“Yes, please, Judith!” I typed back.

“I’ll drop it on your doorstep when I come down at 4 for the churchyard sapling watering,” she replied back in the group.

I had forgotten all about the planned watering—a group of nature-minded village residents had organized for some sapling trees to be planted around the churchyard earlier in the year. The historic drought paired with a hosepipe ban has meant that keeping the saplings alive has become a challenge. Everyone was invited to come up with a watering can to give the twenty or so saplings a big drink.

To have a village, you have to be a villager, I kept reminding myself as I told my two boys to pull on some wellies and grab our two watering cans. We walked up to the church, chatting about blackberries and crumbles, and then spent the afternoon running buckets of water back and forth.

Once the water barrels were emptied and every tree had a good drink, one of my neighbours unzipped an inexpensive cooler bag, the kind of thing that he bought in 1999 and never replaced because a new pattern was released. Inside was a stack of small, striped glasses and a glass bottle of icy cold water. He offered all of the volunteers a glass and it was the sweetest water I have ever tasted. After the physical effort of carrying heavy jugs of water in the warm sunshine, the small glass of water in a church field was the simplest of pleasures.

A reel on Instagram passed my periphery this week. The gist of the video was that not every meal is supposed to be fast and easy, 5 ingredients ready in 20 minutes, that sort of thing. Historically and physiologically, we need to use our bodies, use our hands, work our minds and hands and bodies in tandem. Using my hands and my legs and my social skills to water some trees flexed muscles I hadn’t felt in a while.

After the incredible response from my newsletter last week (thank you, thank you, thank you) there was one comment I couldn’t quite find a way to reply to. It was from a familiar name from many friendly years of shared online interests, who wrote:

Somehow, this very touching comment reminded me of a section in Ina Garten’s memoir, Be Ready When The Luck Happens. I just finished the book, a belated Christmas gift from my best friend.

How serendipitous for it to arrive when my life feels at such a crossroads! In the book, Ina writes, “First and foremost, stay true to yourself and your vision instead of focusing on becoming a brand.”

Maybe I don’t have to build a brand, fill a niche, make sure every outfit suits the branding scheme, add a hook, or write viral content. Maybe I could just tell you about the ordinary, simple pleasures of this wonderful life we’re living in the English countryside. Perhaps there is beauty and value in reminding you that a glass of water after a meaningful task can be soul-nourishing.

When I got home from watering the little saplings, there was a pumpkin on the doorstep. Please send me your best pumpkin soup recipes.

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Last October, my incredibly supportive friend gave me a chance at my dream job: a regular, recurring role writing royal news content for a female-centric outlet, a supportive, encouraging team of like-minded women, producing really good royal content. I loved working with a team of women who were like me—who cared about lip gloss and flip flop trends and royals and tiaras. I went to events, worked with PRs, got free stuff (who doesn’t love free stuff??), and made connections with wonderful, fascinating, smart people.

Recently, the “Powers That Be” made a difficult decision: all freelance positions would be eliminated, immediately. I was a freelancer. The team I worked with could not have been more sorry or more supportive, but the writing was on the wall. The driving reason behind this was a dramatic shift in the online digital landscape, largely—very largely—due to the rise of AI.

Think about it: you Google something, say “Princess Kate Wimbledon", and that little AI-generated paragraph pops up with a summary of the Princess of Wales’s visit to Wimbledon. That AI summary has been pulled from websites that won’t see any views or clicks, ad revenues, affiliate link commissions, or any other method of monetisation. Without monetisation or income, websites, blogs, online spaces can’t carry on.

I’ve now made it a habit to scroll past that paragraph, and click on a link—any link—to find the information I need.

I am so sad to lose that role, the community, the female-centric work of inspiring and enjoying the girly things in life: tiaras, princesses, shoes, bags, jewellery, perfume, a new dress. I have no idea what comes next.

While I watched the online landscape change and the numbers and views on my articles spiral downwards, I started to reject AI more and more. I refused to share AI-generated posters from the PTA, and asked if we could please, please design our own. I was personally offended when friends used AI to write texts to the group chat. I called out friends and family for using ChatGPT when it was unnecessary: think of the water! think of the electricity! think of the ugly data centres!

Maybe, though, think of me? Think of the humans involved in all of this. The bloggers and journalists whose entire field is falling to pieces at the hands of a robot computer: Reach PLC (the company behind outlets like The Daily Mirror, OK Magazine) recently laid off hundreds of subeditors and writers, BuzzFeed cut 35% of their workforce. All of those job cuts are real people.

I’m a real person, too, with children’s sports fees to pay, trips that we had to cancel, financial decisions that we had to make. I am incredibly blessed that we will always have a house and food on the table, which not every person in my situation can securely say, but this has made an impact on our family.

I’m not a Catholic (cue the Under the Tuscan Sun quote: “as a fallen-away Methodist, I do not expect to emerge from all of this a Catholic”), but I was moved and deeply curious that Pope Leo chose to pen his first major contribution to the public knowledge on the rise of AI and the implications to humanity: “on safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence.” The Pope wrote, “entrusting an algorithm in practice with the power to select who is worthy or not, without anyone bearing responsibility for that judgment, is to hand over the task of redefining the boundaries of human possibilities.”

This is a lot of technical terminology that I felt was surmised in a poem I saw on Instagram, that I have shared several times since, which I now carry with me pretty much every day:

Be sure to use AI when making
your next, I don’t know, meal plan,
for example. Definitely do not call
your friend who loves to cook and ask her
for her favorite recipes or tips or ways
to save time making meals,
because you will end
up talking for longer than you had hoped,
hearing, perhaps, about her father’s cancer
diagnosis or how lonely she’s been or even
what she’s planted in her spring
garden and then lost with the early frost.

The rest of this poem can be found at Shawn Smucker’s Substack, and I really hope you read all of it.

Some of the best recipes I’ve ever made have come from my friend Rachel in Arkansas. She goes to a Southern Methodist church, and I’ll text her something like, “what kind of potato salad would the grandmas bring to the church potluck?” and she will send over the most perfect hand-written recipe.

If my car does something weird, I text my mechanic. I am not sure he enjoys this, but I would rather ask him than Claude. Or Gemini. Or ChatGPT. And I enjoy hearing from him.

When my baking goes wrong, I send a message to my friend, Alice, who is the most amazing baker and never says things like “this is because you didn’t use the correct ingredients again.”

If I need facts on koalas, I ask my friends who live in Australia.

I hope after reading all of this, you’ll find a recipe from your favorite blog and scroll past the essay on how this is the best cookie recipe handed down for generations (or, idk crazy idea, maybe read it) until you find the ingredients typed out by a real human.

I hope you call someone on the phone this week. Your mom, a friend, your aunt, anyone.

I hope the next time you want to write an email, you include all the grammar mistakes and fluidity of language so I feel like I’m hearing your voice as I read the words across the screen.

I have no idea what comes next for me, my work, my dreams, but I hope the answers lie in the real human connections I am now searching out every day.

Last year, one of my Instagram Reels went viral. It garnered nearly 300,000 views and over 100,000 account reach, while 88 comments praised how right I was.

“Real life” living in England isn’t all As…

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I have a confession to make but you have to promise not to tell anyone.

Do you promise?

A few days ago, as an early birthday present, my mom bought us a small, portable air conditioning unit for our bedroom. The outside temperatures peaked around 37ºC/99ºF as DPD delivered the incredibly heavy box to our front door, and I immediately sent my husband upstairs to plug it in. The relief was immense, and we spent the evening piled in our big bed, eating a pizza that I had delivered while we set up the little white box of happiness.

Since then, I have found the summer weather so much more palatable. Golden sunshine on the school run and evening walks in the lingering heat feel more enjoyable when I am promised a good night’s sleep. We’re splashing in the local springs and finding hidden creeks to keep cool, finding shady spots to be outside when we can (certainly not on the 37ºC days, those are strictly flat-out-on-the-sofa-in-front-of-a-fan days).

I really enjoyed the Princess of Wales’s Mother Nature series of videos, released last year, and I think they are a worthy two-minute-ish meditation on the seasons. I’m sharing it here for you to listen to or watch as we embrace the next few weeks of sunshine and warm weather.

I must admit most ardently that I am an autumn/winter/spring girlie, but summer does have her merits. We’re not doing a lot of cooking on the oven, but enjoying the freshness of summer’s produce and abusing my husband’s willingness to turn on the barbecue.

Here are some of my favourite summer recipes:

• Ina Garten’s Summer Garden Pasta

• Round Swamp Farm Chicken Salad

• Jamie Oliver’s Pea and Broad Bean Puree (top with half of a burrata, thank me later!)

• Louise Parker’s Red Berry Bircher

• A Perfect Pimm’s Cup

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Eating seasonally is like tuning into the rhythm of nature - it’s a way of reconnecting with nature, your community, and your own creativity in the kitchen. By focusing on what’s fresh and available now, you can make meals feel exciting, comforting, and full of vibrant flavours. Think of it as a challenge to try new recipes, experiment with unfamiliar vegetables, and celebrate the beauty of what each season offers. Let me know what you come up with this winter!

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A week ago, a friend and I dropped our children off at school and rushed to our respective homes for the usual: dishwasher, laundry, make the beds, feed the animals, run the vacuum. Then, both of us …

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Hello friends,

February has a very particular feeling, doesn’t it? The sparkle of Christmas is long gone, but spring still feels like a distant dream. The fields are muddy, the mornings are cold, and …

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Dear friends,

When the Princess of Wales turned 40, Emily Andrews - a journalist I greatly admire and have had the pleasure of speaking with - wrote a lovely profile on her. There was a line from a c…

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Eating seasonally is like tuning into the rhythm of nature - it’s a way of reconnecting with nature, your community, and your own creativity in the kitchen. By focusing on what’s fresh and available now, you can make meals feel exciting, comforting, and full of vibrant flavours. Think of it as a challenge to try new recipes, experiment with unfamiliar vegetables, and celebrate the beauty of what each season offers. Let me know what you come up with this winter!

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I find this really annoying when it comes to cooking, as I had already planned on something warming for dinner and now I might have to change course - oh, the problems of the first world. At least we have plenty to eat!

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This weekend, I’ve treated myself to a new issue of Country Life and some fresh pastries and orange juice from our milk delivery service. I have found it is, without a doubt, the little things that make life magical, and I fully intend to dip into these more and more.

I’ve been thinking a lot about “analog living” - the idea of living off your phone, offline, eschewing doomscrolling for some 1990s version of media. I love some recent suggestions of buying an old TV/VHS combo and playing movies vs endless scrolling of Netflix, plus we’ve been really enjoying puzzles and board games as a family recently.

I have dabbled in phone-free Sundays for a long time now, and I think I’m ready to try them again. Basically, I put my phone on charge on Sunday morning and leave it until Sunday night. I make a conscious effort to log off, instead reading books, baking, flipping through magazines, watching cartoons with my children, making up a Sunday roast. I’ll be trying that this Sunday, with a little Instagram story posted in the morning to inspire others to try it out.

Here’s to a life lived offline!

To Read:

The Unforgettable “Magical” Night Princess Kate Arranged for George, Charlotte, and Louis—Described as a “Dream” Come True for “Most Children”

How do the A-list fit into the Cotswolds? As Tom Cruise eyes up a mansion in the British hotspot, Plum Sykes exposes the trials and tribulations of the super-rich country set

Wedgwood’s craftspeople produce objects that dignify our lives daily in countless ways — here’s hoping that better times lie ahead (I was actually really shocked and sad to read this - here’s hoping we find more reasons to buy beautiful things)

To Watch:

I watched this on Netflix this week and it was a delight!

To Listen:

To make:

Will add this to our upcoming recipes to try, now that game season is upon us!

If you’ve never tried a midweek roast, I highly recommend them. Minimal effort with maximum reward - everything cooks in one tray, so you get the most beautiful flavors throughout the vegetables. You can prep it all the night before, wrap it in foil, and throw it in the oven in the evening. It is almost entirely “set and forget,” but you get to feel so good about yourself when there’s a big, warm, cozy meal on the table.

Midweek Roast Chicken with Potatoes & Root Vegetables

Ingredients

• 1 medium chicken

• Salt and pepper

• Olive oil

• ½ onion

• 1 lemon

• 500g / 1 lb small potatoes, halved

• 2–3 carrots, cut into batons

• 2–3 parsnips, cut into batons

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180°C / 375°F.

2. Season the chicken with salt and pepper, then drizzle with olive oil. Place ½ onion and the lemon inside the chicken cavity.

3. Put the chicken on a large roasting tray and roast for 45 minutes.

4. Meanwhile, drizzle the halved potatoes with olive oil, salt, and any extra seasonings. (If prepping ahead, keep potatoes and veg in a separate bowl until ready to roast.)

5. After 45 minutes, remove the tray from the oven. Add the potatoes to one side of the chicken and the carrot and parsnip batons to the other.

6. Return to the oven and roast for a further 40 minutes, until the chicken is cooked through and the vegetables are golden.

7. Remove from the oven and serve hot.

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Eating seasonally is like tuning into the rhythm of nature - it’s a way of reconnecting with nature, your community, and your own creativity in the kitchen. By focusing on what’s fresh and available now, you can make meals feel exciting, comforting, and full of vibrant flavours. Think of it as a challenge to try new recipes, experiment with unfamiliar vegetables, and celebrate the beauty of what each season offers. Let me know what you come up with this autumn!

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