You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast is recorded on Hello and welcome to Mamma Mia out Loud and to our Friday show. It's the show where we step out of the news cycle and talk about stuff that has nothing to do with all that. Today it's Friday, the twenty fifth of October, and I am Holly Wainwright.
I am Jesse Stephens, and I'm m Venam.
I normally co host our daily entertainment podcast, The Spill, but today I have a record that I really wanted to share with you, so I kicked me off.
Welcome EM on today's show. Do you have a friend that you love but somehow they never ever make your Instagram grid? Are you that friend? Yes, you know what I'm talking about. Welcome to the new politics of social media friendship. Also the most ridiculously wonderful TV show of the year, an interview that made Jesse Stephens swoon, and EM's twenty minute face re team It's recommendations and our bests of worths of the week include revealing riding mistakes
and Stephens's accolade and sitting down. But first, Jesse Stevens be my shean.
Came in today and so I'm going to do a hall. It's like summer stuff, but literally came in four ds.
Very big shopping holl.
L had to do it, y'all.
I just got a new H and M order, so let's open it and try it on together.
I don't even know where to start.
In case you missed it, the TikTok shopping hall has turned young shoppers into what has been termed serial returners, which is seriously affecting retail profitability. So this was in a report from the Telegraph UK this week and it was revealed that gen Z's are sending back almost seven million pounds worth of items a year. Why are they doing this? Because of the surgeon popularity in the clothing
hall whereby you buy a bunch of clothes. Some of them are actually the same items, but they're in different colors, sizes, and you try them on on TikTok, so you get a big bag. I've seen this and like they tried on, They're like should I keep this?
I not?
And then whatever you don't want you just send it all back. So why is that a problem? Well, it's putting an unprecedented strain on retailers. According to Richard Limb, who's the chief executive of Retail Economics, someone has to process all of these returns. ASOS said last year that frequent returners were costing them six pounds per order. What's that, Holly, twelve dollars. Twelve dollars pretty much with some of those customers ordering two or three times a month and then
returning ninety percent of what they received. Ninety percent is what they're returning. M Are you a serial returner? You're young, You're cue.
I used to be a serial returner. When I was younger, I would buy like I would usually be with pants and jeans because I'm like a different size in every gene and I love online shopping, so I'd buy like jeans that were different sizes, like a size a same gene, size eight ten, going there a shin No, that's a whole other convention.
But I stopped.
I stopped doing this because a few years ago I actually interviewed New South Wales Young Australian of the Year Lotty dl. She was a sustainability educator and she taught me about bracketing. Have you heard about this, Yeoh, So racketing is labeled as fashions hidden returns problem, and it shows that the chances of the clothes being returned very rarely do they end up back on the shelves, and
I think it's because of this economic stuff. So firstly with carbon, like you're creating carbon by getting the packages sent to you creating carbon by delivering it back. But it also with some brands, depending on the brand and the value of the clothes, it sometimes costs them less to send it to landfill rather than repackaging, washing, resealing, putting it back on the website and selling it again.
Oh my god, I've heard that it is like less than fifty percent get back on so it can take a long time. So even it's kind of like maybe they're not even selling it by the time you get back with a lot of the really fast fashion ones. And then even if they do resell it, it's like they take the plastic away, they put it in new plastic, and then yeah, once you put it in a truck
and a blar and a bla. They've gotten better at the sustainability of sending it out, but they've not gotten better at the sustainability of sending it back.
I have so many questions because sending anything back is my worst night. There are things in my wardrobe that I should have sent back, like shoes that don't quite fit. But just the process, like the admin involved in like repackaging, go to the post office, da da da da dah, Like why don't they they wouldn't it be easier to just go to a shop and walk into a chaine room and try on three pairs of jeans.
No, because then sometimes when you've had LUNs, you can't try jeans and you need to wait until you get your package. You get your package and then you're like, okay, now it's a good time to try these jeans on. I also think it's because a lot of brands now are doing free returns, so they made it quite well.
They know because they know that this is a thing.
And really and really long, like sometimes it's a month or two months that you've got to re which is really good.
So on the like TikTok's side, like you're saying that we're costing you a lot, but then you're making it really cheap for us to do it.
Which is do it clearly because it's such a pool for the consumer. Like I won't buy something online if that's not returns. Yeah, right, and especially I check for free returns because that is like so appealing to me. But I went into a post office recently to.
Pick up a package.
Don't even get me started on having to go to a post office to pick something up. But I was in there, all young women, all with bags. I just went, this is so interesting because young people weren't in.
The post office ten years ago.
I swear Australia post was like, what are we going to do now that email's here?
And then young women were like, We've got you, We have got you.
Who appears the most on your Instagram feed or your Facebook timeline? Even? Is it your buddies, your parents, your babies, your pets? Is it you? In a date book of birthday dinners, work promotions and assorted life lately updates? Do you post more or less about the people you like the most or about the people you'd like others to think you like the most? I think the answer to these questions varies depending on your age, your job, your
life stage. But what I'd never considered until this very morning, when Emily Vernon brought it up to me, is that there might be a person or people in my life and yours who are offended that they're not on your grid more or at all. M tell me about the secret Mistress friend.
So I came across this TikTok by this user named Lucy, and there was a piece to camera and she seemed a bit upset. She said, that is anyone else the secret Mistress friend?
I'm the one that will do all the emotional regulation and do all of the therapy sessions and be there twenty four fucking seven, but then not post about, not mentioned, no fucking birthday.
Things, nothing, And it feels like that she's living in like the secret compartment of their life, like she's a mistress.
Like secret sector. Remember that episode, you know the how everything. Obviously I have to bring back to an episode of Sex and the City, because because I do secret sex, was this episode where it was people who you were in a relationship with. I bet you would have some stories about this to him, but you're not ready for
anyone to know that you are yet. So it's like and sometimes it's you who's the secret sex and you find that they're taking you to a restaurant that's like really out of the way where they know they're not going to see anyone they know. It's almost like the modern day friendship equivalent of that. But here's what I didn't understand, because one of the things that I thought is that if I'm out for dinner with my girlfriends and we're having a really nice night, I don't post
about that. That's not the kind of thing I post about.
So your friends are your secret mistress.
Yeah, I assume that they all know that our friendship does not need to be performed. But now I think, did they think that I am keeping them secret?
Yeah?
They one hundred percent do. Because you can't go to dinner with your friend not post them, or even worse, post the dinner but not tag them and not show them, and then the next day go to dinner with me and Jesse and then post us and tag.
Have you ever been to a dinner where some people from the dinner go off and take photos and then post it.
No one does that, I like in the bathroom it.
Yes, I've experienced it, and I've been like, oh, I mind the table, We're taking the pictures to mark my dinner, and I'm.
Like can I have a tag?
People really do that?
Yeah, because I think that they know they're the photo people. They know I'm not the photo person that if they asked me, I'd make it weird and I'd be awkward and I don't know how to pose and I'd rather just sit there and.
Are you okay with not being the photo person?
Yeah? I am.
It's funny because me, it's talked on this show before about how she feels like social media at the moment is leaking intimacy in certain experiences that we're having, whether it's with our family or our friends or holidays or whatever. There's this I don't know, it feels transgressive to go, I'm not going to post like it feels countercultural. I think especially for maybe Gen X and millennial women who have come up with this big revolution in media. Like
I still remember the Facebook. We would go out clubbing and I would have my.
Digital camera, digital camera.
Yeah, I would make head.
I would make Friday Nights.
I would make multiple Facebook albums and it would be of a shoe and it would be of a blur and it was like there was no such thing as intimacy. That now I'm just like, it's like a hangover. I read someone refer to it as like an immune response to that that the body is just kind of like I need to keep you away, and the internet oscillates, I think, very quickly between kind of like overexposure and
then pulling it all back. So there's this new trend of the no grid, like people are taking away their their grids or deleting their whole grids. And I've noticed that with nearly every gen Z I follow, if I go on to their account, they've got like six or seven photos, like they don't have this sprawling grid which I do of every thing I've ever posted. I didn't realize you could take it away.
I didn't know that was an option. I thought that the whole point was this is a record of my life, and to delete anything from it would be to deny a moment in time.
I thought, anytime I've seen someone, if Maya deleted her grid, I would call her on the phone, which I never do, and I would say, are you having an identity crisis? I would think that she was in a moment of profound crisis and she needed a welfare check if she deleted it.
But the Genza heads are just like.
What even is identity? What is fixed? And I'm like, what you can't just break the rule?
Okay, but there's a conflict here because you're saying it's not cool to post a lot, but you're telling me em that if you go out for a girl's dinner and it is not posted, then that's somehow slight. I'm not never posted. To me if I'm having dinner with my girlfriend's on like a random if it's birthday or something different, but like a random Thursday night pastor, it wouldn't even occur to me that I should post that.
No, it's not like post it in general. It's more like if there's a group of your friends that you don't post o other people, so you're still posting, but only certain people. And it's the friends that who don't get posted, who are like what the hell? Like I see you once a week, we have beautiful dinners, we hang out all the time. I put makeup on, I dress up for you, and not once have I appeared on your grid. People don't even know we're friends.
Why do you want people to know your friends?
Because then people ask are you still friends with so and so? I haven't seen them on your.
Instagram, so it is a document of your life, like it is, what's like, what.
Will happen if, like, I still don't understand the leaking of intimacy, because what will happen if you do post those photos with your friends?
Well, I think the problem is is that people begin to struggle with every social event and friendship moment being for the grid. Right, So let's talk about Thursday night, pasta dinner. Right, you know, we're all talking, we're just having a good time, it's an ordinary night. At what point are we all like photo time? And then we're all who's approving this picture? Like do you like how you look? And do you look like how you look? And do we tag the restaurant? Not tag the restaurant?
And I always take the restaurant. I don't know where you're going? And then we're.
Very like I feel like that changes the purpose and the dynamic of the evening, right, And the and the thing that people begin to panic about about intimacy leak is are we performing going out for dinner with our friends rather than just going out for dinner with our friends? And I think because.
That takes you out of the moment.
Yeah, And it's to me. It's like, say, it's my friend's birthday and we go out for dinner and I post about it and I'm like, happy birthday, Betty. You know that's my act of like appreciation of Betty. But hopefully she already knows that I appreciate her Like that isn't my real life, do you know what I mean? My grid and my feed is not my real life.
But it doesn't have to be like a pose photo, like a curated photo. It can be like a blurry photo of your pasta while you're eating it, and I just want to see the list of your friends that you're with in the tag, but just so I can stalk them, especially if they're hot. If they're a hot friend, I definitely need.
It's totally so, say my daughter, who growing up in the world of snap maps, did they have snap maps around when you were didn't have right, So it is so normal for you for the idea of like who are you with? Where are you? I need to know all interesting that so and so wasn't there, like.
I just and they wanted to disappear, which is what Snapchat realized really early on, which is why the grid is gone. The grid is gone because younger people don't want that footprint. They've seen it happen enough that it comes back to bite you, like she wants to.
Know happy with my story.
It's happy with a story that's twenty four hours.
She's happy with the story impermanent. Yes.
And what I think you're also speaking to is the photo dump, which is another trend which there was an article recently in The New Yorker about this. What we do online is completely shaped by the algorithm. It's not, you know, just people deciding all of a sudden they'd like to post twenty photos. But in August, I think Instagram went from letting you post ten photos to letting
you post twenty. And you remember j Loo just after Ben posted sixteen, and it is like all these oh what a summer, and she posted all these random things. And I think that what Instagram has become is less like here's my friends at dinner, and more about here's a vibe, like I'm gonna sprinkle these things and give you a sense of my month, rather than like the images that are like opposed the you know, twenty to fifteen influencer posing in a bikini not getting any traction.
What is some chaotic, as a young person would say, cooked carousel of like a dinner and a blurred this, and there's a bonfire and there's half your friend's leg and that's like yeah, and it's the end of month dump situation.
Yeah, or end of week. Like I really respect the photo dumb because I get like a weekly recap of like everyone's big week, and it needs to be chaotic and it needs to be from your POV and I need to see the world through your eyes, so it can't be curated, it can't be edited. What happened is that the celebrities and the rich people got hold of the photo dump and they tried to do it as well. They tried to be like, yeah, look at me, casual, cool,
but in the corner you're like that's a chandelier. You're like, that's a very expensive candle. And what they've done now is that they've led us into this huge world that we never had access before. So now we're just like perving on all of these lives and they don't realize, like you were saying before, how intimate these dumps actually are.
I love a further dump twenty photos thirty Furtosire give me all of them. It's time efficient, so I only have to look at your thing once rather than I have to keep going. And I love that thing of what do you choose? Because when I used to do my best and worst of the week, I used to do on a Saturday morning, I'd do ten and it would always be like, actually that was because you could only do ten. Like what you choose is really interesting,
because that's the whole point of curation, right. It's like, there could be everything in the world, but what would I choose to celebrate or highlight or whatever. And in that instance, Thursday night dinner might make it in right, like all Monday night movie club that I do with Jesse and Meha. And I know I have this much mocked like obsession with privacy, which is funny for someone
who lives a lot of their life publicly. But it's that idea of if I thought that people were looking to see who I was going out for dinner with and wondering why Sally wasn't there on Wednesday, like that would really stress me out a lot.
Why wasn't she there?
You find to hide?
You need to know.
I'm going to be in the comics at Sally if we're here.
The other thing with the not posting the friends, right, And I thought when I watched that TikTok video was there's this evolution of Internet slash social media that I was reading about, which is I guess the niche right, So and TikTok has shaped this, but I think it's sort of in every platform to varying degrees. Is that when I turned up to Facebook, and when I turned up to MySpace, and when I first turned up to Instagram,
I brought my whole self. I brought my parents, I brought my friends, I brought my pets, and I brought my job, and I brought everything. Now there's this thing where it's like, what actually works best in terms of content creation because a lot of this is being monetized is Jesse does this on the Internet. So I'm gonna show you what I do when Jesse does a podcast and you don't get access to me on the weekend.
And that I think I'm seeing that increasingly, even with like really public figures, they're going no, I'm not gonna leak that, and I'm not gonna leak that. I'm gonna have a certain part of myself that's for the public, and then who I have dinner with on a Monday is none of your business.
So do you use your Instagram more like a LinkedIn? Yes, like a social LinkedIn?
Yes? Absolutely? Absolutely.
Do you have a private Instagram like a Finster?
I don't, But I was reading about this because I was thinking, Oh, all the gen Z's I know have deleted their grid, and I was like, because I guarantee they have some Finsta with their photo dumps and with all their like I don't know, hot like posy photos or whatever, I'm certainly not getting them. But that's apparently what gen Z's are doing more and more is they're going because the thing about Instagram that because it's got
the public private settings, it was also for everyone. Like I've always been aware on Instagram that it's not just people who know me. Anyone can come across you and get a sense of you in a second, whereas that's not what happens on your Facebook profile or whatever. What gen Z's are doing now is they're going, I want to have an Instagram account where twenty of my friends follow and it's almost like a group chat with my friends, and then they have that separately so they can be
themselves there, which that had never occurred to me. I thought everyone who followed me on Instagram just needs to know everything.
And they're so active on social as well, Like I always forget that just because they're not posting doesn't mean they're not active, Like they're always the first to reply to DM, to read your stories, to watch your stories.
Do you have a fin Star?
I do have a fin Star follow it, but I don't post on it regularly.
Oh is it for stalking?
It's for start it's stalking. Okay, So we also need to explain this to out louders who aren't necessarily across it. You might have a Finster account that you might use to do exactly what em just said. Go and look at other people's stories without them seeing, because they can see when you're looking at their story.
Yeah, and have it super private so that maybe only, yeah, a few people see it. And maybe that's where you put pictures of your baby because you don't want all the other people looking. Yes.
After the break, we are setting up your weekend with our best recommendations, including a new show that Holly is obsessed with it. She literally was screaming us this morning.
He loud.
It is Friday, which means we share our best recommendations with you, and today I am going to go first. You don't mind.
I like it.
So I am recommending a cleanser. It's the Trinny London Cleansing Bomb. It's called the Be Your Best Enzyme Bomb cleanser. So the cleanser is amazing. It's like this big yellow bottle. You can also get a mini version for like if you're traveling or stuff. But I'm actually not recommending the specific cleanser, but more the cleansing act I do.
Can I ask a questions about the cleanser? Yes, just go on dry.
Our wet skin goes on dry skin. So I'm recommending like oil and balm cleansers in general to work on a dry skin.
Yea.
So I visited my friend and facialist, Lauren over the weekend.
Excuse me, do you have a This is.
Why all they all have such a beautiful skin. I think I need a facialist. I'm very spotty at the moment.
Is it facialist different from a dermatologist? Yes? So am I meant to have like a dermatologist and.
I don't have a dermatology artist is when you have a real problem, when you have your ex summer or something.
And then maybe an.
Interrupted sorry on my skin has changed. I used to be very oily, and then I started getting older and the weather changed, and now I'm very dry, and I didn't know how to work with my skin. So she told me that I need to start cleansing with an oil cleanser. And I talked about this on the You Beauty podcast on Wednesday. If you listened, did you? It's on my left and she told me that she wanted me once a week to cleanse in an oil or balm cleanser for twenty minutes.
That's a long time.
Does she mean leave it on for twenty minutes?
I actually like rapplarge my face for twenty minutes, she said, Put on the TV, sit in front of the TV, watch a favorite episode or something, and just cleanse for twenty minutes a week.
Because I love an oil cleanser do They're my favorite, So they go on dry skin. So then just sit there in front of the.
Telly, rubbing your face, neck, declotage all of it for twenty minutes. I've done it for three weeks. I've done it three times. My skin has completely transformed.
In what way it does like good babes.
Oh well, now I'm purging, so it's not not backgrade, which you told me might happen. Brighter, more moist. Is that the right word for skin? Like plumper? Also like the amount of shit that came out of my skin while doing this, like black heads, spacious feelings, yes, like little hair.
So then after your twenty minutes, you get like a little cloth and white.
Yeah, you get a cloth, and then you can do your double clean so like a normal cleanser on top, and then your normal like skin care routine and your skin feels so good.
I'm going to do that tonight because I actually have that. I've never been very good at using them because I rush.
You need to sink in and then it becomes oily and feels better. Rush it and you don't get that feeling of like gladness.
Yeah right right right, And I do get the sense I'm not getting all my makeup off.
And when you see the stuff come out on your hands, you get addicted.
I'm so excited.
God, this is the best recommendation ever until this one.
Oh gosh, here we go.
So I don't know I have a feeling that this is a recommendation that will divide. People are either going to fucking love this or you're going to be like Holly you canceled because Disney Plus has a new show on it called Rivals, right, and I need to explain that it's based on one of many books by a British author called Jilly Cooper. She's actually Dame Jilly Cooper because she has been around for a very long time and she wrote the books that were very popular in
the nineteen eighties. Is to be called bunk right in.
Like fifty Shades.
No, it is not allowed. I'd be allowed to say that.
Like Jackie Collins, Have you ever read any of those kind of books? I like, sort of really rompy, lightweight, sort of satirical loads of sex, usually set in like a high society world. Bonkbusters used to call them, right. Jilly Cooper was the best at writing those, and she herself is poshing, comes from posh part of England, and they're all set in these Cotswolds, very fancy sort of societies and a lot about class and a lot about
outsiders insiders stuff, but mostly about sex. Anyway, Jilly Cooper's books have all been bought and are being adapted for TV in the most perfect way that could ever happen.
It's nineteen eighty six.
You can have whatever you want.
Come to the cotswart.
Is it going to happen to us in the place like this?
If you don't start spending some of that fortune making a decent television, you're going to lose your business.
Rupert Campbell Black championshow Jump Up put out the past year?
It's an arrogant Black.
Rivals. Doesn't really matter what it's about, but it's a story of a guy who buys a TV station and he's trying to take on like the BBC in the eighties, and it's all this right. That guy is played by David Tennant, who you know from Oh Church, Doctor Who, et cetera, et cetera. The cast is amazing, like lots of people whose names you wouldn't necessarily know. What you've seen in every good English thing you've ever seen. Right,
it is so fun. I've heard Marina Hyde talk about this on one of my favorite progrests and she said this show is TV perfection because it's what we need
at this moment. Right. It's said in the eighties, So it's complete retro pawn of that time, which was very, as we call it now, politically incorrect, but not enough like a hort well sometimes in a horrible way, but it doesn't shy away from that, hasn't like sanitized it and kind of done that thing that sometimes adaptations do where they go, let's just pretend that all the moors of now are the mores of them, Like no, right, So the problematic characters are problematic. There's so much sex.
There's nudity. Penis first episode bangs right full frontal in you Are.
I love a bit of that.
The soundtrack is.
It like sexy?
It's not sexy in a way that would make you excited, Okay, not really. It's more just like funny thing all like funny sex, which is what that was about that Bom plus time. Anyway, I can't tell you. I watched two episodes last night and all I want to do is stop talking to you and gon't watch it. You've sold me that's fun. And what I heard Marina Heidze, which
is so funny. She was like, I don't know how the Americans are going to feel about this because it's prestige TV as in The production values are unbelievable, the cast is unbelievable. But it has no message. It has no like Higher Arc, it's just.
No speech, deliver morality.
Watch and shut up and enjoy and please it's my gift to you. Watch Rivals. Apparently all her books are going to be adapted in the same way, and Riders is the one that I remember mostly, which is about high jumpers and show jumpers. Like it's just so good.
Speaking of has you started watching my recommendation from last week?
Disclaimer?
Not yet, but I promise I will.
What do you think so good? It took me a while to understand it's.
Quite Yeah, it's a bit weird, but I've free watched the new second one and like the new ones and that look. Luckily I have a high brow recommend that is lucky to bring to the table. Because have you seen the clips of Andrew Garfield breaking down on Modern.
Love no podcast.
I've been watching him on as discussed on Monday's episode Chicken Shop Days.
And I watched him with Elmo.
Yeah, I love him.
You're gonna love him all because he went on the Modern Love podcast and what they do is a quick little interview and then they read an essay which sounds like a bad format in my opinion, and it's brilliant. It's a brilliant format, but basically the essay that he chooses. So they gave him a few to choose from, and he chose an essay called Learning to Measure Time in Love and Loss, and it's about the grief of time passing. And he speaks about this concept of honism.
The sense and of knowing and the sorrow of knowing that you will only be able to live your own life. You won't be able to have all of the experiences you want. That I won't be able to read all the books in the library, see all the films in the in the cinema, to know all the people on earth, visit all the countries, all of history, all of time. Is an imprisonment in the life that you have, realizing that you're trapped to a certain amount of experience as you're alive.
And there's a sense of profound grief in that that life is about letting go and realizing all the things he's never going to have. And he talks about how the people he knows who have died still had books I wanted to read, had things they wanted to do.
He just articulated it so beautifully. But this essay.
He reads this essay and he gets halfway through, and this has never happened in a Modern Love episode before, where he just broke down and just started crying because he was so.
Touched by it.
My wife hasn't worn a bikini for six years and probably never will again. She says she's too old, which makes me sad. She's a beautiful woman with gray and her hair. My parents no longer drive at night. Sorry.
It's about a guy who worked in prison and what the cell mats taught him about life.
And ah, so Andrew Garfield.
It's really affecting. I think a lot of people will relate to it. So yeah, Modern Love with Andrew Garfield. It is time for Best and Worst of the week. While it is nearly time, join us after this short break to hear why one of my favorite things in the world is actually my worst.
This week.
Out louders, if you want to listen to us every day of the week, and why wouldn't you, You can get access to exclusive segments on Tuesdays and Thursdays by becoming a Mum and Mere subscriber. Follow the link in the show notes to subscribe, and a big thank you to all our current subscribers.
Right out louders, it is time for us to spill our best and worst of the last seven days. M what is your worst?
My worst is my dad was in and out of hospital this week with kidney stones.
Mate, I've had one of those. It hurts like hell.
Apparently he had many.
I can't even imagine. Oh, it was a lot.
Did they give him all the pain relief?
Yes, he got a lot of pain relief. So he got kidney stones for the first time. When I was sixteen. It was a big deal because it was the first time I saw like a parent go into like surgery. Even though it was like key hold, I was like, I've never seen had a parent be in hospital. And it was my birthday as well, and it was the day after was my birthday party, and he had a surgery and then was able to party straight away after,
and I was like, this is so cool. And the doctor was like, you'll probably get them again in twelve years, and like clockwork, exactly twelve years he's got them again.
How many years ago were yours, Holly? Maybe two?
Yeah?
Well, yeah, a while. Yeah, so he got them again and he was fine for a bit and then he had like a big one, but he was able to pass it, and so they sent him back home from the hospital. But then he was in so much pain from all the little ones because you can't actually remove them. You have to blast them and then pee them out, and the recovery has taken quite a bit. Like he was in a pain, and it was the first time
I've seen like my dad in pain. And I was like, the last time he got them felt like yesterday, and now it feels like he's so much older. It was the first time I've seen my dad seem older, vulnerable. And also because he's like a trade so I've always like pictured him like on a ladder, like carrying a refrigerator, fixing my air con, doing all that stuff. And it just made me realize that in probably like five to ten years, like he can't be that person anymore.
You're gonna have to get all of the jobs you need doing.
Literally get back from the hospital, very got to move my couch. Yeah, but yeah, he's okay. Now, Yeah he's fine. Now he's at home. He's like cooking. It's like, oh, I need to provide this family was back. But yeah, it was just one of those moments I feel like you've talked about it before where it's just one of those moments where you're like, oh, my parents.
May I recommend to you? Andrew Garfield, That's exactly what it's about.
My best though was relating to my age. I went to a concert recently, Lime Cordial.
Have you heard it?
Yes? I have.
They were playing at the icy C.
I couldn't sing one of this song.
No, I couldn't either concert, but I've heard of them. Yeah, it's very alt. I went with my cousin and the only tickets we could get were the tickets like at the back with the seats, so we were sitting. We were the youngest people like in our row basically, and it was so much fun sitting down at a concert that you're meant to be dancing and jumping up and
down for. And then it was just so much fun because we were sitting down for the songs we didn't really know, like bobbing along, and then the songs we did know. I think it's like consensus, like everyone knows that even if you're sitting down, you can stand up and have a bit of a boogie. So we did that. Niece felt great after was able to walk home.
There is no luxury like sitting at a concert.
It is and it started at nine, and they came on a bit earlier, so they came on at eight fifty. So I was home by like eleven.
Oh okay, I'm depressed. How old are you again?
Twenty eight?
Dance at the concerts.
But I don't know if I want to anymore.
You've aged yourself up pretty significantly.
Holly, what's your worst?
Okay, my worst?
It's not really a worse.
In many ways, it's my best because I finally sent the final pages off for my next book. It's been a juice well second to last five, but you know, last opportunity to make a lot of changes. And this book has any out Louder would know, has been what we would call a journey. And anyway, what happens with books, if you don't know, is that you write your book, you send it off, your editor comes back and says, this isn't working, This isn't working. Change this do that?
I mean, I assume that's what happens to everyone. Maybe it doesn't.
Jesse some people like me just get a big ticks.
And so there are like stages of editing, so you do quite a big rewrite and then you send it back and then the structural structural, right, so structural is like big things, and then it's line edits, which are small things, but it's hard.
It's really hard.
I want to tell a story, it's really hard.
And then after the line edits, then it comes back with like these are the page proofs. So you're just literally like proofing for mistakes. It's quite vulnerable, like all these people, Oh my god, so vulnerable. And so by the time you get to nearly the pointy end, which is kind of where I am now, most of the big things have been solved. But you get your document back and it has lots of little notes in the margins,
sometimes maybe a list as well. And the thing is is that sometimes the mistakes you've made just are very revealing about you your life, like because proofreaders are amazing people, right, they make it writers look good. You know, we're very good at grammar and we know all the words. But they also are very particularly pedantic, like they have to
be right in their job. So for example, this is why It was my worst because, for example, one of the edits in this most recent edit was I think I had the character who's this very sort of cold guy who lives in this very perfect apartment, and I referred to the towels that the woman found there as box fresh, and the proofreader wrote in the margin, towels can't be box fresh because you have to wash towels before you use them. Always.
Is that why when I use new towels, I get fluff on me, fluff they stick to me. I think I was meant to wash them, and I had our group text to wash thee.
Like I didn't know that. I thought one of the joys of music, and you tell is how fluffy it was, and b I'm like, you.
Know what I mean?
You know what I mean.
This is what really proofreading and writers are always about. It's the writers they're going but you know what I mean, And they proof it is like, no, I don't know what you said. That's not what you said.
Can you go back to them and be like, I know you're meant to do that, but the character did it.
Of course you can't. Like the proofreader isn't like the teacher who gets to you decide what you're taking on what you're not and let me be clear, ninety nine point nine percent of what they tell you to do, you're like sex. Fuck they picked that up. But then there's their point one where you're just like nah, keeping it. Sorry.
I fought for In my last book, I referred to someone as wearing Nike tea and a specific shoe that looks like they're about to kick you something like that, and they were like question mark, and I was like.
Trust me, trust me, everyone knows.
And I swear every second reader is like what and then every other reader's like, yeah, exactly, those shoes are kicking yeah, sometimes specificity specific see.
The proof of it would know. Anyway, that was my worst of the week was realizing just what a heat and I am, but also thank god we're at that stage now. My best is that I literally found my life purpose last weekend, like all of the search before in the world now all of the searching that I've been doing for my entire life. Last weekend had a really busy weekend because Brent was away in New Zealand visiting his dad. As I spoke about last week, the kids had a lot on it. I'm trying to sign
off my fucking book pages. But I did take half an hour to go and visit a garden here where I live, right, I know, right, you know you're gonna roll your eyes, but you've got to stick with me on it.
So you post a garden on your Instagram story.
I do.
I can't get a tag. I had to.
Tag my tomatoes anyway, Berry, which is a town near me, not quite where I live, but near me, was having garden festival and I was like, that sounds like fun, but actually I'm going to be honest, they're not that fun because basically, I mean, this is good in itself. You get to go and look at some really fancy person's really fancy garden.
Right.
That actually appeals to me too, So it's for people who actually appreciate gardens.
Yeah, and also, if you want to go on pervert, fancy houses and fancy gardens is ideal. But it wasn't really what I was looking for. I was like, help me with my tomato problems, Like, anyway.
Google can help you with that, I'm sure, Like you're here for the wrong thing.
They were like, here, we have a lake full of very expensive carp and fourteen different sculptures and hedges in this I'm like, no, no, where you're leafy greens. Talk to me of your brassacres. Anyway, I found that garden, right, I went and spent twenty very happy minutes.
Were they part of the thing or did you just go to a Brandon's garden?
Because that's what this woman's garden was on the list, And I know her a little bit, like this woman called Jody name check to Jody, I think she's an o louder. I think she listens to us while she sorts a compost. Anyway, Jody's garden is unbelievable, and she loves it. She spends half a life in there. I'm sure she's got these veggie beds that I just can't even She's got these old bed head that she's attached to them to dangling. It looks straight out of the
pages of a magazine. But also just everything's just overflowed. And I was like, this is exactly what I'm going to do with my time when I am no longer working and my kids are grown. I am writing and I am gardening, and that is it. I'm writing gardening right and gardening. I was like that's it.
I found my goal.
I want to be in that garden. I want to be storting my compost. I want to be And I came home and I told the kids that, and they looked at me like I was and I was like, you don't understand. Two years ago, I didn't even know what a garden was, and now I've discovered that. It's all I want to do. All I wanted to.
Kind of get that beautiful.
Yeah, I like that a lot.
You can change.
My worst is also sort of a recommendation for a true crime documentary.
I watched that.
I'm not allowed to recommend anymore, but do you remember the case. It was a few years ago of Gracemulane and she was a young girl from the UK, I think she was twenty two, and she was traveling around the world on like a gap year, and she ended up in New Zealand. She went on a tinder date with a guy there. She ended up going missing, and then they eventually established that that man had murdered her. Anyway,
I started watching that the other night. I've heard really good things about it, and it is an outstanding documentary. The reason it is my worst is because there are a few things I remembered from this case, and it made me think about how quickly the news cycle moves on, and how we never actually prosecute what happened because we
just get thrown all these conflicting narratives. So do you remember about that case that one of the things that made headlines was that what the defense had to argue was that in that hotel room, he choked her because she wanted it.
I do remember such a distinct, so.
Distressing, right, And I remember that being one of the things, and it became this big conversation about choking.
I remember just Sindra Dan spoke about it, Yes, she did.
They show that clip, and this documentary shows the interviews, that shows CCTV footage, It shows inside the room like it's really hearing what the defense had to argue. I almost felt sorry for that lawyer because I just went what he had to argue. What we never went back and looked at was the truth of what happened that night. Because the thing is that once they established guilty or
innocence and sentencing, the world's moved on. Yeah, and all you got with the headlines about the choking that man, I won't go into it too much, because I think you should watch it. But that man, who was an ordinary young man, like and you get that sense from the CCTV he came across so ordinary, took out on a date. What they know they were able to establish is that after she died in the hotel room, he took photos of her naked body and he watched pornography.
They are just two of the details. There are a hundred other details about what he did, but you go, it was in the media. It was like positioned as this accident and that in order to defend.
Almost even like almost her fault. So I felt like young women wanting today dangerous sex acts.
I mean, poor man's life is ruined because of what she wanted. That in order to defend someone who's accused of murder, you have to defame a dead woman, Like that's so fucked up.
And I just, oh my god.
I think it's really important to go back and look at the details of these cases because it gets so vague and so confused that we never really think about it.
I remember this case because I was obviously like single and dating at the time, and I think every woman who was dating at that time remembers this so specifically because I remember I didn't even hear it on the news. I heard it like almost like a rumor because like, that's what you did. You talked about like all the most dangerous situations you could potentially be on in a date. And I do remember the photos because that's what I heard through my friend, but I never saw it on the news.
Yeah, it's like what we're talking about recently with the French case, where you just go, these are not monsters that are like serial killers that are out to it. This is just, yeah, what looks like an ordinary person. My best of the week is my mum, who has now retired, gotten a wood on Friday night. Oh, she had a little awards night and yeah, the whole family went.
When did add retire? Regular outlouders will know this. Jesse Klasma and very regular in the out Louders group.
Wonderful woman pretty much, I would say at the end of last year, because she's a teacher, she kind of scaled it back to a few days and then I think she's officially retired now, but kind of was like I might do some casual teaching.
And see how I love being retired.
She is loving it because and this is what they were all saying was when you retire, you got to retire to something, your garden. You've got to retire to your garden or to ye books whatever. And my mum, and I know this is not every woman, but she's like, I'm retiring to my granddaughters. Like she is living her
best fucking life. It was so lovely to go there and like a bunch of her friends were there and like work colleagues, and she got recognized because she's been a teacher for more than thirty years and got this special award. And I thought, we've been at awards nights or graduations or work things for me and my brothers and moms are always there clap, but how often are you actually there to celebrate your own mum. So anyway,
it was a great night. And then my other mini best was at the day before because she looks after Luna Matilda at different times, but every now and then there's like a half hour period where she has both the girls and that can be really hard when neither of them walk yet. Anyway, she went and bought a double pram off Facebook marketplace, and the picture of the girls on the double pram is the cutest. They hit each other and then they cried. But Mum, she's most
comfortable with a double cram. She's like, I didn't know single prans.
Yes, because she's the mom of twos of twins, so I was like.
I wouldn't even know how to you. How do you get through a door with a double pram? Anyway, my nanna.
Did the same thing because I have two cousins also born in ninety ninety six, so we were all babies together and she bought a triple pram just for photos. Did we have so many?
It's so cute.
I'm so glad there was a ticket tape parade friends Steven because also for all bloody teachers teaching for thirty years, imagine how many lives she's changed, how much differ she's made, Like, I just absolutely applaud her.
They do not every teacher get enough attention. Mum loved it.
My brothers were like, oh, don't feel kind of weird when you're get getting an award.
Mom's like, naps, give it to me.
But no problem, we've center of attention.
Or congratulations and that is all we've got time for today. A massive thank you to all of you out Louders for being with us all week. In our show notes, you're going to find links to everything that we've talked about today. You'll also find us on Instagram and TikTok, of course, or in the out Louders Facebook group, and don't forget, we've got a newsletter. There are lots of different places that you can jump in and connect with us, no matter what your social media jam is.
Read us out a big thank you to our team. Executive producer is Ruth Divine, who last added to her grid on ninth of December twenty twenty three, but loves in Instagram story It's so cool. That is a cool girl. Think that's what you should be doing. Our senior producer is Emmeline Gazillis, who has posted only three times this year. In case you're wondering, the Mama Mia out loud Live show did indeed make it to.
The grid got a priority of She's smart girl.
Our audio producer is Leah Porges, who much prefers posting an Instagram story over putting something on the grid can relate, and our social media producer is Isabelle Dolphin. She's obviously an expert in the field, and her hot tip is to just have fun, don't overthink it, and post the damn selfie.
Yeah, dolls, I think dolphs are big.
I feel like Dolphin might look like you. I definitely be a posting.
Sushnaw.
But hay out louders.
I know you're not ready to say goodbye just yet, so we are going to leave you with a little treat a taste of yesterday's Subscribe episode, where Holly and I found out from Amelia Lester exactly why Donald Trump did that shift of McDonald's if you've seen those images of him serving people takeaway machas.
Yet look, Amelia did some explaining.
So it was essentially him trolling her. Elon Musker has obviously been whispering in his ear because we all know that Elon Musk Clove's control. He didn't actually work an actual shift at the restaurant. It was, of course in Pennsylvania. We always talk about how important Pennsylvania is on this podcast, and he was kind of cosplaying as a minimum wage worker. The franchise was closed, all the customers passing through the
drive through had been pre screened. There was a blonde woman who he got kind of creepy about as he was handing her fries, telling her how beautiful she was and how perfect she was. And now on his campaign store website there's a t shirt that says, I am the first and only twenty twenty four presidential nominee to work with ridnald.
Oh He's so.
As ever, you'll find a link to that episode in the show notes. Shout out to any Mum and Maya subscribers listening. If you love the show and you want to support us, subscribing to MMA MAA is the very best way to do so. There's a link in the episode description