Matcha my style

THING: Iced Matcha lattes, Eat Real Hummus Chips, Glastonbury The Movie

THING: Iced Matcha lattes

What’s the drink of the summer? Why, it’s the iced matcha latte of course! Look around and you will see legions of young people with centre partings, all living on Blank Street, sucking sweet, iced matcha swamp water from the teat of capitalism.

Soon, they will open their overheated laptops and design a deck in Canva for a short-lived creative agency that has dispensed with vowels. But not before they’ve had their cold green milky productivity drink!

What does the rise of the iced matcha latte say about society? I’m not sure. But I do know I want one. GIVE ME THE COLD MILKY GREEN THING. After all, matcha is cool and interesting and Japanese. It’s powdery and mysterious. It’s pretty. It is the taste of modernity. It’s also good for you, if you forget about all those other flavourings they add at the Starbucks chemical factory. Did I mention it was green, like the run-off from the Springfield nuclear plant?

Actually (matchally?) I had a lovely iced vanilla matcha at the weekend with my niece, who is 17 and therefore worships the mysterious elixir. It was delicious - cool and refreshing - apart from the fact it had a murky, bitter undercurrent, like licking a cattle grid. I ignored that, though, because in 2025, everything has a bitter undercurrent, doesn’t it?

And let’s face it, as far as most things go, it’s harmless. It’s not like it’s fentanyl, or a bunker busting bomb, or Jeff Bezos’ Venice CO2 emissions. So, why not enjoy our summery treat while that boring old Doomsday clock counts down to zero? Let those ice cubes rattle joyfully against plastic, like the false nails of influencers tapping on the side of an eyeshadow palette! Let the lurid tea and the plant-based milk swirl hypnotically around with whatever flavours will hide the disgusting taste of matcha! Let’s savour it before we find out that there’s a global shortage of matcha because Gen Z have drunk it all!

Oh, wait a minute, what’s this news alert?

Oh bollocks. Well, it’s not the end of the world. Oh, it is? Oh, well. Hmm, what else could we use, now that we’ve finally exhausted all the earth’s resources?

VERDICT: Soylent Green Iced Matcha, available Summer 2026

THING: Eat Real Hummus Chips

Another day, another salty snack. I really need to wean myself off crispy, crunchy things before I die. However, these crisps do the job of a personal trainer, because they are impossible to open. I bought them to eat while I was on an Avanti West Coast train with broken air conditioning, which was depressing enough, but when it came to busting that pack open, somewhere between Lancaster and Penrith, I found myself completely defeated.

I grappled for ages with the insanely strong packet, which was so sturdy it surely could have held 100 litres of rubble, rather than some ridiculously light and instantly forgettable chickpea-based snacks. In the end I had to give up and open the side of the bag with my teeth like a raccoon. And they were shite.

Has anyone else had this experience with this product or have I finally reached that age where I can’t open things? Will I now have to ask a young person, like a Bob-a-Job scout, to come round and help me open a packet of crisps?

Oh God, I can remember the Bob-a-Job scheme. That must mean I’m ancient. It’s surely only a matter of seconds before I’m sitting in a Windsor chair in the day room, sucking two-day old custard from my cardigan sleeve.

VERDICT: Sweaty old bag

FILM: Glastonbury: The Movie in Flashback

And finally, talking of going soft in the head, I thought I’d got over Glasto FOMO years ago, but coverage of this year’s festival has really got me boomeranging down memory lane, wearing a Senseless Things t-shirt and carrying a two-litre bottle of Frosty Jacks.

I’ve been to Glastonbury twice, which is probably enough for this lifetime. Once was in the early 90s, when I may have ingested some hallucinogens and started speaking in a Birmingham accent. The second time, in 2002, I inadvertently found myself on stage doing backing vocals for Belle and Sebastian, and my husband, who was watching on telly at home, was quite surprised to see me stumbling around pissed and confused in an H&M skirt, not knowing any of the words.

I’ve smelled the Portaloos and the greasy noodles and the woodsmoke, failed to get a signal in the sacred Vodafone field, and I have a lifelong aversion to people on stilts. So why am I being so sentimental all of a sudden? Surely watching Charli XCX from behind the armpit of a guy in a disco ball helmet wouldn’t be fun anymore? And why the hell would I want to be in the same postcode as The 1975?

So, to snap myself out of it I watched a documentary on Netflix about Glastonbury, which was filmed in 1993, the very year I took this amazing photo.

Anyway, unlike this photo, the film was really mesmerising and atmospheric, and completely captured the spirit of the festival. Oh, and it was absolutely choc-a-block with twats.

Nostalgia cured!

VERDICT: Fucking hippies