A Few of my Favourite Things: Christina Patterson

A new column and a dollop of joy.

It’s a new column - and it’s perfect for a Friday because it is all about cheer and good things, and these are are very end-of-the-week qualities.

It also came to me whilst I was having a (Friday) evening drink in the garden. The key to success is to do this early doors (so it doesn’t affect sleep), and not drink to excess (one cocktail can an evening make, if it’s of sufficient standard). On this particular evening, I was watering my tiny garden, drink in hand. This really does combine two of my favourite things, I thought, starting to hum ‘My Favourite Things’, written by the great Rodgers and Hammerstein for the masterpiece that is The Sound of Music. I watched this approximately once a month, if not more often, during my formative years. I am so word-perfect, that when my husband surprised me with a trip to see it on the West End for my birthday one year, he had to lean over and whisper gently, “It’s not the sing-a-long version”.

And then the journalist in me thought, ‘you know, that would be a great feature’. five favourite things - anything. Cushions, ketchup, playing the recorder, Tuesday evenings, sweet peas, ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’, steeples, Budapest, olives, Dolly Parton, steam trains, Agatha Christie. jugs, knock-knock jokes, waistcoats. Anything. Providing one was a favourite book.

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I will, I decided, throw down the Favourite Things gauntlet to some of my favourite writers and Substackers. And I knew just who ought to my inaugural guest: the queen great writing and a lovely Friday night,

Christina Patterson

I have long admired Christina’s work as a journalist - she has written for every publication worth writing for, and was at The Independent for ten years (until she was unceremoniously exited - you can read about this in the excellent The Art of Not Falling Apart), and has been shortlisted for the Orwell Prize, the UK’s leading political journalism prize. You can catch her on Sky News, talking politics in a learned manner. She is also a coach - more on which here.

But I really fell for her writing when I read Outside, the Sky is Blue, her searingly beautiful memoir about her family: her glamorous parents, her sister Caroline, who struggled with her mental health, her brother Tom - who died in his 50s, leaving Christina the last family member standing, the sole bearer of years of memories and possessions: an archivist of grief whilst she also struggles with cancer. Now, I realise I making this sound very gloom and doom, but it is in fact wildly optimistic and full of humour, heart and hope. A book about keeping on, dodging the slings and arrows, finding the humour in the darkness, until Christina rises, like a glorious phoenix. My heart grew like the Grinch’s at the end. It will remind you that what remains of us is love.

And now you can find her being witty, wise and wonderful on here: Culture Cafe. I highly, highly recommend subscribing for “coffee and cake and geopolitics”. It is a dollop of the unexpected landing in your inbox - but always fascinating, and so gorgeously written you will long as I do for Christina to write her next book.

So without further ado, herewith Christina’s favourite things.

1. I can’t remember when I had my first negroni, but I should have stuck the date in my diary and marked every anniversary by singing the Hallelujah Chorus. I love a nice, flinty Vermentino or Macon de Villages, so perfectly chilled that there’s mist on the glass, and I love a velvety glass of Montepulciano or Shiraz. But there’s nothing, nothing, nothing to match a negroni. Like so many of the best things, it’s very simple: just a measure (ideally a rather large measure) of gin, a matching measure of vermouth and one of Campari, served in a tumbler with huge ice cubes and a slice of orange. And there you have it: a jewel in a glass, a bitter-sweet explosion of taste in your mouth. Let the celebrations start, even if it’s just you and your book.

2. Sometimes I half-worry that the thing I’m best known for is my love of crisps. I have one friend who even calls me Crispina. I wrote about this life-long passion in my first book The Art of Not Falling Apart and after it was published people kept presenting me with family-size bags of Kettle Chips. After one event, I was given a giant basket jam-packed with different brands. I’ve always loved crisps: the sudden shock of salt when you’ve felt that itch on your tongue, the snap, crackle and crunch. I love nearly all the pretending-to-be-artisan brands, but I’m fine with the traditional ones too. At a pinch, Walkers Ready Salted will do the job. On a Friday night, with negronis, I might splash out on Torres Truffle. Just hearing the rustle of a crisp packet makes me feel cheerful.

3. I’ve been reviewing books for more than thirty years. Not all that many stick in my memory, but one that does is All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews. Published in the UK in 2014, it’s Canadian writer Toews’s sixth novel and it’s astonishing. The narrator, Yoli, is a fortysomething single mother whose older sister, Elf, a world-class pianist, is begging her to help her die. It doesn’t sound like a cheery subject for a novel, but it’s full of zest, verve and wit as lethal as a Dorothy Parker poem. Yoli has casual sex with her mother’s mechanic out of embarrassment and screams at strangers in car parks as she goes through the agonising process of trying to persuade her sister to change her mind. This wonderful novel will leave you with the feeling captured by the opening of Lady Chatterley’s lover, which Yoli quotes in a letter to Elf: “no matter how many skies have fallen”, you’ve “got to live”.

4. I’ve always been slightly obsessed by beautiful things. I vaguely thought everybody was, but in a recent psychometric test (I’m also a coach) I scored 98 per cent on the “aesthetic” motivation/interest scale. We all have our own ideas of beauty, of course, but mine is strongly influenced by my (late) Swedish mother. One of my more recent treasures is a painted chest I bought on a month-long solo road trip in Sweden three years go. It’s in the traditional colours of Swedish folk art: a soft blue-grey studded with flowers and dots in rust and white. On the inside of the lid, there are peeling pictures cut, I think, from newspapers of the time. From the shape of the dress in one of them, it looks as though they, and the box, date from about 1830. The chest – perhaps a sewing box or a wedding chest – sits by our fireplace and makes me happy.

5. I had a rough time in my mid-twenties and a spell of immobilising physical pain and unemployment. When I got my first full-time job after recovering, I celebrated by buying a picture. The picture was by a young artist called Michele Angelo Petrone. At the private view he invited me to there was one picture that made my heart jump. It’s a painting on silk of two androgynous figures, one sitting and the other half-lying, half-nestled in the sitting figure’s arms. The figures are varying shades of blue. The background is the colour of the sea. The picture is called “Peaceful”. I longed for what I saw in it and have hung it in every home I’ve lived in since. I was 51 when I finally found what I had yearned for. Ten years on, I consider myself unutterably lucky to have it still.

Subscribe to Culture Cafe here - and do read Christina’s books: wonder awaits within.

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I hope you love this series as much as I do. It feels very much like an irregular regular - a drop of Friday happiness and goodness. Please do let me know your thoughts - and favourite things - below, and a heart is always very welcome! Please do share if you wish - the more people who discover Christina, the better!