1. Captain Cook crashes to earth
When Captain James Cook first cast anchor in a black sand bay in Hawaii, he was worshipped as a god – so the story goes. Cook departed Hawaii but was forced to return eight days later because of a storm – and he was clubbed to death. In a remarkable long read, Anna Della Subin probes for the reality behind this story, and finds more disease than divinity.
Notable quote: “These stories, told and retold over generations, ignore one obvious fact,” Subin writes. “Cook was killed because he acted rashly and violently, slaughtering chiefs, kidnapping the king and giving the impression the British had returned to conquer the island.”
How long will it take me to read? About 10 minutes.
2. Remember the office?
Life behind an office desk can be as strange as it is mundane. A new Guardian series, Memories of Office Life, gets into all of it.
If you’re utterly fatigued by Zoom: read about being “trapped in the longest, most anarchic meeting”. “At one point,” Emma Beddington writes “the paralegal, undoubtedly the calmest and most competent woman I knew, walked out, quietly. Curious, I followed her. She was standing shaking with hysterical laughter in the corridor.”
If working from home is causing marital tension: remember what it was like when your spouse had to call you on a landline to argue, as Sindhu Vee writes. “A massive row ensued that lasted for, literally, hours. I had to conduct this angry marathon from under my desk, the only place I could find that had a semblance of privacy.”
If you’re already back in the office: read Susan Smillie on her first proper desk job. “I managed to undermine the professional atmosphere by keeping a lobster creel on my desk and smacking a well-known food critic in the face with a freshly caught mackerel.”
3. How HRT has sold out menopausal women at every turn
From a wonder drug to a cancer scare, hormone replacement therapy was widely adopted, then very quickly dropped. None of this has helped the women it aimed to treat.
Notable quote: From a bestselling book in 1966. “All post-menopausal women are castrates,” wrote Robert A Wilson. But with HRT a woman’s “breasts and genital organs will not shrivel. She will be much more pleasant to live with and will not become dull and unattractive”.
How long will it take me to read? About four minutes.
4.Dun dun duuun … where did it come from?
We’ve all heard the sound of a dramatic reveal, but where did that three beat musical phrase originate? Amelia Tait looks for answers.
Does she find them? Yes! “Since 1984, if you’ve heard a dun dun duuun vibrating from your television set, it’s likely it came from one specific source.”
Where? Dun dun duuun! You’ll have to read to find out.
5. A midweek recipe for roots and curry cream
Nigel Slater’s warming recipe may be written for British winter, but it works in a grey Australian summer too.
But parsnip and celeriac aren’t in season. No, but you can swap out the celeriac for potatoes, which are still around, despite our Covid-ravaged supply chain. If you can’t find parsnips, skip them and bump up the grated potato and carrot then bake some mushrooms to go with it (whichever kind you can get your hands on will be fine).
