Notes On: How to Romanticise July

'July is a blind date with summer' !!!!!

Jul 01, 2025

‘Hot summer nights, mid-July / when you and I are forever wild’ – Lana Del Rey

‘July is a blind date with summer’ – Hal Borland

If July were a song, it’d be written by Lana Del Rey. Soft and sultry and succulent. Sea-salt crusting in wild hair, strawberries warming in the sun, love stories writing themselves between sandy sheets. If July were a colour, it’d be turquoise. Specifically: that colour of shallow sea, gem-like, so blue it’s almost green. If July were a piece of writing, it would be a poem. But if it were a novel, it’d be lust and love and loss, the kind of world you want to exist in, fold yourself between its pages, painted with such nuance and raw emotion by someone like David Nicholls or Ian McEwan or Zadie Smith. Hot, dusty streets. Sepia toned.

July is for spicy margaritas and doing things for the plot, and the song ‘Summertime’ (the Ella Fitzgerald version, obviously, but also the Lana Del Rey version, which is called ‘Doin’ Time’ and is wonderful). July is for reading as many books as possible and writing notes in the margins and notes-app entries about what you thought of them. It’s for tomato salad with salt crusted on top like gemstones. For cherries and plums and nectarines and remembering that the poem ‘The Orange’ exists. July is for living in the moment, because it is summer and you’ll never be as young and starry-eyed as you are right now, so why the fuck not? Here’s how to make the most of it.

Notes On: Spicing Up July

As always, I hope you bought yourself a present for surviving June. (For me, this was tickets to see one of my favourite authors. I’m so excited).
A few years ago, someone on TikTok made ‘tomato girl summer’ a thing. It might have been Hailey Bieber (it was probably Hailey Bieber). As ever, I found this trend kind of fun and kind of vapid, but a few years on, I love the concept of just indulging in as many red fruits and vegetables as possible at this time of year. Tomato salads are elite. So are tomato pasta dishes and tomato soups and strawberries cut up into tiny pieces and tossed into fruit salads or on top of yoghurts or perched on the side of your daiquiri. Basically: let’s make tomato girl summer about nutrition (in a ‘omg this tastes so good’ way and not a ‘how can I restrict myself’ way, obviously).
Get yourself on a boat, this month. It doesn’t matter what kind: a floating bar on some canal in Little Venice, or a pedalo or a sailing dinghy somewhere hot and windy. Whilst you’re there, get an ice cream or a drink (or both). July is for boats. I said what I said.
Read as much as you possibly can. Set yourself a reading goal and read in every quiet moment you have; on your commute, before bed, in the moments before your friend arrives at the restaurant. Reading makes you feel free and seen at the same time, and it’s one of the (few) things in life that I genuinely don’t think you can do too much of. (If you’re not sure where to start, there’s a July reading list below).
At some point this month, plan a hike with a pub at the end of it. It could be a short walk, or a day-long clamber across clifftops – whatever you fancy. Just get outside and then get yourself to a pub with something iced and something crunchy. It’ll make you feel alive.

Get yourself a digital camera!!! Take photos of everything. Print them out and put them in an album, or create a finsta. July is for not giving a fuck about what other people think.
And finally: create for yourself a Carrie Bradshaw moment. Take a notebook to a bar and sit outside. Order your favourite drink. Ask yourself the question: what do you WANT? Actually write it down, at the top of the page. Let yourself dream, because you only get this one life, so think very carefully: what do you want to do with it? The answer might surprise you.

Your July Soundtrack

I haven’t made a specific playlist for this month, because I’ve already got so many summer playlists. But if there’s one thing I’d suggest, for July, it’d be: Lorde’s new album (pure poetry), or anything by Billy Joel. (Yes, I’m basic, but also: he just gets me, what can I say?).

Your July Reading List

One Day by David Nicholls
The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
Assembly by Natasha Brown
Send Nudes by Saba Sams (short stories)
Show Don’t Tell by Curtis Sittenfeld (short stories)

Some recipes:

One final note:

There’s so much going on in the world, right now. Two scrolls on any social media app and you’re seeing Sex and the City memes and Taylor Swift stepping out in Balmain and Christian Louboutin next to hundreds of women attacked with syringes at Fête de la Musique next to Sabrina Carpenter at Olivia Rodrigo’s show next to ‘post-apocalyptic’ headlines about Gaza. It feels a bit like we’re living in a Black Mirror episode, all of us ordering our strawberry matcha lattes and sunbathing and also reading and watching and listening to the world burning around us. To be engaged all the time is exhausting; to disengage is not an option; to feel overwhelmed is human.

Perhaps you have something going on in your personal life, right now. Perhaps you’re feeling adrift because of a job situation, or a friend situation, unmoored from the life you thought was your own. Perhaps you’re struggling with your health. Whatever it is that you’re feeling, know two things: to feel these things is brave, and also completely normal. This life is complicated and difficult and deeply upsetting. To live with complex emotions, to feel unmoored, to wonder why you’re crying for ‘no reason’ on a Tuesday night is all part of it.

So: be kind to yourself. Buy an iced bun. Lick off the icing. Climb a tree. Read a book that makes you feel as though the world is open and full of opportunities. Drink too much. Text your friends. Make reckless, spontaneous decisions. Dig into the centre of you. Bite right into the centre of you, cherry-like, until you find the core. That hard, resilient, terrified, solid, hopeful bit. Remind yourself that all you really need is grass under bare feet and a friend who truly loves you and salted chips under a blue sky and a days off to remember what it’s all for.

Until next time,

Hannah xxx

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