On top of that, I am in the final stretch of preparing for my very first trade stand at Burghley Horse Trials next week. You'll find me in the Lifestyle Pavilion, do come and say hello if you're there. If you'd told me a year ago that Ask Charlie would have its own stand at Burghley, I don't think I'd have quite believed you. It's a huge, brilliant thing and it also means lists on top of lists. Stock, signage, banners, what on earth to wear, whether I've ordered enough of everything, whether I've ordered too much of everything. That particular flavour of excitement that sits right next door to overwhelm. I’m staying in our Lorry for the first time so making sure that’s got everything I need to be comfortable for the time I’m there.

So yes, a lot on my plate right now. And in the past, I know exactly how I would have handled a week like this. I would have run on adrenaline said yes to everything, and reached for sugar the second things felt too much, a stress that gave me a lift for twenty minutes and then dropped me flat on the floor, feeling worse than when I started. It was a cycle I knew all too well, and one I didn't really believe I could change.

But something has shifted for me this summer, and I wanted to share it with you because I think it matters more than another back-to-school list ever could. I've made a proper lifestyle change, really paying attention to what I'm eating, and bringing strength training into my week and I've been working alongside a coach, Alex, who has made a genuinely massive difference to how I feel. Not just physically, though that's real too, but in how I'm able to hold everything that life throws at me.

The honest truth is, I am just as busy as I have ever been. Possibly busier. But I am not falling apart under it in the way I used to. I'm sleeping a little better than I would have been, I'm not reaching for the biscuit tin the moment my chest tightens. I can feel the familiar swirl of overwhelm arrive because of course it still does and instead of it knocking me sideways, I can just keep chugging along, ticking things off, doing the next right thing, and trusting that it will all come together.

I don't say any of this to sound like I've cracked it, because I absolutely haven't. There is uniform to find and a stand to build and I am sure I will forget something important for both. But there is a real difference between white-knuckling your way through a full-on season, and moving through it steadily, feeling like your body and your mind are actually on your side. This summer for the first time in a long while, I feel like they are.

So if you're in your own version of this right now, the school gates, the work deadline, the big scary new thing you've said yes to I hope you can find your own version of what's helped me. It doesn't have to be all at once. For me it started with just paying proper attention to food and moving my body with intention, realising that you can’t out train a bad diet and it has quietly changed how I show up for everything else.

Wishing you a calm and well-labelled week, whatever full on looks like for you.

With love

Charlie x

Someone wrote to say how strange they found it - that they feel so drawn to what I share, even though our lives look almost nothing alike. Different country. Different background. Different day-to-day entirely. And yet, they said, they feel it anyway. That pull. That sense of ‘I get her, and somehow she gets me.’

I sat with that for a while, because I think I'd been quietly assuming the opposite. I'd assumed the connection was the countryside itself, the AGA, the children and animals the rhythm of a life lived by seasons rather than by clock. I thought that was the thread. The shared aesthetic. The shared choice of a slower kind of life.

But that message made me realise it isn't that at all. Or rather, it's not only that. The wellies and the woodsmoke are just the setting. What people are actually responding to, what I'm responding to, honestly, in the people I feel closest to, is something underneath all of it. It's not what we do. It's who we're trying to be while we're doing it.

A kind heart. A generous way of looking at other people. Someone who tries, even on the days it's hard, to be gracious rather than sharp. Someone with something they're quietly working towards, a version of themselves they haven't quite become yet, but are still walking towards anyway. That's the thread. Not the postcode. Not the pet count. Not whether your kitchen has an AGA in it or a hob.

I think it's easy, in this online world especially, to mistake the props for the substance. To think that if we post enough of the pretty, hard-won life, the log fire, the loaf proving on the side, that's the connection. And it isn't nothing, that shared taste. But it was never the whole of it. The whole of it is quieter and much less photographable: it's values. It's the kind of person you're trying to be when nobody's watching, and the kind of person you're trying to be when everybody is.

So if you're reading this from a flat in a city I've never been to, with no dog and no garden and a completely different life to mine, I think that message was right. That doesn't matter nearly as much as I once assumed it did. What matters is whether you're kind. Whether you're gentle with yourself on the days that call for it. Whether you're still reaching for the person you hope to become.

That's the common thread. Turns out it was never the countryside at all. It’s how we show up!

With love

Charlie x

Because with three of them close in age, we don't do stages one at a time in this house. We do them all at once, in stereo, whichever stage it happens to be. When they were toddlers, we were up to our necks in little ones, I didn’t quite have three lots of nappies, but almost! three lots of naps that I tried to lined up, so I could have a moment to rest! three small people needing three different things at exactly the same moment. And now we're up to our necks in teenagers, which is its own particular kind of full-on.

It's made me think a lot lately about which years were actually easier. And I don't think there's a neat answer, because the honest truth is that motherhood never really sits still long enough for you to get comfortable. Just when you think you've cracked a phase, really cracked it, found the rhythm, worked out what they need, they go and grow out of it, and you're back to square one, learning a whole new child.

If I'm truly honest, I think the sweet spot for us was somewhere in the middle, roughly four to eleven. Old enough to reason with, young enough to still want you close. They could dress themselves but still wanted you at the school gate. They had opinions but hadn't yet perfected the art of the door slam. It felt, looking back, like the calm in the middle of two storms.

Because the toddler years were hectic in their own physical, relentless way, the constant motion, the constant vigilance, the sheer exhaustion of being needed every single minute. But they did go to bed at 7pm until 7am - bliss! And the teenage years are hectic in a completely different way. Less physical, far more emotional. Less ‘don't touch the oven’ and far more navigating moods, friendships, exam stress, and the particular joy of being told you don't understand anything, several times before breakfast, if they are up by breakfast!

And yet, here's the bit that makes me laugh, the two stages have far more in common than I ever expected. Back then it was ‘tidy up the playroom.’ Now it's ‘tidy your bedroom.’ Back then it was ‘put your toys away.’ Now it's ‘pick up your bath towel.’ I am, quite literally, saying the same handful of sentences I said in 2013 just to taller, moodier, more sarcastic people.

I think what nobody quite tells you about motherhood is that it isn't a mountain you climb once and then stand at the top of, finished. It's more like a series of entirely different mountains, back to back, and you barely get to enjoy the view before the next one starts. You have to keep moving with it. Keep adapting. What worked on your four-year-old will get you nowhere with your fourteen-year-old, and you learn that the hard way, usually mid-argument, usually in the car.

But here's what I hold onto, on the harder days of this particular stage: it's still them. Underneath the eye-rolls and the bedroom door and the one-word answers, they're still the same small people who once needed help doing up their laces and their teeth brushed for them. Just taller. Just louder. Just figuring out, in their own chaotic way, how to become who they're going to be.

So if you're in the toddler trenches right now, wondering if it gets easier, it does, for a while. And then it gets hard again in a completely different way, and you'll miss this bit more than you think. And if you're in the teenage thick of it with me, saying the same three sentences on a loop and wondering where your toddler went, I think he's still in there somewhere. Just needs reminding to brush his teeth. But what keeps me going when the going gets tough, is hold on to every moment because soon they will be ready to fly the nest. So help prepare them in the best possible way for that.

With love

Charlie x

It wasn't a holiday of ticking things off a list. There was no big itinerary, no rush to see everything. It was family time, old friends, long lunches that turned into long dinners, and for the first time in longer than I can remember, actual, proper time to unwind.

I mean really unwind. The kind where your shoulders come down from around your ears somewhere around day four and you don't even notice it happening.

Putting the Camera Down

Some days I didn't film a single thing. Other days I managed about five minutes, if that. And I'll admit, the old me would have felt guilty about that, like I was letting the content slip, letting you all down somehow. But this time it just felt right. I was living it instead of narrating it, and there's a real difference between the two.

I think we forget sometimes, especially those of us who share our lives for a living, that the point of a holiday isn't to document it beautifully. It's to actually have it. To be in it. So this was the summer I chose being over filming, more often than not and I don't regret a single missed shot.

An Unexpected New Love

Here's the bit I didn't see coming: I've fallen completely in love with tennis. I had a few lessons while we were out there, and something about it just clicked, the focus it demands, the way it empties your head of everything else, the sheer fun of it. I'm nowhere near good, but I loved every minute, and I've come home determined to keep it up. Playing a match with my boys was the best part.

It's a funny thing, discovering a new love for something in your forties. A reminder that we're not finished becoming ourselves, there's always another small joy waiting to be found, if we leave enough space for it.

Water, Laughter, and the Rest of It

Beyond the tennis, it was a holiday of the senses, swimming every day, a go at various water sports, sun on skin, that particular kind of Greek food that makes you understand why people talk about the Mediterranean diet like it's a religion. But if I had to pick the one thing I'd bottle and bring home with me, it would be the laughter. So much of it. The kind that comes easily when everyone you love is in one place, unhurried, with nowhere else to be. Days that are so blissful you don’t want them to end.

Bringing It Home

I always find the days after a holiday like this a bit strange, that gentle bump back down to earth, the washing pile, the inbox. But I'm trying, this time, to hold onto what Greece gave me rather than let it evaporate the moment I'm back at the AGA. A bit less filming for filming's sake. A bit more saying yes to the things that light me up, tennis included. And a lot more laughter, wherever I can find it.

I hope your summer has had a little of that unhurried magic too, even if it's just an afternoon of it. Sometimes that's all it takes to remember who you are underneath the to-do list.

With love

Charlie x

This one feels extra special because it's paid for with my winnings from Handcuffed. It's not often you get to point at a holiday and say "we did that" quite so literally, and I wanted to use it on exactly this, a proper reset for the five of us, somewhere warm, somewhere slow, we are being joined by wonderful friends that we love to holiday with.

It's been a genuinely busy year. Good busy, mostly, the kind where you look up in July and realise you haven't stopped since January. Members Club, the book, the courses, the videos, the endless behind-the-scenes of running Ask Charlie alongside actually living the life it's all about. And there's a lot more still to come, which is exciting, but it also means this pause matters more than usual.

So for the next week, the plan is simple: swim until we're pruney, eat well, read books with sandy pages, and let Simon and the children have me properly present rather than half-thinking about tomorrow's list. There will still be content but no deadlines - just the actual point of doing all this in the first place.

I'll be back with a full Substack next week, recharged and no doubt full of ideas after a week of doing absolutely nothing. Until then, I hope wherever you are today, whether that's a holiday or your own garden, or just a quiet cup of tea, you get a little pocket of rest too.

With love

Charlie x

We were talking about just doing what we want! Bravery and being true to ourselves, and what it actually means. Whether either of us has any. And somewhere in the middle of it I heard myself say something I had never quite put into words before: that being brave, for me, has never been about grand gestures. It is not about reinventing yourself overnight, or doing something enormous and dramatic that everybody claps for. It is much quieter than that. It is simply staying true to who you are. Doing the thing that feels right for you, even when the room is politely expecting something else.

And if I am honest, I have only really got there in the last couple of years.

The people-pleasing years

(I know talk about this often but it’s something that I’m passionate about!)

I spent a very long time being agreeable. Saying yes when I meant no. Filling the gaps. Reading a room and then quietly rearranging myself to match it. Making my opinions smaller so they would not take up too much space, and then feeling faintly cross with myself all the way home, lack of confidence and self belief. I just found it easier than speaking up. It is easier to be who people expect you to be than to be who you actually are, because the second one comes with the risk that somebody might not like it. And I did not want anyone not to like it. That was the whole project, really: being liked. Being easy. Being no trouble at all.

The trouble with living that way is that it works. It works right up until the moment you look around at a life that fits everybody else beautifully and does not quite fit you.

Something shifts

I cannot point to the day it changed, but somewhere in my forties something recalibrated. The volume on other people's opinions went down, and the volume on my own went up. I stopped rehearsing sentences before I said them. I started answering questions the way I actually think rather than the way that would land most smoothly. It stems from never feeling good enough.

It is not that you stop caring about people. I care enormously, probably more than I ever have. You just stop auditioning for them. And there is an enormous amount of energy freed up when you are no longer running a small public relations department in your own head.

It is liberating. It is exhilarating. It is also, I will admit, slightly terrifying.

Taking the chances anyway

All of which brings me to the thing I am doing right now, which is expanding Ask Charlie Home.

The homeware range is growing. New pieces, bigger orders, more of my own taste committed to my first trade stand at Burghley. Every single time I press send on an order I feel that swoop in my stomach, the one that says: what if nobody wants it? What if you have got this wrong? What if you have overreached?

But I have noticed something about that swoop. Fear and excitement feel almost exactly the same in the body. Same racing heart, same fizz, same slight breathlessness. The only real difference is the story you tell yourself about what it means. So I have started reading mine as excitement, and going anyway.

Nothing I have ever been proud of arrived without that feeling first.

You only get the one life

I write about this often, and I will keep writing about it, because it rearranged me permanently. When your health gives you a proper fright, when you have had a chapter that made the fragility of it all very literal, you do not go back to seeing your life the way you saw it before. It stops being theoretical. You genuinely understand, in your bones rather than in a nice quote on a wall, that this is the one life you get.

It is the whole reason I wrote Let's Fly. Not because I have it all worked out, but because I came out the other side absolutely certain that waiting is its own kind of risk. We treat caution as though it were free. It is not. Every year you spend being who you are supposed to be is a year you do not get back.

So no, I am not going to spend the second half of my life waiting for permission that was never going to arrive.

What it actually looks like

I should say that none of this is glamorous. Being true to yourself is a wonderful phrase for my Saturday substack, but in practice it is very small and very ordinary.

It looks like saying no to the thing you do not want to do, without inventing an elaborate excuse. It looks like ordering the stock, making the bookings, sending the email. It looks like disagreeing pleasantly at the kitchen table instead of nodding along and stewing about it at midnight. It looks like wearing the thing, cooking the thing, painting the wall the colour you actually like rather than the colour that photographs well.

It looks like asking yourself, before you commit to anything at all: is this mine, or is this something I am doing because it is expected of me?

That question has become the most useful one I own.

If you are somewhere in the middle of this

And if you are reading this in your thirties, or your fifties, or at any point at all, feeling that low hum of a life that fits everyone else better than it fits you, you do not need to blow anything up. You just need to start telling the truth in small ways and see how it feels.

Say the honest thing once this week. Decline the thing you have been dreading. Take the chance that has been sitting in the back of your mind for a year, quietly refusing to go away.

It is terrifying. It is also the most alive I have ever felt. And I would not go back to the agreeable version of me for anything.

You only get the one life. Go and have it.

With love

Charlie x

It's been a genuinely lovely week. Busy, full, some really special moments in it. And yet more than once I caught myself standing in the kitchen thinking, oh boy, how am I actually going to do this?

That particular flavour of overwhelm where you're not unhappy, you're just... stretched.

A bit like a rabbit caught in the headlights, trying to work out which way to run when actually every direction has something good in it, and something that needs you.

That's the bit nobody quite prepares you for. Not the hard weeks, the ones where everything's going wrong and you brace for it. It's the good weeks that get you, because there's no obvious villain to blame for the exhaustion. Just you, a full diary, a family who need you, work that matters to you, and the quiet, nagging sense that you're letting a little bit of everything slide to keep the rest afloat.

Today's been a different kind of day. No filming, no calls, just me and the to-do list I've been putting off looking at properly for a fortnight. The unanswered messages. The admin I keep meaning to get to. The things that pile up precisely because they're not urgent, they're just... waiting, patiently, adding to the noise in the back of my mind.

If you've ever had a day like that, you'll know it's not glamorous, but it's necessary. Chasing your tail all week and never catching it is its own kind of tired.

And underneath all of it, if I'm honest, is the guilt. The particular guilt that comes with being a mum who also runs something she loves. Guilt when I'm working and I hear the kids in the next room. Guilt when I'm with the kids and I know there's an email sitting unanswered. Guilt when I say yes to something exciting and then feel the cost of it land on an ordinary Tuesday three weeks later. I don't think that guilt ever fully goes. I think you just get a bit better at not letting it take over!

What I'm slowly, slowly learning and I mean slowly, I am nowhere near expert at this, is that the overwhelm usually isn't a sign I'm doing too little. It's a sign I've said yes to too much, or said yes to the wrong things, or forgotten to leave room for the ordinary admin of life that keeps everything else standing up. Every yes is a small quiet no to something else. A yes to a lovely invitation can be a no to an evening with nothing in it. A yes to a new project can be a no to twenty minutes of headspace I didn't know I'd need.

So this week I've been trying to ask myself a slightly different question before I say yes to anything. Not just "do I want to do this" because the honest answer is very often yes, I want to do all of it, that's rather the problem but "what will this cost me, and am I willing to pay it right now." Sometimes the answer is still yes. Sometimes it's a yes but later. And sometimes, and this is the one I'm worst at, it's just no.

I don't have this figured out. I don't think anyone fully does, I think the juggle just changes shape as life changes shape, and the job is to keep noticing when it's got too heavy, rather than expecting to reach some finish line where it's easy. But I wanted to say it plainly this week, because I think so many of us are quietly doing this same dance, full hands, full hearts, and a to-do list that never quite empties and it helps, I think, to know we're not doing it alone.

If you're in a stretched week yourself, I hope you can find your own version of today. A day to put the phone down, work through the pile, and give yourself permission to catch your breath before you decide what's next.

With love

Charlie x

It's funny how long it takes to unclench. This has been such a busy academic year, and Ask Charlie has been just as full - courses, content, deadlines, the constant hum of things needing to be done. I don't think I realised quite how much I'd been chasing my tail until I stopped and felt the difference. That slightly frantic, always-one-step-behind feeling has eased and in its place is something much gentler, and much needed.

I'm not getting up quite so early. I'm letting the mornings arrive in their own time rather than meeting them head on with a list. And I've been trying, really trying, to notice the small moments rather than rushing straight through them to get to the next thing.

A few nights ago was one of those moments. Some friends came over and we made pizzas, just a properly simple supper, everyone brought something, a salad here, a bottle there, and we sat outside in the garden until the light went soft and gold, well actually dark! Nothing planned, nothing polished, just good pizza, good company and that lovely warmth of an evening you don't want to end. It's been so hot here lately that being outside after the sun loses its edge feels like its own small luxury.

And that, to me, is exactly what summer is about. Not grand plans or big days out, though there'll be time for those too. It's the unhurried evenings. The not-racing-around. The pleasure of a simple meal shared with people you love, eaten with your fingers, off your knee, with the dog hopeful under the table and Billy (the tortoise) trying to get involved!

I think after a full-on year, we sometimes need permission to just... stop. To let a day be unstructured. To let a supper be simple. To let the to-do list wait until tomorrow or the day after, or whenever it feels like being picked up again. Summer, with the children home and the light lasting so long into the evening, gives us that permission almost automatically, if we let it.

So that's where I am this week, enjoying the slow mornings, the long light evenings, the simple suppers in the garden and trying to hold onto that feeling for as long as I possibly can before the pace of things picks up again.

I hope you're finding your own pockets of slowness this summer too, whatever they look like for you.

With love

Charlie x

Because time given to people doesn't just happen does it? It happens in the context of the people around us. Our neighbours. Our friends. The school gates. The church pew. The people we see out walking the dogs or at the village shop, or in the queue at the local post office. Community is simply what happens when we decide to show up for one another, again and again, in all these ordinary places.

I think community gets a bit of a fuzzy, old-fashioned reputation sometimes, like it's something from a different era, something our grandparents had and we've somehow lost. But I don't think that's quite right. I think community is still here, waiting for us, in every single place we live and work and gather. It just needs us to choose it.

And here's the thing I really want to say this week: community was never meant to be a competition.

It is so easy, isn't it, to slip into comparing. Whose garden looks nicer. Whose children are doing better. Whose life looks more put together from the outside. I see it, I feel the pull of it myself sometimes and I think if I'm honest most of us do. But that competitive instinct is the very thing that quietly poisons community. It turns neighbours into rivals. It turns friendship into performance. And underneath it, so often, is jealousy and jealousy is such a heavy, joyless thing to carry.

The alternative is so much lighter. It's choosing to be pleased for someone else's good news instead of quietly measuring it against your own. It's turning up with a casserole rather than an opinion. It's the WhatsApp group that organises a rota when someone's poorly, the school run that becomes a lift for a friend having a hard week, the church coffee morning that's really just an excuse to check in on each other. None of that requires anyone to lose so that someone else can win. It just requires kindness.

I think about this a lot living where we do. Village life has a way of putting community right in front of you, you can't really avoid your neighbours out here, and I mean that in the best possible way. Someone always seems to know when the lane needs clearing after a stormy night or when a new family has moved in and could do with a friendly face. It isn't grand. It's casseroles and lifts and a hand over a fence. But it adds up to something that genuinely holds people up.

And I think that's really the heart of it. A good community, whatever shape it takes for you, whether that's your street, your church, your school, your yard, your circle of old friends, isn't there to make anyone feel small. It's there to nurture, to encourage, to notice when someone's struggling and to celebrate when someone's thriving, without a scrap of envy attached to either.

Imagine if we all leaned a little further into that. A little more compassion, a little more genuine gladness for other people's happiness, a little less odd, prickly, one-upping behaviour that helps precisely nobody. I really do believe it would make for a kinder, calmer, altogether better way of living together.

So this week, my gentle nudge to you is small but I hope it lands: find one way to show up for your community. Check in on a neighbour. Say something kind and genuine to a friend who's doing well and mean it. Turn up to the thing you keep meaning to turn up to. None of it needs to be grand. It just needs to be given freely, the same way we talked about giving our time last week.

Because in the end, a life well lived is rarely a solo effort. It's built by the people who show up for us and by us showing up for them.

I’m so grateful for this wonderful online community, community comes in so many different forms 🤍 open your eyes and heart to find yours.

With love

Charlie x

And this week, I’ve had the most extraordinary reminder of why that matters so much.

Janet.

Janet and I found each other on Instagram. She’s based in South Africa, you might know her as @Thyme2travel and for a while we’d been exchanging messages, commenting on each other’s lives from opposite ends of the world. The way you do. The way that can so easily stay as just that, if you let it.

But Janet came to England. And she came to my house. And we cooked together in my kitchen, and we filmed it for YouTube, and honestly? It was one of those afternoons that just fills you right up. Here was this woman I’d only ever known through a screen, standing at my AGA, and we just clicked. Properly. The kind of conversation you don’t want to end.

It wouldn’t have happened if either of us had kept it to the comments section. It happened because someone reached out, and someone else said yes.

A wedding in the garden.

Then, last minute and I mean genuinely last minute I got a message. A couple had been let down by their wedding venue. Just like that. The day they’d been planning, pulled from under them.

Someone asked if I could help. And I said yes. We held the wedding here, in our garden in and barn. And it was the most beautiful thing to be part of.

I keep coming back to this idea: in giving, we receive. I don’t mean that in a transactional way, I don’t mean give so that you get. I mean that when you open your door, your home, your time, something comes back to you that you couldn’t have planned for. Joy, maybe. Connection. A memory that’s yours forever. The look on someone’s face when something they thought was ruined turned out to be wonderful after all.

I received that look this week and I’ll keep it for a very long time.

The man with the perfume.

And then there was another moment, smaller in scale but no less extraordinary to me.

I met a man who has built a brand called Dilli House he makes perfume. We got talking, the way you do when you’re both somewhere and the conversation just finds you. It started with my book, Let’s Fly. He asked about it, and I told him, and then in that way that only happens when someone feels genuinely heard, he opened up.

He told me why he created Dilli House. His backstory. The reason behind it. And it was incredibly moving. The kind of thing you don’t expect from a chance conversation, but which stays with you.

I walked away thinking: I would never have known any of that if I hadn’t stopped. If I’d been distracted, or in a rush, or just not really there. We are all of us walking around with these whole stories inside us, full, complicated, extraordinary stories and we share them so rarely. Because nobody asks. Because there isn’t time. Because we’ve got somewhere to be.

What if we just… stopped more?

I’m not saying you have to host a wedding or fly someone in from South Africa. I’m saying: what if you asked the next person you meet what their story is? What if you gave ten minutes of proper, undistracted time to someone who probably doesn’t expect it?

I think we underestimate, enormously, the power of just being present with another human being. It costs nothing. And what you get back, the warmth, the perspective, the sheer humanness of it, you cannot put a price on.

We live so much of our lives at a distance from each other. Phones in hand, half-here, half-elsewhere. And I understand it, I really do as I’m as guilty of it as anyone. But this week has reminded me, loudly, of what we miss when we do that.

Janet in my kitchen. A couple getting married in our garden because someone said yes. A stranger with a bottle of perfume and a story I’m so glad I heard.

Stop. Say hello. Mean it. You have no idea what’s waiting on the other side of that conversation.

With love

Charlie x

There is something about food that opens people up. I don't know quite what it is perhaps it's that your hands are busy and the pressure is off or perhaps it's simply that you're all facing each other for once. But conversations happen over a meal that just don't happen anywhere else. The catch-ups, the check-ins, the “how are you feeling, really?” moments. The things your children will tell you over a plate of food that they'd never volunteer if you asked them outright.

Phones off the table

I'll say this plainly: leave the phones away from the table. Not face-down beside the plate, not on silent in a pocket being glanced at but away. It's such a small rule but it changes everything. The moment a phone appears, half the table leaves the room without moving an inch. We owe each other better than that and honestly, we owe ourselves better than that too.

A meal without phones is a meal where people actually talk. Where someone tells a story properly, from beginning to end. Where you notice that one of your children is a bit quiet, or that your husband has had a rotten day, or that there's something brewing that needs talking through. You simply cannot notice those things while you're scrolling.

Once a day if you can and if you can't, that's alright

In an ideal world, I think every family and every couple would sit down together once a day. Breakfast, lunch, supper, it doesn't matter which. Just one meal where everyone stops, sits, eats and talks, catches up on what’s been going on.

But I'm also a realist. Life is busy and people are pulled in different directions, school runs, work, the horses, clubs, all of it. If once a day isn't possible, then make it a couple of times a week and make those times sacred. Better still, give it a name and a shape: a Sunday roast that everyone knows is happening, every week, no excuses. Or in the summer, a barbecue in the garden with everyone gathered round. Make it a non-negotiable event something the whole family plans around rather than squeezes in.

And in between, take the conversation where you can find it. Some of the best chats I've ever had with my children have happened in the car or out walking the dog, side by side, no eye contact required, which I'm convinced is precisely why the big stuff comes out. Those moments count too. But there's still nothing quite like a table.

Why it matters so much

As a parent, I feel it's one of the most important things I do, simply spending time talking to my children, properly communicating with them. Not the logistics of who needs picking up when but real conversation. About feelings. About what's going on in their world. About the things that are worrying them and the things that are making them laugh.

And it matters just as much as a couple. After all these years, Simon and I still need that time to sit down together over food and actually talk, not about the diary, but about each other. It's how you stay connected. It's how you stay married, frankly. Communication is key.

Time is so precious. Food shared and enjoyed, conversation flowing, phones nowhere in sight, it costs nothing and yet I genuinely believe it's one of the most valuable things we can give the people we love.

This week, try this

Pick one meal. Just one. Tell everyone it's happening, put the phones in another room, cook something simple, it really doesn't need to be fancy and sit down together. Ask one proper question of everyone at the table and listen to the answer. That's it. That's the whole thing.

I'd love to know how you get on. Do you have a non-negotiable family meal? A Sunday roast that nobody is allowed to miss? Tell me in the comments, you know I love hearing from you.

With love

Charlie x

It creeps up on you. You're the one who notices the laundry basket overflowing, the dishwasher that needs emptying, the beds that haven't been made. And because you notice it, you do it. And because you do it, nobody else learns to notice it. Before long you're running the entire ship single-handedly while the rest of the crew lounge on deck and then you wonder why you feel cross.

A captain needs a crew

Here's how I think of it. Every household needs a captain of the ship, someone who has the overview, who knows what needs doing and when. In our house, that's me, and I'm quite happy with the role. But a captain is not the same thing as a servant. A captain has crew members. The crew help. They have jobs. They pull their weight. Nobody on a working ship sits about waiting to be brought a cup of tea.

And do you know what? When everybody helps out, it's not just a relief, it's genuinely lovely. The house runs better, the jobs get done faster, and there's a feeling of being in it together that no amount of doing-it-all-yourself martyrdom can match. Teamwork really does matter.

Give everyone a job and make it theirs

The trick, I've found, is to be specific. Vague appeals to “help out more” get you nowhere. What works is when each person knows exactly what their job is: it's your job to empty the dishwasher. It's your job to help with the laundry and do the folding. It's your job to make your bed every morning. When a job belongs to someone, it gets done and nobody can claim they didn't know.

It doesn't need to be a rigid rota pinned to the fridge (although if that works for your family, wonderful). It just needs to be clear. Everyone in the house should know what they're responsible for, and everyone should be responsible for something.

This is how practical skills get passed down

There's a bigger reason this matters to me, and it's really the reason Ask Charlie exists at all. If we don't teach practical skills, they don't get passed down. It's as simple as that. A child who has never emptied a dishwasher, never sorted a load of laundry, never folded a fitted sheet (alright, nobody can fold a fitted sheet, but you take my point) becomes an adult who can't do those things and has to learn them the hard way, alone, in their first home.

So I encourage the children to get involved in everything. They help with the cooking, they help around the house, they have their jobs. Not because I want little workhorses, but because I want them to leave home one day knowing how to look after themselves. That's the whole point. These small daily jobs are quietly building independent, capable people and honestly, I can't think of a better gift to give them.

This week, try this

Have a look at who does what in your house. Be honest. If the answer is “mostly me,” then sit everyone down and hand out some jobs, one each, clearly named, theirs to own. Emptying the dishwasher, doing the folding, making the beds. Start small, hold the line, and don't swoop in and do it for them when they're slow about it (this is the hard part, I know).

You're the captain. Let the crew do some sailing.

Do tell me - who does what in your household? Have you cracked getting everyone to muck in, or are you doing the lion's share? I'd love to hear in the comments.

With love

Charlie x

I had to take a breath.

Because that girl would never have believed this was possible.

The book I wrote, and the girl I was.

I’m really dyslexic. School was hard. Not hard in the way people sometimes mean it, as in, “oh, I wasn’t very academic” but hard in the way where you internalise the message that you’re not bright enough, not capable enough, not the kind of person things work out for. I carried that for a long time.

Let’s Fly is about what happens when you decide you’re not going to carry it anymore.

It’s about the rock bottom moments.

The periods of my life that were genuinely really tough, that I didn’t want to become my story. About realising that your past doesn’t have to dictate who you are. About making the decision and it is a decision, even when it’s a terrifying one to change.

I wrote it because I wanted it to exist. Because I wished something like it had existed for me, when I needed it most.

The people who made it possible.

Sitting in that studio, I kept thinking about Simon. About how differently things might have gone without a husband who has believed in me, consistently and quietly, even when I couldn’t believe in myself. That matters more than I can really say.

And I kept thinking about you. This audience that has grown around Ask Charlie the people who watch, who read, who show up week after week. You gave me the confidence to keep going. To take the dreams seriously. To think, maybe this is actually possible. I find that genuinely humbling, and I don’t use that word lightly.

What I really want you to take from this.

I talk a lot about bravery. About stepping outside your comfort zone. About the fact that if you have a dream, you can turn it into something real. And I mean all of it but sometimes you need a moment that makes you feel the truth of it rather than just say it.

This week was that moment for me.

So if you’re reading this and you’re stuck somewhere, in a relationship, in a job, in a version of yourself that you’ve outgrown, I want you to know that change is possible.

Not easy, not quick, and not without fear. But possible. At any point. You don’t have to have it all figured out before you begin.

You just have to begin.

Let’s Fly is available to pre-order now, It would mean the world to me if it found its way to someone who needs it.

With love,

Charlie x

Half term. Being away. Coming back. That particular brand of catch-up where you open your inbox and your to-do list and think: right, where on earth do I even begin?

I've been chasing my tail all week and I suspect many of you know exactly what that feels like. The mum juggle is real, isn't it? The way life doesn't pause just because you need it to. The mum taxi happens. The meals need making. The house doesn't tidy itself (if only). And somewhere in the middle of all of that, there's the rest of it, the work, the plans, the things you promised yourself you'd get to.

This week I've felt all of that acutely. And literally drowning in laundry! But here's the thing I keep coming back to: the chaos is part of it. The juggle doesn't mean you're failing, it means you're living a full life. And actually, when I sit quietly enough to look at the week honestly, there's rather a lot in it to feel grateful for.

 Because this morning, something rather wonderful is happening…

At 9am today, the very first Ask Charlie Home collection goes live on my website.

I've been sitting on this excitement for a while now, and I am absolutely bursting to share it with you. Oven gloves, AGA pads, oven gauntlets, aprons and tea towels, the things I reach for every single day in this kitchen in my first colourway: pink and green. My pink and green. The colours that feel like home to me.

It is, I'll be honest, one of those moments where you have to pinch yourself a little. This is Ask Charlie Home. An actual product range. Real things you can hold in your hands, use in your kitchen, and I very much hope you love as much as I do.

This is just the beginning. More colourways are on the way, and I am absolutely brimming with ideas for what comes next. I've been scribbling things down in notebooks, lying awake thinking about it in that excited, slightly-fizzy way that means something is really alive. I can't wait to share more with you as it all takes shape.

For now, go and have a look. The shop section on my website. I'd love to know what you think.

 And one more thing — don't miss this deadline.

If you order my second book, Let's Fly, before the end of the day on 31st May, you will receive a signed copy. I mean it end of day, 31st May. If you've been meaning to order it and you just haven't got round to it yet, today is your nudge.

It would mean the world to me, pre orders for an Author as soon as important.

Right. Back to the chaos.

The week isn't over. There's still plenty to do, and my baby turns 15! today so huge celebrations for him! Can’t believe how time flies and I'll still be chasing my tail for a few days yet. But honestly? I wouldn't have it any other way. This full, busy, wonderful, occasionally overwhelming life, it's mine, and I'm rather fond of it.

Thank you for being part of it, hope you have a wonderful weekend.

With love,

Charlie x

Simon and I have just celebrated nineteen years of marriage. Nineteen years. I say that and it still catches me slightly off guard, not because it feels too long but because in so many ways it doesn't feel long enough. We spent the week in Scotland, walking, talking, breathing fresh air, eating good food, going to bed early, waking up slowly. Simple things, all of them. And yet, entirely restorative.

We walked miles. The kind of walking where you don't really have a destination in mind, you just go and somehow the conversation finds its way out of you. I think that's the magic of a walk, it loosens something. There's no eye contact, no pressure, just two people side by side moving through the world together and suddenly you're saying things you hadn't quite found the words for at home.

We talked about everything and nothing. About the children, about work, about the future, about old memories that surface when you're away from the noise. We laughed a lot. We sat in silence and it wasn't uncomfortable, it was companionable, the kind of silence you can only really share with someone you know deeply.

And it made me think, as I so often do on these trips, about marriage. About what it actually takes to make one work, not just survive, but genuinely thrive.

I think the honest answer is that it takes effort. Consistent, gentle, daily effort. Not grand gestures, although those are lovely but the small kindnesses. The cup of tea made just the way they like it. The text in the middle of the day just to check in. The asking, and actually listening to the answer. The noticing.

A successful marriage, in my experience, is built on kindness above everything else. Kindness when you're tired. Kindness when you're frustrated. Kindness when it would be far easier to snap and walk away. Alongside that, thoughtfulness, understanding and a kind of quiet nurturing of one another that never really stops, even after all these years.

And then there's communication. Which sounds so simple when you say it and yet it's the thing that so easily gets lost in the busyness of life. When did we last really talk? Not about logistics, not about who needs to be where and when but really talk, about how we're feeling, what we're worried about, what we're hoping for? That's what a week away together gives you back. The space to actually communicate.

Scotland has made me feel like myself rested, reconnected, grateful. Grateful for nineteen years with someone who still makes me laugh, who I still want to tell things to, who I still adore.

If you're in a position to carve out time for your person even just a night, even just a long weekend, do it. Don't wait for the perfect moment because the perfect moment rarely announces itself. Just go. Walk somewhere beautiful. Turn your phone off. Talk to each other. It's the greatest gift you can give your marriage.

Here's to nineteen years, Simon. And to all the years still ahead of us.

With love Charlie x

This past week has been one of those weeks that I’ll look back on and feel genuinely grateful for. Busy doesn’t really cover it. But there’s a particular kind of busy that fills you up rather than draining you and that’s exactly what this was. It was the kind of week that reminded me, in the most vivid and human way possible, why nothing truly nothing replaces being in the same room as another person.

We live so much of our lives through screens now, don’t we? And I say that as someone who creates content for a living, someone who understands and genuinely loves the connections that social media and newsletters and YouTube can bring. But there is a warmth, a realness, a depth to a face-to-face conversation that a screen simply cannot replicate. You cannot feel someone’s deep energy through a phone. You cannot catch someone’s eye across a table, or laugh together in the same space, or feel that quiet, lovely sense of belonging that comes from actually being present with other people. This week gave me all of that, in abundance, and I am still buzzing from it. So grateful to everyone that came to say hi! I love meeting you in person.

It started last Sunday at Badminton Horse Trials, one of those events that, if you’ve never been, you simply must add to your list. I was there with the wonderful Kate of KAHO Prints, who so generously invited me to join her on her stand for the morning. I took copies of Through the Seasons and spent a couple of hours doing a book signing, which was just the loveliest thing. To hand someone a signed copy of your book, to see their face light up, to have a quick conversation with a complete stranger who has somehow already found their way to you - it’s quite unlike anything else. Kate, thank you. That was such a special way to begin the week.

Monday brought a change of pace, a one-to-one AGA masterclass from home with the most lovely Laura. There is something so intimate and joyful about teaching in your own kitchen, sharing the quirks and rhythms of the AGA, watching someone’s confidence grow in real time. I adore those sessions.

Then on Tuesday, I drove up to Stamford for a book signing at The William Cecil Hotel and what a day that was. The extraordinarily talented Jocelyn Lawman, who illustrated Through the Seasons so beautifully, interviewed me in front of our guests, and I genuinely could have talked all evening. There’s something about being in conversation with the person who brought your words to life visually that feels quite extraordinary a creative partnership celebrated out loud, in front of people who care about it. And then we had the most wonderful dinner. The hotel had invited a group of influencers to the event and the evening was warm, generous and full of exactly the kind of conversation that doesn’t happen over email or DM’s Real talk. Real connection.

By Thursday I was at Chelsea Town Hall for the By Beautiful Brands spring fair and what a gorgeous event it was. The kind of gathering where every detail has been thought about, where the people in the room are passionate about what they do and where you leave feeling inspired rather than exhausted. I loved every moment of it. I was there signing my book but also sharing a sneak peek into the new ASK CHARLIE HOME collection, the feedback was incredible, so excited about what’s to come!

And then, on Friday, Simon and I got in the car and drove to Scotland. Simon wasn’t feeling 100% a bit run down and tired, which is entirely understandable given everything and so I did most of the driving. And here’s the thing: I didn’t mind at all. In fact, I had so much energy. Off the back of the most full-on, wonderful week, I was still running on a kind of quiet high. The conversations, the connections, the laughter, the book in people’s hands, it had filled me up rather than emptied me out.

We are here now to celebrate our nineteenth wedding anniversary. Nineteen years. There will be long walks, good food, proper rest, and the sort of slow, easy time together that you can only really have when you’ve stepped fully away from ordinary life. Scotland in May is something else entirely. I cannot wait to just breathe it in.

But before I fully exhale into holiday mode, I wanted to share all of this with you because I think it matters. In a world that increasingly rewards us for staying home, for posting rather than going, for engaging digitally rather than physically, I want to make the case for showing up. For getting in the car. For standing on a stand at a horse trials and signing books in the spring sunshine. For sitting across a dinner table from someone you’ve never met and discovering you have everything to talk about.

The screen is a wonderful thing. But it is not the whole thing. Don’t let it be.

With love

Charlie x

Let's Fly is my second book and in many ways it is the most personal thing I have ever put out into the world. It is not a recipe book or a how-to guide. It is something quieter than that. A collection of reflections, stories and thoughts - the kind of things I find myself turning over on long walks or in the early morning when the house is still. The things that feel too big for an Instagram caption and too tender to rush.

It began, as most honest things do, with something I needed to work through myself. I have been thinking a lot over the past few years about courage. Not the dramatic, headline-grabbing kind but the quiet, everyday courage it takes to keep going. To heal. To hope. To choose, again and again, to rise rather than stay stuck.

In these pages I write about family, the wounds that can run through generations and the extraordinary possibility of healing them. I write about friendship and what it really means to show up for the people you love. I write about hope, about dreaming bigger than feels comfortable and about the choice because it is always a choice to step out of a victim mindset and into something more expansive.

It is not a self-help book. I am not standing on a stage telling you what to do. It is more like sitting down with you over a cup of tea and being honest about the things that are hard and the things that are beautiful and the fact that most of the time those two things are sitting right next to each other.

The title came naturally. Let's Fly. Not a command - an invitation. Because I genuinely believe that we are all capable of more than we imagine. That courage begins softly. That we do not have to have it all figured out before we take the first step.

I have loved writing this book so much. It has been a joy and a challenge and at times a revelation and I hope that when you read it, some of that lands with you too. Whether you are standing on the edge of something big, or simply searching the skies for a new direction, I wrote this for you.

Let's Fly is available to pre-order now, with delivery in early July.

And if you order in May, your copy will be signed. I will be personally signing every pre-order that comes in this month, which feels like such a lovely way to send this book out into the world.

The link to pre-order is below. I am so excited for you to read it. Genuinely. I cannot wait.

With love

Charlie x

Let's Fly with Charlie Gray of Ask Charlie - Hardback Book — Ask Charlie

And this year, May has gifted us something particularly welcome:  Two bank holidays weekend. I don’t know about you, but I felt the need for it in my bones. An extra day, just one extra day has this wonderful way of completely changing the shape of a weekend. Suddenly there is room to breathe, room to potter, room to do absolutely nothing useful and not feel remotely guilty about it. That is the magic of a bank holiday. It gives you permission.

Now, I will be honest with you - the forecast is looking a little iffy. There may be rain. But honestly? I am not complaining. It has been such a dry stretch lately, and you can feel it in the garden, in the ground, in the horses’ field. The land is thirsty. A good soaking rain is not a disappointment right now, it is practically a gift. So if the skies are grey and the wellies come out, so be it. There is always the AGA and a pot of something warm on the go. A rainy bank holiday has its own kind of cosiness.

May Day Holds Something Very Special for Me

But there is another reason May will always feel significant to me, and it has nothing to do with the weather or the wildflowers, as much as I love both. Twenty years ago, on the 1st of May - May Day - Simon proposed to me.

Twenty years. I say it and it still catches me off guard a little, in the best possible way. I remember the day so clearly: the light, the feeling of complete and total surprise (he had kept it wonderfully secret), and that specific, particular happiness that settles over you when you realise your life is about to change in all the very best ways. May the 1st has been threaded through with gold for me ever since.

I think that is partly why I feel such warmth towards this month. May Day is not just a date on the calendar, it is a little private anniversary, a moment each year to look across the kitchen table at Simon and think: ‘Twenty years ago, this all began.’ Life has grown and changed so much since then, in ways I never could have imagined and some I would never have wished for but that thread back to that first of May holds steady.

Here’s to the Month of May

So this May, I am going into it with gratitude. For the extra bank holiday days however the weather behaves. For the rain that the garden so badly needs. For the long evenings and the late sunsets and the fact that the horses are out in the field until all hours and the whole world feels a little looser and more generous somehow.

And for May the 1st, always. That will never stop feeling like a reason to quietly celebrate.

Happy May, everyone. I hope it is a good one for you.

With love Charlie x

There’s a version of life that’s actually quite comfortable, isn’t there? You know the one. You bumble along, days rolling into weeks, everything ticking over nicely. Nothing too challenging. Nothing too risky. No real chance of failing, because you’re not really trying anything that might fail.

I lived that version for a long time. And honestly? It wasn’t bad. It was fine. Safe. Predictable.

But fine isn’t the same as fulfilled. And I think, deep down, most of us know the difference.

The thing about staying in your comfort zone is that it’s seductive. It masquerades as contentment. You can convince yourself you’re happy, and in some ways you are because nothing is going wrong. But there’s often this quiet whisper underneath it all, isn’t there? A little voice that says: but what if?

What if I tried that?

What if I put my hand up?

What if I said yes?

For years I got very good at talking myself out of listening to that voice. Too scary. Too risky. Too busy. What if I embarrass myself? What if it doesn’t work? What if people think I’m ridiculous for even trying?

Sound familiar?

I won’t pretend I suddenly became fearless. I didn’t. I’m still not. If anything, the older I’ve got the more clearly I can see what’s at stake which in some ways makes it more frightening, not less. But somewhere along the way I made a decision, not all at once, but gradually, that the regret of not trying was scarier than the risk of trying and failing.

And that shifted everything.

Because once you start saying yes to things even small things, even terrifying things something strange happens. It doesn’t get easier exactly.

But you get braver.

You realise you survived the last scary thing, and so maybe you can survive this one too. Your threshold shifts. What felt enormous six months ago starts to feel manageable. And slowly, slowly, opportunities you would never have even seen before start appearing.

That is not a small thing. That is everything.

I think we do each other a disservice sometimes when we make success look effortless.

When we only share the polished outcomes and not the white-knuckle moments that came before them. So let me be honest: the things I’m most proud of in my life have all come with a side of genuine terror. That sick feeling in your stomach. The voice in your head telling you to back out while you still can. The 3am spiral wondering what on earth you were thinking.

I’ve felt all of it. I feel it still.

But I’ve also felt the other thing - the thing that comes when you push through it. That rush of I did it. The quiet pride that nobody can take from you, because you earned it the hard way. The sense that you are actually living your life, not just passing through it.

That feeling is addictive. In the best possible way.

I’m not suggesting everyone needs to upend their lives or make dramatic leaps. Bravery doesn’t always look like that. Sometimes it’s sending the email. Signing up for the thing. Saying yes before you feel ready. Telling someone about the idea you’ve been sitting on for two years. Dreaming of.

It’s available to all of us, in the everyday, in the small moments. You don’t have to wait until you’re confident. You won’t suddenly feel ready one day that’s not how it works. Confidence, I’ve come to believe, is something you build by doing, not something you wait to feel before you start.

So start before you’re ready. Say yes before you’re sure. Be a little bit ridiculous. Take the chance.

I am so glad I did. And I’m not done yet, not even close. There are still things that scare me, dreams that feel too big to say out loud, goals I’m working towards that I genuinely don’t know if I’ll reach.

But I know this: I’d rather be in that position than the alternative. I’d rather be reaching and stretching and occasionally falling flat on my face than be standing still and wondering.

Be brave. Just be brave. Even if your voice shakes. Even if your hands shake. Even if it all goes horribly wrong which sometimes it will, you will come out the other side knowing something about yourself that you can’t learn any other way.

That’s worth everything.

With love Charlie x

We live in a world that celebrates busy. Full diaries, packed schedules, back-to-back everything. And yes, I love a productive day as much as the next person. The satisfaction of a day where you’ve really gone for it, ticked everything off and hit your goals? Brilliant. But here’s the thing, you cannot run at full throttle every single day and expect to sustain it. It doesn’t work like that. Your body will eventually catch up with you and say enough!

The busy days are necessary. But so are the quiet ones. They are the most important.

I think of it like the natural rhythm of the seasons, we push hard through certain periods, and then we rest and restore. It’s not laziness. It’s not being unproductive. It’s actually the thing that makes the busy days possible in the first place.

After a stretch of full-on days, early mornings, late nights, endless to-do lists - you have to build in the recovery. A quieter day where you breathe out. A bath and an early night. Nourishing food that actually fills you up rather than something grabbed on the go. A walk outside with some fresh air in your lungs and a proper pint of water in your hand. These things are not indulgent. They are what keeps you going.

You can’t say yes to everything. Learning to say no is essential.

This was a hard one for me to learn. I am a yes person by nature, I want to show up, I want to help, I want to do it all. But saying yes to everything means saying no to your own wellbeing, and that’s not a trade-off that works long-term.

Pacing yourself is about working out your priorities and being really honest with yourself about what actually matters and what can wait. Not everything is urgent. Not everything needs to be done today. Some things can sit on the list until tomorrow, or next week, or, and this might be radical - not at all.

What balance actually looks like for me.

It’s not a perfect 50/50 split of hard days and easy days. Life doesn’t work like that, especially when you’re running a business, managing a home, and everything in between. For me it’s more about reading the signs. If I’ve had three or four big days in a row, I know I need to pull back. I plan in a slower day. I get outside with the horses. I cook something nurturing and sit down to eat it. I go to bed at a reasonable time.

It sounds simple because it is. The hard part is actually letting yourself do it, giving yourself permission to slow down when everything in you is saying push on.

But trust me on this. If you don’t choose to rest, your body will choose it for you and on its terms, not yours.

Look after yourselves. Pace the week. Say no sometimes. Have the bath.

Love Charlie x