My vacation, myself
I'm that girl who shows her travel slideshow in the middle of a party.
I’m back from summer vacation, a whirlwind trip for my birthday week. I don’t really need to post—the internal anti-burnout rule at Gift Guide headquarters is 10 posts/month—but I’m being self-indulgent and doing a vacation recap. I had some epiphanies. Namely, Glasgow is an incredible summer city?! Did everyone know this but me? The perfect antidote to hot-hot France.
It made me think a lot about ideating country-hopping itineraries: Do you go from hot to cold climates? Expensive to cheap cities? Reading and lallygagging to exercising and hauling bags? The answer is yes and yes and yes!
The birthday trip itinerary was friend-forward throughout, escalating in “novelty” activities and descending into calm, tempered relaxation: A backyard garden dinner in London hosted by Charlie Gilmour, boating to a bothy-type structure in rural Scotland for a few days of camping at the home of the secretive translator Alasdair MacKinnon, two days of tourism in Glasgow with the most popular man in town, known only to me as “Martin.”
London, Loch Hourn (Knoydart), Glasgow
What London has over New York is house parties. You might still change your life at one. I was gifted a snake ring, a delicately hand drawn card by a goth-y friend of Joe’s (snakes in a martini glass?), a book by A.A. Gill, a bottle of homemade horseradish vodka, and an eccentric glass candlestick from Miranda Keyes made by Miranda Keyes. Why so many people gave me slinky items, I care not to parse…
We scooped up writers John Phipps and Rosa Lyster early in the morning and took the train from London to Glasgow, where my husband had pre-shipped my presents, the star of which was a men’s Harris tweed cotton raglan Mac coat from Drake’s. I had mentioned to Joe that I thought he should shop at Drake’s; and he cleverly surmised that meant I wanted to borrow his clothes. My fall wardrobe is precious to me, and I am happiest when presents add to this particular seasonal look. The ingenious of this gift—because the gift was for me—is that the version he chose was a reversible coat. (Rainproof on one side, houndstooth on the other.) Earlier this year, I got a reversible mink fur coat. This is very New Jersey of me, but the truth is, I need something a touch less precious and more all weather than a floor-length fur coat. I got a knee-high version, and didn’t worry about weather patterns. This is my new obsession with outerwear.
To top off my presents, Joe got me four pairs of Campbell’s of Beauly (“highland outfitters established 1858”) shooting socks (thick, over-the-knee wool numbers in a variety of dirt-adjacent colors). These were meant to have a use value for our trip into the West Highlands. And I did in fact wear them every night...
From Glasgow, we drove to Kinloch Hourn, where Alasdair elegantly met us on his sailboat. Well, sort of. Actually, we got stopped halfway up on the road by roadwork, abandoned our car, and walked a mile to the pickup point. (The boys went back for the bags later.)
The destination was a house lovingly named Runeval—sans electricity, running water, or cell service—that Ali’s family has rented for the past decade. (When I asked where it was, I was forwarded coordinates on the loch.) A stream runs through the property, into which we dropped a cold bag with steaks and other perishable items. At this point in my life, if I have cell service, I’m duty bound to use it, so my choice in holiday had strict parameters to be so remote as to be cut off. I’m not bragging about this, it actually kind of annoys me that I go to use Instagram on holiday and I have to answer emails.
One feels validated if one’s activities are “covered” by the FT. (A week or so after I secured my CT house, I saw an article entitled, “Welcome to the Litchfield Hills, the smart set’s anti-Hamptons.”) So I wasn’t surprised to sail out of the loch—the cell service as bright as the sun!—and see that the FT had published an article titled “How the shepherd’s hut became the last word in luxury.” Talk about the disintegration of a word. I am personally tired of luxury. (Whenever I go to put on an $1,800 shirt only to have to pause and steam it, I want to scream!)
What I want from a vacation is clarity of purpose and the purpose is feeling “clean,” like I need my entire brain to be swept and then repopulated with beautiful things, like ideas from books. Speaking of! While in the mountains, I read Lost Lambs—Joy Williams characters in a Nell Zink world—and can enthusiastically recommend it as our New Year’s Gift Guide Book Club pick. If you need it spelled out clearly: For readers who enjoyed Big Swiss.
If you pre-order it now, you will get it as a post-Christmas treat. Out January 16th. Pre-orders matter for authors, and we care about mattering! After you pre-order, just sign up here, and I’ll use the e-mail list to send you programming options (zoom, in-person, etc.). I’ve spoken to Madeline Cash, the author (b. 1996), and she will do an event with us. I love a new literary star… Especially one in her 20s.
