Daisy Buchanan – Favourite Things
Each week Reaction Weekend brings you Favourite Things – interviews with interesting people about the skills, hobbies, pleasures and pastimes that make them who they are.
Daisy Buchanan is an award-winning journalist, author and broadcaster. She has written for many major newspaper in the UK. Her podcast You’re Booked, where she interviews celebrated writers from all over the world about how their reading habits shape their work, tops the podcast charts. Her latest novel, Insatiable: A Love Story For Greedy Girls, is available for purchase here.
These are a few of her favourite things…
Walpole Bay tidal pool
I moved to Margate four years ago, and I don’t think there is any greater luxury than going for an impulsive swim on a sunny day. As much as I love rushing into the water at high tide, there’s something magical about the Walpole. It’s a Grade II listed tidal pool and it feels like the most spacious, peaceful place in the world. There’s a perfect confluence of sea and sky and the water is delicious. It’s on the icy side, even in the height of summer, but it’s a taste you can acquire. Swimming in the sea offers the greatest reward for the least latent talent. I’m no sportswoman, but it makes me so happy to derive so much pleasure from an activity that I am not particularly good at.
Perfume
I am a total scent sybarite – and a promiscuous one. I don’t have a signature perfume, I have about 12, because I can’t resist anything that smells heavenly, and I’m a sucker for a great name. My current favourites in rotation are Power Ballad by Room 1015, Debaser by DS & Durga and Narcotic V by Nasomatto. My perfect perfume is one that makes me swoon. But, my holy grail is something that I imagine might smell like the love-in-idleness flower from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I think any really great scent can tell a story. I’m willingly seducible, and I want to be enchanted. When I’m writing at home, I’m usually dressed as though I’ve just fallen out of a hedge, but I can’t resist putting some perfume on.
Reading in bed
Most mornings, my husband and I start the day in bed, with big mugs of coffee, and we read for at least an hour. It’s so decadent. My argument is that it’s essential for my mental health and much better for me than looking at my phone and frowning at my emails. The truth is that it feels lusciously lazy. I’m usually a bit too sleepy to read in bed at night, but starting the day with a book feels gentle and nourishing. I’ve just been reading Eva Ibbotson’s Journey To The River Sea which is a children’s book about a young girl who is sent to live with awful ex-pat relatives besides the Amazon but finds herself falling in love with nature and the mysteries of the river. It’s the most thrilling, enchanting story that I’ve lost myself in for ages.
Laughter
I simply couldn’t live without it. I think I’m an easy laugh; it doesn’t take much to make me giggle, and I definitely have a silly sensibility. I have five younger sisters, and they know exactly how to render me hysterical with laughter (and they like to do this at especially embarrassing and inconvenient times). I’m married to a comedy writer – he’s incredibly funny, but I sometimes wonder whether he wishes I had a slightly more sophisticated sense of humour. I laugh at his jokes, but then I also laugh at myself tripping over my own pyjamas. The Off-Menu podcast got me through lockdown, and I’ve been listening when I go running, laughing to myself along the way. I suspect I’ve acquired a reputation as a local eccentric.
Lunch
Nothing makes me happier than being in a restaurant with my favourite people in the middle of the day. Dinner is great too, but during the evening the stakes seem slightly higher as there’s more time pressure with a lot to cram into one catch-up. A really leisurely lunch is a blissful skive, an opportunity to gossip, plot and take your time to talk about everything and nothing as the afternoon unfolds, spilling out from under you. Obviously, I love delicious food (take me to Noble Rot, Café Murano or Margate’s Bottega Caruso) but the best lunches are the ones that go on for six hours, where I’ve had such a wonderful (boozy) time that I struggle to remember what I actually ate. It doesn’t help that I’m usually too greedy to stop to take a picture before I start eating.