a period mystery thriller involving the disappearance of an elderly woman on a train. He plays an engineer/fellow passenger who offers to help the female protagonist who is trying to find the missing woman.

Fave contemporary role: This one’s tough because I honestly haven’t seen more than a couple, so I’ll go with Silk, an older British legal drama series. The first season (in which he appears) is excellent, and definitely worth a watch for the performances of the lead actors, Maxine Peake and Rupert Penry Jones (another Period Drama Boyfriend). Hughes plays Nick, an articling student — coincidentally, alongside a very young Natalie Dormer, who is also really good; it’s a small part, but it was my first time seeing him on screen and he made enough of an impression that I remembered it years later.

Least romantic role: Wikipedia reminded me of this one. He played the abusive boyfriend of Domhnall Gleeson’s character’s sister in About Time. I really enjoyed that movie, but I do not remember Hughes in it at all.

Watch at your own risk: It pains me to say this but … A Discovery of Witches season 2. Hughes plays Kit Marlowe which, on one hand, is great casting and, on the other hand, a total missed opportunity because, guyssss, the writing is so bad. I loved the books, but the show really dropped the ball after season 1. I mean, when you have daemon Kit Marlowe (who is in love with a vampire who is in love with a witch) played by Tom “Brooding is my middle name” Hughes and somehow you make it super boring … you done messed up.

Happy period drama watching, loves!

It’s a red-letter day, friends: I’m turning 45 today. That means I’m now officially closer to 50 than 40. I don’t know how I feel about that. I rarely think about my age. I’m not afraid of getting older, but personal history (and residual trauma) makes me fear running out of time. Rather than dwell on that, I try to focus on living each day to the fullest and not putting off things that are important to me. That has been one of the best lessons my 40s have taught me so far. Don’t postpone your joy.

That, and not giving any f*cks about other people’s opinions on how I live my life. My circus, not their monkeys.

As much as I love the idea of a spoil yo’self birthday week, I never seem to find the energy to apply myself to making it happen. This week has been just your average, middle of the summer kind of week. I do have fun plans for today and the weekend, though. Nothing too wild: a thrift adventure with a friend, a day trip to Calgary with the fam, pedicures with my SIL. My social battery comes from Temu, so we gotta conserve it, lol!

I did treat myself to a few new books, including Amy Odell’s new biography of Gwyneth Paltrow. As someone who came of age in the 90s, I’ve had a decades-long love/hate relationship with GP, so I was excited to dig into all the behind-the-scenes gossip and drama that the book promised. It delivered some, for sure. There are some very juicy tidbits in there about Brad, Ben, Chris, and her various other boyfriends. (Though, interestingly, very little about her current husband.) The second half of the book is focused on the drama with Goop, which was somewhat less interesting to me because it’s pretty straightforward (Goop peddles nonsense about ‘wellbeing’, sometimes merely silly and sometimes very dangerous). The book reads like an extended Vanity Fair article, which is my preferred style of celebrity reportage, so no complaints on that score. I do wish there was more cultural analysis weaved into the biographical narrative, but Odell sticks mostly to facts. I also got the sense she was pulling her punches, likely to avoid getting sued by Gwyneth, who (allegedly) has a vindictive streak. Anyway, I will repeat here what I’ve said before: I wish Anne Helen Peterson would do a deep, detailed breakdown of GP’s public persona (particularly in the 90s and early 2000s) within the broader cultural Zeitgeist.

If you’ve read Odell’s book, I would love to hear your thoughts 😉

Have a great weekend!