5 Things I’m Doing In February

Everything I'm watching, listening to, reading, attending and buying this month

OK, February went by pretty fast (is it just me and January inevitably dragged while February has been blink-and-you’ll-miss-it?) so apologies for the late list this month! But, as always, here is everything I’ve been up to.

WATCHING

Donald Glover and Maya Erskine in Mr. & Mrs. Smith

Whenever I’m asked who my favourite person I’ve ever interviewed is, my answer is always Donald Glover (I also have an answer for least favourite but that information is for besties only). Both times I interviewed the actor, writer and musician, I found him to be completely charismatic, fascinating and fun. Big fan. I didn’t really care for the Brad and Angelina film Mr. & Mrs. Smith, its real lasting legacy being Team Aniston and Team Jolie t-shirts, but when I saw that Glover was bringing the story of married assassins to television I knew I had to check it out. The result is such a refreshing take on the spy genre, expertly weaving intriguing action with a study in domestic married life. This is much less slick than the original, these spies fumble and don’t speak foreign languages perfectly and misuse their firearms. Dare I say it makes for a more ‘relatable’ hitman portrayal? Every scene keeps you guessing. Glover and Maya Erskine are perfect in the lead roles and the whole series is so charming and witty. Much like Glover himself. 

Mr. & Mrs. Smith is streaming on Amazon Prime Video

READING

I’m always up for anything involving mid-century New York scandal so I can’t wait for Feud: Capote vs The Swans which will be shown on Disney+ in the UK (it’s already out in the US on FX/Hulu). While we wait for the exact release date, I’m reading Truman Capote’s Answered Prayers, of which the third chapter, ‘La Côte Basque’, is a thinly-disguised account of the scandalous and dysfunctional lives of his socialite friends (the Swans), including figures such as Babe Paley and Slim Keith. After the standalone chapter was published in Esquire in 1975, the women, shocked and pissed at Capote’s spilling of the tea, threw him out of New York high society. The fallout of the story being published is dramatised in Feud.

Capote’s procrastination of Answered Prayers was legendary and Joseph M Fox recounts in the Editor’s Note the book’s rocky road to (not quite) publishing. Capote’s original deal was an advance of $25,000 and a delivery date of January 1968 which was renegotiated four times into $1million to be delivered by March 1981 after Capote was swept up in his burgeoning fame (and subsequent demons) brought on by the success of In Cold Blood and just couldn’t come up with the goods. In 1971 he famously said of the book, “Either I’m going to kill it, or it’s going to kill me”. Answered Prayers ended up being published unfinished in 1986, two years after Capote’s death. Despite claims that numerous other chapters exist, only three ended up in the book, including, of course, ‘La Côte Basque’.

GOING

Plaza Suite at The Savoy Theatre

Two old school friends and I went to see Sarah Jessica Parker and her husband Matthew Broderick in Neil Simon’s 1968 romantic comedy Plaza Suite at the Savoy Theatre. When the play’s transfer from Broadway was announced, headlines decried the cost of tickets (£399!) and it ignited a fresh discussion about theatre becoming an unaffordable pastime. After Andrew Scott hit out at theatre’s “frustratingly” expensive tickets earlier this month, my friend Alice Jones, Deputy Head of Culture & Books at The Times and The Sunday Times, tweeted last week: “£300 for a theatre ticket is way too much but I do wish when actors were (inevitably) asked about ticket prices they could point out some of the good - cheaper deals, theatres doing lots to bring in new audiences - instead of just perpetuating the idea the whole artform is elite”. And of course she’s completely right. Our Plaza Suite tickets were £35 a pop, a far cry from what the headlines would have you believe (sure we were in the nosebleed section but you could still catch all the action). Check out sites such as LoveTheatre for weekly deals on all the big shows or you can always enter into lotteries to ‘win’ discounted tickets on sites like TodayTix. You might not always have the best seat in the house but the experience can still be wonderful. And Plaza Suite itself? Well, the leads were fab but unfortunately the play felt dated and unfunny, not that you’d know it by the enthusiastic response of (I suspect mainly SJP) fans in the audience. And when I say “I suspect”, I mean I literally saw a female audience member in a pink tutu. 

BUYING

OK this isn’t sexy, far from it. But I just have to share my most brilliant recent purchase, the Meaco Arete Dehumidifier & Air Purifier. If you, like me, live in an old house in London then you’ll likely have a problem with damp in winter. We had an awful condensation problem (my friend likes to call it “devil’s sweat”) and I was having to wipe our living room windows down with a cloth every morning. We were also getting tell-tale signs of mould which I quickly scrubbed off with bleach - a horrible job. And because it’s obviously too cold to dry the laundry in the garden (and we don’t have a tumble dryer), ours sits in the house, creating more of a problem. But this dehumidifier - cor - it works wonders. It collects a few litres of water every couple of days and there has not been one drop of condensation in our house since we got it. It also has a clothes drying setting, so I pop the clothes horse next to it in the hall and it honestly sucks the damp out of the laundry and it dries in no time. At £260 it’s not the cheapest dehumidifier on the market but the clothes setting is a game changer. And it’s going to cost a lot less than getting damp proofing done. We’ll do fun things like lipstick or candles in this section next month, I promise, but in the meantime consider this a PSA for anyone being visited by unwanted devil’s sweat.

LISTENING

My husband doesn't ever really buy me flowers. What he does do, however, is occasionally come home with a random record for me that he thinks I’ll like. Vinyl over violets, if you will. Knowing I have a soft spot for country (yes, Beyoncé’s “Texas Hold ‘Em” has been on repeat), but I suspect wanting to gently nudge me in the right direction, he recently bought me Lucinda Williams’ acclaimed 1998 album Car Wheels On A Gravel Road which I think he now slightly regrets introducing me to because I keep hogging the record player with it (not to mention trying to turn our living room into Lucky Voice on a Friday night by drinking a couple of red wines and singing “Drunken Angel”). It is a perfect, perfect album.