It’s funny how quickly it happens: a couple of fashion shows and red carpet events and things suddenly start looking up. After having been deprived of anything non-essential for over a year, the past weeks’ events almost feel excessive.

And excessive they were, in the best possible way. Take the premiere of 007 No Time to Die last night in London. Everybody was covered in head to toe sequins, and it felt appropriate in non-camp way. Pre-pandemic I probably would have thought it not very modern, but now – what’s not to love?

And one does love a bit of James Bond, doesn’t one, especially when served with this magnitude of fabulousness? I’m a bit tired of the debate around whether a woman should be cast as James Bond in the future editions. I find Daniel Craig to be 100% on the money when he said that women deserve heir own roles written just for them. Women being underrepresented in films is not because they are not cast as action heroes, but because there are not enough lead roles written for them.

A lot was going on across the Atlantic as well, as Jennifer Lopez and everybody else (that’s Harry and Meghan) were gathered in New York in the margins of the UN General Assembly. There was a fair bit of not staged love in the autumn air as well, when Lopez announced during her performance that she has love on the brain, which is great. The following not arranged paparazzi shots are the first pictures ever to show Ben Affleck to actually look like he’s not about to slit his wrists with a butter knife. So definitely love on the both brains. Well done, and congratulations. You will be able to see the accidental photographs taken of their walkabout in Central Park here.

(And does it matter that they do these PR-stunts? Not really I suppose. I’m working to become less cynical but am not there yet.)

As we are in the topic of love, I just finished a beautiful novel Last Summer in the City by Gianfranco Calligarich. I picked it at random, but it turned out to be the perfect novel to officially switch to autumn. Its subject matter is different from Call Me By My Name, but there’s something similar about the atmosphere. Last Summer is witty and emotional, very Italian, and feels very real. A recommendation if you are in the market for sophisticated, non-cheesy romance with a side of real-life drama.

Nothing, or little, to do with any of the above, but as non-essential things have been mentioned, I acquired a body oil from the French apothecary L’Officine Universelle Buly. It’s a heavy glass bottle with beautiful labels, is shipped with a hand-written note and all kinds of bells and whistles, and smells of Scottish lichen. In my (extensive) experience every product that has a reference to Scotland in its name, in fact smells of artisanal gin and tonic. Which, all things considered, is not necessarily a bad thing.