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Monday

Easter Monday and we’re out in Camden, observing the tween girls’ stations of the cross: namely, Pop Mart and Miniso, Chinese retailers selling toys, collectibles and “blind boxes”, for which the devotional parent is invited to pay 15 quid for their child to unwrap a surprise. (The surprise – can you guess? – is that it’s not worth 15 quid.) Other purchasing options include the “Action Figure Squid Game Set”, which retails for – adjusts glasses – £250. A range of DC Comics collectible figures starting at £32 a pop. And something called a “Cinnamoroll figurine”, which is, inexplicably, £95.

We come to look not to buy, which seems to be the general position of everyone in the shop and may be why Pop Mart’s share price has lately been tanking. Until this year, almost 40% of the company’s revenue was generated by sales of the Labubu, the “ugly doll” spiritual heir to the Cabbage Patch that sold for up to £70 a unit and that tweens briefly went crazy for last summer. Since then, enthusiasm for Labubus has cooled and Pop Mart’s share price has plunged 22%. As we speak, its top scientists are, presumably, working on the next hideous thing to replace it.

One thing we don’t find on Monday: any NeeDohs, the small, hard squishy that feels like a defective implant and, as the world’s top fidget, is so popular there’s a global shortage. (NeeDohs are favoured by parents, too, mainly because if you drop a NeeDoh on the carpet, it doesn’t stick to the fibres like slime.)

Anyway, thanks to the influencers, you can’t lay your hands on a NeeDoh for love nor money and might have to default to “squishy dumplings” which come in a variety of colours, including the “viral glitter dumpling” which is “secret” and – I could go on in this vein forever until we run out of money, or sanity, or both.

Tuesday

There’s been a lot of pre-press about The Devil Wears Prada 2, which suggests to me its makers are nervous. The trailers look … thin? On Tuesday there’s a release of photos featuring Anna Wintour posing with Meryl Streep for Vogue and reminding us how drastically times have changed. Twenty years ago, when the first movie came out, Wintour scarcely deigned to acknowledge it, but times being what they are and all that, now even the most hatchet-faced among us must engage in fun publicity for clicks.

Elsewhere in the rollout: here’s Anne Hathaway on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar, telling us about her wobbly moment in what she describes as an unflattering swimsuit – as opposed to her “aspirational swimsuit” – and acceptance of which she presents as a moment of wild “who cares?!” abandon. Standing critically in front of the mirror, said Hathaway, “I looked again and I said: ‘You are 43,’” adding that she decided to appreciate what she saw “instead of criticising it”. There followed in the piece a robust discussion about body dysmorphia and how even the tiniest Hollywood star is supported in the delusion that she’ll never be thin enough. Just kidding, it was presented as an adorable piece of relatability for normie middle-aged women to love her for.

Wednesday

An annual rite up there with Christmas: the hottest day of the year so far when everyone in the realm is obliged by law to totally lose their minds. As temperatures drift towards 25C, marine commando-style we activate our response: go to the park, buy ice-cream, drop ice-cream, walk 4km to the pub while kids complain bitterly, wait 45 minutes for food because everyone has had the same idea, get the bus back while ignoring the person in our party who’s pretending to limp, remark on the fact we’ve all caught the sun and by the time we get home, find we’re hungry again but there’s no food in the house because it’s the Easter holidays and I haven’t done a shop for 10 days. Absolutely smashed it!

Thursday

Amanda Knox is in London this month to promote her new documentary, Mouth of the Wolf, in which she travels back to Italy to “confront” Giuliano Mignini, the prosecutor who wrongfully convicted her and sent her to prison. The film comes out after two memoirs and a scripted series, the Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox, last year’s Netflix show dramatising her experiences, and has been co-produced with Knox’s husband, Christopher Robinson, who also – words to make the heart sink – composed some original songs for the soundtrack (I’m sure they’re lovely). In her place, I imagine we’d all do something similar, namely go over and over the ground of what happened until it began to make sense. For audiences, however, the latest return to Knox’s story may test a market principle: that a vanishingly small number of subjects – the Titanic, the second world war – can withstand this much revisitation.

Friday

Astronauts!! On the far side of the moon!! On Friday, the crew of Artemis II head back to Earth having seen things no other human beings have seen. “I had an overwhelming sense of being moved by looking at the moon,” said the crew member Christina Koch. “In all of this emptiness – this is a whole bunch of nothing, this thing we call the universe – you have this oasis, this beautiful place that we get to exist [in] together,” said the pilot, Victor Glover. Through them, we saw Earthrise on the far side of the moon and remembered, maybe, there’s still magic and awe left in the world.

Digested week in pictures