Digested week: high-end hen dos, pricey hoo-has and some horny history

The Guardian

23-05-2025

Another dream dies hard. I was not invited to Lauren Sanchez's hen do, and Jeff Bezos' bride-to-be and her gang of close personal brunettes have now returned from their £500,000 jaunt and are recovering – I imagine in solid gold flotation tanks in a mansion's solid gold flotation tank room – without me.
They took a private chartered champagne boat ride down the Seine (or possibly up the Seine – are you going to make me admit again that I wasn't there?), drank espresso martinis at Galeries Lafayette's restaurant and documented every moment on Instagram so the rest of us could gaze in awe and wonder if hen partying as a billionaire's fiancée's friend is any less hateful than doing it the normal way. It is, I suppose, likely that if you are a Kardashian or an Eva Longoria or Katy Perry, as so many of the guests were, you are more extrovert and naturally gregarious than average, but it remains a pleasure to imagine that when the gilded invitation dropped through the letterbox the girls' reaction was the universal one: a muttered 'WTF does Bridezilla want now?', a resentful locating of a wheelie suitcase and some mid-tier underwear to throw into it, and a vow never to agree to this kind of thing ever again.
There is another hoo-ha about Gwyneth Paltrow's hoo-ha. Her most (in)famous piece of Goop merch, a candle launched on her lifestyle website in 2020 under the name This Smells Like My Vagina for the not inconsiderable sum of $75, is now selling on eBay for the even more not inconsiderable sum of $400 (£295).
And all my questions of five years ago come flooding back, including but not limited to: does the name mean that the candle smells like GP's own? Or is it meant to evoke the essence of all? IS there an essential vagina smell? Is it the one we hear all the jokes about, and, if so, why would you want to perfume your house with that? Furthermore – who was in charge of ensuring that the scent was accurate enough to forestall claims of misrepresentation? Did they get a bonus payment or was it a privilege fought over by a worryingly devoted few? So strange to have so many questions burning brightly in my mind still, and yet somehow not quite want any of them answered.
I visited one of the oldest windows in London today. It looks like it is made of glass but is actually 15th century cow horn, shaved to a translucent fineness. It is in the Great Hall of London's Guildhall, and you should go and look around the whole thing immediately. Descend into the medieval crypt dating back to at least the 13th, and possibly the 11th, century and see the gouges at the bases of the pillars where the horses stabled there at times over the centuries have kicked them. Go to the art gallery and take in a Canaletto or a Constable or two. Look at the enormous royal coat of arms that was salvaged from Christopher Wren's St Michael Bassishaw church when it was demolished in 1897 (though take care because there's a statue of Margaret Thatcher just a few yards on and I know we all need to be mentally prepared). And then, down some steps, 8 metres under the surface of the city, see the remains of the Roman amphitheatre that were discovered during the building of the underground carpark that now lies on the other side of them.
I was shown round by friends of my late dad, whom I very much consider myself to have inherited and won't let any of the rest of my family have, and it made me think anew about how wonderful London is and how wonderful the people are who want to share its secrets with you.
Speaking, as we almost were, of the preservation of things that add grace and gaiety to the nation, research has found that the semicolon is in danger of dying out. Twenty years ago it was deployed once every 205 words on average. Now it's down to once every 390, and only 11% of people surveyed described themselves as frequent users. God, people are animals.
And what are you going to do once it's gone, eh? What are you going to do when you need – yes, need – to indicate a pause in print slightly longer than a comma, slightly shorter than a full stop? How are you going to yoke together two separate but related clauses in a way that suggests exactly that liminal state? How are you going to avoid a comma splice when duty calls? Come on, people. If we can preserve Roman amphitheatres and the passage of medieval horses for the delight and education of future generations, we can do this too.
It's the end of the week so time for my mother to eat again. She works mostly off diesel, but needs the occasional nutrient to get by. Dad used to do all the cooking but stopped a couple of years ago when he died. So every Friday she rings me (my sister just blows a whistle down the phone if she tries calling her) and we have conversations like this:
'Did you say I should put salt in pasta?'
'Yes.'
'Why?'
'Because that's what gives it what we call 'a taste'.'
'Do I have to?'
'You don't HAVE to. The pasta will still get soft and in that sense be edible if you don't.'
'If I boil the water.'
'Yes. Yes, if you boil the water. But it will be an unhappier experience than if you had put salt in.'
'It's a lot of faff.'
'Is it really, though? It's adding a teaspoonful of salt to a pan of water. People do it all the time, often almost without thinking, so automatic does this small action become.'
'I'll think about it.'
'You do that.'
I'm off to buy a whistle.