This summer’s been fun, hasn’t it? Over 30°C most days.

I want to start by saying that being a domestic cleaner by day, i.e. in the sweltering, unrelenting, unforgiving heat the UK has had this summer, and an author by night, i.e. where I get to sit and just type, makes absolutely no sense.

They are completely the wrong way round. And this is why…

Cardio + heat = hell

Cleaning people’s houses means cardio. It means being indoors, it means hot homes with no AC*. It means hands inside cleaning gloves that are so sweaty you don’t know if it’s sweat or if you’ve split the gloves. It means the hoover chucking out HOT AIR (when the day comes that Mr Dyson or Mrs Shark or Ms Whoever invents a hoover — okay, vacuum — that chucks out cold instead of hot air, I will be first in line to get one). It means all-over body sweat and your glasses constantly sliding down your nose.

(*I thought most non-Brits knew, thanks to social media and American-now-living-in-Britain YouTubers, that homes in the UK do not have AC. Or even window-unit AC thingies. We do not have AC as standard. Normally our “summers” last for three days, a week at best, where we moan about the “sweltering” heat of 25°C and then go back to moaning about the rain. My experience has shown that not all do know this fact about the UK, and that our homes — old ones and new-build ones — are built to retain heat. This is what we mean when we say “British summers hit harder” — it’s because they’re hitting you in the sweaty tits that are sweating off your sweaty body.)

I digress.

Writing in heat = easier than cleaning in heat

In contrast, writing a book requires sitting at a desk/table/armchair/bed and tapping away. No cardio. No standing over a black-and-red sucking machine with a smiling cartoon face1 that blasts out air from the deepest, darkest depths of hell at you. We may not have AC in British homes, but we can close the curtains and point three fans at ourselves and sit melting in our pants and bra, hoping that the Amazon delivery person just leaves the parcel in the parcels box and doesn’t knock on the door only to hand it over to you in person or leave it on the doorstep when they could have just put it in the box, Sharon.

(Amazon drivers: if there is a large box marked “Parcels: inside”, please put it in there and don’t knock. I’m in my PANTS and too hot to jump up to get dressed and answer the door in time.)

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I beg of you (whoever “you” may be), why why WHY can’t I swap the two? Clean houses at night — or at least the evening — when it’s invariably cooler, and tap away at my keyboard in my M&S best** during the day?

**Who am I kidding? I’m usually in my M&S worst.

I suppose I’d be disturbing the clients who are having their evening meal. (“Sorry, can you just lift your feet while I hoover and mop under the dining table?”) Or I’d make a racket with the hoover banging away at those skirting boards when they’re trying to get the kids to bed. Maybe that’s just terribly British and polite of me, but when I check the thermometer in a conservatory and see 40.6°C, with a 24-hour maximum at some point of 53.5°C (OMFG 😲​)2, then I don’t think it’s actually an unreasonable request to want to clean during the cool of the night.

I’m writing this post during a “cool” day of 26°C. (My usual British self is laughing so hard at that. Who even AM I?!) I didn’t have any cleaning shifts today, thank the gods. But as someone who LOVES summer, who LOVES the heat and who LOVES summer wardrobes and ice cream and having all the doors and windows open all day, I can honestly say that I’ve never known heat like it over here.

I’ve never known to go so long without any respite from the heat at all. Popping into Tesco has been just about the only way to cool down this summer. That, and shoving your whole body in the fridge-freezer for a few seconds every time you go to get yet another ice cream to eat. Wearing makeup is a thing of the past because I’m not really a fan of the makeup-sliding-down-my-face look. No fixing spray in the world can make that melty gloop stick to my sweaty, salty kisser.

On the upside: Washing that you can hang outside at 4 pm and bring in bone-dry an hour later. Not having cold hands, feet or any other extremities. Ever. And ice cream. Tons of ice cream.

It’s cooling down at last…

I heard on the Met Office grapevine (aka their app) that it’s going to cool down this week. Even crazier: it rained this morning. Actual rain! It wasn’t big, fat rain, to be fair, but the South West of England hasn’t seen rain in weeks and weeks. But then the ground was bone dry again by midday, so that was that.

It was only a matter of time before this author wrote a Substack post about the weather. (I get such a kick out of writing “author”, though I’ll feel a little less of a fraud once the book is actually available to hold in your non-sweaty November mitts and read.)

To be fair, the British Summer of 2026 (doesn’t it sound right, like the Summer of ‘76? “The Summer of ‘26!”) has been the gift that keeps on giving in terms of social media content, though sadly, it’s brought its fair share of fires and devastation, too.

At any rate (and my summer-loving ass can’t believe I’m saying this), I’m looking forward to the temperatures dropping. It’ll be nice not to come back from a cleaning shift with a T-shirt that I have to literally wrestle off my body because the sweat-soaked fabric has stuck like UHU to my torso. My car’s steering wheel might even be a bit cooler than hot-as-coals after a shift, too. Heaven.

And I can come home, put on my author’s cape, and tap away like the almost-an-author-no-really-I-am that I proclaim to be. Maybe in my pants and bra, or maybe with a T-shirt and shorts on top (layers, woo-hoo)!

Shameless plug for my debut novel

It took me two years of my life to write, so I’d like to think it’s pretty good after it took me an ETERNITY to edit the life out of the soul-sucking thing, if you know what I mean…?

Sweet Sweet Ninety Seven is for you if you love all things nineties, a time-travelling protagonist, second-chance love, and a wonderful book boyfriend.

Expect closed-door romance and spice level: 🌶️. (All the chemistry. None of the explicit detail.)

Also expect laughter, tears, swooning and a ‘Cool Britannia’ London setting.

“Wonderfully funny, poignant, and dripping with 90s nostalgia” ~ Amber Eve

“[I’ve] barely put it down ⭐​⭐​⭐​⭐​⭐​” ~ My friend & neighbour Danielle

PRE-ORDER ON AMAZON HERE

A note about the pre-order: you can only purchase an advance copy of the e-book — if your preference is paperback, then that’ll be available to order on launch day, 7 November.

Thank you all for your support, friends…! Happy Wednesday

Catherine x

The story:

What if heartbreak came with a do-over?

A heartwarming second-chance romcom brimming with ‘90s nostalgia, love, regret, and the life you might have lived.

Just days after her silver wedding anniversary ends in disappointment, Ellie Foster-Russell discovers her husband is having an affair.

When she wakes up the next morning in 1997 — twenty-five again, back in her old life — she knows this is more than a second chance.

It’s a do-over.

Same flat. Same job. Same friends.

And Tom.

Funny, charming, impossible to forget. The man she once shared a single, perfect New Year’s Eve kiss with… before everything went wrong.

Ellie knows exactly how the next twenty-seven years are supposed to unfold.

Although this time, she has a choice.

But changing the past comes at a cost, and the present she left behind might not be finished with her just yet.

She’s about to find out that second chances come with consequences… and now her heart is on the line.

A warm, witty and nostalgic romcom about love, timing, second chances and finding the courage to choose yourself, Sweet Sweet Ninety Seven is perfect for anyone who’s ever wondered: what if?

Leave a comment

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You can always — if you’d like to help me out on a pay-as-you-go system — Buy Me a Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/catherinesummers (thank you sooo much)

Dearest Blog,

We’ve had some good times together, you and me, haven’t we? I created you way back in 2011 when blogging was still a bit of a weird thing that people didn’t really “get”.

“So, what does it do?” they asked me. (I had no answer for that. What did they mean, “do”? Should it “do” something?)

“Does it make you money, then?” (To which I thought, how would it?)

“What’s it for, exactly?” (A bit of fun? To show off what I wore at work that very few people get to see? To showcase my underused photography and writing skills?)

That was many moons ago, and things have changed. I’m sorry I’ve neglected you recently, but I wasn’t sure how you and I could reconnect in a meaningful way in this new world (that’s not even called the blogosphere anymore, =sob=).

Now, my dear blog… we’re changing things up. Are you ready to go back to basics?

Your long-suffering editor,

Catherine x

Although I may have given away the punchline with that open letter to my fifteen-year-old blog, I might just explain how I got here.

(If you don’t want to hear, just skip right to the end — go to the heading “What I’m doing with the blog”. I won’t hold it against you. But you’ll miss some hilarious photos from back in the day if you scroll…)

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Way back when… 2011

Those were the days: the Summer of 2011. I’d been reading fashion blogs for a while, slavishly absorbing the street style in The Sartorialist, hoping to gain just a modicum of that level of cool. And one day I decided I’d bring my own blog into the world, no matter how inexperienced I was tech-wise, no matter how daunting the idea of writing and running a blog felt like at the time.

I was about to turn thirty-nine, and I wondered if anyone was interested in an ordinary British woman who was approaching forty and wearing kooky/weird/mismatched outfits to the office. There were a handful of older fashion bloggers in the US at the time, but I’d not found any in the UK, and I thought it was time one existed1.

And so, on my thirty-ninth birthday, Not Dressed As Lamb was born. It came quietly into the world, and I didn’t tell anyone. I published my first few outfit posts. They included just one full-length outfit photo. 50–100 words tops.

Until one day, I took a leap of faith and commented on someone else’s blog. That blogger, god love her, returned the favour and left me a comment. We became friends on Google Friend Connect (high five if you remember GFC!) — and thus began my foray into fashion blogging proper, where people were actually visiting my blog.

One month later, I thought I’d try something new; I wrote my first long-form post. I talked about fashion-related age-appropriateness. People liked it. I wrote more.

And more, and more, and more… until my blog was covering topics like ageing, health and beauty, personal stories, Gen X stuff — but still included a good chunk of my personal style.

I made it my full-time career, and while I was never one of the really big players (not by a long way!), I did alright with a few blogging award wins, big brand deals and a couple of TV adverts to boot.

Fast forward several years…

Where it all went wrong (career-wise)

Let’s blame it on the pandemic, shall we?

It started before that… in 2017, to be precise:

All within the space of a couple of months, one brand failed to pay me, and another went bust (and failed to pay me). The third was my management company, where the owner/director did a runner, owing me thousands. Back then, brands paid my management company, and then they paid me, minus their commission. So the brands paid up for my work, but the talent agency didn’t pass that onto me.

So we got by for a couple of years, living off our savings, but then —

2020. I’m sure I don’t need to explain what happened there.

(Fashion) brands did pay for the first couple of years of the pandemic, but very soon they didn’t, offering up gifted items only as payment. I was also hit with a string of health problems, plus perimenopause, parents needing looking after, family issues, an unwell doggy, etc., etc., which made blogging and posting on Instagram the last thing I felt like doing.

I found Substack. I dabbled for a couple of years, but never really got to grips with it. It was at this time that my previously lucrative blogging career had all but dried up, and adding to my Things to Take Care Of list, my elderly parents’ health worsened, as did my own mental health.

My career was down the toilet.

(I’m really cutting a long story short here… if you’ve made it this far: please stick with it!)

Two years ago, I started writing a book. My debut novel. I had a great idea, and I ran with it. But it took so much longer than I could ever have anticipated, and I had to take on part-time work as a domestic cleaner to make ends meet.

I’ve recently lost both of my parents within ten months of each other, and it’s taken me about six months since then to feel a little more… emotionally stable, shall we say.

So here we are: August 2026. The book is finished and finally available to pre-order (I’m really playing down just how excited I am, because I’m at bursting point right about now).

It’s taken me a while, but I now feel that Substack has become my new home for writing “blog posts”, the main reasons being…

1. It’s free [for me] to send my subscribers notifications that I’ve posted. Sending emails to my blog subscribers used to cost me £55 a month (whether I posted on the blog or not), and I could NOT afford/justify that any longer.

2. AI results on Google searches has killed blog traffic. A few years ago we feared it might, and it has (for me at least). Advancements in technology so often change things beyond our control.

3. The costs of running a blog were outweighing the money received from sponsored blog posts, and I was running it at a loss.

But what to do with a (once-successful) blog? So many blogs that I followed “back in the day” no longer exist. It’s so sad when I type in their URLs only to find they’ve gone :(

What I’m doing with the blog

An idea came to me out of thin air while I was in the shower (as all good ideas do!) the other day.

“I finally know what to do with the blog!” I exclaimed. (To myself, as no one was around to hear me. It was an anticlimactic moment of the utmost degree.)

And I don’t know if any of the OG “What I Wore Today” bloggers are doing this now, but I’ve decided I’m stripping it back.

I’m going back to basics.

And when I say basics — I really, truly mean BASICS. When I first started the blog, I posted one photo of one outfit plus a few words. That’s what I’m going to do again. It won’t be as regular as the two or three posts a week I used to do, but as and when I’ve worn something cute, I’ll photograph it and share it on the blog. (And maybe a monthly roundup here on Substack of the blog’s outfit posts so you can have a quick look at them.)

But more than that, it’ll act as a kind of diary of my life. Although many of my old outfits are starting to look shockingly outdated (see exhibit B below)…

…I’d really be upset if I lost the blog (or I just let it go) — it’d be like losing all my diaries and photographs. I love to have a scroll through the early days of the blog now and then. It’s a trip down memory lane for me.

So that’s it: my simple solution to the thing I’ve been mulling and fretting over for a good couple of years now. It’s simple, it’s back to basics, I can cut the costs of running it back to the bare bones.

I don’t think I’m going to start a new trend where old school style bloggers go back to their roots and publish the most simplified outfit posts*, but you never know. It’s a solution that I feel will work for me.

(*I do realise there may be many bloggers out there who never stopped!)

Less pressure.

Less time spent shooting different angles and multiple viewpoints.

Fewer hours spent in Lightroom uploading and editing photos.

I’m not going to bother to spend time on carefully crafted SEO or metadata or any other technical nonsense… It’s not worth it, because, you know — AI Google search results. Again, too much of a time suck.

I just want to wear cute outfits, spend an hour (tops) photographing and writing a blog post about it, walk the dog and write my books. That’s it.

And when I say books… I’ve already started on book 2. Yes, it’s the second in the Sweet Sweet series.

Don’t know anything about book 1 yet? I’ve got you covered.

My debut novel: Sweet Sweet Ninety Seven

Sweet Sweet Ninety Seven is for you if you love:

❤️​​📚 Nostalgic romcoms
⌛ 🚀​ The nineties (we’re talking time travel, kids)
​​❤️​🩹 Second chance love stories
​👫💞​ Friends to lovers trope
😂​😭​ Writing that’ll make you laugh and cry (but in a good way)

PRE-ORDER ON AMAZON HERE

A quick reminder of the story…

What if heartbreak came with a do-over?

A heartwarming second-chance romcom brimming with ‘90s nostalgia, love, regret, and the life you might have lived.

Just days after her silver wedding anniversary ends in disappointment, Ellie Foster-Russell discovers her husband is having an affair.

When she wakes up the next morning in 1997 — twenty-five again, back in her old life — she knows this is more than a second chance.

It’s a do-over.

Same flat. Same job. Same friends.

And Tom.

Funny, charming, impossible to forget. The man she once shared a single, perfect New Year’s Eve kiss with… before everything went wrong.

Ellie knows exactly how the next twenty-seven years are supposed to unfold.

Although this time, she has a choice.

But changing the past comes at a cost, and the present she left behind might not be finished with her just yet.

She’s about to find out that second chances come with consequences… and now her heart is on the line.

A warm, witty and nostalgic romcom about love, timing, second chances and finding the courage to choose yourself, Sweet Sweet Ninety Seven is perfect for anyone who’s ever wondered: what if?

A note about the pre-order: you can only purchase an advance copy of the ebook — if your preference is paperback, then that’ll be available to order on launch day, 7 November.

Thanks soooo much for all the support, happy Tuesday!

Catherine x

Leave a comment

If you got this far please click the Like ❤️ button and maybe even leave a comment to make this post more visible… thank you!

You can always — if you’d like to help me out on a pay-as-you-go system — Buy Me a Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/catherinesummers (thank you sooo much)

Just a quick one to announce the start of the 97 DAY COUNTDOWN of my debut novel Sweet Sweet Ninety Seven!

If you love:
❤️ romantic comedies
❤️ 90s nostalgia
❤️ second chances
❤️ a wonderful book boyfriend
❤️ stories that make you laugh and cry
...then this is the book for you!

PRE-ORDER ON AMAZON HERE

A quick reminder of the story…

What if heartbreak came with a do-over?

A heartwarming second-chance romcom brimming with ‘90s nostalgia, love, regret, and the life you might have lived.

Just days after her silver wedding anniversary ends in disappointment, Ellie Foster-Russell discovers her husband is having an affair.

When she wakes up the next morning in 1997 — twenty-five again, back in her old life — she knows this is more than a second chance.

It’s a do-over.

Same flat. Same job. Same friends.

And Tom.

Funny, charming, impossible to forget. The man she once shared a single, perfect New Year’s Eve kiss with… before everything went wrong.

Ellie knows exactly how the next twenty-seven years are supposed to unfold.

Although this time, she has a choice.

But changing the past comes at a cost — and the present she left behind might not be finished with her just yet.

She’s about to find out that second chances come with consequences… and this time, her heart is on the line.

A warm, witty and nostalgic romcom about love, timing, second chances and finding the courage to choose yourself, Sweet Sweet Ninety Seven is perfect for anyone who’s ever wondered: what if?

A note about the pre-order: you can only purchase an advance copy of the ebook — if your preference is paperback, then that’ll be available to order on launch day, 7 November… Don’t worry, staying subscribed here means you’ll get all the updates you’ll ever need!

Subscribe now

Free advance copies

I’m still looking for readers who’d like a free advance copy of my debut in exchange for an honest review on Amazon when it launches… You can still apply for another week or so!

CLICK HERE TO GET AN ADVANCE COPY TO REVIEW

Thank you so much for all the support, speak soon

Catherine x

Leave a comment

If you got this far please click the Like ❤️ button and maybe even leave a comment to make this post more visible… thank you!

You can always — if you’d like to help me out on a pay-as-you-go system — Buy Me a Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/catherinesummers (thank you sooo much)

It’s the strangest feeling. My debut novel will be available for pre-order this week (you can read what it’s about here). Ex…CITING!

This week I’ve been in full “author mode”, checking for stray typos and creating my Amazon author page and gathering keywords and categories and ISBN numbers and author bios and all sorts of other things I’d either never heard of or never given a second thought to until recently.

=breeeeeeathe=

Thinking about the whole kit and kaboodle, writing the book has been the easy part. Getting it online and starting the marketing campaign is going to be the real test of my patience of my skills as a publisher. About a week ago, I remember thinking: this reminds me of setting up my blog, back in 2011, which I launched on my 39th birthday.

(A strange noise just left my throat, something between shock and awe of having started this online journey in my thirties. Having turned 54 last week, that’s kinda scary, in a “where has the time gone?!” way.)

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I was definitely flying by the seat of my pants back then, too.

I remember that time quite clearly: it was new and exciting, and people were bemused and curious about “blogging”, especially when Instagram husband Keith was helping me with the photo shoots in the early days. I can recall a conversation with a farmer (hardly surprising, seeing as I live in the West Country) about two months in. He asked what we were doing, and I replied, “We’re taking outfit photos to put on my blog.”

“You’re doing what to put on a what?”

“Oh, a blog is a website where I post pictures of what I wore that day and people online can comment on it…” The awkward conversation didn’t end there, of course, and from that moment, I vowed never to explain what a blog was ever again. The explanation then became “I’m taking photos of my clothes to sell online.”

Easy. No more questions.

But for this chapter of my life (pun not intended), the phrase “I’m writing my debut novel!” apparently needs no explanation whatsoever, and that’s something of a relief.

But like with the blog, the learning curve has been huuuuuuuuge.

What you initially think is just “I’m writing my debut novel!” becomes learning about formatting, the minutiae of grammar, editing, understanding plot mechanisms, catering for your audience, learning how to ‘show not tell’, more editing, watching webinars and how-to videos, yet more editing… AND THEN there’s marketing, Facebook ads, Instagram plans, working with a designer, writing Amazon blurb and keywords and author bios, setting up accounts with endless publishing-related platforms, buying ISBN numbers…

Oh.

My.

God.

These things are never simple, are they? Meanwhile I’m dealing with the loss of my parents, sorting out their estate and trying to sell the house, working domestic cleaning shifts in houses that are currently anywhere between 28°C and 37°C (I checked thermometers after I’d wiped away the sweat dripping down my face) because no one in the UK has aircon, and generally wondering how on earth I’ve managed to write and finish a book in two years. At times it seemed like I’d never finish.

[Cue Limahl singing ‘Never Ending Story’…]

But to end on a positive note: I’m immensely proud of what I’ve achieved. I have a finished book, I have a cover, and that’s really all you need, isn’t it (she says with a cough and a big dollop of irony)?

So the book will be available for pre-order in the next day or so: I’ll publish a post here and toot my horn about it on social media when it’s ready. Meantime, here’s a look at the cover — which I am totally in love with!

(Big shout-out to designer Margarita Castaño, who’s been an absolute superstar in bringing my vision to life.)

Free advance copies

I’m still looking for readers who’d like a free advance copy of my debut in exchange for an honest review on Amazon when it launches… I decided to keep the application form open for a little while longer, so if you’d still like to be on my special ARC team, you can still apply!

CLICK HERE TO GET AN ADVANCE COPY TO REVIEW

(Don’t be intimidated by the questions; if you’re a Substack reader you’ll almost certainly make the list unless you say, “I hate second chances/time travel romcoms”…! Just fill out what you can.)

Speak to you VERY soon with a link to the pre-order page — and thank you!

Catherine x

Leave a comment

If you got this far please click the Like ❤️ button and maybe even leave a comment to make this post more visible… thank you!

You can always — if you’d like to help me out on a pay-as-you-go system — Buy Me a Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/catherinesummers (thank you sooo much)

Hello, and happy Tuesday. Well, not just any Tuesday… here it is — the announcement about my debut novel: a romantic comedy with more than a smattering of time travel!

I guess there’s no turning back now, is there?!

As I mentioned in my post last week, I’ve been working quietly behind the scenes* on something incredibly close to my heart. It’s not exactly a big secret — I’ve been harping on about this for ages, thinking it would be finished MUCH sooner than a full two years after I started it — but I can now finally let you know exactly what my debut novel is about, and I’m sooo excited about it.

*SO quietly, in fact, I received many, many “Are you okay?” messages thanks to my radio silence :/

It’s a romantic comedy featuring two of my favourite tropes: second chances and time travel. Because if there’s something Gen Xers love, it’s a bit of nostalgia. But non-Gen Xers will love it too, especially if you’re into the nineties.

Plus, there’s a strong theme of female empowerment, which I’m really proud of.

The book is the first in a planned trilogy, and it officially launches on 4th November 2026 (with pre-orders opening at the end of July)!

The official cover art won’t be ready until mid-July, but because you’re a lovely subscriber to my newsletter, I wanted to give you the very first look at the blurb and invite you to be part of the journey.

What’s the book called?

You can probably guess where the time-travelling aspect takes my protagonist…

What’s the book about?

Here’s the back cover blurb:

What if midlife heartbreak came with a do-over?

Just days after her silver wedding anniversary, Ellie Foster-Russell discovers her joyless husband is having an affair. After a night out to vent, she wakes up not hungover — but 25 again, back in her 1990s life.

Same flat. Same job. Same friends.

And there he is: Tom. Charming, funny, impossible-to-forget Tom — the colleague she once shared a perfect New Year’s Eve kiss with… before everything went wrong.

Ellie knows exactly how the next twenty-seven years are supposed to unfold. But this time, she has a choice: follow the life she remembers, or risk everything for the one she never had.

Because second chances don’t come without consequences — and the present she left behind might not have finished with her just yet.

A witty, nostalgic romcom about love, timing, and daring to choose differently, Sweet Sweet Ninety Seven is perfect for anyone who’s ever wondered: what if?

(And, I have to add, Tom is the best book boyfriend ever. Just sayin’.)

Join my exclusive ARC (Advance Reader Copy) Team!

Now… because this is my debut novel, getting people to leave early reviews is vital for the success of my book (however modest that “success” may be). They tell the bookstore algorithms that real people — not bots! — are reading and enjoying the story. I hate that just about everything depends upon algorithms these days, but there’s no fighting them, sadly.

So! I’m building an exclusive ARC Team made up of readers from my community, but before I extend the offer to anyone through social media, I’m sending this offer to my subscribers first.

Maybe you’re a seasoned ARC reader, and you know exactly how this works. Or maybe, like me before I started writing my book, you have NO IDEA what an ARC reader is. But if you’re the sort of person who reads a lot and regularly leaves reviews for books, then you can become an official ARC reader, and I’d love to have you in my team (I sound like I know what I’m talking about, don’t I?! Believe me, I’m winging it…!)

Subscribe now

If you join, you will get:

• A free digital copy of the book in late August (weeks before anyone else)

• Behind-the-scenes updates on the publishing process

• A reveal of the cover art before everyone else

• A sneak peek of Book 2 before anyone else

• My eternal gratitude!

All I ask of the members of my ARC Team is that they read the book and leave an honest review on Amazon, Goodreads or BookBub during my launch week in November.

(Obviously if the book isn’t your thing, may I ask you not to leave a review? I know I can’t dictate what you write, but I’d like to think my subscribers wouldn’t crush my dreams that way, considering the number of hours plus blood, sweat and tears I’ve poured into this, eep! I guess what I’m saying is, Please be nice — or just ignore me, and forget I ever mentioned a book...!)

Please note that spaces on the team are limited, allowing me to manage everyone/everything personally. If you love romcoms, second chances, or a bit of magical time-travel mischief, I’d love to have you!

CLICK HERE TO APPLY FOR THE ARC TEAM

Applications will close at 11:59 p.m. BST on Tuesday, 14th July, just before I reveal the official cover art to everyone.

Thank you so much for reading, for supporting my blog over the years, and for stepping into this new chapter with me.

Thank youuuuu!

Catherine x

Leave a comment

If you got this far please click the Like ❤️ button and maybe even leave a comment to make this post more visible… thank you!

You can always — if you’d like to help me out on a pay-as-you-go system — Buy Me a Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/catherinesummers (thank you sooo much)

Writing really was the whole purpose of having the blog for me.

Well it was… eventually. In the beginning it was all about outfit photos (what fashion blog wasn’t back in the early 2010s?), but before long I came to love the writing part equally, if not more.

Plus I’d always loved writing wild stories when I was a kid.

So Substack seemed like a natural direction to take when I lost a little interest in the clothes part of blogging. And now?

I guess it’s come full circle, because I have, after two long years, finally finished the novel I’ve always said I wanted to write. Well not ‘this’ novel per se, just… any novel.

A novel.

And it looks like this will be one of the platforms where I’ll be talking about it… because if I don’t, who will? I’m self-publishing, and there are NO END of self-published romance novels out there. But without wanting to toot my own horn (so British of me), I’m really, really proud of the book I’ve written. If I were given this book, I’d want to read it — and I’d love the story.

So if it weren’t already obvious, my newest venture will be into the world of self-publishing romcom novels. I’m nervous, I’m excited… but I’m tired. Writing a book whose story you didn’t plan or map out really well to start with (meaning months and months of editing) and taking care of two elderly parents at the same time do not go hand in hand with early nights. But I’m confident it’ll be worth it.

(I’ll stop cringing now and go back to being apologetically British. =ahem=)

I’ve been writing my debut novel for so long, I’m not even sure if I know how to write blog/Substack/non– fiction posts anymore. What do I write about? Do I have to write about me and my real life and not just the characters and the world I’ve built in my novel? Am I really going to be able to do this every week as I’ve promised myself?

Call it self-doubt or imposter syndrome, but it’s the first time I’ve felt out of my depth since writing my very first blog post nearly fifteen years ago. I’m in a real, Where do I start? headspace at the moment…!

The last couple of weeks have seen the most progress I’ve made with the non-writing part of the book in all the two years I’ve been writing it. I’ve done so much research into how to market a book to make it a success, and I’m sure I’ve not even scratched the surface of what I need to do.

And to be absolutely honest, it’s more than *a little bit* overwhelming.

But market it I must, and I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m going to be writing about writing, and social media-ing about writing. (I’ll do my best to make it sound a bit more exciting than that sentence makes it sound…)

And maybe I’ll write a little bit about my everyday life, my domestic cleaning job, and, of course, Suki the greyhound.

(Because… dogs. Need I say more?)

My last post here on Substack was in March, and it was something of a significant date as I posted it one year after my dad died, and not quite three months since losing Mum as well. I’m doing okay. Maybe not great, maybe not sparkling… just okay. I’m treading water furiously and my head is just above the surface.

And that’s perfectly fine at the moment.

The designer starts work on my book cover today. I’m beyond excited because she is AMAZING. I’ve been absolutely obsessed with her work since forever and I can’t wait to see what she creates — every time I remember that I’m working with her I have to pinch myself. The middle/end of next month (July) will be when I reveal the artwork and make the book available for pre-order.

I’ve also been working on setting up an author Facebook page, and getting myself back on Instagram and changing that to reflect what I’m doing now. Marketing is so much work — why did I not think about this aspect of it before I embarked on writing a book?

Seeing as I’ve been blogging since 2011 you’d think I knew that, wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t you??

This week has been quiet where my cleaning shifts are concerned. I’m going to Cornwall for a week very soon and some of my clients have also been/are going on holiday; it means I had to switch everyone around… A quiet week this week means I’m cramming everybody in next week — and ermahgerd 29°C is predicted here in South West England. Think of me when I’m furiously cleaning small rooms that aren’t air-conditioned and the hot air of the hoover is blasting into the room, won’t you…

And in my final news, I’m back doing my morning walks (though sometimes afternoons are easier) and holding myself accountable by featuring them on my Instagram stories. I’ve neglected my walks for too long (months) and just a few walks this week in all that nature have boosted my positivity already. The exercise absolutely KILLS my legs — my feet and leg pain is unreal — but long may the exercise continue. I know that the pain won’t improve unless I get fit; I’ve just got to battle through that constant pain for it to improve.

=she lets out a big sigh=

So hopefully, before long I’ll be able to stop treading water and swim to that shore. And once I’m on dry land, who knows where that’ll take me; I’m excited. But first I’ll have a long nap.

Thanks for reading :)

Next week: I’ll tell you aaall about the book. Cue excited micro dancing

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This is the post I never thought I’d have to write for at least another year or so — well, that’s what I hoped.

In May last year, I wrote about losing a parent when it had been a long time coming and wasn’t a surprise. Dementia does that. But on the first anniversary of losing my dad, I’m writing to say I recently lost my mum… and it wasn’t necessarily a surprise (due to her age), but it came out of nowhere and was still a massive shock.

It wasn’t meant to happen like this. That’s what I can’t help thinking. I don’t want to go into the finer details about losing Mum, but we said our goodbyes to her in hospital on New Year’s Eve, and I was with her when she passed in the early hours of New Year’s Day.

And all I can say to that is — what a shitty way to start the year.

I’m numb. I’m angry. I’m still in shock. I’m horribly sad.

But she was 91 is another thought that keeps going round my head. Dad was 95. They had a very long and happy life together: together for 73 years, married for 68. But if Mum hadn’t fallen — as is so often the case with older people — before Christmas, she would probably be sitting in her lovely sun-filled kitchen1, watching the birds at her bird feeder and drinking a cup of tea today.

We’d probably be very sad that it had been one year since losing Dad. I’m sure there would have been tears. But with daffodils outside her window, the sun making more of an appearance and the evenings getting lighter, I’m certain it would have been a turning point, a date that we just had to battle past for her to look forward to a little bit of a future for her in her twilight years.

At the end of last year, she put in an offer on a new house, a bungalow less than two minutes’ drive from my house. A two-minute walk thanks to a footpath shortcut. Nearer to Keith and me, good for emergencies. Nearer to town and accessible with a (potential) mobility scooter for her, not as rural and cut off as her current home. It was to be a fresh start. She was excited.

It wasn’t to be.

Instead, her house is now up for sale. My siblings (and more of the family, everyone’s been great) and I have done the majority of the house clearing, prepping the house for going on the market. But it’s been a horrible job, because it brings such overwhelming sadness: you can’t keep everything but you want to, and you feel horribly guilty donating, recycling, etc., things that Mum loved.

Everything’s a process, whether it’s the logistics of finances, the house sale or the funeral, or the process of coming to terms with the fact that I won’t ever speak to her again. I won’t hear my phone ringing and see Mum mobile on the screen.

Admittedly, she would have taken an age to say something, spent several seconds saying Catherine? I can’t hear you, hold on… and fumbled around while I’m shouting, Put it on speaker, Mum…! only for me to tell her that she should end the call and I’d try calling her back on the landline.

I also won’t ever have to talk her through how to get her TV on the right channel. Or explain how to save her shopping basket in her online grocery shopping, only for me to say I’ll get in the car and be there in ten minutes, rather than her getting frustrated on the phone.

I won’t have to collect her prescriptions anymore. I won’t have to pick up a TV guide for her at Tesco when I’m already there doing a bit of shopping, though every time I go now I still, for a split second, think, Oh! I’ll get a TV guide for Mum...

The other day, I was staring out of the window while waiting for tea to brew and thought about a thing that had happened that day, and I briefly thought, Can’t wait to tell Mum that. It catches you off guard.

My sister asked me, Were we naive to think that she could go on for at least another year or two?

No, was my answer. If she hadn’t fallen and ended up in hospital, she’d still be with us now. We weren’t naive, we were just hopeful. Hopeful she’d have a couple of years to do things she wanted to do without the worry of staying in with Dad and his dementia 24/7 because he couldn’t be left home alone.

We wanted her to have a little freedom. Get out for a cup of tea and a cake at a nice cafe at a moment’s notice. Stay out for the afternoon and go to lunch with friends. Visit the garden centre. We even took her to the Van Gogh interactive exhibition in the autumn, and she loved it. After looking after my dad for so many years with all the frustrations and heartbreak that that brings, she deserved a bit of ‘me’ time.

As I already said… it wasn’t to be.

But to look on the bright side, we did as much as we could to make Mum’s life brighter and easier since losing Dad.

We entirely redecorated her bedroom. We decluttered the house. We did some kitchen updates, a half-makeover. We did get her out and about more often. And we know she loved and appreciated everything.

She just had a very hard time in herself after losing Dad: understandable after living with someone for 68 years. And now we’re having a hard time being without her; we didn’t get the time to adjust to being without her like we did with Dad. We didn’t expect it so soon.

So this post — the one I didn’t want to have to write — explains my absence somewhat from anything online for the last few months. I haven’t updated my Instagram, my blog, or my Substack. I’ve not wanted to, and I’ve not felt like it anyway.

I’ve been continuing with my domestic cleaning job, where I have several regular clients who are all lovely. It gets me out of the house and keeps money coming in (god knows we’ve needed it).

I’ve continued to write my first novel; it’s taken me sooo much longer than I ever thought it would… that’s partly due to the steep learning curve I’m on with the logistics of writing a novel (who would have thought that planning the story rather than making it up as I went along would have saved me so much time down the line with editing?!), and partly because my parents were taking up so much of my time. I am not complaining about that — I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat — but I am now able to get into a routine and get everyday things done that I had to put off before, which strangely is making me feel better.

It’s a harsh irony that improving one part of your life can require a painfully sad, unwelcome event to occur. The thing that made you miserable creates other circumstances that make you happy.

Or maybe not happy… just less anxious.

Realistically, my novel (I’m self-publishing) should be out by the summer. (It’s a second chance, time-travel British romantic comedy, and I’ve bloody loved writing it.) If you’re subscribed to this newsletter, then you won’t miss when it’ll be available to preorder.

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I’m honestly so excited about publishing it, but also absolutely terrified… I’ve lived and breathed these characters for almost two years now(!), so to think of them out there in the world and being exposed to the general public scares me.

It would be nice to end the year on a much more positive note than it started on.

That said…

And as Trevor McDonald used to say on News at Ten: And finally…

Going forward, I’ve got to think positively. Of course Mum wouldn’t want us to be moping around and constantly being sad. But things just trigger you, and I can be absolutely fine one minute, and then I think of something… and I’m in full-on, blubbering floods of tears the next. It’s definitely the shock of losing her so soon [after Dad] and so quickly.

And just to top off our year… our dog Suki has a tumour. We thought it was a fatty lump or cyst on her ribcage, so did the vet, but then a couple of weeks ago it changed shape and size so the vet took a sample.

Turns out she has a tumour.

Thankfully, Suki is happy as Larry, loving life and full of energy. But whether the tumour is benign or aggressive, we won’t know unless she has an operation to remove it. However, she’s had kidney disease for about a year, and we’re managing that with a special renal diet, and that, by itself, is a problem — but it’s manageable.

Here’s the stinger: an operation would almost certainly trigger the kidneys, and they just wouldn’t cope. They’d shut down after a while. It’s not guaranteed, but it’s high risk. We had two options: have the operation and risk triggering kidney failure, or basically keep our fingers crossed that it’s benign and treat it with medication.

After a long discussion, we decided to go down the medication treatment route.

(And if you have any experience of anything similar, please can I politely ask that you don’t give me any details. And the same goes for any judgements on what you’d do in the same circumstances… it wouldn’t be helpful. There are a lot more details I’ve left out that helped us make a decision. Thank you ♡)

So on top of everything else, we’ve now got this to contend with. We’re not ignoring it — we couldn’t possibly, she’s on so many different medications we have alarms set for 8 am, 4 pm, 8 pm and 12 am to administer regular doses — but we realise that any time spent with her would be time wasted if we’re constantly crying and sad about what might or might not be. (And dogs respond to our emotions, so negative energy would rub off on her.) The anxiety has been parked in a little section of our brains in the ‘cross that bridge when we come to it’ bay.

Because I’ll be damned if I spend the rest of this year constantly worrying if I don’t have to. I can be sad, that’s fine. I can have moments of bursting into tears at things that trigger me; that’s also okay. But my anxiety is going to have to take a break for a bit — I’m telling that emotion to back the f*ck up.

And I hope I’ll come back to my little space on the internet with some good news for a change, and maybe it’ll be more regular. That’s the thing with life: you just never know what’s around the corner. One foot in front of the other is sometimes all you can manage.

Hope you’re okay and that life is treating you well. Thanks for reading ♡

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I haven’t started a new job in 23 years.

(I don’t count the one I started in about 2015 that ended up owing me a four-figure sum as a freelancer and promised me for months I’d get paid, only for me to continue working for them, thinking they’d eventually cough up. They never did, and I never made that mistake again.)

Anyway — yesterday I had a video interview and was offered a job on the spot. I’m ELATED. My husband is elated for me.

It’s part-time, I’m still self-employed, I can accept or refuse as much work as I like, I can dictate the hours and days within which I’m available. I can “leave the job at work”, meaning I don’t have to “take it home” with me and think about it when I should be at home relaxing.

It won’t be stressful. I don’t have to get my knickers in a twist over whether I’m qualified enough for the job or meet targets or anything performance-related (I mean yes, there is some of that, but I’m 100% confident I can do the job brilliantly).

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Too good to be true, you may ask? Maybe, but that’s the thing: there’s always a pay-off, isn’t there? No job can be so perfect in terms of flexibility of hours to suit my lifestyle (I have a dog and refuse to leave her all day), ease of work, etc.

The pay-off is the pay. Or lack of. And, some may argue, no one “wants” to do this job: domestic cleaning. (Unless you didn’t look at the spoiler image at the top I’m sure you’ve guessed that already.)

And I’m not ashamed to admit that this is what I’ll be doing now to pay the bills and put food on the table. Because for the last couple of years, we haven’t been able to do either. Our money woes are so bad that if we want to buy food, toiletries, vet bills or anything that’s outside of fixed monthly bills, it’s up to me to earn the money to do that. Keith’s salary — even a managerial position — doesn’t cover anything that’s not taken out by monthly direct debit. That’s how much stuff has increased in price (and only continues to increase), and salaries haven’t risen along with it.

So when your blog/content creation income has dropped to levels so low you’d think you were sponsored by the cost-of-living crisis, you know you have to take drastic action. I saw an ad for a company looking for more cleaners in my area, and I went for it.

The pay isn’t great, but when I can refuse shifts if I want or ask for more, be out of the house for a couple of hours locally and be back to spend time with my favourite girl (Suki the greyhound) and have something completely flexible so I can get on with my other projects, then why wouldn’t I do it?

Some may turn their noses up at cleaning other people’s houses. I’ve been dealing with a house lived in by my two elderly parents for so long now, nothing fazes me. We lost my dad back in March and my time is a little freer now, but only a little, as Mum is 91 herself and nonagenarians need a lot of help. I’m feeling much more ready emotionally and physically to do this job, and it sure beats being stuck to full days in a supermarket1 (even part-time, they want 2-3 full days a week) or having to use my brain in something like social media marketing. I’m happy to go into someone’s house, make it look and smell amazing, get paid and go home again. I clean my own house, I clean my mum’s house, I can clean a stranger’s house.

I’m good at cleaning. No one will bother me or ask for reports or chase deadlines. In and out in two hours. Come home and write. Snuggle up with my bag of elbows dog. Do it all again the next day.

I can’t wait.

Thoughts? Could you do it if money were tight…?

P.S. The image at the beginning really IS AI-generated, in case my sarcasm was confusing…

P.P.S. The supermarkets, restaurants, cafes, etc. locally don’t pay any more than the cleaning does — less, in many cases :(

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Life is so hard to predict, isn’t it? Last spring I thought my dad didn’t have much time left.

He’d had vascular dementia for several years and his physical health was rapidly declining, so we were fully prepared (as much as you can be) for saying goodbye. He was 95, so when he went into hospital with Covid1 a year ago we doubted he’d be back home, but he pulled through. Even pneumonia and another hospital stay in October didn’t bring him down.

I was surprised that he saw Christmas, but deep down, I knew it would be his last.

And it was. On 13th March this year, my dad slipped away peacefully in his sleep. I’d stayed the night at my parents’ house — as I have done many times over the last few months — to support my mum (who’s 91 herself), but from what his carers told us and judging by his declining health that week, we suspected it was time.

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So for all those ‘worst case scenarios’ we’d imagined about how the end would pan out, it was as peaceful for my dad and as stress-free for my mum as we could have wished for. It’s the strangest thing to say about the loss of a loved one. But that’s what it was: stress-free, at least as far as coping and managing goes.

My dad wasn’t in any pain. He was at home with family, not in hospital. He’d had a long and very happy life, and he was cheerful till the end. My mum was with him, and I was with my mum, and I was there to do what had to be done for her, taking the stress of arrangements away from her.

Here’s another strange thing. I’m the youngest of four children, the designated ‘baby of the family’, especially as there are nearly ten years between me and my nearest sibling. I live ten minutes down the road from my parents so have always been the first-point emergency contact for geographical and practical reasons. Despite all that, I never for a moment imagined that I’d be the one who’d have to make the phone calls to my siblings just before 6 a.m. on a Thursday morning to say that Dad had gone. I never felt ‘grown up’ enough to accept that responsibility, if that makes sense (you may know what I mean if you, too, are the ‘baby’ of the family). The official phone calls you have to make aren’t fun either, but they had to be done.

But it was me who was there when it happened, and I did make those phone calls. I’m forever grateful that one of us was there to support my mum and to relieve her of the things that no one wants to have to do when a loved one passes away. When you’re 91, easily confused and your eyesight is deteriorating, it’s almost an impossible task to work through the grief of losing the person you’ve been with for 73 years and, at the same time, have the presence of mind to know who to call and what to do. She could never have coped by herself.

It’s the weirdest thing to say, but I’m forever grateful for the way it happened. Even the funeral was as lovely as it could be, if that’s not a contradiction in terms. The sun shone, the turnout was amazing (especially as my dad outlived so many of his friends, peers and family members), my brother gave a fantastic eulogy, we all wore bright colours as per my mum’s request, and we truly made it a celebration of a wonderful man who lived a wonderful life. Even my 13-year-old great-nephew getting heckled by his three-year-old cousin during a poem reading responded brilliantly and made us all laugh; my dad would have loved that.

I wish that sort of end and celebration of life upon everyone who deserves it, because it really was the best way to go in all senses of the word. So many people don’t get a wonderful ending, and I wish that weren’t true.

So life froze for a little bit. I didn’t give up writing my Substack, but I needed a break. Two months has now passed and I’m ready to write regularly here again. My dad was a creative and a doer: DIYer, builder, artist, poet, draftsman, athlete. He was also a very eloquent writer and public speaker and was quietly proud of what I achieved in my blogging career. When he was still able he always read my blog posts and gave me little critiques (they were always positive, of course). He’d cut out articles from magazines and newspapers I’d been featured in and pin them on his noticeboard. I feel it’s only fitting that I continue on in my writing journey, because he would have wanted that.

I’ve mentioned before I’m currently writing my debut novel — the first draft is finished and I’m in the heavy editing phase — my only regret is that I didn’t do it ten years ago when he would have been mentally sound enough to understand what I’d done and to possibly read it. A fantasy romcom may not really have been his thing, but I know he’d have given it a go ;)

I titled this post Not Knowing What to Write Upon Losing a Parent, and when I started I had no idea what I’d be writing or what point of view I’d be writing from; I just wrote. I needed to get back into writing more freely, something without the necessary structure and discipline required for my novel, and here we are.

If you’re going through something similar with a parent or loved one, I feel for you. Dementia is a draining disease for everyone who cares for the person who has it. The dad that I lost was lost a long time ago, and I’ve been missing him for many years now. I’ve moved into a different stage of grief and am dealing with that, plus we have to take care of my mum differently now as she’s having to adapt to a new life and deal with her own grief.

A weight may have been lifted from our shoulders, but our hearts are now heavy.

I just want to say: Dad, you really were a wonderful, loving, tremendously popular and warm-hearted man.

Thank you for giving us a fantastic childhood and for supporting us in every way imaginable as adults.

Thank you for always loving and treating my husband like he was your own son.

Thank you for always wanting to spoil the dogs with too many treats (we know you were feeding them under the table)!

Thank you for teaching me everything you knew about DIY and gardening.

Thank you for keeping your sense of humour right up until the end and keeping us all on our toes.

Thank you for a thousand other things I could list here.

Thank you for being you.

Bye for now, Dad. Love you always ♥

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It’s Summer 1997, and I need to leave a message for my flatmate (let’s call her Sandra) before going out.

What do you do when you can’t find a pen and paper?

When I was twenty-five and rented a flat in London whilst earning about £5 an hour to stand on my feet all day in retail, I wasn’t a) organised enough, or b) flush enough to afford notepads or anything resembling a way to leave notes for Sandra. I would have had pens somewhere, but when you’re young and rushing out the door because all you do is go out-out, who has time to look for one?

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Thankfully, I’d acquired a set of magnetic alphabet letters somewhere along the way — I think it must have been two sets, however, and maybe some numbers. And as many of us probably did in the days before text messaging, I constructed a barely-decipherable message for Sandra on the fridge and ran out the door.

Upon my return, she’d left an equally unconventional reply. This went on for some time until the everyday messages — which at first simply passed on basic information — became more… creative, shall we say.

That’s what happens when you’re alphabetically restricted: you see it as a challenge.

You’re forced to use more than a little artistic licence when it comes to writing ‘short stories’. Because that’s what we did: we wrote one-sentence stories for each other.

I’m currently writing my debut novel, much of which takes place in the nineties. To get myself into a nineties frame of mind, I searched through my boxes of loose photos (you have the same, I’ll bet).

The scraps of paper I found were torn out of a notebook, and they recorded the shock tactics deployed by Sandra and me to outdo the other in terms of filth and depravity, as much as it’s possible to do with children’s alphabet letter magnets.

After reading through the notes and finally getting my breath back after laughing (yes, I totally LOL’d at them whilst on my tod), I wondered what to do with the notes. One word popped into my head:

Substack. =toot toot=

A caveat

If you are of a sensitive disposition or don’t like swearing or gross-out humour, you might not want to read any further. Because there’s A LOT of both. In fact, I think I used All The Bad Words.

I make no apologies. Plus, they’re not really meant to make sense (and, IMO, are all the better for it).

If I’d known how much I would still be laughing at these ‘short stories’ nearly thirty years later, then I would’ve kept the magnets for posterity.

Alas, their whereabouts are unknown.

Please also note most many of them were written when I returned home from the pub {ahem}.

Enough dithering. Here, for your reading pleasure, is a catalogue of thoughts from a twenty-something’s drunken mind, restricted by two sets of alphabet letters and a few numbers where Zs were probably put on their side to make an N and a 3 was used when I needed an extra E.

Take it away, nineties Catherine.

~ knob me raw till my gonads could whip a bed vixen

~ a gimp weed bore no qualm to ya fucky jim duds

~ dr no saw me poke a bunny while i got a jizm

~ loopy zebra man eats my moped if i bungi jump

~ fonz aliens do moan with my big bad pecker

~ a deaf godzilla monkey is down pub with mr ben

~ wild zebra boy made us fix puke up on jammy git

~ felch boy tim gave one up dodi and imrans bum

~ i weed on dads boil and my bum caught fire

(The one above being my personal favourite. Please note at this point I was laughing at my own ‘jokes’ so much I typed out the rest in between a lot of ROTFL.)

~ our dippy mum gave my pant snake blow job

~ i phuct a mole man so puka yer gizm

~ barf me up some ky jely mama on di big poxi cunt

~ ox bred sphincta boy gave me funki woman pump

~ naomi c fed me a large spunky pup with boobz

And finally…

~ dirty mingas make me duf up menz bolox bad

As I said — I make no apologies! Which is YOUR favourite…?

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OR you can always — if you’d like to help out on a pay-as-you-go system — Buy Me a Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/catherinesummers (thank you sooo much!)

So what do you do when people you thought were decent, functioning human beings prove otherwise?

When they let you down in such a way that x number of days/weeks/months ago you could never have imagined they’ve ever be that… terrible? When you end up saying (in reference to them), How do they sleep at night?

It’s one thing to witness this in everyday life around the world. People on the internet are awful. Politicians are awful. Celebrities are awful. Billionaires and oligarchs are awful. Not all of them, but a lot of them.

(I’m holding back on the adjectives I’d like to use here; ‘awful’ is going to be my go-to word for now because within the thesaurus I use, the first context for ‘awful’ was described as ‘extremely unpleasant in nature’. It seems tame but believe me, I’m holding back. And I’m not talking about murderers and r@pists of course, just regular people, the ones you don’t expect it from.)

It’s another thing for these awful people to be friends or family, the people you think have your back, the people you’d always held in high regard and would never do anything as awful as x, y or z to you (or anyone).

Turns out we were wrong. It turns out people can let you down spectacularly. And not just NOT having your back, but being there to rub salt in the wound, kick you to the ground and spit on you — all behind a mask of politeness, pleasantries and a fake smile.

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I’m sure you’ll appreciate that I can’t go into any kind of detail here, and I know that as a reader that’s all sorts of frustrating (sorry). I’d love to describe the whole juicy mess, but as it’s an ongoing thing I’m staying cryptic about the details.

But to give you an idea, here’s an analogy:

You and your partner have a What would you do in this scenario… discussion one day about being on a ship that’s going down, and you’re both there with X and Y (friends/family, the collective term for which I’ll use FF).

Your partner: Being on a sinking ship would be terrible. But I’d have to make absolutely sure that you’re safe. Then I’d make sure that X and Y are too.

You: Aww, you’d make sure we were all okay?

Your partner: Of course! Once you’re safe, I want to make sure they get onto a lifeboat because they’re my FF. If there was no way I could save myself, at least I’d know I’d helped them get to safety. They’d do the same for me, I’d like to think.

You: But what if they were told by someone else — let’s say another FF who’s got a grudge against you for absolutely no reason that you know of — tells them to leave you to drown? When they could easily save you as well as themselves?

Your partner: Well, I’d like to think that they wouldn’t just blindly follow those instructions, because who’s that spineless and cruel?

You: I agree. Any decent person would know that’s the right thing to do. I’m so glad you’re the type of person who’d make sure they’re okay and ignore the one dishing out the stupid instructions because that’ll only cause someone to drown for no reason.

Your partner: Well, as they’re my FF then they’d do the same for me. Wouldn’t they?

You: Of course they’d do the same. They’re not awful people — what decent person WOULD do that? Leave you to drown on a sinking ship when they have a chance to save you as well as themselves? They’d never do that.

Your partner: Yeah ❤️.

Yeah… no.

We have found ourselves on that sinking ship. Turns out people CAN be that awful, hiding it with cordialities. I (we) would never do that in a million years to someone because it’s a horrible thing to do. However, they would do it, and, it seems, they can still sleep at night. They can still live with themselves even after continuing the awful behaviour of the OG rather than calling them out on it.

When we’ve seen a particularly heinous crime discussed on the news or in a documentary, my husband and I often discuss how a group of (two or more) people gets to the point of committing a spontaneous group crime.

In other words, the majority of the people are joining in. At no point has one person turned round and said, ‘You know what? I don’t think this is a good idea. Let’s not do this. I’m not doing this.’

Instead, they go along with it. They go along with the terrible act, seemingly blind to how awful what they’re doing is. I know I’m touching on a whole psychology/pack mentality issue here, but it’s fascinatingly disappointing and shocking that the majority are prepared to be awful people — and too spineless to go against the perpetrator — rather than stand up and do the decent thing.

And again, I stress — I’m talking about regular people, not criminals.

And when those regular people are friends/family, it’s an eye-opener. They do something you could NEVER imagine doing yourself because you couldn’t live with yourself if you did that to a person, could you?

They can, it seems.

So, ugh. What a ballsack of turd blankets. The wheat has most certainly been separated from the chaff, and true colours have been shown. I mean… wow.

P.S. Oh, and in case you’re wondering, there is absolutely nothing we have done (that we’re aware of) that would justify their behaviour. Nothing. And everyone else who is aware of this situation is horrified at what’s happened and ‘can’t believe anyone would do that to friends/family’.

P.P.S. It sure makes you realise who are the good guys and who are the bad, doesn't it?

So that was our February, how was yours? Ever had this sort of treatment from your own FF and found yourself equally appalled/horrified/shocked…?

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I'm currently writing my debut novel (not about Robin Hood, mind). Could this be a taste of the drama to come...?

The beauty of having a mother who is on the sentimental side (not a hoarder, but one that doesn’t like ‘just throwing things away’) is that one day she will give you all the drawings, school reports and exercise books you produced as a child/she accumulated as a parent.

Those works of art and literary masterpieces have been in my possession for a while and caused me much amusement over the years.

I made drawings aged 4 that would make your toes curl (I’m talking anatomically correct and therefore… concerning). I wrote endless stories and diary-style ‘What we did at the weekend’ entries in my school exercise books. And I have maybe not all of them, but quite a few.

This weekend my husband Keith and I switched some furniture around at home, sorting out a bookcase in the process. And there, sitting among my Beatrix Potter and Ladybird books, were three school exercise books from 1979 onwards. I had just gone up to the Juniors at primary school (I had to look this up, that’s the UK equivalent to Year 3/Key Stage 2), and my story-telling skills aged 7 were on FIRE.

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I could have chosen many stories to feature here, but the story I’m about to publish — Robin Hood — has gone down in family history. It is legendary. Remember, this is long before Kevin Costner gave up on an English accent in Prince of Thieves and even before Michael Praed and Jason Connery donned beautiful blow-dried mullets in Robin of Sherwood in the 1980s. No, I was inspired by Disney’s 1973 Robin Hood (Robin and Marian were both foxy foxes) and Errol Flynn’s The Adventures of Robin Hood from 1938 — in colour, no less. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say I was more than a little in love with both Robins as a kid =ahem cartoon fox?!=

I’ve mostly typed it out exactly as I wrote it (I’ve included shots of my original pages at the end of the story) with the same punctuation and grammar, but I did break up the speech into separate paragraphs so it’s a little easier to read, in the same way that a book formats speech. I wrote this story one month into the first term of a new school year, and I’ll never forget how it was my new teacher, Mr Wellman, who taught us how to use punctuation and write stories with speech quotations.

I took all that knowledge about punctuation and I ran with it. Speech marks everywhere. To be fair to my younger self, they are pretty much all in the right place. So thank you, Mr Wellman, for encouraging me to write stories and giving me the tools I needed.

P.S. I did correct a few tiny errors just for readability, but I left a couple of spelling mistakes that were so fabulous I didn’t want to change them. Let me know in the comments if you’ve spotted them.

P.P.S. When I read my book, I thought, Oh I spelled Marian wrong the whole way through… and went to type it out as ‘Marion’. I looked it up just to check. Nope, my 7-year-old self knew what she was doing. It’s Marian.

Robin Hood by Catherine W, age 7 and 2 months

Long ago, Maid Marian was walking through Nottingham Forest1 picking flowers. Then, the Sheriff of Nottingham came into sight.

“How dare you, Maid Marian, pick flowers on the Nottingham Castle’s field!” he said. “Take her to the dungeon.”

So Maid Marian was taken to the dungeon. While she was being chained up, Robin Hood was outside playing with his merry men2. They were playing who could shoot the tree furthest away from them with their bows and arrows. You see,3 the dungeon window was by Robin and his merry men. Then, they heard a shout of “Help!” Then they turned round and looked. It was Maid Marian, shouting from the window.

“Maid Marian!” shouted Robin. “What are you doing in there?”

“I got caught by the Sheriff of Nottingham,” shouted Maid Marian back to Robin and his merry men.

“Why?” asked Robin.

“Because,” said Maid Marian, “I was picking flowers on the Nottingham Castle’s field.”

“Oh that’s nothing to worry about,” said Robin. “We will try and get you out.”

So, Robin and his merry men disguised themselves as ducks by putting some elastic on rubber ducks and putting them on their heads. Then, they swam in the moat disguising themseflevs as rubber ducks. Then, Robin found a little gate, just at the bottom of the castle. So, he went through it and then found a metal drain. So, he tried to push it upwards, with his merry men helping him.

“Here it goes!” said Robin, and they pushed it up and across. “Now to rescue Maid Marian,” said Robin.

So they charged through a door and came into the Sheriff of Nottingham’s hall!

“There is Robin Hood and his merry men!” said the Sheriff of Nottingham. “Get them!”

But Robin didn’t agree with that answer. Robin decided to get “them”. While the fight was going on, one of Robin’s merry men went to the dungeon. First, he found a staircase. Beside it, was a sign pointing to the dungeon. So he went right to the top of the staircase. When he got there, he looked around. Then, he saw a door. It had words on it. It said “The Dungeon”.4 So, he opened the door. In there were great big black bars. Behind them was Maid Marian.

“Help!” she said. “Please get me out. The key is over there!”

So Robin Hood’s merry man lifted the key up from the table she pointed to. When he lifted the key up, he carried it over to Maid Marian and opened it up. He helped her out, because there was a big high board against it.

“Oh thank you very, very, very much. But how can we get out?” said Maid Marian.

“Oh that’s easy,” said the man. “I have got a rope in my pocket. Look.” And like so, he pulled a very, very long rope out of his pocket.5 Then, he pulled the glass out of the window hole, and dropped it on the floor. “Quick,” he said as he pushed the rope out of the window. “Climb down the rope as quick as you can.”6

Down they went. They ran to a speishell place called: “The cat’s den.”7 It wasn’t very far away. It was half a mile. Then the man heard a shout of “Hooray!” It was Robin.

“Robin!” said Maid Marian. “It’s, it’s you!” She whispered something in his ear.

Robin said, “Yes.” Can you guess what she said? She asked him to marry her. So they married, and lived happily ever after.8

The end

I haven’t read this story in quite a while, and I haven’t read it to the end in at least twenty years, because it had a touch of the prophecy in it: I actually asked my husband to marry me. I mean, way to go, Maid Marian, asking Robin to marry you: talk about ahead of your time?!

Though I have to say, I’d have been more interested in Robin’s gallant ‘merry man’. Taking the initiative to rescue Marian? A very, very, long rope in his pocket? (That’s what he said.) Pulling glass out of a window?! I’m thinking the merry man should be played by Chris Hemsworth and the story needs an alternative ending. You missed a trick there, Marian, sweetie, Robin did bugger all…

Has this story made you desperate to read my debut novel?! I’m not sure I can match the level of drama in Robin Hood, but I’ll try…

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So… January’s been a bundle of laughs?! #EyeRoll

Maybe my annus horribilis seems to have decided to extend itself into the financial year — that’d be till 5th April, then — or perhaps even the academic year: end of August! Wouldn’t that be WONDERFUL?

After today there are still three days to go in January. At the end of December I told 2024 to go eat a bag of dicks, and to be honest I’m worried that if I do the same to Jan Twenty-Five (yep, that’s his name)1 then he’ll run off to his siblings Feb, March, April, May and June — and the rest of the buggers — and snitch his guts up, causing the other months to hatch an even eviler plot against me.

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(I’m finding that personifying the months of the year helps me channel my energy into writing awkward grammar. So far so very good.)

Right, I feel a list coming on! Shall we take a look at this month’s contestants for Bundle That Gives Us the Most Laughs? In no particular order…

More knee pain, but this time it’s different. Except it’s not, because it’s almost exactly like the very first leg pain I had nearly ten years ago which started this whole shitty journey to Painsville. About mid-January it was really quite painful for a few days, then on Blue Monday (yeah, that old chestnut…) I woke up at four in the morning with pain SO bad we considered calling an ambulance just so I could grab the paramedics by the shoulders and scream GIVE ME ALL YOUR MORPHINE!

Instead I took =ahem= many, many paracetamol2 and waited till first light to see if the pain had subsided… it went from 93% on the Worst Pain You Can Imagine scale to about 65%, and that’s where it’s stayed.

The hideous knee pain is (as I feared) caused by my old friend Sciatica, hurrah! So I’m having to pay for weekly physio again. Which we can’t afford. Yay. The pain is also in the back of my thigh and calf, i.e. the sciatic nerve. I can barely get round the house, going up and down stairs is a nightmare, and I cannot walk the whole 10 mins into town to run errands (I have to drive and park as close as possible, still resulting in me hobbling by the time I return to the car due to the pain).

I also cannot walk the dog.

The dog is refusing to go on walks, which is great for saving my painful leg (see above) but not great for her health. Greyhounds are notoriously lazy, but nine-year-old Suki is a cut above the rest. If there was a Crufts category for Laziest Bugger of a Dog Who Pretends To Be Excited About Walking Then Gets Outside and Refuses To Move then she’d wipe the floor with the competition. Apart from sleeping ALL day (which greys do anyway), she’ll get onto the driveway (sometimes not even down the garden path, tbh) and walk anywhere between 10 yards and 50 yards before planting on the spot and going Nope, I am not walking ANY further! Home! NOW!

But can someone please explain to me how she is not putting on weight and still has muscles that Charles Atlas would be proud of? Her thighs are incredible. She is nothing short of a UNIT (38kg/83lb of solid muscle on a deep-chested, pointy-headed horse house on speed sticks). I think the weather has a lot to do with her reluctance to venture out; I swear to god she gets outside and goes, No one told me OUTSIDE was outside… What IS this??! Unacceptable!

I didn’t get a local job I applied for, which would have been perfect in terms of hours, location, what I have the most experience in, etc. The pay wouldn’t have been brilliant but it would at least have meant a regular amount of money coming in that I can rely on. Most part-time jobs unfortunately want you to work 2-3 full days a week, and I’d have to get a dog sitter (not a dog walker, see above) if I did that. Therefore the money I’m earning would go towards paying a dog sitter so what would be the point…?

I’m still looking, I’m still applying, it’s just that that one would have been perfect. I didn’t even get to round two, balls and bugger.

Also! Blue Monday! Our kitchen hob broke in half! A wooden chopping board accidentally fell over from an upright position and came down onto the ceramic hob and cracked it in half! It now needs to be replaced! I’m shouting with these excessive exclamation marks to try and mask just how feckin’ cheesed off I am! (I’d like to say it was a cheese board that came down just so I can add a punny layer to this story but it wasn’t! It was just a regular board!)

Send more funds to buy new hob! And an electrician! And the money to pay him/her!

=deep breath=

The weather has been seriously appalling, and we’re losing track of which storm is which and what each one is called. Two storms in a… week(?) with raging winds and driving rain have left our garden muddier than Glastonbury at the end of the festival. The British population is ready to up and move to calmer climates faster than David Cameron can say Brexit, anyone?

We had Storm Éowyn followed by Storm Herminia (my husband Keith said More like Storm Hernia, hur hur…) with a grand total of about, hmm… 30 minutes(?) between the two. Basically, they got their shifts mixed up and were bloody well double booked on the rota, weren’t they.

Climate change is real, and it’s battering us in the face with its big fat dose of a reality check and LOOK I DO EXIST shoutiness.

On a more (personally) troubling note, two days ago my elderly mother (she’s 90) came down with a virus that’s left her weak, bunged up and coughing severely. The real sting is that she was due to have her first cataracts operation TODAY, and she’s waited six months to have her eyes done. She can barely see at all and she’s still a carer for my father who’s 95 and has advanced vascular dementia. Despite being petrified (her words, though I think I agree with her, the idea of someone poking around my eyes while I’m awake is petrifying), she was looking forward to having it ‘done and dusted’ so her sight can improve.

Her virus symptoms are exactly like the bronchitis I had before Christmas so that doesn’t bode well: you have to stay COMPLETELY still for a cataracts op, and if you’re coughing that’s the last thing you’re able to do. By some miracle I managed to arrange a doctor’s home visit today (yes you read that right, a HOME VISIT) and we’ve got antibiotics on the way.

Poor Mum doesn’t deserve this. F*ck you, winter viruses. Leave the old and the vulnerable alone.

So in conclusion, CAN WE GET A BREAK HERE PLEASE, UNIVERSE? THANK YOU.

Come on Feb, if you think you’re hard enough…

Let’s have a chat in the comments — how’s January been for you? An evil git of a month or something more pleasant (the latter I hope)…

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Earlier this week I said I’d be concentrating my efforts on Substack and resting the blog for this year, and would see how it goes.

I’ve already found sticking to a regular Substack writing schedule is considerably easier than sticking to a regular blogging schedule (ex/current bloggers have you found this?).

But firstly: hello to all the new subscribers I’ve had this past week, and welcome! It’s really great to have you on board, and thank you to the other Substackers who have been recommending my newsletter. I truly appreciate it ❤️

Back to this post:

I’ve realised that a blog post is infinitely more work than a Substack newsletter. Once you’ve written your blog post, the work is only about half done. There’s all the SEO (search engine optimization) and Google-garble-whatever stuff to do. You need to create sharing-on-social media images and write and schedule the subscriber email (I always wrote my own, I never liked the somewhat limited automated ones). It all takes up SO much time. And if the blog post was all about the images (can you tell I’m old school…), then there was the editing of those to do as well. In Lightroom and then Photoshop. And uploading them to an image bank for safekeeping.

Urghh.

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(Does the thought of all that extra work make me lazy? Or just old? Or maybe a little… jaded?)

This year needs to be easier for me after my annus horribilis of 2024. I’m paring back, I’m simplifying things. And although I’m resting the blog in 2025, there are a few things I want to transfer from there to here (as mentioned in last week’s Substack about my reimagined newsletter name of Not Lamb Anymore).

First up: the monthly Thoughts on Things I’m Loving This Month. It’ll be published on the last Saturday or Sunday of the month (depending on how busy my week has been) and will concern a few things I’ve seen/heard/read/liked/watched/bought/baked*, etc. etc. and my garbled thoughts around them.

*baked… like I ever would 😂

This month I’m just going with the three categories of what I’ve watched, brilliant things I bought (or received) for Christmas and social media posts I loved. I might switch it up next month. Who knows.

Anyway – hope you like these lovely things I’ve been enjoying the past few weeks. Happy Sunday!

Disclosure: This newsletter includes some affiliate links — if you buy through these links, I receive a small percentage of the sale at no extra cost to you.

TV I loved

Traitors (BBC) — HOW good has the third UK series been? So many pop culture moments, most of which involved the people’s princess, Alexander. (Brits will always root for charisma, kindness and excellent manners, and I am gutted he didn’t win.) From ‘Sherber yur, wur, wur’ (if you know, you know), to ‘like a pony’. Plus, the faces he pulled in the death match. Also, I read somewhere that he was ‘Michael Fassbender if you drew him from memory’. Give that man his own TV show, stat.

Black Doves (Netflix) — We finally got round to watching this and we managed to stay wide awake through the whole thing (always a good sign for us)! Keira Knightley really suits a kick-ass role and I’ll watch Ben Wishaw in anything. 10/10 for its grippingness.

Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story (Sky and NOW) —I bawled. I adored Reeve as Superman when I was a kid, and even now his chiselled beauty makes me melt whenever I see him in that iconic outfit with the black hairstyle. It was inspiring and devastating in equal measures.

The Fall Guy (Prime) — great Saturday night popcorn movie. Great leads, great chemistry, fun plot and great stunts (of course).

Outlander S7 part 2 (MGM) — of which I am a massive fan anyway (SPOILER ALERT): what about that revelation at the very end?! Does that mean that (correct me if I’m wrong) William slept with his… niece?!! OMG.

Best Christmas presents I bought or received

£2.99 and free UK delivery for a high-quality 3D-printed personalised name keyring? With tons of colour options and a stylish font? I bought three, great for kids and adults.

The M&S Apothecary Warmth range is a very, very good Le Labo Santal 33 fragrance dupe. I use the hand/body lotion and shower gel with the original Santal 33 and wowsers, you can’t tell the difference.

Super smart, super stylish (and very warm) black ladies’ gloves. Long cuffs, gooood. Bought as a present, liked them so much I bought some for myself.

The hooded neck travel pillow that prevents a lolling head on the sofa during a quick (or long…) kip, plus the hoodie bit blocks out light. The surprise hit of Christmas 2024 in the Summers household. Yep, we’re officially old.

A very cool Middle Class Woman of a Certain Age mug (cockwomble TV chef Gregg Wallace reference there, we’re reclaiming the phrase).

The snuggliest, warmest faux fur blanket, I’ve been watching box sets from under it since Christmas.

Perfect for someone with advanced dementia when nothing else works: Snap card game. My dad is in the latter stages and struggles to even communicate with us now, yet somehow he could play this game and we were amazed that it held his attention. No mention of dementia or Alzheimer’s on the box so it’s very discreet. Highly recommended.

The loveliest personalised initial bracelet with lots of pretty colour options and an easy-to-put-on adjustable cord rather than a fiddly clasp.

The Life Skills Every 9-Year-Old Should Know book. I’ll just copy-paste the Amazon description here as I can’t improve on what they’ve put: ‘An essential book for tween boys and girls to unlock their secret superpowers and be successful, healthy, and happy’. Other ages are available.

Buy now, save for next Christmas: a personalised dog tree decoration. An incredible selection of dog breeds, from a Podenco to a Lagotto Romagnolo, and a Swedish Vallhund to a Affenpinscher. See our Suki and Riley (our boy that we lost in 2019) ones, below, on our tree last month 💖 (do note the Suki one wasn’t from this particular seller, we got hers the year before).

My favourite social media posts

‘Open the pod bay doors, HAL’, if HAL were a more realistic 2020s smart speaker (i.e. a smart-ass sonofabitch, as all smart speakers are IMO).

The most-skilled piece of HGV (truck) driving I have EVER seen. My jaw dropped.

A classic piece of British comedy: Yes, Prime Minister with the most spot-on sketch about the British press. Hilariously, scarily accurate.

Such a heartwarming reunion after the LA fires: one man finds his dog who he’d been separated from when he lost his house. If you haven’t seen it… MASCARA WARNING.

A video about Gen X being the best generation (I’ll always say we are). But if you (Zoomers) say otherwise, Gen X will pick a fight with you… we fear nothing.

How Brits react to snow (this isn’t an exaggeration, my husband Keith had a member of his team do EXACTLY this to him at work when we had just one inch of snow).

The best social commentary use of Sylvanian families I’ve ever seen. Also, extra points for the use of the phrase ‘everything shower’ and a gay dinosaur.

Someone filmed bats upside down and it looks more like a goth nightclub than a goth nightclub looks like a goth nightclub.

Let me know the best thing you’ve watched (or thoughts on what I talked about here), your favourite Christmas present (given or received) and/or the best thing you’ve seen on social media in the comments:

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Please consider a paid subscription (see the Pledge your support button at the end), it’ll only be activated once I’ve turned on the paid content feature. It’ll help me (quite literally) put food on the table. And to show my gratitude I’ll send you extra stuff!

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Some of you may have noticed that my Substack newsletter changed its name — albeit very subtly — last week.

Having started my blog in 2011, I still consider myself an OG blogger. The days of pre-TikTok, Instagram being just square images with pretty bokeh filters, and Google Friend Connect*. The vast majority of bloggers that I used to follow have lonnng since given up their blogs.

*if you know what this is then congrats, my friend — you are officially an OG too.

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And some, like me, clung to their blogs for dear life. I wouldn’t exactly say blogs were a sinking ship (because there’s nothing like owning your own platform), but when that ship is a money pit that costs more to run than it’s making, it’s time to make some tough decisions.

I’m docking the ship in the harbour for a little while.

Back in the day, Not Dressed As Lamb was my baby. It’s still there. It still exists. The original blog name, in case you were wondering, is a take on the expression ‘mutton dressed as lamb’. NDAL started life as a What-I-wore fashion blog on my thirty-ninth birthday, so the concept was the idea that I was approaching forty and therefore not young (‘not lamb’) anymore.

(Can you see where this is going?)

At first, I wanted to avoid doing the mutton-dressed-as-lamb thing, but the message soon evolved into Wear whatever you bloody well like and prompted a hashtag that’s still being used today on the regular.

Eighteen months in (at the beginning of 2013), I was getting enough sponsored brand work to warrant taking voluntary redundancy and going full-time with blogging. For several years I made more than a decent living out of it, and times were good.

But, times change. Dwindling numbers, dwindling visitors, the blogosphere becoming oversaturated with content creators, an absence of brands wanting to invest money in a blog and spiralling running costs (since the pandemic hit) have meant that the blog is now — unfortunately — an albatross around my neck. I absolutely cannot afford to keep it running, except maybe just to maintain its existence without adding new content (for now). The blog’s mailing list alone costs me nearly £700 a year to simply exist, even if I don’t send any emails. The whole thing costs four figures to run.

So I’m going to concentrate on Substack (as well as other projects, including writing my first novel which is nearly finished and going to be published this spring, fingers crossed) in 2025, and rest the blog for a year. This decision to concentrate on writing as my main source of income — and not work on brand collaborations — has meant that the fashion and style aspect that I was known for (hence the name Not Dressed As Lamb) has become irrelevant, sadly.

At the beginning of the year, I realised that I wasn’t trying to be not dressed as lamb anymore. (Dontcha just love a double negative?!) My Instagram handle is Not Lamb, and as the blog faded into the background I was starting to become known as Not Lamb more than Not Dressed As Lamb. And as I wrote above,

NDAL started life as a What-I-wore fashion blog on my thirty-ninth birthday, so the concept was the idea that I was approaching forty and therefore not young (‘not lamb’) anymore.

So, please allow me to introduce my (very subtly) rebranded Substack newsletter:

Not Lamb Anymore, by Catherine Summers.

And just to add an extra layer or two of over-explanation, Not Lamb Anymore has a double (triple?) meaning. I’m not young (or should I say young-young), meaning ‘lamb’, anymore. And I’m not Not Dressed As Lamb anymore. And I’m now concentrating on Substack so I’m not even Not Lamb anymore. But no one needs two ‘nots’, so I used a little poetic licence.

I’m sure you get it.

I’m continuing the premise of the newsletter being the ‘ramblings of a perimenopausal fifty-something Brit’. I intend to write stories, recount tales, talk about dogs, and observe stuff and write about it. I’m sure I’ll still write about style, but I can’t promise you I’ll be doing the traditional fashion blogger thing of outfit photos… I honestly think those days are over (if you’re sad about that then do know that I am too).

I may well transfer my Things I’m Loving This Month posts from the blog to here, as well as health and beauty posts and my favourite type of blog posts to write: Listicles, like A List of All My Celebrity Crushes, 1977 to Present and 9 Things I Tried Once and Will Never Try Again.

So let’s see how it goes. And as for paid content, I’ve been saying for MONTHS that I’m going to activate the extra content for paying subscribers ‘soon’. The reason I didn’t get round to it was because I wasn’t writing the blog OR my Substack consistently, and until that happened with the latter I wasn’t going to activate the paid content feature. I feel that can happen now that the blog is having a little rest and Substack is my full-time baby.

Here’s to a new chapter 🍻

(And speaking of new chapters, I’m thinking of making my debut novel something that’s accessible to paid subscribers before it’s officially published — I’m just not sure how that’ll work just yet. I can’t release chapters as they’re written because I skip around so much when writing. To make the earlier scenes fit in with the later ones I go back and tweak things, so constant edits are a thing.)

Anyway - watch this space…!

~ Let me know what you think of the new Not Lamb Anymore newsletter title.

~ Let me know what type of content you like to read.

~ Let me know if Tuesday is a good day for new content (as a subscriber I get nearly all my Substack newsletters on a Friday and sadly can’t read them all).

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Please consider a paid subscription (see the Pledge your support button at the end), it’ll only be activated once I’ve turned on the paid content feature. It’ll help me (quite literally) put food on the table. And to show my gratitude I’ll send you extra stuff!

OR if you can’t stretch to a subscription (I’m in that position myself so I get it), you can always — if you’d like to help out on a pay-as-you-go system — Buy Me a Coffee:

https://buymeacoffee.com/catherinesummers (thank you!)

Nearly every January we’re reminded that 'Blue Monday' is about to roll around —

— the third Monday of the month is (allegedly!) the most depressing day of the year. For 2025, it's worth making a note in your diaries that Blue Monday will fall on 20th January 2025. Next Monday, in other words.

SCRATCH THAT…!

(Cue sounds of a car coming to a screeching halt. Or a needle scraping off a playing record.) What I meant to say was, I CALL BULLSHIT. I know I’m drawing attention to its attention-seeking self, like a Twitter troll on a rampage, but seriously — forget all this ‘most depressing day of the year’ nonsense.

Who wants to be told they’re going to be miserable?

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(Going off on a slight tangent here, but while writing this I discovered a way to describe ‘attention-seeking’ on the thesaurus I use — the very fabulous wordhippo.com which I highly recommend for writers — I typed it in and one of the context suggestions was “Showing low self-esteem and needing approval from others to validate one's life”. How perfectly does that describe internet trolls? Take that, Katie Hopkins, you lousy garbage gremlin.)

Anyway, I digress.

Southern Hemisphere readers: I will admit I’m envious of you being in the middle of summer. Since the longest day here in the Northern Hemisphere (just before Christmas), I’ve been obsessively checking the sunset time every day, making a mental note of how much longer the day is from one day to the next. It’s no secret I don’t ‘do’ winter. You can keep your pumpkin spice and falling leaves and =horror of horrors= snow. Without looking, I think the official sunset time for South West England here should be… 16:29 today? (There’s no sun — as if, lol! — so I can’t exactly cheat by looking out the window.)

I’ve checked: it’s 16:33.

(That’s actually way out for me and my daylight-obsessive self. Must do better.)

By Monday (the blue one), sunset will be 16:44 (isn’t THIS interesting reading?!), and so if sunset is roughly eleven minutes later every week, then by the end of February it should be about…

…one hour and a bit later, so let’s say 17:55, or five to six. Then the clocks change at the end of March, so only another four and a half-ish weeks and you can add the hour we add for a month plus the daylight-saving hour and BOOM IT’S TIME FOR G&Ts ON THE DECK IN THE GARDEN BECAUSE THE SUN WON’T SET TILL EIGHT.

Still with me?

Blue Monday is, they say, the worst day of the year because it’s when:

• The weather is bad

• Debt level is high

• Christmas is long-gone

• New Year's resolutions have been broken

• Motivational levels are low

I’m not exactly sure, but I reckon your eyes are rolling as much as mine.

Truthfully, we should just agree to be thankful that there’ll be only…

Twenty-five days till Valentine’s Day!

Sixty-nine days till Mother’s Day!

Three months till Easter Sunday!

— in other words, not long till advertisers ram yet more reasons to spend money unnecessarily down our throats. What unbridled joy!

Sarcasm aside (can you tell we don’t do 14th Feb or Mother’s Day in our house…), I guess what I’m saying is, DON’T BUY INTO BLUE MONDAY.

Don’t let advertisers or marketers tell you to be miserable (if I see just ONE email from a brand talking about buying stuff I don’t need from them because, You know, Blue Monday, then bollocks to them, I’ll unsubscribe and never have to think abut their wares again). There’s enough misery going on in the world right now, so I guess what I’m saying is: let’s reclaim the third Monday in January every year and cheer the hell up in whatever tiny way we can.

I’m making anti-Blue Monday plans. I think I’ll dye my hair pink (again). I’ll watch Cunk on Life (but not while I’m eating because I always end up choking from laughing too much at anything involving Philomena Cunk). I’ll wear orange or pink or red or yellow — or maybe all of them all at once. I might rearrange stuff in the house and move furniture or hang pictures or spray paint some ornaments neon pink… because Blue Monday.

Interesting fact: Blue Monday was ‘calculated’ with an equation, where W = weather, D = debt, d = monthly salary, T = time since Christmas, Q = time since the failure of New Year's resolutions, M = low motivational levels, and Na = the feeling of a need to take action:

And if the absurdity of the existence of a literal equation that calculates happiness (or lack of) doesn’t make you laugh, then can I recommend Philomena Cunk anyway…?

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Thanks for reading my rantings — that’s the third week in a row where I’ve ranted about happiness and/or sadness (or both). I’m getting good at moaning. Just slap my thigh and call me Victor Meldrew.

Next week? I might discuss changing my online name and ask what you’d like reading about here, as it might be time to haul my blog’s ass out of the doldrums and get it settled in with the good people of Substack once and for all…

Like what I wrote? Please click the Like ❤️ button to make this more visible to non-subscribers (even better leave a comment and let’s get chatting!), thank you so much x

P.S. It is said that roughly twenty years ago, a press release commissioned (commissioned?!) by Wall's Ice Cream calculated the happiest day of the year to be the day closest to Midsummer in the Northern Hemisphere (21st to 24th June). I mean, no shit, Sherlock: I could have told them that, FFS. And I’d have accepted payment in ice cream, no need for any friggin’ research, thanks very much.

One week into 2025, fifty-one to go, and I’m still in one piece.

Well, I say in one piece: that’s apart from a very painful shoulder and neck (caused by the coughing from my bronchitis I had the good fortune to enjoy at the end of last year). But the positive to take away was that I got a last-minute appointment with my physio today to ease it, so let’s say I am ON IT when it comes to getting things sorted. There will not be another shitshow like last year, not on my watch…

2024 was brutal

My 2024 summary — a Substack post written as a list of bullet points with all the things that contributed to my annus horribilis — highlighted just how much awful, crappy stuff happened to me, my husband and our family last year.

While I can’t predict what will happen in 2025 (and have little to no control over outside influences!), I’m choosing happiness this Tuesday. Which I have now renamed Choose-Day1. While I don’t make New Year’s resolutions (it’s a rare thing for people to do nowadays, don’t you think?), I’m choosing to be more mindful of my reaction to things.

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There’s the old saying (which probably started out as a meme as so many things do these days):

You can’t control what happens to you, but you can control your reaction to it.

Corny as hell, but hey: after last year I like corny. I’m looking for corny in my life2.

However, and here’s the caveat I’m passing onto my willpower, that’s easier said than done. Having spent twelve months feeling that, rather than getting up again after being kicked to the ground, I was kicked to the ground every time I got up again. And when you feel like that, it’s sooooo hard to find the motivation.

I’m not gonna say it’ll be easy. I will have to remind myself that having a CHOICE about my reaction to things is a luxury that I’ll most certainly always have. It’s a privilege to have a roof over my head, access to the internet, food to eat and access to free healthcare. (Told you — corny.) I will have to start appreciating life for the good things I DO have.

Because if I don’t… well, I’ll just have another miserable year, won’t I?

So what am I choosing this Choose-Day? Writing this post and thinking about these things reminded me of a social media post from a few years ago I copied and pasted into a little note on my phone. It says it in a better way than anything I could come up with, so I’ll just paste it here.

How to take care of your body, mind and soul

Give yourself six months to get into the habit of practising radical self-care and self-love:

Delete the apps.

Block the numbers.

Wake up earlier.

Get dressed up even though you're not going anywhere.

Eat healthier.

Journal.

Have spa days.

Exercise.

This is your ONLY life.

Do what you can to love and enjoy every aspect of it.

No more waiting.

Be the person you've always wanted to be.

This will not be like the other times, this time you will change, you will stick to habits, and you will see results.

I believe in you.

~ @joannarahier (I can’t find that Instagram anymore so here’s a link to the Joanna Rahier website so she gets some sort of credit from me.)

So I can choose to delete the apps, wake up earlier (and for me: go to bed earlier too!), get dressed up, exercise, be the person I've always wanted to be.

Because if I don’t — meaning if I have another year like last year — I’ll be in an even worse mess by the time January 2026 rolls around. Not gonna happen.

I choose to finish my first novel and get it published and start my second book.

I choose to celebrate the birth of two great niece(s)/nephew(s) that one of my nieces and one of my nephews are expecting.

I choose to enjoy the wedding of our friends’ daughter in August we have coming up.

I choose to be more proactive about where my career is going and make tough financial decisions.

I choose to look after my body better (in all ways).

I choose to retile the splashback in the kitchen which has been left far too long (2025 is the year it WILL get done).

I think I found the corny in my life I was looking for: it’s right here in this post. That’s a good start.

It’s Choose-Day. What are YOU choosing from Joanna’s list? Or has it inspired you to choose something of your own? Get sharing your thoughts with a comment…

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Please click the Like ❤️ button to make it more visible to non-subscribers (even better leave a comment and let’s get chatting!), thank you so much x

P.S. Shout out to the AI image generator for giving my girl a standard number of limbs and a standard number of digits in the lead image, though don’t look too closely at the index finger of the left hand, which looks more like a thumb. Maybe the generator had a crappy 2024 too, you never know.

To rehash the late, great Queen Elizabeth’s words of 1992,

2024 is not a year on which I shall look back with consummate joy. It was, unfortunately, my ‘annus horribilis’.

Without wanting to end the year on a downer (apologies in advance, but I thought I’d get Christmas out of the way before unleashing anything resembling an avalanche of woe, though I shall try to make it as lighthearted as possible), I’m going to put this year to bed by writing it away and out of my system.

Trigger warning: I’m discussing dementia and elderly parents, so if this might upset you then maybe skip this post… if that’s the case I’m so sorry you’re having to deal with it too :(

Where to start? My family and I had an annus horribilis before, in 1990. Thirty-four years ago, the year I turned eighteen, we suffered a truly abominable year. I won’t go into the minutiae of everything that happened, only that it involved the horrifically premature, unexpected (and separate) loss of three young family members/friends and one family cancer diagnosis, the latter thankfully beaten.

Fast forward to the end of 2024, and I feel drained and fed up — only that this time, I don’t have youthful energy on my side. I’m fifty-two, and I feel fifty-two. I’m nearly three times as old as I was back then. Too many times over the last twelve months I’ve felt like my brain and my body were, quite simply, broken.

I am going to end this post on a positive note (or three), however — if I don’t, then I feel like this year will have won, and I’m not standing for that — but let’s get the negatives out of the way first, shall we?

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Everything went tits up

Here are some of the things that contributed to our annus horribilis — some serious, some trivial (but still adding to the general urghh that was 2024). In no particular order, they were…

• My ongoing leg and foot pain turning into full-blown sciatica, producing a level of pain I have never experienced before

• An almost total loss of income from my work as a blogger/content creator

• Money worries so bad we had to borrow money just to buy food and pay for the dog’s upkeep and my own physiotherapy (so I could at least function on a basic level)

• The sudden, unexpected loss of a (my husband’s) close lifelong friend

• Two other shocking, premature losses of people close to other family members

• My eldest sister and brother-in-law visiting from Australia for the first time in six years, only to contract Covid and spend the first two of their six-week visit in isolation

• The whole family then contracting Covid and extending the isolation period even further

• Arguing horribly with my husband (when we’re not a couple that argues) over his directorship of a non-profit company that turned sour and stressful to the point of are we going to have to sell a kidney to get ourselves out of this

• Falling over in the street, ripping open my elbow and leaving me with a very sensitive, ‘don’t let me bang it because it’s always excrutiating’ appendage (and a nasty scar the length of an eyebrow)

• My 90-year-old mother having a serious fall at home two days after my own fall and being hospitalised, leaving the family to organise an emergency temporary care home placement for my father

• Dealing with the emotional trauma of my 95-year-old father (who has vascular dementia) entering end-of-life care after contracting Covid in the spring and pneumonia in the summer and being hospitalised both times

• Dealing with my mother who is struggling to cope emotionally with my father

• Waiting for an ambulance (one of a few times we’ve called for one) and cradling my father in my arms, only to think he had actually passed away at one point

• My husband and I contracting flu (badly) twice in the space of six weeks this autumn/winter despite having paid to have flu jabs — and finding out mine was actually bronchitis (it still hasn’t completely gone away)

• Discovering a rat problem in our garden and having to pay for pest control

• Realising that the only type of paid work I am offered (my work as a creator/influencer that I’ve been doing for the last eleven or twelve years) brings me absolutely no joy whatsoever and I’d rather be doing so many other things to earn a living

• Continuing to cope with perimenopause and all its joyful symptoms, including massive weight gain, lethargy, brain fog and joint pain

• A whole year of the worst weather Britain has possibly ever unleashed continually on its inhabitants including two major storms, a summer devoid of good weather and snow in November

• England losing in the final of the football Euros for the second tournament in a row

• … and a few other things that are too personal/that involve other people that I can’t outline here

There are probably more things, I’ve just forgotten them among the plethora of woefulness I’ve described. As I was writing the list I kept thinking Oh my god I’d almost forgotten about x, y and even z…, so who knows what else I’ve omitted.

For anyone with a relative, partner or friend with dementia, you will know what a horribly cruel, unrelenting disease it is. It is draining on those it leaves in its wake. I’m so sad to think that this will almost certainly have been my father’s last Christmas. We honestly thought he’d already had his last in 2023, the fact that he’s still here two days before the end of the year is something of a miracle. I grew up in a very loving, very happy family and to see my parents as they are now is heartbreaking. Thankfully I have a wonderful extended family who all do so much to support and help each other, and that’s a blessing I know not everyone in the same situation as me is lucky enough to have.

Going forward into 2025 will be hard. It will start, sadly, with ‘a black cloud of knowing’ over us. Knowing that there’s a 99 per cent certainty of losing a parent (and when they are 90 and 95, possibly both) in the year ahead doesn’t exactly bring on the joys of a new year. But this has been a long time coming and we take each day as it comes. I’m okay. We’ll get through it.

The positives

There have been some tiny glimmers of hope this year.

My husband’s directorship did not get us into the trouble we thought it would, and, thank god, it is now in the final stages of being handed over to another party for good. All four of our kidneys are safely intact.

I’ve decided what I want to do in terms of a change of career. I started out as a freelance (fashion) blogger in the days when blogging was the content creation of choice, and to be fair I made a pretty decent living out of it. However, the combination of the pandemic, the economic downturn and the rise of the ‘influencer’ and social media platforms has meant that the jobs I used to be offered are either non-existent or the fees offered are (and I’m not exaggerating when I say this) about 10 or 20 per cent of what I used to charge six or seven years ago. And that’s all sorts of depressing when you consider I was told back then I was undercharging.

I can’t live off what I’m earning now, and the jobs I am offered (nine times out of ten it’s video content that they want me to appear in which is a hard No thanks) hold zero appeal to me. The very last thing I want to do is make videos when all I want to do is write.

(Thank god for Substack, eh?!)

I have almost no interest in clothes anymore, and that’s perfectly okay with me. When the clothes you love no longer fit you and you can’t afford to go out anywhere to actually wear anything of any merit there’s little joy to be had in putting together ‘cute outfits’.

“Didn’t feel cute, won’t delete later because I didn’t take any photos in the first place.”

~ Me, 2024.

The BIG news — the thing that makes me super happy — is that I’ve almost finished writing the first draft of my debut novel. It has been nothing short of a joy to sit down at my laptop to create characters and write stories about them every day. It may appear that I dropped off the face of the blogging and social media earth in the latter part of this year, but I haven’t been idle. Between taking care of my parents, dealing with shit (as described above) and writing my novel, I have been working — and stressing — my guts out.

I last changed careers back in 2013 when I decided to try blogging full-time, and despite my reservations about not being in a nine-to-five I somehow made a decent success of it (not enough to become a viral phenomenon, suiting me just fine, but enough to live a comfortable lifestyle without money worries). I’ve enjoyed writing my novel so much that I already have the idea for two sequels and a fourth, stand-alone book. If someone could wave a magic wand and ask me what I want to do for a job without having to worry about being paid enough or how it’s going to work, then I’d say Fiction writer, please!

So, as they say in the annals of the blogosphere, Watch this space. The end of the year has given me a little clarity, and it was almost as if I needed to get this year done and out of the way for me to go, Right, that shit is done with, let’s move forward with the New Year. I can’t say when the novel will be out — my goal is Spring 2025 — but I can say that if you’re a woman of a certain age1, Generation X or a lover of a good romcom then it’s definitely for you. It’s brimming with Gen X references, nineties nostalgia and romance as well as a healthy (healthy? oh, the irony…) dose of menopause and middle-age topics. But I’ve found out writing your first novel comes with a MASSIVE learning curve, and unlike a blog there’s no going back to edit and tweak once it’s published.

It’s shit-ass scary soiling-my-pants stuff, but I’m welcoming the change.

Finally, in the ‘Things that are good’ domain, one of my nephews and one of my nieces are expecting babies in 2025, so that’ll be my fifth and sixth great niece/nephew. Wonderful news.

However… I need sleep. I also need to raise my fitness levels. My morning walks up the hill have all but stopped due to sciatic pain and bronchitis (I’m still breathless even on our leisurely dog walks). Sleepless nights from back pain, constant coughing or straightforward worry have caused me to favour an extra hour in bed instead for most of the year. I’ll still need to deal with whatever is going to happen with one or more parents in 2025, so a year devoid of stress isn’t on the cards for me.

So, sayonara 2024. I can’t say it’s been a pleasure… you’ve been an absolute jizz gremlin. Go eat a bag of dicks, you mood-hoovering POS. Move out of the way, 2025 is coming through and I need to gird my loins all over again.

How’s your year been? Please do share some positive stories with me, I need to hear them…!

P.S. In case you’re wondering, the blog isn’t necessarily being retired, though never say never. It costs me four figures a year to run it, and it’s becoming clear that this is financially unsustainable unless I win the lottery and can keep it going for the sheer hilarity of looking back on my outfit shoot bloopers — and general outfit choices — in years to come. Substack is going to be the way forward. Tough decisions need to be made 🤔

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Last week I fell over in the street. Not just a trip or a stumble. I went flying.

Face down, flat on the floor, arms outstretched. SPOILER ALERT: I’m fine, as in, “nothing broken, no lasting damage” fine. What did happen, however (while I was lying prostrate on the hard pavement), was my transition into official old age.

(Also, WARNING: this article contains a description of a nasty injury. If you actually like mild blood ‘n’ guts descriptions, read on, because this is for you.)

I’m writing this with my arm in a bandage covering a large dressing on my elbow, my shredded palms having only just healed over from what looked like the aftermath of a fight with a cheese grater. Last week I was coming back from walking the dog (Suki is a very large, very strong 37 kg/82 lb greyhound), and although she doesn’t generally pull on the lead, she gets excited when we’re nearing home. When we reach the upward slope of our driveway (it’s on private land shared by eight homes so it’s like a mini car park) she’s effectively dragging me up due to her excitement over the post-walk snack she knows she’s getting at the other end. If I’m tired I quite like her giving me a hand up the small hill, like being a kid and you ask your mum to take your hand and drag you along because I’m soooo tirrrrrred, Mahhhm, helllllp meeee.

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Except this time, I tripped on the kerb. Normally you’d stumble forward and save yourself, maybe even coming down on your hands and knees if you’re (un)lucky. But when you’ve got your hand looped inside a dog lead that’s taut and you’re being pulled by a strong, excited dog who is capable of a scary 40 mph at top speed, you don’t stumble. You don’t “trip”. You have your feet taking out from under you as she pulls you through the air like a middle-aged Superman. All my weight came down hard on my palms and my right elbow. I barely have any recollection of quite how or why I tripped; it was the classic “it happened so fast” scenario.

Now, I would normally say I was left lying on the cold, hard pavement, but it was not (a) cold (day). It was one of the only sunny days last week warm enough for a long-sleeved T-shirt that I had (with hindsight) stupidly pushed up and past my elbows. In other words, my arms were completely unprotected. If it had happened on a day like today, I would have been wearing at least a couple of layers, maybe a hoodie and a light jacket. When I hit (scraped along) the ground, quite a lot of the pavement decided it would embed itself within me, much as I’d left much of my skin and blood on it.

The unsympathetic dog

And just to paint an even more elaborate picture for you, my darling dog did not come over and lick me or offer any sort of sympathy. No, she is a diva of the highest order and kept the lead taut, looking back at me with a look on her face that said, “What the hell are you doing down there? Can we just get home already?”. So much so that, with my arms outstretched and my hand still in the loop of the lead (and my palms in a tremendous amount of pain), I had to yank her back towards me to gain some slack on the lead to get some leverage and stand up.

(Greyhound owners reading this will know that there is NOTHING on earth harder to move than a grey that doesn’t want to go that way. I swear their legs turn to lead, driven into the ground and rooted there for all eternity — or at least until they’ve decided where they want to go next.)

I couldn’t let her go because 1) our neighbour owns a cat who regularly patrols the driveway, and Suki (the ex-racer that she is) will go after it like a canine possessed; and 2) she has zero road sense or spacial awareness, so if a person/child was walking around or a car was coming out the driveway she’d still head for her own house as the crow flies, mowing down anything in her path — or get mown down herself.

No one came to help

And herein lies the rub: It was at this point that I thought, Is no one around? Did no one see me fall? Can anyone come and help me? And those thoughts were swiftly followed by, Oh my god I’m officially old. I am on the ground and I need help.

I WANTED someone to come rushing over, saying Are you okay? Can I help you, old woman?

(Honestly I wouldn’t have minded being called an old woman if a young person came along at that point. I was in so much pain they could have called me Betty White for all I cared.)

But would you believe it: I was outside my house, in a residential street just off a main road, and NO ONE saw me. Not one person was around (I looked). No one was walking up the road. If any of my neighbours were in their house they still wouldn’t have seen me because the pavement is quite a bit lower than our driveway and houses and I was hidden by a fence. No cars turned into our road to drive past and see me go over or see me lying face down on the ground. And no one driving on the main road would have seen me because I would have been hidden by the parked cars. What were the chances??

When we trip in the street when we’re young, we’d rather break our legs and crawl home rather than have anyone see us. It would have been mortifying if I’d done this aged 18 or so. But there I was, picking myself up off the pavement, dog desperate to get into the house, blood pouring out of my elbow and palms stinging like a bitch. I staggered up the driveway, opened the front door to let Suki in and then just dropped everything in the hallway. Thankfully we have a downstairs loo so I sat on the toilet where I could reach the sink and alternated putting my elbow and palms underneath the cold running water.

It was at this point that the pain started, as did the shock… I think to get yourself home or to wherever you need to be to be safe, adrenaline kicks in and you just drag yourself there. Once you’re effectively safe the reality dawns on you. My hands started shaking as I tried to negotiate getting my elbow and my hands under the water, all the while trying not to think about the stinging pain.

At this point I will cut a long sob story short and say that I called my husband (whose work is five minutes up the road thank goodness) and, bless him, he was able to come straight home and take me to the MIU (Minor Injuries Unit) at our local hospital. Unfortunately it was shut that afternoon due to staff shortages (anyone my age or older remember early closing of shops on a Wednesday afternoon? It reminded me of that, fuckin’ boo) so I went back next morning and got it seen to. I’d soaked my elbow in salt water the previous evening and then put wet kitchen towel on it and wrapped it in cling film to keep it wet overnight — I was teacher’s pet and did all the right things, apparently. Go me.

Thankfully the skin on my elbow wasn’t painful (fun fact: pinch the skin on your elbow as hard as you like, it won’t hurt) and the nurse got the tweezers out to pick out all the big black bits of pavement from the wound. But 48 hours later it reeeeally started hurting, and has hurt like buggery for the week or so since. However, I’m on the mend, and in hindsight it was a good thing that Suki was pulling: I think it was only because the lead was taut (and so, therefore, was my arm) that I didn’t try to break my fall with my wrists, because I may well be in double plaster casts by now.

Back to the point about old age

Coming back round to the old age point, I still maintain that I wished someone had seen me. Whether they’d seen me go over or seen me afterwards and just lying on the ground, I soooooo wanted someone to come running along and say, Can I help you, are you okay?? And I would have mopped up the attention, played my best Ouch my back hurts/ouch my legs hurt/ouch my arms and hands hurt card and gone with it. I’d forgotten to mention that I hit the ground so hard my glasses came off my face and the frame is now scratched where it hit the ground, but the lenses are fine — as was my face. Sadly my eternity ring is a little scratched too but good news is it’s not missing any stones.

And check out my phone (cover):

The whole thing was bizarre. I wasn’t embarrassed about falling over. At all. This was the first time I can remember falling over in public since… I was a kid? I don’t actually remember doing it as an adult. You live in fear of tripping and someone seeing you, then you reach a certain age and you WANT the help, the sympathy, the nurturing from someone younger than you. I’ve gone full swing to being a kid again, devoid of embarrassment.

Furthermore, I’ve had two more appointments to get the dressing on my elbow changed and have three more booked. I’ve quite enjoyed the sympathy I’ve had from the medical staff to whom I’ve recounted the story… I always follow it up with a “Do you want to see a picture of the fresh wound?” question, because so far everyone who’s seen it has recoiled in horror due it being “so much worse” than what they expected. I recounted the sorry tale to my family WhatsApp group, and one of my nieces actually said,

Thanks, family.

Second, and last, fun fact: I was wearing white trousers when this happened. Now, you’d think that they’d have been ripped to bits and filthy at the knees, wouldn’t you? Incredibly, they weren’t. Apart from a few drops of blood from my elbow, there wasn’t a mark on them. Not even a dirty smudge from the pavement.

And as each day goes by and I’m desperate to itch my wound, I can’t help thinking about my attitude towards this fall.

I’m not sure how old this makes me exactly. Maybe I’m on the cusp of old age? I’m totally at peace with it, so it’s all good.

I’m already picking out fancy walking canes. Even just to have to wave in the air so I can be seen next time I go flying, especially because I’ll have attached a flag that has HELP ME painted on it. I’m not taking any chances.

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How many articles have you read that encourage you to have a closet clearout/wardrobe refresh every year?

(Weirdly I received yet another one in a newsletter I subscribe to while I was writing this post. Someone obviously heard my furious keyboard tapping coming from the shadow of my chairdrobe.)

Decluttering has been a big thing ever since Marie Kondo introduced us to the KonMari Method of decluttering and uttered those (now famous) words, “Does it spark joy?” – and to be honest, I’m a fan. I always feel better when I have a good clear out at home, and the results are worth every minute of decluttering, decisions and *ahem* dust.

(I’m even working towards Swedish death cleaning my house. My progress is slow but steady; I’m aiming to finish by the age of 80. I figured 28 years should be enough time to get it done.)

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So to address this uncluttered phenomenon: yes, I regularly go through my wardrobe and clear out clothes that I know I won’t wear anymore, for whatever reason. They get donated or put into the car boot sale/online selling pile (which reminds me, I have to get round to doing both of those things.)

However, I’m not entirely comfortable with the advice that tells us that the way to declutter your wardrobe is to judge every item on whether it’s been worn in the last year. Or even more extreme, the last six months.

What the WHAT now?! If I haven’t worn something in the last six months I should just get rid of it?? Seriously?

Any Brit will know that items in their summer wardrobe don’t get much of an outing and, if you take this year as an example, warmer temperatures have only really started appearing in the last couple of weeks or so. (Don’t get me started on the fact that the shops are stocking Autumn-Winter lines already, WTF.) Therefore I have a ton of summer clothes (well, dresses) that I still love and of course haven’t worn since last year or maybe even the year before, because we just don’t get enough hot summer days to wear a different summer dress every day.

But more than that, I can’t fit into the majority of my wardrobe right now. I have SO many clothes that I absolutely ADORE – I mean I love them like you’d love a beautiful oil painting or a stunning sculpture you have as part of your home décor – but they don’t fit me. Still, here’s the rub (much like my thighs experience on a daily basis, little joke for you there): I want to wear them. But just because they don’t fit me now doesn’t mean they won’t fit me ever.

And the fact that I love these clothes so much is why purging the clothes that no longer fit will NOT make me feel better. In fact, it would make me far MORE miserable and sad to get rid of them than it does to have them in the wardrobe and not be able to wear them. And I don’t think it’s fair to be indirectly berated by these draconian decluttering articles that tell me my life would be SO much better if only I had a full-blown purge and tossed them out.

I’m telling you, I would PINE for them. Like a child who’s been told their cherished, threadbare muslin needs to be thrown out. Or a dog whose favourite toy is so old and chewed up that it’s barely recognisable as a rabbit (“A rabbit? I thought it was a platypus…”) – you can’t get rid of it, can you? It would break its heart. Older people often love their trinkets that are so old-fashioned that the temptation to say “Mum, are you sure you want to keep that horse ornament with the brass horseshoes on it?” is not a wise one to succumb to. Don’t go there. Leave the ornaments be.

In the same way, leave me and my wardrobe alone, you decluttering freaks.

I’m not disillusioned, oh no

Now, before anyone says “Oh but you should just accept your size and move on!” – can I just say that yes, I’m firmly in the body size acceptance camp. I have fully embraced the fact that at the age of 52, I’ll likely never be a size 8 again and nor do I want to be. My weight gain in recent years is not purely down to “just middle age”, perimenopause or anything age or metabolism-related. I’ve had a huge number of health problems lately, all of which have resulted in me being almost totally unable to walk around the house, let alone anything resembling (even gentle) exercise.

Sciatica pain is one of the most debilitating conditions to have when you’re a mostly healthy person, and as someone who enjoys their food it means I ended up being stressed, tired and lethargic – and gaining weight at a scary rate. It’s not a case of “Ugh I’ve put on 10lb/5kg” (oh, the poor sweet child who cries that)… I am 48lb/22kg/3.5 stone heavier than I was before all the pain started three years ago. (And I could be heavier than that, I haven’t weighed myself in a while.) So right now, even my previously bigger clothes are now way too small for me.

But that’s perfectly okay. I’m not losing sleep over the clothes issue. But what I AM concerned about is my health. The weight gain does have to be addressed if I don’t want an increased risk of heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, osteoarthritis (which my mother suffers from and my joints are pretty painful already) or any other weight-related issues that can have a severely detrimental effect on my health. My goal is, therefore, to improve my health and get back to a reasonable (i.e. healthy) weight, and the first stop has been physiotherapy. I’ve been having regular physio for several months and can now finally feel like I can move again without pain.

That goal should mean that I get fitter and trimmer and be able to do the things I love doing once more: running, hiking, weight training, dancing round the kitchen without collapsing before You Should Be Dancing by the Bee Gees has even finished. I was on a trampoline with my six-year-old great niece the other weekend and I could barely do more than a couple of bounces before my knee went Er, NOPE?! That needs to change; I’m intending to get back on that trampoline and bounce my middle-aged toosh into next week before the summer is over.

I am not a minimalist and never will be

I’ve already purged the teeny-tiny size 8 clothes that I know I’ll never, ever get back into (or at least earmarked them for selling). The clothes I want to wear are the ones I was wearing just a couple of years ago, the ones I still love and adore and want to wear again. I also want to be able to wear my collection of vintage shirts and dresses.

So if I were to take the advice of some of these articles that tell you to purge your wardrobe of anything you haven’t worn in six months or a year, then to be honest I’d have nothing left that brings me joy. I am not a minimalist. I like to be organised and have everything incredibly tidy, spick and span – but a minimalist I am not.

It would break my heart to say goodbye to my flared trouser pink corduroy jumpsuit or my plunge neck terracotta jumpsuit. I’m not ready to let go of my pink-striped vintage DVF jumpsuit (over my dead body). In other words, I just want to wear all my jumpsuits again 😉 – if my house were burning down I’d 100% be going back in to save them. Them AND the dresses.

(Well maybe not really, but you get my point. Though I might go back for the vintage striped one, I mean look just how FABULOUS it is…)

I do know that decluttering is key

I’m not denying that decluttering has a therapeutic effect – it does. I know only too well that having a messy, cluttered home results in my own irritation and lack of productivity. I get angry with such small, trivial things when the house is a mess. My wardrobe is super-organised and tidy; even my socks and pants are rolled up beautifully in my drawers à la Marie Kondo… she’d be so impressed. (I’ve thought about DM-ing her a photo of my underwear drawer like a proud panties parent, but that might get me blocked.)

My wardrobe is just… fuller than it should be. It still has many, many items that I can’t wear, but want to. (I say “it” like it’s singular – I have three double wardrobes plus a rail for protected occasion wear and winter coats in the loft. I am not embarrassed.) I love looking at these items and remembering the fabulous outfits they created. There are beautiful vintage pieces that I could NEVER part with. Why would I want to? They won’t date, they’re dated already as I like to say. And I have items that are 10, 12, heck, even 15 years old that I’m going to hang on to because good lord, I made some great purchasing decisions back in the day. Go 30 and 40-something me.

But I DO keep these too-small-but-dearly-loved items separate and slightly to one side, knowing that they’re there and waiting for my fitness levels to return. Because I can do both: the decluttering of everyday stuff that’s worn out/not doing me any favours/not getting me excited PLUS the keeping of certain, beautiful pieces that I fully intend to fit into at some point.

In my eyes, if I give up on those pieces then I’ve given up on looking after my body. And if I do get fit and my body shape doesn’t change, then so be it… but I’ll be healthy. I’ll be strong. Strong enough to build a giant glass-fronted cabinet (like the V&A costume collection, oh yeah) for those treasured pieces. They can be displayed and gazed at from time to time without ever being worn ever again.

Just watch me.

Do you think we should purge our wardrobes every 6-12 months and get rid of anything we haven’t worn in that time, without exception? Or are you like me and far too fond of certain pieces to just let them go even if they haven’t been worn…?

If you enjoyed this post then please click the Like ❤️ button to make it more visible to non-subscribers (even better leave a comment!), thank you so much x

Leave a comment

I’m a self-employed writer and blogger, and I hope you agree with my belief that all creative work should be paid. I’ve been happily writing my blog for free for 13 years (thankfully brand sponsorship just about keeps it afloat) but if you think my Substack content is worthy of - and you’re able to afford - a paid subscription*, then my food cupboard, mortgage provider and I will be very grateful.

Either way please like, comment and share the heck out of my content if you can, it’s all appreciated. Thank you so much for your support, whatever form it takes!

*When I turn this feature on, which I’m planning to do soon for some bonus content