Why We Love, Love Island
That's it then. It's over. Eight blissful weeks enjoying your most committed summer romance to date. Deeper, more heartfelt and definitely more #loyal than you've ever known, but now it's over and you have to find a way to move on.
2018 is the summer that will be remembered for a seemingly endless heatwave, nationwide fan shortages and the year that Love Island really made it into the mainstream. I am no cultural glitterati, but in previous years I just felt the show was just not my type on paper. Until this season I didn't get how anyone got any pleasure from the show and prior to meeting Camilla and Montana from Season 3, through my events work, I had no idea who they were. {They were both intelligent, articulate and genuinely charming women by the by}.
Who remembers Eyal?
But 2018 is the summer that changed all that. Yes the women were still in bikinis and heels, but as the boys were equally objectified, I felt able to put my feminist concerns aside and deep-dove in, 100%. 6.30am each morning, as the front door closed behind my husband, I put on the previous night's episode while I got ready for the day ahead.
So now what? As with the end of any relationship, as well as the churning nausea, it's the 'what am I meant to do now?' cold turkey feeling that is the hardest adjustment. From my experience of break ups I would say the more sure fast solution is finding things to fill the time that the relationship previously occupied in your life, so you don't feel the loss as keenly.
9pm every evening now sees a sizeable portion of our great nation bereft, dejectedly scrolling through Instagram for one last glimpse of Jack's gnashers, Dani's cherub cheeks, or Laura's over 25 wisdom, as our favourite love birds adapt to life away from the villa.
Instagram is never going to be enough though and despite what the Mail Online would have you believe, it's not actually possible to scroll all the livelong day if you want to keep your job. You've lived and breathed the drama of the islanders for the first half of your summer and now you're suddenly adrift, having to find your own fun for the whole of August.
To infinity and....well, that's about it in the villa actually
So to save you from being a total melt, here are some things you can do to fill the heart-shaped hole in your life and allow you to move on at a pace that would make even Megan proud.
First up, the Undercover Lover podcast. Presented by Harriet Minter and friends such as journalists Dolly Alderton and Elizabeth Day. This is a great weekly recap and unpicking of the goings on in the villa by articulate and insightful women. Alongside their favourite moments, more pressing questions are addressed, such as: can you actually have good sex while holding down four corners of a duvet? So that's your Monday morning commute sorted.
If it's Iain Stirling's satirical voice over that you are missing {he is, surely, bringing 80% of the show's joy?}, you can still enjoy his dulcet tones by downloading the audio version of his book, Not Ready to Adult Yet, read by him. In it, Iain meets with friends, fellow comics and his Mum to try and figure out why Millennials are the way they are.
Host a summer party and insist your mates come over well early so you can all get ready for the night together. This was my favourite part of the show, watching the girls get ready for a night out, every night, bringing back some great housemate memories.
And if you really want to get into the role maybe check out some of the Missguided #islandstyle collection or grab yourself a personalised make up bag to accompany your water bottle available here.
Then it's time string up way more festoon lights than you think you need, turn on some plastic orbs and fling some coloured bean bags around the place. Then get the Ministry of Sound The Pool Party playing and settle in around a fire pit. I can also tell you where to get the actual diary room seat and cushions if you want to go all out...
Get The Gypsy Shrine over for a glitter party. Remember the glitter body art from 2017? All done by the amazing Charlotte Eastwood and her team. They made me up for a Hallowe'en party last year and I received no end of compliments. So if you don't bump into the girls at a festival this summer, you can book them for your hen do or special night out, or shop their collection here {some of the glitter is also biodegradable}.
And if you're still struggling after that little lot you can either start the series all over again on ITV2 catch up, or even better, head over to Netflix and start Love Island from the very beginning, yay! Iβve been told Season 2 is the best. Otherwise we can just wait for the inevitable At Home with Jack and Dani that will doubtless be hitting screens soon.
I used to think any viewing pleasure found from Love Island was purely voyeuristic. I believed it could only be about mocking beautiful people and judging their morality, as they couple up with one god or goddess after another, as the show's wiley producers throw new islanders, ex-lovers, lie-detectors and Caroline Flack into the mix every time things settled down.
And that is what I was fully geared up for this season: Beautiful bodies tottering around in the sunshine and struggling to get up from brightly-coloured beanbags in wedges. But this year I quickly realised I had fallen hard. For me the show offers a lot of the emotions that we have all, at one time or another, felt for another person. We have all in turn been butterflies-excited, desperate, in love, dumped and quietly content, and each night served up some, often all, of these emotions in a single bitesize episode, reminding us that regardless of age, sex or IQ, we are all just as fallible as one another.
With so much out of control in the world at present, it does feel rather as though we are all off to hell in a handcart, and this is where Love Island for me has a role. It offers up a goldfish tank hour that you can fully immerse yourself in, interact with via the app, and then enjoy endless memes about on Instagram. It spills into real life, with people outside of the show's target audience watching purely to be keep up with the "Did you watch last night?" morning coffee conversations at work. It has brought 'live' broadcast back in a way no other show has.
In times of trouble it's reassuring to watch the islanders lounging on the day beds, occupied solely with the happy prospect of falling in love and winning Β£50k and the ready-to-wear fashion or protein-shake endorsements that will naturally follow. It makes far better entertainment than worrying about mortgage repayments, or your parents' ailing health, could ever do, and therein lies the security blanket and the charm.
I know we call it reality tv, but there is something comforting in knowing the Mallorcan sun will rise each day, those water bottles will always be filled and on any festoon-lit night the worst that is can happen, is that one of these bright young things will get dumped. And for me it is this essential lack of real life that makes Love Island so appealing.
You've enjoyed the first half of the summer sipping iced rosΓ© in front of 'telly, now it's August and the heatwave is back, so time to get out and enjoy it. Just be sure to wear sunscreen and take your water bottle. xx
Love Island: The Interiors...I would watch it
