A newsletter for all my little women

Lockdown has meant comedians have had to diversify, replace the rip and roar of live stand-up gigs with the filters of Instagram, the dancing on TikTok, the whatever the fuck that is of Twitch.

The first morning of lockdown, yearning to know what I should do next, I strode outside at dawn naked with hands on hips, took a deep breath, squinted at the sun and begged the comedy gods for guidance. “A weekly newsletter” a voice seemed to whisper across the early Edgeware Road traffic. 

And then another voice, this one older, louder, wiser.

“But wait, instead of using the time productively to further your career and entertain the nation, why don’t you wait for 12 months, just when everything is starting to return to normal and everyone is trying to get gigs, THEN start a newsletter.” 

So here I am. 

Smiling, I bowed my head. A weekly newsletter, like something a 19th century lighthouse keeper from Newfoundland would’ve written. It was all so obvious, thank ye gods.

But what would I do to occupy my time before then? The answer is as obvious today as it was back then.   

I would start candle-making.

Yes kids, it’s a chandler’s life for me. Is it a surprise? Not really. The greatest time of my life was the two weeks I spent driving around New England in 2019 with my boyfriend. Let me explain: I am someone who has read Little Women so often, I genuinely confuse chapters from the book with my own childhood. Visiting Louisa M. Alcott’s house in Concord outside of Boston was, simply put, a religious experience. This was the actual house that I grew up in with my sisters during the American Civil War. I mean, Louisa. I mean, Jo.

I had no idea how emotional I’d find it until halfway through the tour I’d been sharing with a coachload of middle-aged American tourists, I realised I had in fact been silently weeping the entire time. This lovely group of retirees from Florida had been walking through the house with a strange unknown woman, who wasn’t speaking, just quietly sobbing to herself and touching the walls. This was the very parlour that me and my sisters performed plays to Marmie to take her mind off Papa and the war - it was too much.  I like to think they thought I was the ghost of Little Beth, home for one more visit.  

Slowly however, much like fellow Yankee, Jessica Fletcher, I began to twig that something wasn’t quite right.  Despite how vague the tour guide was being about dates, the timelines just did not add up.  This was, in fact, the house Louise M. Alcott wrote the book in, not where she and her sisters grew up. This bombshell changed everything. I guess selling the houses as the place Louisa panic wrote Little Women because she didn’t want to live at home anymore, didn’t have the same romantic ring. To be honest though, looking around that parlour and knowing that when Louisa wrote those little plays and forced her sisters to act them out for her parents’ friends, they were all well into their late twenties, made me closer to my Little Women than ever.

But dear readers, unbelievably this wasn’t even the highlight of the trip. This was in fact a visit to a recreation 19th century New England village. The guides there dressed and acted like the Civil War had just ended. Most tourists used this as an opportunity to try to catch the guides out, a tacky trivial waste of everyone’s time, I’m sure you’ll agree. I immediately accepted that it was 1875 and relaxed into long meandering conversations with them about Grant’s government, the price of cotton and when this goddamn country would get back on its feet after the war. It’s absolutely the most relaxed I’ve felt in my life.

Watching a candlemaker at his pots explaining to me and a group of ten-year old-school children from Boston where he got his tallow, I turned to my boyfriend and said with a spontaneous certainty that came from deep within my bones “If I ever have some Agatha Christie style break with reality and go missing for a few weeks, look for me here, this is where I’m going to end up”.

So, I think that’s why I turned to candle making in lockdown. I love the slow ritual of it, weighing the wax, pouring the syrupy fragranced oil, slowing bringing it to boil, the excitement of waiting for it to set, will there be bubbles, will there be cracks? The delight of a pour that’s so perfect, you wake up to dainty jars with the smooth creamy wax sheen of iced Christmas cakes. Have I made mistakes? Sure. That’s candle making baby - if you call yourself an expert, you’re revealing yourself to be a fool. But much like Kris Jenner feels about reality TV stars, I find safety in the knowledge if one is a complete disaster, I can easily make another. And most importantly when my agent texts to check I’m keeping myself busy, I can reply with absolute confidence, I am absolutely using my time wisely.

Things that have annoyed me this week: CRAFT BEER

Oh, hey craft beer, thanks for deigning to talk to us. I know you’re having a bit of a moment, like the nerd who dramatically loses weight after school and now is really feeling themselves, but I have to bring you down to earth. 

You’re just beer. Just a beer.

We all felt sorry for you and pretended you were worth £8 a glass but our well-intentioned encouragement has gone to your head and not in a ‘far too big a head on a Guinness’ way.  

Stop taking yourself so seriously and charging $$$ for a cloudy warm drink that tastes like the milk at the bottom of a cereal bowl. Dutch courage was supposed to give sailors enough courage to fight pirates, not check their beer tab.

You taste like piss that pissed itself.  Yes, your cans are cool, but all the bright colours, cartoons and fun puns on the outside can’t hide the fact, that like every kids’ TV presenter, inside you’re a sloppy, drunken mess. 

Note to craft beer:  Nobody likes a try-hard behind the bar. Your names are nothing more than bad dad jokes. 

Smooth Hoperator? He’brew? Peter Piper Peppered Pale? Pathological Lager? Your Little Sumpin Sumpin..? For the love of God, stop with the puns. These jokes are never going to get your wife back, stop calling her. She’s moved on.

The For Richer or Porters have ruined more pubs than prohibition and destroyed more atmosphere than a can of hairspray from the 80s. The Sexual chocolate stouts have put more people off booze than David Hasselhoff eating a bathroom kebab.

Crafts are supposed to be fun things you do with kids, not beer you drink alone because you’re not allowed to see yours anymore. 

Bring back swift halves, lager tops, bitters in a glass tankard! Ordered in seconds, everyone knows their name. 

In a post-lockdown world we’ll want to pour booze down at breakneck speeds not muse over names and graphic cartoons drawn by middle aged men named Ben.

I want to enter a bar like Cheers, click my fingers and order my usual. What’s wrong with the simple drinks of life? Nothing! If it's good enough for Norm, it's good enough for you.