Margaret Mitchell

Abstinence doesn’t typically come to mind when one thinks of Valentine’s Day. But this year it coincides with Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent, when we traditionally give something up. (Bear in mind that Christianity recognises a very gruesome torture and death as the ultimate gesture of love. For us, a little bit of suffering seems perfectly in order on a day celebrating love.) White-knuckled sex positivity isn’t serving women’s spiritual needs I was still in Catholic school in Virginia the last time the two days collided. We were, like all teenagers, obsessed with love and fixated on our own nascent desires, although this obsession manifested in strange ways.

When Cecilia Lisbon, the youngest of the five Lisbon daughters in Sofia Coppola’s film The Virgin Suicides, winds up in the hospital having survived an attempt on her own life, the doctor tells her: ‘You’re not even old enough to know how bad life gets.’ ‘Obviously, doctor,’ Cecilia replies, ‘you’ve never been a 13-year-old girl.’ The dark edge of adolescence runs through Sofia Coppola’s films. You get a sense from even the most playful and romantic scenes that, behind the lustre of expensive clothes or dappled sunlight, girlhood is tragic and that its transformations are traumatic. Coppola’s eye for these contrasts makes her films brilliant.

It didn’t matter that it was 33˚C. Starbucks staff across Britain spent the beginning of September putting out pumpkin-themed menus, selling customers pumpkin spice lattes in pumpkin-shaped mugs, to be drunk alongside a slice of pumpkin-flavoured loaf cakes, a pumpkin seed cookie, or a brownie cut into pumpkin shapes and frosted in hazardously orange icing. Happy fall, y’all.   The minor humiliations don’t stop me – I'm a creature of nostalgia and these drinks don’t taste bad, either The hot early autumn didn’t stop us obsessives: there is, inevitably, an iced pumpkin spice latte. The spice mix in question, of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, clove and sulphur-based preservatives doesn’t necessarily have to include any pumpkin.

‘Remember to flirt outrageously.’ This essential piece of advice is imparted courtesy of Country and Town House magazine for its readers curious about Scottish reeling. The reel, a social folk dance, dates back to 16th-century Scotland and has remained popular for all this time, notwithstanding a brief hiatus in the 17th century when the Scots Covenanters assumed the stance (rightfully, some might say) that such amusement leads to mischief leads to sin. Less curious about the dancing than the flirtation, I joined some friends for the final, sweaty session of the season at London Reels.

In the heart of Shoreditch, a handful of arts students have strayed from their typical east London mould. Those who study at the Prince’s Foundation School of Traditional Arts are taught, through research and the practice of traditional arts and crafts, to ‘experience the beauty of the order of nature – a spiritual, sacred beauty, connecting the whole of creation.’ The School’s ethos is centred around the philosophical vision of its president, the King. Charles is known to have some woolly ideas about aesthetics and spirituality and alternative medicine, articulated in his 2010 book Harmony: A New Way of Looking at Our World.