I am done with summer.

The barbequed aubergines of July are saggy in their skins, the island heavy with a swelled population.

I am drunk with strawberrysweet vows exchanged in churches, disco balls in marquees. Light-headed with hunger, which the temperature disguises daily until the sun goes down. All I eat is salt in every guise. Glistening crisps. Deep black wrinkled olives. Stale wedges of focaccia.

The holidayhard tiles are somehow both slippery and gritty from the beach, and my grubby sandaled toes need washing after every day’s walking, covered in soil from the woods dustier than I can ever remember. Beech trees once glossy and green instead crunch and thirst, losing most of themselves more than a month ahead of time. The care home is stifling, fans whirring in the still of the day.

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There have been too many iced lattes in the blinding sun of the kitchen, each floating with half an inch of melted water on their surface, diluted and lukewarm. Too many children’s nightmares of dropped ice creams, too many screams of tiredness, heat rash and thirst. Too many days spent in the office where the air feels like a slowcooked stew, where yellow sweat bleeds through my crisp white shirt.

The billowing washing hanging outside the front is tainted with the neighbour’s disposable barbecue smoke, and the cars out the back clog the road and make me late for everything. The sun offers possibilities that are palpitatingly endless, and half an hour’s stolen TV is more guilt-inducing than a missed visit to a sick relative.

Bring me the oil painting that is autumn.

The hunger for mash, for crumble, for shepherd’s pie, that comes as the wind turns.

The converted barn escape. The dog with her deep, wool-like fur, curled in a perfect circle, one paw outstretched to touch my foot. Sluggish shared naps on the sofa, faces turned against the windows and their cooling drafts.

I want a kettle singing in my tiny kitchen, the windows streaming with sweating onions, simmering stew, proving bread. Corn that didn’t ripen left for the birds, tomatoes that almost did, collapsing into chutney.

Velvet-rich curtains and brownies, apples that shine when rubbed against your jeans. Lingering blackberries picked on runs when I don’t feel sweat dripping down my temples three minutes in. Tiny lights hung down my spiral steps, bare feet on the sheepskin by my bed, the winter duvet heavy with comfort. The pile of books unread by my bed can be rearranged with good intention, whilst I choose instead to speak on the phone, every night, before we both fall asleep.

I want those drives as dusk settles around the car, the deep understanding becoming apparent in my body that there is nothing else to do in the day, no more emails to reply to, nowhere else to be, that rest draws near.

I want the natural order of things.

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Driving down south and the July day is parched. All our windows are down along the motorway and the wind feels like a holiday-wind, the type where you step off the plane and it hits you, fragrant and hot, right in your face. We walk along a dry, crackling field, sun-blinding, grasshoppers singing, impossibly beautiful.

People are gathered ahead of us in a woodland glade, a band playing Nick Cave gently at the front, and the light picks through the leaves above us. It’s dusty, there are banners hanging from branches, plenty of cherubic children, and an immaculately dressed bride and groom.

We watch them literally tying the knot, and as they walk back down the aisle together the congregation turns to them, faces following them as sunflowers do.

Later, heading to bed, I bump into another guest, staggering slightly in the dark. “I’ve got everything I can out of the day, Jess, it’s time to call it a night,’ he says.

What a great way to live your life, I think, slightly worse for wear myself. Get what you can out of the day, and then call it a night.

I am standing on a forecourt in the blinding sunshine on an industrial estate lined with flattened Monster cans, old tyres and the odd mattress, waiting to drop my Mini off for auction.

We are directed to an office which is both very hot and very bleak, and I watch a young man who has entered with a handful of ice creams, including some pops that looks like antifreeze. He catches my gaze, looks quickly away, but then begrudgingly seems to change his mind and offers us one each. (Not the Cornetto though, sadly) My thighs are sweating too much to say no.

I wait for the man who is doing the inspection, dimly aware that sucking on an ice pop as a 36 year old isn’t the assertive, ‘there’s no marks on my car’ demeanour I should be adopting. But it’s sweet. And most importantly, glue-tongue cold.

The man arrives, and is joined by another one with an iPad. ‘Go and wait inside’, he says. ‘We’ll be twenty minutes.’

Opting out of the hot box that is the office, we choose instead to stand on the blazing tarmac, witnessing the hideous rigmarole that is the inspection. I feel like someone is going through my Google search history, or possibly my knicker drawer, pulling out individual choices and holding them up to the bright, terrifying sunshine.

The man has a camera and is shooting every possible detail of the car - underneath it, every angle of each seatbelt, under the wing mirrors.

P looks around the lot. ‘There’s a lot of very flashy cars here’ he says, making conversation.

‘Well,’ the man says, ‘a lot of people have to return them because they can’t afford the finance. It’s very sad.’

‘Ah. I’m trading in for something electric.’ I say ‘my car’s not flashy though, is it?’

He looks seriously at P, then at me. ‘No - no I’d say yours is bang average.’

Good things to click on:

• A hopeful radio show that will also make you laugh

• This landed on my doormat and it’s wonderful

• Really loved staying at this pub this month (twice, as it happened)

• I’ve been working on this product for more than a year and am very excited it is nearly time for you to add it to your bath…

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When you tell people you grew up in an aquarium, generally they have visions of you feeding conger eels, holding starfish and watching tiny baby seahorses take their first curly steps. As it happens, this isn’t too far from the truth.

Though we only lived on site – among the mermaids’ purses and the hermit crabs – for a year after I was born, I spent the majority of my free time there from a very young age, and my dad would often bring fish home with him too. One summer we had a tank of baby blue lobsters, their perfect tiny claws pinching siblings as they grew into themselves. I could watch them for hours.

It was at the Sea Zoo that I learnt most about fish, crustaceans and bivalves – from the conger eels’ migration to the oyster’s pearly exploits, the jellyfish’s lack of brain to the octopus’s famous ability to open jars (though not predict football results). The late great David Bellamy narrated all the information boards about the animals – you could press a backlit red button and his distinctive, booming voice would ring out among the tanks, which were dark, had a particular smell, and were designed to feel like walking through a shipwreck.

When I remember my days at the Sea Zoo, it is always summer in my mind. Principally because I would be there every six-week school holiday, without much adult supervision. As a young child this meant a lot of eating. Midday in the coffee shop I would order a large white buttery bap filled with egg mayonnaise, and the ladies in the shop would save me the broken chocolate fish that they couldn’t sell, tails or heads snapped off, tonged from the glossy white boxes for afters. Later, I would return to the tearoom for a cone of Mr Whippy, served with a candy shrimp studded jauntily in the top. In between I would wander the playground, the ‘aquablasters’ – where you could pay to shoot water guns to cool off in the summer sun (you got 10 seconds free to tempt you in) – and the gift shop, lusting after an enormous plush seal or colour-changing thumb ring.

Often I’d have friends in tow, whose parents were also working and took any opportunity for childcare, even if it meant being looked after by lobsters and clownfish.

As I got older, my entrepreneurial parents enlisted me to help alongside my older brothers. My first job was making leaflet packs – putting thousands of brochures about the fish into an envelope with other tourism leaflets from the area. I’d be called in for pot wash on busy days; I can still see the blue plastic trays and clattering stainless steel teapots backing up now. And then I learnt to laminate in the back office (we loved to laminate in the 1990s) – usually jaunty signage printed in Comic Sans.

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By the time I was at secondary school, my summer holidays became an opportunity for paid work. Firstly, I was employed in the giftshop, unpacking plastic shark grabbers, of which we sold thousands, or running boxes of homemade rum and raisin fudge through the till. Before long, I had graduated to the ‘Pearls Counter’. This was where a customer could choose an oyster from a bubbling tank that had already been x-rayed to show it was holding a pearl in its midst. I would don gloves and open the oyster with a special knife while a crowd watched on (and usually videoed with a handheld camera). I’d then feel through the innards with my fingers – a squelchy, often smelly job as the oysters were long dead – until the pearl emerged, pure and iridescent under the lights. I’d measure it, identify its colour, write a certificate in a special calligraphy pen, and then set it in jewellery if the customer so desired.

The counter was atop a fish tank that you could walk over - giving the visitor the chance to see plaice and dogfish below their feet – but this meant that the whole process – already fraught for a self-conscious young teenage girl – was perilous. On more than one occasion, I enthusiastically narrated the process to onlookers, while popping the gelatinous sac suddenly with my knife, so that the pearl jumped out of my fingers and straight into the tank below, lost in the sand forever. The potential owners watched on, eyes wide, the pearl lost to the sea once again.

The above is an extract from my book, The Coastal Almanac, which is published by Hachette in September 2026. You can pre-order it here.

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Good things to click on:

• Thousands of academic studies are published each day around the world, my brother writes a newsletter compiling the best of them

• Heard this in Australia and haven’t stopped singing it yet

• Drank this in Australia and haven’t stopped craving it yet

• Like the rest of the world, I listened to this and was gripped from start to finish

• Scorched peas are very delicious

• This was surprisingly fun

If you enjoyed this post please press the heart - it helps others find my work.

In a month when the trees are bare, I drive to meet my girlfriends in the closeness of the sauna and the openness of the sea. The car radio says in a lifetime, the longest relationships we have are often with our siblings.

Warm to the core, we write intentions by headlights, and hover in dry robes under the moon, drunk on female company.

Afterwards, at home, gritty and coolskinned, there is blood. The babies on my fridge look back at me, gazes unbroken.

The sea is at its near-warmest by the time he takes his guitar and condiments and moves out.

What a thing to discuss on Zoom, I think, a month later. When I realise I am crying, I write down what she says to absorb it after.

I have helped so many women like you, I read it back in my own handwriting.

Near the hospital, I stay with my brother. We don’t discuss the operation, but the fridge is full of food and the dog is allowed to sleep with me, head on the pillow.

I move home. My intention stays on ice.

—

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My flight is delayed and I am sitting in the airport with a bowl of noodles and the quiet satisfaction of my phone charging under the table. I order pickles to cheer up the fact my bowl is gravely under-seasoned. The man next to me pauses his phone conversation (‘you’d be so proud of me dad - I had my hand down that U-bend!’) and says to me ‘Oh you like these god damn things. Would you like mine too?’

Before I have time to answer, he is scraping them into my bowl, using the chopsticks that have been in his mouth.

—

T is having a party and apparently I am helping him prepare.

Despite the fact fifty people will be arriving at his apartment in a mere few hours and we have yet to - prepare any food, tidy up inside or out, bring countless crates of alcohol up the five sets of stairs with no lift, ice the several layered cake or any of the 5876 drinks - he has booked lunch for us both in a restaurant he loves down the road. When I protest, he says ‘well, maybe we won’t have pudding.’

We arrive and I’m sweating gently, noticing too late that my dress is covered in soil from the balcony I have been hosing down. I wonder how quickly I can mandolin coleslaw for fifty, and whether we have any capers for the potato salad.

Luckily for T, the two course lunch is probably one of the best I’ve ever had.

-

When your brain is removed from its relentless daily rhythm and it has space to think about anything - not that Whatsapp, the huge pile of clothes on your bed, your bank balance, how you forgot to buy Marmite again, which of your friends will announce their pregnancy next, whether you have seen your grandma enough recently - what does it think about?

—

A friendly local stops to talk to us. T comments politely on her dog and its tiny coat. ‘Oh she has so many but she always insists on this one!’

I am in a regional town outside Melbourne, waiting for T to finish work so we can drive to some beauty spots.

‘They say once you arrive in Ballarat, it’s impossible to leave!’ the local continues.

T takes his car keys from his pocket and I hope she doesn’t notice.

—

Disorientated and in need of caffeine, hidden deep underground away from the bright Tasmanian sunshine, I am looking for a member of staff to ask for directions to a particular exhibit, when I notice a small queue.

Did I know anything about this room, the member of staff asks, as I make it to the front. I shake my head. She takes my bag and coat, warns me about deep water, and ushers me inside, shutting the door silently behind me.

Completely alone, thousands of miles from home, and unburdened by my things, I walk along a gangway which is flanked either side by black water, gleaming in the dim light like a blade.

In front of me is a real Egyptian mummy, encased in glass. Hanging from the ceiling above the cabinet is a noose, just visible in the gloom, and a poem, glowing in the darkness. After I read - the short poem and the history of the person who lies before me - I say a few words for him before I even realise that’s what I’m doing.

I don’t feel I have breathed out until I leave the room a few minutes later.

The Butterfly

There is no story behind it.
It is split like a second.
It hinges around itself.
It has no future.
It is pinned down to no past.
It’s a pun on the present.
Its a little yellow butterfly.
It has taken these wretched hills
under its wings.
Just a pinch of yellow,
it opens before it closes
and it closes before it o

where is it?

-

The piece that makes me cry - loud enough for passers by to notice - is four videos, displayed together, of a man both dancing and lip synching to Tina Turner’s Proud Mary.

Proud Mary is the song the artist has chosen for his future funeral and every five years, he records himself dancing to it again to remind him that one day he will die.

—

Trips abroad are like those pop-up books I had as a child. You open yourself up and they are conjured out of nowhere, three dimensional, colourful, so much fun. Then the story is up, the covers shut, and you’re back, in the cool spine of the dark plane, wondering where you put your airsickness tablets.

Good things:

• I ate olives in Australia, several times, warmed. Strongly recommend.

• This book - despite its terrible title - was uncomfortably true and I loved it

• How to have difficult conversations

J is making hot cross buns.

She has driven from London with a posh Tupperware of a tepid fermenting buttermilk, and announces she is making them without yeast, and will rely on the slow fermentation to help them rise into the bouncy buns ‘we all know and love.’

The morning she is to bake them arrives.

She asks my mum if she has plain flour, greaseproof, a silicone brush. And where would she find a piping bag? She shrugs off any question of when they will be ready - ‘they will be ready be just when you want one’ - when pressed by her own mother - ‘probably mid-morning.’

By the time everyone has emerged for a late breakfast, J has already been through a nine step process, adding more buttermilk and flour, ensuring the temperature is just lukewarm enough to bring the odd bubble to gurgle to the surface.

It’s the sort of day when the sunlight is so strong that people’s faces appear golden, and the table very dark, with moving flecks of dust illuminated in the air.

I slice bread for toast as they are mixed, looking for Marmite as they are studded with jewelled fruits and zest, then shaped and arranged carefully on greaseproof. J then allows herself the luxury of a tea as they prove once more on the tray, before carefully marking them with the familiar white cross of the season, and brushing with warmed apricot jam (using the silicone brush.)

We pour coffee as I hear the metallic scrape that tells me they are - finally - in the oven. My mum closes her eyes to bask in the sun, the dog lies in a shaft of light at her feet - says she is looking forward to a bun to go with her second cup.

Barely five minutes have passed before J is opening the oven door.

My brother comments on the ‘strange farmyard smell’ as he pours granola into a bowl, but he is only just audible behind J’s: ‘oh no! Where have the crosses gone? The crosses have disappeared!’

There are titters round the table as she shuts the door, but everyone reassures her that the crosses don’t taste of anything anyway.

Another twenty minutes pass - there are discussions of what to do with the day, whether we’ll head to a beach before the roast - before she retrieves the tray from the oven.

She keeps her eyes firmly down as she manoeuvres the tray, and the buns, exactly the same size as when they went into the oven, thud gently as she transfers them to a waiting wire rack.

As everyone takes one, a new sort of quiet descends over the table.

A is first to break the silence, mouth full of dense dough. ‘Well J, they’d be nice if you liked that sort of thing.’

My mum eats a half, spread very thickly with butter, and then says she couldn’t possibly manage any more.

K is shaking slightly as she puts her knife in - ‘the - the raisins are very nice.’*

If you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, please ‘like’ it using the heart button at the bottom - it helps other people find my work.

Good things to click on:

• I have sent this to so many people - I was metaphorically throwing things at the radio (but it did make me think)

• A brilliant film with the distinct feeling of a play

• This excellent listen shows us why we need to be alarmed by the enormous decline in reading

• Paintings that capture daily life

• Never thought it’d be something I add to my to-buy list but…

*I would like to make it clear that J, my sister in law, is actually a very good baker, which is why I can have the confidence to describe this rare incident in such glorious detail.

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For the last year or so, I've been working with some of my favourite people - chefs, nature experts, photographers and writers - on this very lovely project. It will be published in the UK and USA in September 2026.

I'm going to say that really boring thing now: pre-orders really help a book's sales, and the nice people at Waterstones have selected my almanac for 25% off until this Friday, so please consider buying it now if you think you might like it. You will need to enter “FEB26” at the checkout to receive 25% off RRP. Of course, it’s also available on Amazon and all the other big hitters.

Pre-order now

Since medieval times, an almanac has been something that predicts, packed with planetary alignments, lucky days, and instructions for you to follow. This fits very neatly into my wish and hope to control, understand and to know what is coming around the headland.

But if we know anything about the world, and in our particular instance the great expanse of sea, the countless shipwrecks will affirm that we have no idea what's coming, almanac in hand or not.

Rather than to predict then, I have written this book to celebrate the turning of the seasons by the sea, offering ways to mark, notice and appreciate them, with a focus on Ynys Môn, the island I am from. Learn to identify seaweed, rockpool life, and seabird eggs. Cook a turbot over fire, and season it with sea salt you harvest yourself. Pick primroses, fig leaves, wild garlic spears, and discover ancient traditions that people have celebrated for millennia.

The allure of a life by the sea, of course, is also defined by our retreat from it when it's too rough, so during the months when the outdoors becomes harsher, I have shared ways to appreciate the inside too. There are classic Welsh recipes as well as simple, joyful crafts like marbling or dyeing hen’s eggs for a happy Easter table.

It is a cliche, perhaps, but it took life to bash me about a bit - the very real experiences of heartbreak, and serious illness of those close to me - before I started to really appreciate my natural surroundings.

I am learning to pay attention to the joy of simple things and this book is a nod in that direction, with a reminder that it is all of our responsibility to look after the natural world.

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Images above: Jim Marsden. Curlew by Paul Rogers. More on all the contributors in the coming months 💕

Staying a village with two friends who I met at university nearly twenty years ago - one we chose because it was geographically helpful more than anything else.

The house we’re renting has a laminated booklet of info, including frequently asked questions. In response to ‘who owns the house’? The answer is: ‘my brother John.’ What a perfect answer.

We head out for a wander and a coffee, and walk past a hypnotist with words on the window: Change your mind, change your life. I wonder aloud what we’d all change if we could.

Me: I think I’d want to change myself so I didn’t care what anyone thinks of me.
L: I’d want to be more decisive.
C: I’d make it so every time I had two drinks it actually felt like five, but I wouldn’t get the hangover of five.

Other excellent things C says over the weekend:

• When I dress my kids in matching cute outfits it’s so they’re more tolerable - to me and to other people - when they are behaving appallingly

• Why does a hoover always smell like dog even when there isn’t a dog?

• When I see a twin and I’m not sure which one it is, I always just tell them ‘oh yes, you’re the fun one’

There’s a charity shop closing down and we peruse happily for quarter of an hour or so. I choose a pack of twenty yellow pencils for £1 and take them to a counter.

Attendant: ‘If you want those you need to buy ten packets for £1.’
Me: ‘Sorry?’
Attendant: ‘If you want those you needs to buy ten packets for £1. I can’t sell you less than ten packets.’

On a dog walk and there is a what looks like a solitary Malteser in the middle of the path. Tread on it, and the noise confirms my suspicion.

—

If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (author of Le Petit Prince)

—

They make me tea with a packet of loose leaf. They describe how their grandfather used to make it. How he knew exactly how long to brew it before adding the milk, and would spend a calm few minutes waiting and then fishing out the odd floating leaf with his teaspoon before knowing implicitly when the temperature was just right for the first, delicious sip.

—

My dad finds a box in an outhouse containing my mum’s childhood Cindy doll’s clothes. Open it and immediately see they are made better than 95% of adult human clothes now. Teeny tiny pairs of tights, complete with seams at the back, a blue quilted jacket with faux fur trim, a floor length PVC black coat. There is also a toy dog on a lead, a framed picture of who I assume is Cindy’s boyfriend, and white plastic boots which I would quite like in my size.

Good things to click on:

• Wow this was a ride

• My friend Kiri absolutely smashed Live At The Apollo, watch it if you need a real belly laugh

• Ever wondered what historian Dame Mary Beard did yesterday?

1. ‘I always find out what I really wanted to say once the break starts as I learn what it feels like to be a thinker, and not just a harried, hunted animal’

2. On a drive recently, I listened to this six times and wondered if it would be possible to inject it into my veins.

3. Whilst researching a project this year, I read that flatfish start life looking like a normal fish. As they grow, they begin to change - with one eye literally migrating over to the other side of the head. As adults, flatfish are essentially fish on their side. Plaice are right-eyed, meaning both eyes are on what was originally the fish’s right side. Other species can be left or right-eyed. The turbot, for eg, is left-eyed. Mindblowing.

   

4. When a relationship ends, it can feel like you’ve lost a part of yourself. But this book points out that the ‘self’ you think you’ve lost is actually an identity you built around the relationship, not your core being. The real you, the observer, the awareness, the steady inner sense of being, is still completely intact. There is a part of you that is not bruised by the world’s buffeting, it sits quietly beneath the chatter. It cannot be diminished.

5. A handful of things people I love did for me when I was struggling this year:
   - Picked me a bunch of homegrown grapes, doused in autumn condensation.
   - Filled a fridge with healthy food and gave me a London house to stay in for two weeks.
   - Collected me from my house with coffee and took me for a walk before work one sunny, sad morning.
   - Helped me design and make a collection of beautiful birds.
   - Sent a jiffy bag in the post, stuffed full of paper and pens.
   - Made hot bowls of homemade black bean soup.
   - Gifted me a pastel bunch of dahlias the size of saucepan lids.
   - Answered my hysterical phone call(s) at 3am.
   - Gave me half a bottle of organic vermouth in a kilner bottle.
   - Ordered brand new wallpaper.
   - Delivered cherry brownies wrapped in greaseproof paper to my door.
   - Sent a handmade butter dish.

6. I loved Asura

   

7. Sometimes the dog barks when the dishwasher releases its tablet, as she thinks someone is knocking at the door.

8. So much of life, I realised in 2025, is accepting that it will look different to how you thought it would.

9. ‘People wonder about what you are pursuing.

   You have to explain about the thread.’

10. From this book:

    

    
    

When I need something to change my mood/rhythm, I’ll often look for something productive to do. Cooking or baking an easy recipe often works. I get some simple steps to follow and something delicious for me to enjoy or to gift at the end of it. Other things are: cleaning, eating chocolate or the classic: changing my duvet.

I think of the very specific people who will make me feel better, and plan stuff with them. Most recently - two days in Paris with two excellent friends.

When I lack energy, I’ll get out into nature to invigorate- a big walk is the go to. Or if life feels heavy, I try and nest; make a fire in the wood burner, blitz a soup and watch something comforting on television. I nearly always try and get into water with women for a lift. Also doing a methodical, visual task with a definitive end helps - jigsaw/sorting my wardrobe out, always with a podcast or audiobook.

When I start moving, sometimes just with my breath, sometimes out in nature, often with the support of music, I find that my low mood shifts. It has space to be present and felt and then literally moved, released, and transformed.

Honestly? What do I do? I go to my favourite place: Sheffield. I will do plenty of obvious things - like nap, do the stuff that made me happy as a kid, etc etc etc BUT ultimately, I go to Sheffield. I get lost in the other people there, it reminds me of a time when I was there studying, by myself. I don’t like being in the middle of nowhere when I’m sad, I want to be in the thick of it. In Sheffield.

If it’s a nice day (and if it’s not tbh) but especially if it’s a nice day, I wrap up warm, go for a walk and listen to a frothy podcast that makes me feel like i’m in the room with the people talking. Sidetracked with Nick and Annie is my current fave for this.

If I can actually get myself to do it, then a bike ride or even just getting to and looking at the sea often does the trick.

Sleep, sleep, sleep!

If I’m feeling low, I’ll either: go for a drive (anywhere, as long as there’s a cafe at the end where I can have a brew and a cake. For an hour minimum) or watch a film. I’ll choose something that I’ve watched a million times, or go to the cinema, or out for a meal, by myself.

I have a note on my phone called ‘Mental Health’ where I write down what’s helped in the past with specific emotions eg. Rumination is helped by …., overwhelm helped by…It’s a long note nowadays!

I normally call my friend Scally, go swimming (why does swimming always help?), watch a comedy series e.g Ghosts, or tidy a corner of my flat.

Back in stock for one last drop

Delighted to say my calendar is back in stock for a final flurry of 2025. All orders will be despatched by Monday 22nd Dec, though I can’t guarantee xmas delivery.

A calendar of wholesome titbits, designed to comfort and delight. From a comprehensive guide for an at-home spa day in February, to a warm spiced masala chai for summer days, a recipe for the world’s best cake to how to sauna like a Finn, I’ve made this calendar, brimming with contributions from my excellent friends, to bring joy into every month of your 2026. Expect full moons, cut-out gift tags and a very sweet hedgehog.

For every calendar sold, at least £6 will go directly to Doctors Without Borders. £2000 raised so far and counting…

UK orders only I’m afraid this time.

Order yours

Five good things:

• A boost of confidence

• This book of poems is one I love

• I discovered some of Susan Williams-Ellis’ early designs and fell in love

• Last week I stopped in Chagford, chocca block with excellent independent shops

• Listening to Claire' Tomalin’s autobiography, which moves between the ‘trivial and the tragic’

Elly Kemp’s fire cider for winter

One of my favourite entries printed on the calendar this year is my brilliant friend El’s fire cider recipe - a wonderful thing to make now in time for the lurgy that January often brings with it.

A zingy dark amber liquid ready as your secret weapon to help carry you through the darker months. An oxymel is any concoction of vinegar and honey mixed with herbs or plants to extract healing properties. Used for centuries as a natural medicine.

Enjoy with fizzy water as an energy boosting morning drink or dilute with boiling water and more honey as a warming tea. Omit the chilli if you would like less of a kick. The fire cider is best made and left to ferment for 4 weeks.

You’ll need a large jar.

50g fresh organic turmeric
50g fresh organic ginger
1 -2 red chilli
1 lemon
1 orange
2 sprigs of rosemary
1 cinnamon stick
4 tbsp honey
750ml live apple cider vinegar

Start by sterilizing a large jar. Coarsely grate the turmeric and ginger, skin too. Roughly chop the chilli. Slice both the lemon and orange into thin discs. Add everything to the jar along with the rosemary, cinnamon, honey and then top up with the vinegar. Top with parchment before sealing and store at room temperature for 3- 4 weeks.

Strain the vinegar and taste, you may want to add more honey before bottling. Decant into the sterilized bottle and keep in the fridge. The fire cider will last for 3 months if sealed and refrigerated.

“It is a general sense of the poetry of existence that overcomes me. Often it is connected with the sea”

- Virgina Wolf

I found myself, as the last summer days finally escaped into autumn, on the coast of Northumbria, a wide open horizon of the North sea ahead, and some 1400 other people - some, oddly, wearing dressing gowns, others in dry robes - but all waiting, just as I was, for the same signal.

We gathered early on a milky morning of close dampness. The sand undertoe was cool, interrupted only by heaps of kelp, a side effect of a recent storm, which had dredged them from the sea’s depths, revealing them to the faint rays of light for the first time.

Though the sun had yet to fully rise, my two companions had brought with them a hipflask apiece- whiskey and brandy - which we passed back and forth between us.

After several years of hearing about the virtues of the North East Skinny Dip from a good family friend, me and two others had finally taken the plunge and driven up there, booked an Airbnb near enough to taste the salt in the air, and begun psyching ourselves up for the mental leap that would be immersing ourselves in the North Sea in our birthday suits.

To my right, B looked terrified in a way I had perhaps never seen in the 36 years of knowing her, face white and eyes vaguely absent, and I noticed that S drank deeply from her flasks of bravery as soon as I returned it to her.

My feelings - as I gazed out at the tiny glimmer of light rising above the not unsubstantial waves - were harder to access, numbed by the North Sea breeze.

A woman ran up the beach, holding a sign which read ‘thank you’, presumably for the fundraising element, and a ripple of applause concertinad down the beach. People started jumping up and down, whooping and cheering as she ran up and down like a wind-up toy.

Before I had even fully realised it, she had disappeared into the waves, and the crowd was counting down en masse. As we neared the fateful ‘one’, dry robes were dropped left right and centre.

Skin burning cold, mind adrenaline rich, at once out of body and acutely aware of it at the same time, I ran in, the waves slapping my thighs, splashing my shoulders, occasionally my face, an act reminiscent of flicking water upwards over a sink when needing a shock.

I was vividly aware that there were no breaks or barriers. Instead of clothing, my skin was touching the water at every point. Every dimple, every joint, every nerve was immersed. Perhaps it’s too simple, I thought, that it felt good because water is where we came from. That as newborns, we implicitly know how to swim.

There was nothing between me and the sand and the sea and the sky.

Beneath the physical numbness - every single one of my fingers and toes had turned deathly white - there was something else. A kind of cold, mental clarity was emerging, clear as a Glacier mint. Newly bright pink skin revealed in its vulnerable glory, exposed to the elements.

Then, of course, I had to turn around, naked as the day I was born, and walk back to dry land.

Good things to click on:

• DIY dahl kits are back and I think they are wrapped so beautifully

• New wallpaper of joy

• Thank you for all your calendar orders

• I re-listened to this and remembered how eloquent he is

• Jen and I have made these very sweet decorations and now you can buy your own

Five good things:

1. Every year, I design the recipe card and read Jaya’s words before she puts her DIY dal kit on sale. Every year, I am glad she is doing it.

2. One of my favourite books is now a drama. Do I risk watching it?

3. My dad’s prize-winning courgettes, lined up outside.

4. Want a podcast series to get stuck into right now? This one has Shakespearean drama in spades. It tells the story of Australia’s richest woman, who the Guardian describes as a Trumpette (which is a fantastic word, though absolutely not a fantastic thing) and climate change denier.

5. This month has been made a little warmer by the discovery of adding a spoonful of chai spices to my porridge.

The Good Things calendar 2026 available for pre-order

I am delighted to say I’ve had many messages asking whether my Good Things calendar will be returning for 2026, and I am even more delighted to say it will be!

A calendar of wholesome titbits, designed to comfort and delight. From a comprehensive guide for an at-home spa day in February, to a warm spiced masala chai for summer days, a recipe for the world’s best cake to how to sauna like a Finn, I’ve made this calendar, brimming with contributions from my excellent friends, to bring joy into every month of your 2026. Expect full moons, cut-out gift tags and a very sweet hedgehog.

Pre-order yours here (UK only)

For every calendar sold, at least £6 will go directly to Doctors Without Borders.

A few boring but important bits:

• UK delivery only

• Delivery is sent 48hour tracked. This is a pre-order item, and the first batch of calendars will be sent w/c 1st Dec 2025 by me and a kind team of volunteers

• Calendar is A3

• Printed on 100gsm, 100% recycled sugar paper

• Colours, including covers, will vary from calendar to calendar

• Calendar may arrive rolled. Carefully twist into the tube to remove

• Contributions from my friends and colleagues, including comic Kiri Pritchard Mclean, writer Bee Wilson and chef Anna Jones, amongst many other talented souls

• This year four ducks, who I reared from orphaned ducklings, are the stars of the calendar
  

  Pre-order yours here (UK only)

This year’s excellent contributors in full:

Alison Lea-Wilson
Caroline Craig
Bee Wilson
Rachael Pilston
Jaya Chandna
Gurdeep Loyal
Anna Shepherd
Anna Jones
Carys Williams
Kiri Pritchard Mclean
Elly Kemp
Liz Haraala Hamilton
Jen Shipley
Jim Marsden
Claire Dinhut

‘‘Light breaks where no sun shines; Where no sea runs, the waters of the heart; Push in their tides’’

It’s a mild September morning in Laugharne when we arrive, with sudden bouts of rain, which are followed by such bright white skies that sunglasses are a necessity. Tiny raindbowed droplets hang in the air, backlit by rays, the atmosphere of a seaside carwash.

There are signposts on the beach line, pointing to the ‘Dylan Thomas birthday walk’ - I wonder why I like it before realising it’s the meeting of the abstract and the physical. Like you could signpost to another day - a specific happy bank holiday with your parents perhaps, or the fateful, raw day you broke up with your partner.

Thomas wrote a poem on his 30th birthday, celebrating this very specific coastal location, after walking a route around town and along the coastline. Very sweetly the town has taken this trail into its heart, peppering benches along the way engraved with his words, even offering free pints from the pub he ended up in, to those who do the walk on his actual birthday on October.

Sadly we are here too early for the free beer, and my emotional state is not one to be cheered by alcohol anyway, but nonetheless we walk the shore, along the frothy edge, catching the sea, which moves in so many directions, in the corners of our eyes. The painted sky is big, and the town sitting above us both beautiful and melancholy. As Thomas himself said ‘ugly lovely.’ When we’ve had enough of our shoes slipping on the seaweed, we turn and walk towards our destination.

Thomas’ writing shed is tiny, and perfect, jutting out towards the beach, centred around a window that overlooks the estuary. This reincarnation of the interior, with his jacket hung on the back of a chair, his boiled sweets, a few bottles and many scrunched up pieces of paper makes it look as though he has just left and will re-emerge through the door any second.

The walls are covered with pictures and paintings he admired, many of which, I can’t help but notice, are paintings of naked women. He called it his ‘word-splashed’ hut.

I have long been interested in how and where writers work, the spaces they carve out for themselves, outside life, to ensure they get words on paper.

For Thomas, his space to write came from a kind benefactor:

‘‘The place, the house, the workroom, the time. All I shall write in this water and tree room on the cliff, every word will be my thanks to you. You have given me a life. And now I am going to live it.’’

Not quite as romantically, I don’t have a benefactor, and often write in my spare room, where there is barely space for a bed and a small table and chair, but the view of the fast moving strip of water that separates the isle of Anglesey from the mainland of Wales does save it.

As I look out over the estuary, it strikes me how similar the two views are. Herons, oyster catchers, scores of geese, have all entered my view whilst at my desk, just as they do here.

Leaving the shed behind us, we follow the path, twisting through the woods, and sitting high above the coastline, we come to the house Thomas lived in for the last years of his life.

It’s small, with two pale shirts as replicas of his blowing gently on a line outside it. Already for me, it is painfully close to the bone - of domesticity, of the everyday, the routines and rhythms that make us who we are.

Inside it gets even more so - it tells especially of sentimental, signposted days, rather than those plagued by the arguing Thomas and his wife were famous for. There is an account, framed above the fireplace, from one of the Thomas children, of what a Christmas day looked like in her family. The Christmas pudding, the cheap cracker presents, the constant presence of the sea in the background, endlessly creeping closer and then retreating, her parents disappearing to the pub as Dylan was wont to do, whilst she read under her duvet, using a new Christmas torch.

Alongside framed poems and beautifully scripted letters, which are pinned all over the walls, there is a single chair facing a window which overlooks the sea. It looks simultaneously beautiful and very bleak. Like you couldn’t want for more, but more is inevitably absolutely necessary.

I sit in the room alone and find myself crying, the 90s video playing in the background, surrounded by the sea on all sides. Dylan Thomas’ distinctive voice rings out, reading some of his most famous works.

Pulling my coat tighter, I walk slowly down the stairs, to my kind friend who has stayed downstairs with our three dogs, not bickering for the first time, but bathing instead in this very specific autumn sunlight.  We order clattering pots of tea, cheese scones with more cheese and butter, Welshcakes, buttered bara brith, toast and strawberry jam.

Good things to click on:

• Listen to this beautiful story about beautiful Etta and her beautiful work

• I did a course with this clever artist

• For those kind enough to ask, the Good Things Calendar will be returning for 2026! I will have news on pre-ordering very soon

All pull quotes this month are Dylan Thomas’, and the photos are mine.

One Tuesday afternoon, I got a WhatsApp message on a girlfriends’ group. ‘Could anyone look after the ducklings whilst I’m away?’

The ducklings in question were four tiny tennis ball sized beings, which she had saved from the jaws of the wild unknown, after finding their dead mother floating by, and noticing the sibling numbers dwindle overnight (there were originally eight.)

L collected them from her, and when I returned from work later on, there was a lidded, clear box, drilled with holes and lined with a towel already peppered with poo, resting on the kitchen bin. In the corner was a handful of food and a plastic drinking pot. A kind of scattered beeping emerged from the box, not unlike parking sensors, if four Minis were reversing at once.

I introduced a small shallow tray of water. Instant delight spread through their quarters, as they pushed their little heads under the surface and flicked droplets over their backs. Their bills moved so fast, frantically filtering, that they blurred as though in a cartoon. Within seconds, all four birds were squashed in the little dish that I normally ate my yoghurt from. Witnessing their joy, I wondered aloud about a full-sized human bath. L smiled ‘cold, yes?!’ I ran up the stairs, still in my coat and shoes, and starting running the water.

We picked the ducklings up, their tiny bodies surprisingly warm in gloved-hands, transporting them upstairs in a cardboard wine box before coaxing them into the water. The beeping picked up, at an all-time high as they plopped, one by one, into the bath, until only one was left, sticking to the edge resolutely, finally only coaxed in to be alongside its siblings.

At first, they huddled together at one end, disproportionately large webbed feet planted on the shallow edge. But I threw some duck food in, and almost immediately they were enticed onwards.

Soon, they were playing, stopping to drill beaks and swallow food pellets, pausing occasionally to preen their fluffy down, and sit on the hosepipe of the tap which acted as a little bridge. Perched on a stool, I watched them for half an hour, the splashing noises reminding me of the routine of bathing my small niece. I smiled as they appraised me too, turning their heads sideways to get a clearer view, until I could see my own reflection in their beady eyes.

Once out of the bath, I tucked a towel around a hot water bottle and they perched together on its belly, as though on top of Yr Wyddfa, surveying the lands below. Google told me drying them was essential as they didn’t yet have the waterproofing oils of adult ducks.

After eating, preening was their favourite activity. Post-bath, they would angle their pipe-cleaner flexible necks down to their little chests and back as far as their downed bottoms.

The bath became a daily ritual, it brought all six of us so much joy, and allowed L to sluce their plastic home with a hose outside, and me to line it with fresh towels afterwards.

A few days of bathing, and they became bolder. Now upon entering, they would immediately dive, whole bodies under the water, and I could see the way they moved whilst submerged, almost reptile-like. When they were safely atop their hot water bottle on dry land, I would pull the plug, and the drain would soon be clogged with what now resembled mushy peas.

As the days flickered past, their appetites increased at an alarming rate. On Saturday morning, I had the audacity to wake up closer to 7.30am than 6.30am, and as I came to, I heard them from the lounge downstairs, squeaking all at once. Pulling on a dressing gown, I saw all their tiny bills were open wide, and tapped my feet as the kettle boiled, peas waiting patiently on the side to be defrosted.

I called in reinforcements later that day and my dad arrived, with a bucket of fresh pondweed. Adding some of it to the little dish of water was an immediate hit, four bills tugging at the frilly greenery with alacrity.

Their animated furore in the weed reminded me what had always been true: the ducklings didn’t belong in a lounge or a bath, they belonged to the outside, and the friend who had asked me to look after them could only offer them a temporary home.

We drank tea and watched over the ducklings together, sitting on chairs as though watching a show, and to my delight, Dad agreed he would build the ducks a pen over his prized fish pond a few miles away.

The day they moved was a happy one - they were thrilled by the sights and sounds of the pond and the sky, and immediately leapt into the water without apprehension (or grace). Their energy was matched only by their voracious appetites, as they began to eat absolutely everything both in and out of sight. Pondweed, duck food, peas, fish food, pond flowers, roots of pond flowers (much to dad’s dismay), little creepy crawlies, tiny dried sprats and oats which I snuck under the net.

As I write this, they remain there to this day, the happiest ducks you’ve ever met, bills deep in green water all day long, snails and slugs supplied on demand, down turning to feather.

My grandma and her carer sit and watch them sometimes quietly, witnessing their awkward teenage years. Something about it is hard to beat.

''When ___ happens, I can finally relax. When the house is clean, when the work is done, when I’ve proved motherhood hasn’t changed me fundamentally and that I have my life together. Practically speaking, these beliefs are asking too much of me, but they are also a kind of north star, providing me both a map and the promise of deliverance once I arrive.

However unsubstantiated they may be, I’m attached to the impressions these beliefs give me: that everything can be under control, that I haven’t lost my way. Despite all my romantic writing on the topic of letting go and embracing disorder, it seems my fantasies still revolve around the opposite. To let these notions go is to lose something precious.’’

-Hayley Nahman

---

Good things to click on:

• A theory of the internet - how Tik Tok trends happen and plenty more

• This conversation between the mums of Paloma Faith and Romesh Ranganathan

• Swan mug

• Finally saw the Ballad of Wallis Island and loved it as much as I knew I would. A near-perfect film.

• Our clothes swap of joy is coming back to the big smoke!

• Loved this book, which this quote comes from:
  

  ‘I’d adapted too quickly to the idea that autonomy should come above all else. I thought of this as a moral value, an unquestionably desirable state’

They say - can’t remember who - that if you want to know what you really love, think about what you loved when you were ten.*

Fun to think about if you have the chance. Some of mine:

• choosing a book from a printed catalogue that got delivered to school

• rearranging things endlessly in my bedroom, including papers pinned to the noticeboard above the bed

• putting on a dress on holiday

• reading and re-reading the Pop Larkin Chronicles

• anything to do with a dog or puppy

• writing menus for special occasions in my very best handwriting

• new bed sheets

• these wind up keyrings, which I collected

• a free afternoon to bake, usually from the book Simply Cadbury’s Chocolate

• having autonomy to choose a pencil case and what to fill it with (the best things always came from my Japanese school friend Miki)

Pretty much all of the above still stand.

The day after I read that she was pregnant I did not feel happy. I was torn into tiny pieces of ripped paper, my fingers pressing into the inner flesh of my own arm until the skin turned deep purple underneath them. The second day, I heaved my body out of bed when I could no longer bear the hot, itchy feeling of my eyelids, having been awake for nearly a whole night. Breathing became drunken, my brain losing any connection with the rest of me. The third day, I ran. Down the lane lined with brambles, which scratched my lower legs until they bled, pigment-rich, tart like blackberries. For one second, adrenalised and high on tears with ‘The Edge of Glory’ on max volume, I could see for the flicker of just one second - he was going to be a good father.

Good things:

• Loved this book written after the chance discovery of a baby hare (since reading it I have gone on a hare deep dive - these incredible creatures even have their own Welsh saint)

• I liked taking part in Mr Bingo’s email day

• There was lots to chew over here

• Someone I know told me her father used to say to her "Life is hard, and you are soft."

• On internal family systems

‘‘Jealousy often emerges when the place we believe we hold in someone else’s life feels uncertain. It can feel like the self is being rearranged. This is part of the drama of the imaginary, where the self exists in relation to others. When those relationships shift, or when we imagine them shifting, our sense of stability can falter. Jealousy asks: what am I to you, really? Am I still chosen?’’

- Philippa Perry

*Thanks Cathy Rentzenbrink for this prompt

The woman from the aceteria recommends four restaurants in town, which she writes on a green post-it, neatly in capitals. The first is chic, marbled, and fully booked. The second has doors shut against the bright hot afternoon, but I will myself and my terrible Italian to venture in. They have a table but their menu is fixed, consisting only of meat. The third is closed on Mondays. The fourth however, and we are in luck. 

We climb unassuming steps and enter. Servers are whipping tomato splattered cloths from tables and smoothing hands over new ones, pouring glasses of red wine and delivering knots of rolled white bread at a rate that seems at odds with the warmth of the afternoon. A young couple next to us are eating deep fried puffs of dough and the thinnest whispers of ham whilst entertaining their brand new baby. An older man is ringing up bills on the ancient till whilst  another is pouring small, bitter coffees to be drunk at the bar.

We both snap the QR code on the table and try to make sense of the menu. I choose tortellini with spinach, ricotta and sage butter, followed by spaghetti pomodoro.

L falters with his phone, overwhelmed by too many options. The server waits, smiling but eyes already on the bar, waiting to deliver the next plates. L orders tortellini too, 'in brodo', and then points at something for 'secondi' on his phone. She looks at him for a millisecond, narrows her eyes, then nods efficiently.

Two plates of tortellini arrive, mine like foamy boats, frothy, thick pasta covered in black pepper and filled with cool ricotta. It is a last-meal-level good. L's are pretty, smaller dumplings, delicately formed, filled with rich Ragu and as promised, served in a light broth. We add Parmagiano with the tiny teaspoon given, and slurp greedily.

'That was heaven' I say

'Into it. Big time' L replies.

The secondis arrive. Elegantly curled spaghetti, a rich red sauce with olive oil in gleaming pools. As L's is put on the table though, his face changes, almost imperceptibly, as the server returns to the kitchen.

'Is that what you ordered?'

'It might be, it's just not what I expected'

I look at his plate. It's piled with grey meats, skins visibly pimpled, an untidy heap of cuts I don't recognise. The meat is in a variety of beigey colours, but it's the texture that looks to be the biggest issue.

'Is it nice?'

He looks down. 'I’m working on it'

My eyes stay rooted on my own spaghetti. I finish quickly.

His food appears barely touched, something that has never happened in the three years of us eating together.

'What do you think yours is?'

'I’ll tell you when we leave.’

I head to the bar to pay the friendly man on the till. He smiles and offers a mint. I tip. L is waiting for me on the stairs.

'It was an assortment of boiled creatures. Veal. Chicken. It must have been boiling for hours. I think there was a shin in there somewhere. But the centrepiece was a whole tongue.'

He rolls a cigarette, quicker than usual. I walk faster, suddenly in need of air.

'Generally I only want one tongue in my mouth when I'm eating.'

In May, we drove through Slovenia (see: the gun and the carrier bag of cake) and Italy, staying somewhere new every night. Every morning, both L and I summed up the accommodation from the previous night in six words.

I can almost taste the breakfast in each place when I read them back:

Patterned home of elderly Slovenian auntie
City centre faded glory of old

Tepid conference building surrounded by beauty
Grand ski hotel lost in time

Chic designer rooms, the greenest view
Bohinj boutique bringing comfort and joy

Two cheerful hosts, folded orange towels
Soaps in hallway (coffee was cold)

Hot pine attic with rude hosts
Noisy little dogs made stairs intense

1920s space to be someone glamorous
Charming rooms rushed after long drive

Big sky hill home brings peace
Wild, green mountain retreat from life

Salvatore's homemade lemon cake, iconic view
Exceptional host provided breakfast of champions

P.S. Things to click on:

• This email made me happy

• One day I’ll get to cherry blossom season

• A long, thought-provoking listen on sex work

• I just love the Summer Exhibition every year, this one was no exception

On the edge of a petrol station in rural Slovenia, we shake hands with a stranger, and climb into his car. He introduces himself, polite but businesslike. Inside is a large carrier bag of cake and a gun.

Our ears pop as we leave the supermarkets and car parks behind, and drive higher and higher into the mountains, endless newly green leaves blurring past in the late sun. The road becomes progressively less like a road as we go on.

Luckily, his English is better than our Slovenian.

'We arrive, you must be silent. Follow me close. And in a minute, we stop and you must toilet.'

The car stops in dense woodland, on the forest track, and I foolishly look around for the toilet, then notice he is peeing round the corner. I squat uncertainly in a large patch of wild garlic.

Back in the car. 'First, I go, then you' pointing at L, 'then wife', pointing at me.

'We arrive, you open blinds slowly. Very, very slowly.'

He pulls up and opens the door. Every noise is amplified against the backdrop of clear, sunlit air and singing birds. I want to do a recording for Chirpomatic, but sense this may not be the time.

In the promised order, we walk. Our guide in front, gun in one hand and cake in the other. Leaves crunch beneath my feet and I will myself to be lighter.

A small wooden hut becomes visible and he gestures us up the steps inside. 'I go and put the cake' he whispers, barely audible. We shuffle inside, along the wooden bench.

He returns, somehow now with a two litre bottle of bright blue fizzy pop which he drinks deeply from.

His finger points to the blinds, and we lift the heavy felt. The gesture changes the atmosphere in the shed completely. Each of us now has a front row seat to the evening, and the darkness inside is offset by the tiny bright windows. The contrast reminds of being at the cinema. We are here for a show.

The guide plays us a silent video on his phone ‘this one is 200kg’ he whispers, and we mouth wow without making a noise. He slides my window open the tiniest crack to clear the glass of our breath. L and I crane to see every angle from our tiny windows.

‘40% chance this way, 40% chance that way,’ he points. I hope the other 20% isn’t behind us.

It might be ten minutes later, or it might be ninety, when he taps my leg and points.

An enormous brown bear has appeared centre stage, the sweetest face I've ever seen. Deep, fluffy coat, with only the broad shoulders to remind me that sweet perhaps isn’t his defining characteristic.

He looks around, sniffing the air. The guide mouths ‘he can smell us’ and shuts my window with a deft, silent slide. Our eyes widen.

This is what we came for.

PS I loved this idea

Inspired by L being horrified by what I eat on a tired Tuesday evening by myself (pasta, with lots of tomato ketchup, frozen peas and grated Cheddar and maybe some cornichons if they are floating about in the fridge), I asked some friends what they eat when they’re hungry and it’s late and they’re alone.

-

I’ll just stand at the fridge and eat things.

So yesterday for example, I had a great dinner - 3 strawberries, the end of a cucumber, three slices of parmesan, leftover daal that mum made, a kiwi with the skin on because apparently that’s what everyone is doing now (have you heard about that?), some flatbread and end of olive tapenade that I realised afterwards expired in Jan and just enough of C’s Easter egg so he wouldn’t really notice.

-

A few times last winter this ended up being porridge. Strange but true.

More often than not though it’s a sort of egg fried rice stir fry type thing. Or just lots of greens with chilli oil on top, that always feels like a win as it’s ready in 7-8 mins.

-

My first hope would be I that I’d have something stashed away in the back of the freezer which was delicious, home-cooked and I’d forgotten about. However, this would be unlikely.

I always remember a friend telling me that sweet potatoes have more goodness in them than any green vegetables so they tend to be my go to for comfort and ease. So I’d have a jacket potato (of the sweet potato variety) and stick on top of it whatever was in the fridge which would generally be cheese and possibly Heinz beans if I need some comfort.

-

Either pan-fried gnocchi with random veg and pesto, or stir fried veg, noodles and lots of peanut rayu. Basically anything with peanut rayu.

-

I do have something else I eat which is very low brow. It was something I ate probably 90% of the time after J died. It’s kinda therapeutic to me now. I call it pasta special. There is nothing special about it really. All it is is pasta pesto and cheddar cheese/vegan cheese.** Nothing authentically Italian is ever sprinkled. Then hummus, gherkins and picked beetroot on the side. I sometimes cut up vegan sausages. This is a very ‘I’m on my own’ meal which holds a lot of emotions in it.

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A fish finger sandwich. Or scrambled eggs on sourdough toast from the freezer with chopped up tomatoes and toasted seeds.

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Make is a bit a stretch. Fresh supermarket soup with a bag of spinach chucked in so it wilts.

-

Honestly, probably shred a load of veg (mainly cabbage, love cabbage) and some cold buckwheat noodles to make into some sort of cold noodle salad. Whack in some tuna or tofu. OR I make a BANGING omelette. The only thing I will happily say I can cook really well is an omelette.

-

I see what I have in the fridge and pull together a risotto or risoni (you might call that orzo). I’ve always got homemade stock in the freezer*; some parsley from the herb pots on my balcony. Right now, for example, I could make a shredded chicken and asparagus version.

-

Basically, pasta/garlic/chilli/tinned sardine/tomato with greens on top if I have any (I usually don’t)

-

Tuna-mayo-cheese toast, with loads of Cajun spices

-

Until maybe a year ago it would've been a family sized bag of crisps with a favourite dip (fancy houmous or sour cream and salt) but my metabolism is growing up. It’s still an assembly dinner though, that J wouldn't see as a full meal. Like two different green veg and rice.

I’m a big cheese sandwich fan too, sometimes use that as a vehicle for plenty of salad things so it looks green but it’s mainly mayonnaise.

-

* T has showed us all up here with fancy homemade stock and balcony herbs

** Enjoyed the fact this is surprisingly similar to mine

For the first time, I am sharing an extra issue this month, with some of it just for paying subscribers. Thanks so much to everyone for welcoming me into your inbox.

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The morning had been filled with the chicest of shops, a breakfast of bitter coffee, honeycomb on fresh baguette, flowers lining the market streets in buckets, just past their peak. Colour, hot pavements, bright light.

In the sweet shop, there were named chocolate creatures of all shapes and sizes, lined up in their clear, ribboned boxes, bright eyed and glossy, alarmingly uniform. Antique earthenware bowls in the window, tempting people inside with their glacéd contents.

I watched as mum made her choices and they were tonged into a plastic lidded box for her: melon, cherries, lemon, each one glowing brighter than the next.

Lunch was socca. Thin, crispy chickpea pancakes, orange in the sun, near burnt on the bottom, flecked with plenty of black pepper and served messily in white cones which leaked their warmth onto our hands. Washed down standing up, swallowed with cold peach tea.

Yesterday was the Matisse museum. Clean, sharp-scissored collage, inside a house of joy in building form. Crowds of tired tourists, L sitting outside on the concrete waiting for me.

But now, on one side of the medieval square - very slowly at first - but then undeniably all at once, everything I have been pushing down, rises to the top.

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