We got Hygge with it ...and made peace with our choices

There was no newsletter last week as I spent a long weekend in Copenhagen, where we spent most of the time walking to the perfect place for brunch, standing in a queue outside the perfect place for brunch, taking photos of brunch and, finally, eating brunch. We also drank quite a lot of beer, though not at breakfast; or lunch.

It was lovely.

I won't bore you with the photos.

Except this one, taken in the wonderful, wonderful, design museum.

Doesn't that blow your brain?

That, and other events this week made me really think about the choices we make and how we then live with them.

Choose Life

Last Wednesday, I ran a training course for some of women we've placed into a law firm through the Reignite Academy . The topic was "Time Management & Productivity". Sounds a bit dry when you write it down. We began with the question "Why bother?"

Turns out it's not dry at all. When time is all you have, the choices you make about where you spend it are pretty fundamental. We all agreed on the importance of being intentional about where we spend time, what we do and do not do, to make sure we get the most out of life.

The Road Less Travelled

Or, should I say, forks in the road. August 2008 was one of the highlights of my professional career - I was Director of Brand at Deloitte, we'd just agreed to be sponsors of the London 2012 Olympics, and a group of us went on a "fact finding" trip to Beijing. (The facts I found were that Beijing is very smoggy and Olympians come in all sorts of shapes and sizes). It was also the last month I ever received a regular pay check.

A combination of events (missed out on promotion, nanny resigned) meant I chose to walk away from that job and into ... well, to be honest, other than being responsible for the school run, I wasn't sure what. Every four years, when the Olympics comes round and I see Deloitte's involvement part of me wonders what life might have been like had I made a different choice.

Happily, this wondering lasts about twenty seconds a. because it's utterly pointless; b. because my imagination isn't sufficiently creative to conjure up the answer; and c. because I'm usually busy running to the next thing on my very full, though not particularly lucrative, agenda.

No Competition, No Regrets

Back, to the training course - everyone in the room could remember making a choice that meant they stepped off a career ladder and saw peers continue to progress, often reaching very senior levels in their profession. It's easy, in those circumstances, to feel a bit of a failure, but we all agreed that's a road you don't want to go down.

You're not living anyone else's life. Own your choices, forget the "competition" (life really is NOT a competition) and make decisions today that work for you and the people you care about.

There. Profound bit done.

Talking of How to Spend it

I've lost count of the things that Kier & Co have accepted for free but I have to say I find them all a little bit disappointing. Not so much the fact that they've taken the freebies (though it is definitely depressing to see them repeating the very behaviours they criticised the Tories for), no it's more that the choices are a bit dull.

I mean, the dresses his wife rocks up in are nice enough but they're not exactly fashion forward are they? If someone was buying me some free clobber I think I'd be heading to Molly Goddard, Isabel Marant, Loewe darling.

And Arsenal? I'd rather have tickets for the Hay Festival but I guess that's just me. Taylor Swift at Wembley? Not for me, though I would do ANYTHING to get my hands on a ticket to see Laura Marling play at Hackney church next month. DM me if you can help.

Time Savers vs Time Wasters

Back to my Copenhagen trip: how do you find the perfect place for brunch in a city noted for its pastries? TikTok, obviously. Or, possibly Instagram. Never Google. You don't Google things anymore. That's so 2023. (Clearly I had to rely on the twenty-somethings to do the research as I can barely open TikTok let alone use it to find out anything useful).

On the face of it, this is quite handy and saves you a lot of time trying out places that prove to not quite be the thing. HOWEVER, it comes at a price. By the time you get there, literally millions of other people have done the same research, so the queues are enormous. And they can't just go, enjoy the product and leave again, they have to take their own perfect photos, record their own sensational videos and - despite having done all the research - can't make their own bloody minds up when they get to the front of the queue.

So your trip out for a quick bite ends up taking hours. I'm not sure this is progress. We've all become lemmings. I went to a great new wine bar the other day - Goodbye Horses in De Beauvoir (the French bit of Hackney, obvs). Before you go looking it up, don't even bother. The TikTok crowd have got there first and the bloomin' place is now impossible to get into.

I am, however, a convert to another twenty-something favourite. The Lime Bike. Still don't quite understand how it all works so my son had to unlock it for me, but having spent so long in the queue at Lille bakery, it was the only way we could get round the city in time to do the rest of the day's sight seeing. Brilliant.

Crowning Glory

Didn't watch the last series of The Crown as it just felt pointless. Turns out it wasn't so pointless after all. The "sympathetic" portrayal of the monster that is Mohamed Al-Fayed so incensed his victims that many were persuaded to finally speak out and call him to account. I seriously hope that all the people who aided, abetted and enabled him are also named, shamed and, where appropriate, prosecuted. The saddest thing is that no-one is surprised.

The Fashion Slot

Back to lighter things, you'll notice, if you're in the UK, that the weather has turned. Here's what you're going to need:

• A Mac. I heartily recommend taking yourself off to the second hand market in Brick Lane where there are thousands of Burberry raincoats waiting to be bargained for. You have to hustle.
• Baggy trousers. Taking my daughter's advice on this.

• Pair of boots to replace the trainers you've been wearing all summer. Love these but I won't be paying the price Miuccia wants to charge. Reckon I've got something similar in the back of my wardrobe from twenty years ago that I could bash about a bit to make them look very similar.

The Cultural Slot

I'm watching: Ludwig. It's like putting on a warm pair of slippers. Makes me laugh out loud. David Mitchell and Anna Maxwell-Martin are superb. Not sure anyone else could have pulled it off.

I'm listening to: The Writers Panel podcast from 3 Sept, where Will Smith talks about Slow Horses. He says, right at the end, that Gary Oldman commented that the show works so well because it's "the right source material, with the right writer, the right actors, the right producer, the right broadcaster ... everyone involved is making the same show". That's why it's so perfect. Lesson in life right there.

I'm reading: Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner. Shortlisted for Booker. Really not getting it. Will keep going for a little longer. Tell me if I'm missing something.