It is not, as I’m sure you’re all aware, either a Wednesday or a Friday lunchtime, but I’m beginning to learn that certain things don’t happen when you think they do. I’d banked on the baby arriving late - as many first babies do - and using the past week to idly write things while ragu bubbled away on the hob. But the baby arrived on time, and everything else stayed put.

I am still writing this in bed, but surrounded by the curled wrinkles of muslin. The starfished hands of our child claw the air. I am very grateful he is here at the same time that hot cross buns are in the shops and the garden is full of daffs. When he finishes his last feed of the night dawn is breaking, and the new day is ripened by a sense of survival: we made another morning.

Many good things this week. Many twilight Googles of things I never knew existed, too. Only a handful to share with you here, hence this edition of savourites being made available to everyone, rather than paywalled as usual. Here’s to the weekend.

The baby

Farrah’s Things Worth Knowing

I was very chuffed to be invited to answer Farrah Storr’s fantastic Things Worth Knowing Q&A, which went out on Wednesday. Farrah used to edit ELLE and Cosmo, and is now head of Writer Partnerships for Substack UK - a generous phone call with her about a year ago resulted in savour sparking into life. Her newsletter is a pleasingly frank look at life from the other side of a Devil Wears Prada existence of jetsetting and fashion week front rows that boils down to the stuff that really matters in life. I enjoyed thinking about my last 24 hours on earth for it, 24 hours before my life changed completely.

Subscribe to Things Worth Knowing

New York, New York

It was in the strange, early hours of an autumn morning several years ago that I first saw Martin Scorsese’s New York, New York. It’s a weird and intoxicating film, all trippy colours and the kind of chilly Seventies glam that’s tinged with overindulgence. Released in 1977, the film has become this kind of forgotten-about odd fish in Scorsese’s back catalogue. But it’s nevertheless the kind of thing that both makes for good rainy Sunday afternoon viewing and will leave you with snapshot memories of certain scenes.

M was playing New York, New York because he was about to join the team of people opening the new Kander and Ebb musical on Broadway, which is based on that film. If babies can hear things in the womb, ours will have heard the refrain of ‘Cheering For Me Now’ for most of its gestation: M has been singing it near-endlessly. The play had its first preview last night (again, with the timing), but he couldn’t be there because he was trying to get the baby to sleep. We woke up to reports of the roof of the St James’s Theatre having been blown off.

New York, New York: A New Musical @NYNYbway

This top of the heap performance brought the house to their feet. Thank you NYC for being a part of it! 🤩 #nynymusical #nynybway

4:03 AM ∙ Mar 25, 2023

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