12 June

More kidulting. You may recognise Keith, from the Great Pottery Throwdown. A master potter. He and his wife Marj bought an old chapel in Wales, to renovate. What’s fascinating about the show is watching the modern adult have no clue about doing adult anything. The building they took on (behind them) requires enormous work, they have no idea how much. It’s their attempts that show it. They bore with even the most basic tasks inside 10 minutes, and go off to buy food and coffee. That’s Kidult culture 101, continuous eating out. When they do get professionals in to help, they target nonsense like sandblasting the steel columns in the building because they love the ‘gothic’ feel, while basics like fixing leaks and preparing the vast areas of painting needed are ignored. The crowning highlight so far is them buying a shipping container to live in while renovating. But it then has to be decorated too, in gothic ways, they even add a stylish bathtub to the container. The container has no running water of any kind, nor is it planned to. Meanwhile this colossal building sits there with nothing being done on it. Both were goths growing up, it’s how they met. They’re middle-aged, still living those teen years. Everything is done in designer chic clothes. Their choice of an old mortuary slab as their kitchen island bench (more goth styling) bemuses the guys who help them carry it in the building. There isn’t even a kitchen, they’re ‘styling’ the building before even basic repairs have begun. They’re literally playing The Sims, a concocted fantasy divorced from basic realities. And lots of ‘getting to the know the neighbours’ community stuff, more idealised drivel. Both burst into tears regularly in outpourings of sentimentality at their stylised adventure into coastal living in a chapel. The same gentrification we see here in Australia too, with old country towns turned into havens for baristas and lifestyle kidults. Kidult culture is styling and posturing and emoting over the ruins of adult society. I want to slap the pair of them in every episode and tell them to put on some old clothes and do some fucking hard work.