It’s not lost on me that on this first day of term (here in Leicester anyway, where we break up early and return to school early, a throwback from the now defunct hosiery industry), it’s raining on a biblical level. The heavens have thrown themselves open shouting SUMMER IS CLOSED. And it occurs to me that I never did get that summer beach body sorted (cackles with irony… I hate all that jazz as much as the next woman), so for 2026 I’ve failed on that front. What I did do was altogether more interesting, or rather it was unexpected - even to me. I got fat.

Now usually, when my jeans become snug and my chin grows a friend, it’s a bit of a surprise to me. I often eat due to enjoying texture and repetitive motion. I like to crunch and chomp and chew. The flavour is less interesting to me. I’m always a little bit outraged by the increase in girth. How unfair! How annoying! Especially the need to abstain until my waist circumference reduces and the risk of heart disease is abated again. Winter is my favourite season to grow larger, as it is for all, no? Cozy scenes and large knits mean a few extra pounds are to be expected.

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Not this time. Way back 3000 days ago in late June when it was so hot we were surfing Rightmove for homes in Scotland, I just let myself eat. Not in some kind of experiment, it wasn’t as knowing as that. I just ate when I wanted and what I wanted. I chose the thing on the menu that I desired rather than the option with a moral value attached. My gelato order upgraded from mini to regular, I ate the crisps too, and another bag if I wanted, a small snack was a Cornetto to stave off heat exhaustion. It felt indulgent but I was too hot to care. Nothing fit. Yoga was tricky as my rolls of fat reappeared, you can’t forward fold as well with a belly. Pyjama bottoms were my best outdoor trousers, though certain pairs were assigned for only that duty. I’m not a complete slut, I wouldn’t just roll out of bed and carry on my day without changing. Not often anyway.

And I did care but also I didn’t. My waist was podgy. I lay on my side in the small hours, too hot to sleep, the fan making me dry eyed and grumpy, the cat a splat on the bed, all fur and exhaustion, and squished my tummy like one of those squashy fiddly toys. I could feel the globules of fat (fat cells?) all plump and full to the brim. They rolled between my finger and thumb this way and that. Full of fried chicken and sausages and Twister lollies and clotted cream atop scones. As I let my stomach go it fell to the bed, a little friend by my side, returned again. Hello old pal.

And so I carried on like this until one day when I needed to go out out. The evening had a chill in the air so I rummaged for my jeans. And the size 14 didn’t fit, no matter, I’ve always been a large 14 when left to my own devices. And then the 16 didn’t fit either. So the old size 18’s were required. I am a good feminist in some ways, I know the number on labels does not maketh the woman. I know it’s all a load of nonsense. However, these jeans were also quite unpleasant to wear, (though I’ve never liked super tight clothes, they make me anxious, always have).

And so it’s the end of the summer and I think I am going to rename the summer of 2026 My Fat Girl Summer. It’s the summer I ate with abandon and ordered whatever I wanted. I jostle as I walk and I am snoring so loudly I wake myself and so it’s time ladies and gentleman to embrace My Slim Girl Winter which will involve restarting Mounjaro, re-enrolling on the bootcamp classes at my yoga studio and getting excited about wearing something other than pyjamas.

If you want to read about my previous Mounjaro experience, I wrote about it here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. I’ve also written a lot about my weight over the years including everything I know about being thin, gaining weight as a test of love, the Human Being Diet, what I am most ashamed of, reaching rock bottom (my most read piece here on substack after the Meghan debacle) and feeling bad about my wattle.

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I very rarely write about having ADHD anymore because of the general boredom around it, the whole ‘everyone has it’. I feel ashamed, like I conjured a diagnosis just to be cool. (I didn’t, and I’m not). One of the things I find most annoying about not being medicated anymore is that I can be impulsive. I have what’s called in this house ‘good ideas’ though tbh they’re not always good ideas. Having these ideas means I waste a lot of time going off on side quests. When it’s hot this behaviour evokes a deep sense of self loathing. To give you an example, last night at 6.45pm I set off for B & Q to have some wood cut.

Now this in itself is fairly normal behaviour. A little late in the day given the shop closes at 8pm and there could have been a queue for the cutting service, but not stupidly late. What was stupid was the reason and the preparation I’d (not) done. Let me give you a little insight into how I came to be eyeing up plywood in B & Q on a Friday night.

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Thoughts, Friday 14th August 2026

8am - Very hot, hate being this hot, tired from scrolling too late, hate being hot.

8.20am - Get up, go and do a small production job for my boyfriend for a shoot, feel hot and bothered and annoyed at bad driving.

8.30am - Maybe should move to the countryside where I can wander about in my knickers and the driving might be better.

8.33am - Hate how far away everything is everytime we shop in the countryside when on holiday. Also hate the flies.

9.30am - Home. Kitchen is insanely hot, makeshift curtains made from tying the Christmas tablecloths to the windows with twine not making a huge difference. Decide SOMETHING MUST BE DONE.

10am - Decide we must go the cinema asap to get away from the heat. Research times, make a plan with youngest, get ready.

11am - Just about to leave and despite knowing this is likely the last few days of insane heat in the Midlands have a bright idea I will make wooden shutters for the kitchen windows. Must measure up immediately and visit B & Q on way back from cinema.

11.05am - Use my dressmaking tape measure to roughly get the dimensions for both windows. Windows are huge so have to measure in two parts. Can’t get the tape measure to stay straight. Look for DIY tape measure briefly. Can’t find it. Go back to fabric bendy one.

11.10am - Have two sets of different dimensions for two windows that look similar. Measurements in inches and written as ‘34” + 35.5” wide x 58” tall’ like some kind of GCSE maths question.

11.20am - Leave the house. Fantasise on the way into town that I will paint the wooden panel shutter things either in jaunty and minimalist stripes or with folk art canal boat style flowers. I don’t know how to do the latter but that’s never stopped me yet.

11.45am - Arrive in town. We pick up my new varifocal glasses. Am warned they will likely make me feel dizzy at first and make walking feel odd. Ignore the warnings, put them straight on and walk out of the opticians. Do not feel dizzy or odd. Think maybe they don’t work for this reason.

12pm - Go for lunch (McDonalds - in our defence we were on a mission to bring home a McCafe cup for my boyfriend, don’t ask). Both myself and youngest son outraged at the poor behaviour of other children watching very loud devices whilst their grandparents scrolled on their devices. Oh well, gives us something to talk about. We both enjoy a good bitch.

12.30pm - Both like the look of a crystal pop up shop in the shopping centre. Pay for youngest to break open his own geode (£2.50 - bargain!). Feel angry that shop guy does not have any bags for the fragmented geode and says to visit the till and pay 50p for an organza bag. Find an old Lidl receipt in my bag and fashion a geode receptacle from it.

1pm - Visit Tiger shop which is my best place to visit, even including Ikea. Consider I should move to Sweden when kids grown. Youngest and I buy 3 pairs of sunglasses, a beaded necklace for glasses, a make your own mosaic tray for £8 and two LED candles that strangely feel like wax.

1.30pm - Cinema time. Buy tickets for The End of Oak Street. Reflect how lucky I am that 1 out of my 3 sons likes apocalyptic sci-fi films. Buy almost melted vegan vanilla ice-cream for son which I eat as it’s disgusting and he rejects it. Eat it. Regret it. Wish I didn’t eat all wasted food in some kind of money saving exercise. Enjoy film even though I irrationally hate Anne Hathaway. Ponder how Ewan McGregor gets away with being so bad at accents. Son and I more upset about dog situation than about human being eaten. Very happy about resolution re: situation with dog.

3.30pm ish - Go back to crystal shop because youngest has been thinking about his idea of a snail terrarium and if a snail might like a fancy rock to sit on. Buy a rock and an amethyst tree because the snail will like it.

4pm - Visit one of those Mankind shops and look at rude socks, Lord of the Rings paraphernalia and remote controlled flying toys. Have forgotten all about shutters but am very tired.

4.30pm - Make our way back to the car via John Lewis toy section which is incredibly hot and makes me angry because WHY IS THEIR AIR CON NOT BETTER IT’S JOHN LEWIS FFS. Youngest and I sit in a 16k garden pod to see what it’s like. Decide it’s not worth 16k and feel sad someone left an empty water bottle in it. Standards are slipping at John Lewis.

5pm - Drive home.

5.30pm - HOT. Decide the shutters need to happen just as soon as I’ve cooled a little. Do not check forecast for next 7 days, vaguely aware that next week is cool enough for the dog to go to work with boyfriend, so on some level know the shutters should have been fashioned at the beginning of the summer and are not in fact ‘urgent’.

6.45pm - Decide shutters are urgent and set off in car to B & Q. Traffic terrible. Emergency alert from government goes off whilst in car, feel like I am living in my own apocalyptic film.

7.10pm - Arrive at B & Q. Go straight to wood cutting area, see there is only one man in queue but he is having a lot of wood cut. Wait. It’s very hot. Chap cutting wood keeps cutting it wrong. He is holding wood up against pieces he has already cut and they are all different sizes. Does not make me feel optimistic about the shutters fitting with my shoddy measuring and his shoddy cutting.

7.15pm - Remember my measurements are still in inches and decide to make best use of time and convert them to metric whilst waiting. Peruse wood options. Realise my shutter size is too big for any piece of wood. Feel sad.

7.20pm - Brainwave. I will have shutters cut into half and then stick them together with hinges. Will look French. Think this is a great idea. Have to amend my measurements. Am pleased as think I can get three panels from one piece of wood. Ask man in queue to give my measurements to the cutting man when he’s done and note the wood I want on paper. He says no problem and keeps apologising for how long his wood is taking. I say ‘don’t be sorry’, smile and go off in search of hinges.

7.35pm - Return to cutting area with hinges and rope. Needed rope for erecting soft toy ceiling prison for youngest’s room. Cutting man still busy.

7.40pm - The wood is all cut for the man in front of me. Cutting chap says he will get one piece free because of how badly he measured them. Feel a bit worried about shutters again. Cutting man asks customer how he’s getting the huge pieces of wood home and he replies ‘in my Nissan Micra’. I am worried for the customer but he looks like he might have some of those springly ropes with hooks on.

7.45pm - Tell the cutting man my plan and the wood I want. He breaks the news that I can only get one shutter per piece of wood. Each piece of wood is £22 meaning the shutters will cost £88 plus the cost of hinges. I make an executive decision that this is too expensive for DIY shutters and say thanks but I am not going to bother. Ask him where cork tiles are for terrarium construction.

7.50pm - Can’t find cork tiles. Buy rope. Leave. Drive across the car park to Smyths to save time. IT’S TOO HOT.

7.55pm - Try to gain entry to Smyths Toys to buy a terrarium kit. Chap on the entrance says ‘ do you know what you want sweets?’ and I think, no, not really, I never know what I want, my brain is extremely annoying and I miss my legal speed that made me normal but I am worried about links to Parkinson’s disease. Don’t say this, instead say ‘Yes, a terrarium’. He replies ‘what’s that, a game?’ I say no, it’s a kit for growing stuff and for snails, whilst thinking it’s not strictly for snails but I don’t think this guy cares and also I need to gain entry to the store. He directs me to the aisle I need and says ‘be quick sweets’. Think about what it might be like to be married to a man who calls me sweets and think it might be nice and that he’d be very good at DIY and getting served at the bar. Find terrarium kit but looks plastic and has no price. Looks like it might be £30 for a plastic tub and some compost. Leave the store and say thanks but it’s not what my son wants. Feel bad for blaming absent son. Chap says ‘no problem my sweets’.

8pm - Pop into Home Bargains whilst at shopping park place to look for cork for making a homemade terrarium. Cannot find cork tiles. Buy long hair conditioner despite not having long hair but heard on social media it makes your hair grow faster, a net of low fat Babybels, an energy drink (not for me) and a bag of salt and vinegar Pop Chips. Get walked into three times by members of staff in Home Bargains and decide this is because I am now wearing varifocals on a beaded necklace and have become middle aged invisible to anyone under 40.

8.30pm - Drive home. Eat all of Pop Chips in car on journey. Half of Babybels too. Driving is bonkers.

9.30pm - Open one of the LED candles and realise they need AAA batteries and feel a bit conned that they were £4.50. ‘Light’ one and try to convince self it’s as good as a real candle. Boyfriend suspiciously quiet.

10pm - Consider whether Andy Burnham has ADHD and was meaning to send out the alert about not using barbecues and fireworks when he first came into power but got side-tracked by a snail terrarium and making plywood shutters in the style of canal boat art. Too little too late Andy, the UK is on fire already. (A bit like deciding to make shutters when the heatwave is over).

11pm - Smuggle low fat Babybel cheese net into bed without waking sleeping dog, sit in underwear with fan on and scroll reddit for info on shutters whilst eating cheese in nibbling circles until there’s a tiny centre left. Cat extremely interested. Worry the wax shells might attract vermin. Research tells me the shutters should be attached to the outside of the house or they don’t work. The idea is to stop the UV light reaching the window, so entire indoor shutter idea was nonsense.

1am - Finish scrolling. Go to sleep.

If any of the above is annoying, let me tell you that it’s way more annoying to live like this and feel like you have no agency over your brain deciding to prioritise the wrong things. I had around two years of being medicated and it was utter joy. I have never been so calm, so productive and so focused.

Luckily my boyfriend is the foil to my chaos and so far this summer has stopped me from digging a freshwater pond in the garden, buying a second hand above ground full size swimming pool, purchasing a £300 caravan from facebook marketplace and buying a Victorian dress complete with bustle and putting our names down for a chihuahua puppy. He’s a very patient man.

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In my head

Okay so before I go any further I have a question to ask, for those of you who are regulars, do you prefer a list for this section (like last month, see here) or do you prefer a little mini written letter instead (as per every other month?) Answers below:

Anyway, here we are in the hottest UK summer I can remember. I can’t help but fantasise about future days when I don’t spend the nights throwing covers on and off, sleeping to the sound of a fan, dreaming of ice and waterfalls and lollies.

Ted, our furry Golden Retriever is fed up. He’s the only dog I know who likes to sunbathe and so is sad when this request is denied him. We have a mini pool I bought online for £100 that arrived and is tiny, maybe big enough for one person to get into.

I should wait until winter and buy a huge pool for next year, but of course, I won’t and then next May I’ll be horrified at the inflated prices. My boyfriend isn’t so sure about a garden swimming pool, even the 12 foot ones. He predicts Ted will break it and we’ll be left with a flooded garden and Ted doing his remorseful face. He could well be right, but those photos get me every time. The families look so happy larking about in their backyard, all slim and swimmy. I’ve always felt that way about pool pictures. Remember holiday brochures with the empty swimming pools and inviting sun loungers? They hold so much hope. A photo of an empty, still pool is a tonic.

Peaceful huh?

Anyway, my main past time of the last month or so (is it only that long the UK has been in some kind of heat hellscape?) has been making repeated visits to the garage freezer for various ice lollies including Twisters, strawberry splits and coconut, pineapple and lime lollies (Sainsburys - SO good). What have you been doing?

This is reader supported, which means that the more of you who subscribe, the more time I can spend writing. If that sounds like a good thing then there’s a handy button below. There are free and paid options. Paid means I can take all my vinted bits to the charity shop, so you know, no pressure, but you’re essentially doing God’s work if you sign up:

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In my basket

A fan of course!

Ordered a Shark fan which I was initially a little disappointed in (unfair - it’s a fan not aircon) but after filling the water jet bit with iced water can report it is excellent. Got mine from AO as I have one of those yearly delivery passes with them but you can buy elsewhere:

Sadly AO didn’t have it in green, but if you buy direct from Shark they have all manner of colours. Remember though, iced water is the game changer. Do not buy from Amazon as the prices are insane, way more than the £130 it should be.

Listening & Reading

The summer should be a great time for reading huh, but it being the school holidays means it’s not as easy for me to get through the volume of audio books I like to consume in an effort to keep my brain from wandering. Here’s what I have managed last month:

• Dissection of a Murder by Jo Murray - I am absolutely not of the point of view that a book must be true to life to be enjoyable. BUT… if a book depends on modern day UK law to form a narrative then it does need to be believable, and this just wasn’t. Which is odd given the author is an ex criminal barrister. And the ending, well, no spoilers, but it’s a nope from me. Have you read it?

• The Beginning and End of Everything by Sarah Hiscox

  

  This memoir about eating disorders and drug addiction is compelling but also deeply frustrating. It clearly had a huge marketing spend behind it and Hiscox is well connected enough to have managed to get onto every major podcast to talk about her experiences. Her best friend is Davina McCall (who contributed a saccharine foreword) which I’d imagine helps. This is not a criticism. If I’d been a heroin addict who’d missed a chunk of my son’s childhoods and decided to write about it then I’d milk every contact I had too. Gladly it is well written.

  Notably Hiscox, like every person who’s been through intensive rehab and therapy, is utterly honest. There’s a definite stripping away of ego in the retelling of her darkest moments which can be jarring when she calls herself out for her utter selfishness. She admits to periods of blaming her husband for her addiction, given he bullied her into trying heroin on holiday in India because, well, he thought it might be fun. (Have you ever heard such a posh boy trust fund thing in your life? What happened to getting drunk and having sex on the beach as a bit of a risque moment? Who thinks trying Class A drugs in India is fun? WHO?) She is keen to assert that she doesn’t blame him now she is clean and that she was already deep in the grips of an eating disorder. Apparently the heroin was only a matter of time.

  Hmmmm… Sorry but I disagree. In fact her husband comes off pretty badly in this memoir. At one point when she’s clean and allowed to visit her sons at her previous home, her husband starts sleeping with her again, maybe also ‘just for fun’? They divorce, then he takes her out for dinner to ask her to marry him again. Seriously? What in the screwed up rom-com is this nonsense? He sounds like a prick. Sorry Sarah but I just don’t like him.

• White Teeth by Zadie Smith. Have been meaning to read this for years, like twenty plus years. Glad to have ticked it off but think maybe the hype might be a little OTT. If you love a yarn with interconnecting families/lives it’s a good read. I wanted more of the female characters and less of the men. But then that’s kind of the story of my life.

Watching

It’s been a cinematastic month given the heat. Give me a 5 litre cup of icy Diet Coke and an aircon cinema and I’m a pig in shit. So far we’ve seen Moana (live action version) which we found very funny despite the reviews being dreadful, Toy Story 5 which we liked but found the voice of Jessie grating, and Minions & Monsters which was a 10/10 for us, funny, pacy, easy to follow. Yes please and thank you.

We had plans to try and sneak into The Odyssey but decided against it. Damn it being a 15 when so many kids are mythology geeks.

Making & Mending

Clay Club continues to be the highlight of my week. I’ve been making baubles, plates and bowls mainly:

And then at home I’ve been making air dry baubles. What can I say, I just love clay!

Visiting

A hell of a lot of cat sitting this month, including this fella:

And this lady:

And a grand old time having some drinks with my college pals. We’ve known each other for 30 years this month!

Definitely not changed a bit!

BRIEF AD BREAK ALERT:

Did you know I sell my sourdough starter? If you’re in the UK you can buy it here.

From baking to… divorce:

I have physical copies of my book about divorce available here and if you wanted to get a copy immediately it’s always on Amazon as an ebook here.

Oh and if you’re after some jewels may I recommend mine and Scott’s little Etsy venture? Take a look over at our shop here. Lots of really affordable bits packaged up by yours truly.

Okay. Ad break over.

Links you might like

1. Free printed paper templates here, including gorgeous thin ruled lines for French style hand-writing and dotted paper and graph paper and crochet paper and…

2. A journey from media girl about town to Universal Credit.

3. Did you know the most fatal forms of ovarian cancer usually start in the fallopian tubes? I didn’t. Turns out you can have them removed without entering premature menopause. Obvs needs to be done after you’re done having kids.

On my table

More like in my gob. These.

You may have missed

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Last months posts have included:

1. Tesco rejected my job application. Read here.

2. My ONE idea to improve the NHS and it costs nothing. Read here.

3. An interview with a woman who recently underwent a breast uplift and labiaplasty. Read here.

4. What your driving says about you. Read here.

5. An ode to Good Food magazine and also, what to do about the glut of blackberries. Read here.

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My month in pictures

(Sorry this is behind a paywall but, well, they’re personal photos, not THAT kind, they’re my life and so they’re not for everyone and their dog).

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How I loved those late nineties editions of Good Food. I still have them somewhere in the garage. They took me to a fantasy world of family dinners around a rustic pine kitchen table, mismatched plates, ‘gluts’ of foraged fruits, jam making, picnic conjuring, ice cream churning, bread proving. I learnt as much about food as I did about class. In my childhood jam was from Tesco and dinner was eaten on a lap tray. Bread was white and sliced and accompanied every meal two slices for gravy. It’s just how it was; this isn’t a sob story.

I loved the January edition free calendar showcasing seasonal ingredients and their recipes. Perusing the months ahead and what should be eaten was a window into an unusual world. At 17 I’d never seen nor picked a blackberry in the wild. Sure, I’d been to the local Pick Your Own and emerged red lipped, belly aching, brandishing a plastic tub of strawberries. But you had to pay for that. Free fruit? What wonder was this?

When I became a mother those fantasies of foraging came to the fore, but I just didn’t know what I was looking for. One year on holiday in Suffolk I filled plastic bags for life with hedgerow blackberries, more thorn than berry. Stowed in the holiday home freezer until the day we left. The resplendent jam was a Russian roulette of sweet treat or sharp scratch. Not my best work but so began a love of scouting for free food.

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I think the blackberries of my 1990’s Good Food calendar featured in the month of September or even October, but thirty years later and climate change means they’ve been falling off the bramble bushes here in the Midlands for at least 3 weeks already. Times are changing. Luckily my love affair with free berries endures. The freezer has a good kilo or so stashed away, open frozen for easy tumble access come winter for porridge, smoothies, yoghurt, crumble and the like.

I might make some cordial if I manage to grab a couple of tubs more on my way here and there. Always a few empty plastic fruit trays stashed in the boot. I find it hard to leave bushes heavy with fruit, the birds and mice ignoring them. But I don’t love blackberries in cakes and bakes, much as I don’t care for cooked apples either. Just me, I know. And blackberry vinegar is all very well and good but you only need a couple of bottles per year, huh? And blackberry jam is DELICIOUS but we haven’t eaten all the jars from last year yet, so that seems foolish. So many berries and yet what to do with them?

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And then it came to me. A couple of almost past their use-by-date cartons of double cream, some milk, sugar, blackberries… ice cream of course, or rather, gelato. I read somewhere recently gelato is a superfood. I’ve decided not to google if this is true, because for me it is and always will be. There’s nothing I love more than homemade ice-cream and the only thing I regret about my counter top ice-cream machine is that I waited until my 46th year to buy it. You can make ice-cream by hand, of course you can, it just won’t be as a smooth and it’ll keep you chained to the freezer for a few hours, not literally of course.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for you this Friday afternoon. I could bore you with the tale of how SEVEN different middle aged men approached me to give me advice on blackberry picking yesterday whilst I was standing next to a bramble bush minding my own business but this isn’t news, is it? Annoying though.

What about you? Any good blackberry recipes to share? Don’t forget if you like this recipe then a like, a share and even a comment are much appreciated. Or if you prefer you can sign up for my recipes and ramblings below. Most of my writing is free, but the juicy stuff is behind a paywall for the price of a coffee per month:

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It’s ridiculous and exhausting and leads to the general feeling that politics is a joke, something silly people concern themselves with whilst the rest of us get on with living out lives. And politics is anything but silly, of that I am sure. Maybe the behaviour of the power hungry is though. Perhaps you should have to prove you don’t want to rule over the masses in order to be able to do just that. Hmmmm…

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Anyway, I feel like Andy’s got a lot on his plate. He’s already launched with a few crowd pleasers; removing VAT from household electricity bills, removing VAT from the hospitality industry (not restaurants and cafes though) and capping bus fares at £2. There are further rumblings afield. Which brings me to the reason for writing this. I have a little suggestion for Andy about the NHS. Are you listening Andy? This one’s for you:

Dear Andy,

I have worked in the NHS (as a student midwife, admittedly over 25 years ago), I’ve given birth three times in NHS hospitals, I’ve navigated the NHS Right to Choose process for autism assessments, I’ve spent the day with my best friend on an NHS cancer ward just days before she died, I’ve visited my father daily on heart wards and stroke wards, spanning many years, most recently last summer. I am also friends with quite a few women who work in the NHS, mostly in hospitals. And I’m good mates with a lecturer who teaches the next generation of NHS employees. I can’t comment on budgets, low salaries, managerial incompetence, the over-use of expensive bank staff and crumbling buildings.

What I can comment on is ONE creeping habit I’ve noticed over the years that is contributing to poor hygiene, lacklustre patient care, the sometimes incorrect administration of drugs and the decline in Team (with a capital T for sure) on wards. This one thing can be removed without any cost to the NHS, it can be implemented immediately and the uplift will be seen within about 24 hours. Magical huh? Imagine if such a solution existed? It does. (And it’s not religion).

Ban staff from using their mobile phones on shift.

Now before an army of NHS staff come knocking at my door with pitchforks, hear me out. There are many, many jobs where it’s not standard to be glued to your mobile phone whilst you’re being paid to work. Some of these jobs are minimum wage, so this is not about whether low pay should be rewarded with access to smartphones as some kind of odd, but free perk. It is not a human right to have access to your smart phone at all times, contrary to all of our popular beliefs. Yes there might well be times you’re waiting for an important call for something personal in nature. This isn’t what I’m talking about. And those calls are rare. As for emergencies, every ward has a landline phone that a relative can call.

Mobile phones are a huge infection risk. It should not be normal for staff to be touching a mobile phone in between caring for patients. If a member of staff put their hands down their pants and then went to administer some drugs we’d all be horrified. The incessant use of mobile phones is the same, probably worse.

Mobile phones are attention grabbers. It should not be normal for staff to be scrolling social media or answering messages/emails or doing the weekly shop or WHATEVER whilst they should be working, especially when their work involves looking after vulnerable human beings. Looking after people who are in pain/unwell requires your full attention, so much is learnt through observing. This is rule 1 of all medical training - listen, watch, smell, feel. You can’t be fully present when you have a mobile phone on your person, ask any child raised by a parent who is chronically online.

When my father was in hospital last year I witnessed every level of staff preoccupied with their mobile phone. One health care assistant sat scrolling facebook next to a bay with urine on the floor. When I politely asked for some anti bac spray and paper towels to clean it before my father’s bed was wheeled in, she replied ‘it’s not what it looks like’. So she had noticed it, but decided not to do anything about it. Her phone was more important to her. I watched beds being changed and wiped down time and time again without attention to detail, a quick spray and a wipe, a slap-dash job before the phone came back out of the pocket. The corners of each PVC mattress untouched.

On a general surgery ward a few years ago I watched as the same nurse tried to administer two sets of the same painkillers to my post-operative relative. When I asked her why he needed two sets in such close succession and if they were different she denied having previously administered them. She offered to show me the iPad she recorded the meds on to ‘prove’ this. I had to get other patients on the bay to confirm that she had indeed just been to see my father less than half an hour ago with pain meds. I’d watched her return to the desk after the first set of meds were given and consult her mobile. Maybe there was a glitch on the iPad recording system or maybe she forgot to make notes in her haste to answer a message? Two sets of painkillers would have had serious consequences for my relative, given the cocktail of drugs they take daily that interact with them. These are just a few examples, there are more. I’m just trying not to bore you Andy, you’re a busy guy.

I think these reasons are enough, but actually one of the biggest worries is the decline in Team. My lecturer pal tells me their students complain that their mentors are always on their phones. They get bored, so they too go on their phones. As my friend says, they’re just copying what they see. And when everyone is stuck in their own little personally curated world of social media and news and online shopping and messaging and dating and rightmove and, and, and… there’s no Team. You can’t forge the bonds of a team when everyone exists in a silo. And you definitely can’t deliver a good quality of care without working in strongly forged teams where there’s trust and respect and reliance. It’s crucial. Teams aren’t formed simply through discussing patient care, a team is personal isn’t it? It’s the jokes, the asking about the holiday, knowing when your colleague’s mum is poorly, taking an interest in each other - it’s knowing each other well. And I’d suggest that this might actually make staff happier too.

So there you go Andy, I’ll give you that one for free.

Love from Holly.

Do you work in the NHS? Tell me your ward isn’t like this! Are my experiences unusual? (They are taken from various parts of the UK, not just Leicestershire). And it goes without saying, not all staff are this way of course.

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Anyway, some driving tropes I’ve noticed whilst pootling about in my car:

Red Flags Aplenty

Calls other drivers ‘she’ as a slur regardless of their gender. Often reverts to sexual slurs as driving insults. Cow, slag, bitch, whore. Never a bastard eh? Sadly I was in a long term relationship with one of these. 10/10 do not recommend. Terrifying. Also, think a lot of this woman hating diatribe is actually rooted in a deep mother wound and a wish to be pegged. You heard it here first.

The Teacher

This driver is on a one man/woman crusade to teach the world the error of their ways. In or outside of the car, they’re full of helpful advice. They overtake super wide to draw attention to dangerously slow driving, on the motorway they move from the inside lane to the middle to the outside and back again in a huge loop around the middle lane offender to show them what they’re doing wrong. It’s a public service provided for free. They love a tut and a wag of a finger. They probably grow their own vegetables and are part of a co-operative to buy rice and dried beans in bulk. The late in life Teacher volunteers at a high street charity shop and hugely enjoys disposing of sub standard donations.

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The Fuel Economist

See that car slowing, slowing, very gently to a stop at the red light from ooh, half a mile before? That same one who barely accelerates? Looks a bit out of control on a hill, like maybe they’re not even in gear? You’re not imagining it - what you’ve spotted is a Fuel Economist. They’re out to save money and they’ll do anything to save some pennies. Air con? Turned off. Windows? Closed. Boot? Empty. The die hard won’t pay for parking either, preferring to park out of town and walk in. It’s hard to know whether to applaud them or pity them. I mean it looks exhausting right? And it is, because the Fuel Economist is also usually a prepper. Their home is a treasure trove of solar powered radios, water purification tablets, gas canisters, maybe even a generator. Their freezer houses roadkill, foraged berries, sourdough starter and any spare space is rammed with bottles of frozen water (it’s more economical to power a filled freezer rather than empty space don’t you know).

I’m not trying to say the Fuel Economist is cheap, but they always agree going Dutch at the beginning of a date, pay their share with Clubcard vouchers and if they pick up the tab for the taxi home, you bet they’re expensing it on the company. Ick-central.

The Optimist

Glass half full, always hopeful, this driver thinks any gap is a possibility. We’ve all sat and waited as they try, try and try again to parallel park into the tiniest of spaces. After the 12th attempt of them trying to eek a 7 seater into a Fiat Panda gap, they drive off, looking for the next tiny spot.

You have to admire their optimism. They approach clothes shopping in the same way. Size 5 trainers not available? Only the 3’s left? Let’s give them a go! Their kitchen is painted a baby poo colour because the mustard they wanted was out of stock. Ever the optimist, admirable really. They’ll always try and squeeze through that gap, even if it does mean a few scratches on the paintwork. Nevermind! Adds a bit of character.

The Daddy

Now age is no barrier to Daddy behaviour. You also don’t need to be a father, nor do you need to be male. What you do need is an overwhelming urge to take control of situations in a calm and controlled fashion. This must include, at least once a journey, placing their arm around the back of the front passenger seat in order to reverse. Owning a car with rear reverse cameras is no barrier to this little move. The Daddy doesn’t fully trust cameras, they distort things you see. They also take issue with dishwashers, automatic car washes and sprinkler systems, amongst other new fangled things that emerged in the 70’s.

They do have a very green lawn from hand watering and are brilliant at camping. They have all the gear and every idea. Barbeques are also part of their skill set. If World War III breaks out then you want The Daddy on your team.

Car as Weapon

Very similar to the Red Flag Driver above but this one is less about the verbal insults and more about inciting some kind of physical fight where they are never the collateral damage. Starts with a long beep of the horn, ends with the slamming of the breaks, the gesturing of ‘come on then!’ and swerving the car to use it as a weapon. Utterly terrifying to be a passenger of. Definitely do not tell them to calm down, tends to ignite emotions further.

I was in a long term relationship with someone who progressed from Red Flag Driver to this fella. The only advice I have is to leave them, but maybe take some advice from Women’s Aid before you do. These people are dangerous when rejected. They also firmly believe that all women have out of control emotions without recognising that their own feelings of extreme anger are that very thing. Low IQ, low EQ. Avoid.

Middle Laner

We all hate the Middle Laner, huh? Obliviously slowing down the flow of traffic on the motorway, refusing to dip back amongst the lorries and caravans. GET OUT THE WAY! But I have a theory about these guys - they’re not bad people, they’re just extreme procrastinators. The middle lane gives them most options, so there they stay. Easy to spot out of a car - they always wait to order their meal last in a restaurant. They’re just seeing what everyone else is up to, getting a bit of inspiration, waiting. Whatever you do, don’t make them commit first. It’s just not in them. In fact, suggest going for tapas, that’s right up their street.

Indicator Denier

They know where they’re going, that’s what matters, why would they tell you? These people drive about in a daze, it’s all about them. They don’t notice when they’ve blocked a junction as they sit in traffic. They’re oblivious to the expletives muttered by their fellow road users. They also prefer to park at a jaunty angle, I mean why not, it’s faster isn’t it? Heavy users of their mobile phones whilst driving, time in the car is wasted unless they make a call, answer a message or do the online shop. Driverless cars can’t come fast enough with ID on the road.

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You’ll still be able to spot them though, once driving is a thing of the past. On trains for example, their bag always deserves a seat of its own. You must ask for it to be moved and hell yeah, they’ll sigh like you asked their 90 year old Granny to stand up for an Olympic gold winner. Entitled much?

Beauty Salon on Wheels

The reason you’re stuck at the lights whilst they turn to green and back to red? BSW was just grabbing at that stubborn eyebrow hair with their trusty glove box tweezers. They often travel in rollers and always keep a second full make up kit within easy grasp, just in case. Their car is less mode of transport and more mobile salon. Often drives a Beetle, Mini or Fiat 500 complete with eyelashes. Don’t underestimate BSW though. They might look like an air head but they’re secretly plotting the launch of their cigarette lighter powered, salon grade LED red light face-mask. Give it a year and they’ll be on Dragon’s Den. Give it five and they’ll be a Dragon.

Racer

Listen, it doesn’t matter that it’s their Dad’s car, what matters is how low the seat can be adjusted, how fast they can accelerate at the lights and how quickly they can break. After all, they’re not paying their own petrol bill are they? Traffic lights are there to be challenged, amber means put your foot down. Seat belts? Nah, they’re too restrictive, they like to feel their body move with the car. (NB: Also a great method of natural selection for when they crash). The Racer likes to share their musical taste by playing their selection extremely loudly with the windows down. They’ve heard it makes the girls swoon. (It doesn’t). NB: also believes zebra crossings are optional stopping points.

Will experience one driving ban before the age of 25. Definitely will be an unfair decision by the courts. Definitely will save their life. (And others).

Mobile Creche

She’s got the wheels on the bus at the highest volume setting, she’s abusing her ADHD meds just to get through the day, she’s high on coffee and suspects she ruined her life by having kids. The only way to get through the next 18 ish years is to never be alone with her offsrping. Thus the car is a mobile creche for the days out she subjects them to. Portable potty, snacks aplenty, bottles and bottles of water, books, towels, spare clothes, wipes, nappies, sun cream, Calpol, even a sleeping bag. There’s nothing she won’t do to avoid confronting the three massive mistakes strapped into the back of the car. She cranks up the nursery rhymes to drown them out. “What was that Jonty? Gabe? Claudia? Sorry darlings, Mummy can’t hear you over Wind the Bobbin Up”.

Mobile Crèche Driver used to manage a team of 30, now she can barely manage breaking up a squabble in soft play. Pass the Elvanse, it’s a double drop day.

The Body Dysmorphic

BD has spatial issues. They just don’t know the width of their car. Any gap is approached with slightly squinty eyes, a holding of their breath and a little prayer. They’ve actually never scraped their car but the anxiety driving evokes means they’re popping Calms like travel sweets. They keep an emergency vial of Rescue Remedy in the glove box for navigating multi storey car parks, always listen to Classic FM ‘for their nerves’ and plan every route to only include left turns. They’re secretly looking forward to old age when they qualify for a free bus pass and can claim their reactions are too slow to drive anymore.

Despite their nervy OAP demeanour their personal life is extremely colourful. Currently part of a throuple and exploring a side hustle as a dominatrix; when they wear PVC they come alive, and oddly their spatial awareness is excellent when brandishing a whip.

Cyclist Avoider

The Cyclist Avoider is terrified of being in trouble with middle aged Lycra clad male cyclists. She’s married to one you see, and she knows the special venom they reserve for menopausal drivers. She doesn’t want footage of her to appear on any of the cycling tik tok accounts, or shudder - the Daily Mail. So she always slows down and passes them with lots of space, more than she would even give to a horse. Problem is she’s so nervous of them she forgets to check what’s coming the other way.

Rest in peace poor Cyclist Avoider in her Peugeot 107 who died at the mercy of an HGV. Still at least the cyclist she was overtaking caught it all on his head cam - got him a Leicester Mercury front page piece about his PTSD. Result! Plus her sacrifice, sorry death, has left her widower Geoff free to pursue Susan from the Cycling Club. After all, those who pedal together stay together.

The Non-Driver

Last but definitely not least, there’s The Non-Driver. Emotionally stunted at the age they first failed their driving test, they keep this info to themselves and have concocted a story of being a free spirit, of not wanting to be tied to a machine, of preferring public transport for environmental reasons.

Usually male, their girlfriend nods sagely as ND lectures car owners on their gas guzzling ways, her keys poised, ready to whizz ND back to his parents in her battered old Golf. She really does love him, despite him not having a job and always borrowing money from her. His trust fund doesn’t come through until he’s 30 he says. He’s extremely handsome but what Mummy calls ‘a bit of a doer-upper’. First on the list is teaching him how to wipe his backside so he doesn’t leave marks on her Piglet in Bed sheets. It’s just knowing how to bring it up… tricky.

So who are you? Or are you perfect like me?

(NB: Obviously this is all a joke. Sort of).

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This isn’t the whole story. Let me tell you more. A friend of mine is currently looking for work, they’re entirely flexible, have no dependants and can provide references. Experience in lots of areas from cleaning to delivery driving to retail and beyond. They are even currently employed, so they’re, you know, employable.

They’re also in their early 60’s.

Can they get a new job? No. Are their applications being replied to? Mainly no. Are there hundreds of applications for the minimum wage roles they’re after? Undoubtedly yes. The Tesco driving role they applied for included two multiple choice aptitude tests to check they’re not, well, a psychopath with road rage and/or someone who tells people who’re angry their Yakaut is missing to fuck the fuck off. They chose the obviously correct answers. And yet not even an interview.

I was intrigued, so I had a go. I wanted to help, to see what was going wrong. I’m not above driving for Tesco, no siree, but my application wasn’t genuine. I’m a carer you see, so working outside the home isn’t possible for me. I just wanted to understand the application process and help my friend in the future.

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Turns out I have no idea. I too failed this stage. What do Tesco want? What do any of the cleaning roles, fulfillment roles and delivery driver roles want? She’s applied for over 20 jobs in the last 3 weeks. She heard back from only three of the companies, all major employers. Two of the companies who didn’t even respond were independents who I’d have thought might have known better.

I think I know what you’re thinking. Maybe her applications are crap. They’re not. I’ve seen them. They’re bespoke, thoughtful and no, she hasn’t used AI. It is her age? Was it my age? I heard a similar story from a pal at Clay Club who explained a family member in their early 60’s needed a job to fill the gap before pension age. Just 20 hours a week. Fit, healthy, personable. Can’t catch a break.

Then there’s Stacey Duguid, ex fashion editor of Elle. She can’t find any work either, albeit the roles she’s applying for are a bit more cerebral than delivering groceries. She’s convinced it’s her age. Yesterday I read a piece on substack by Emma Gritt, a journalist who went from the world of media to Universal Credit. She too just couldn’t find work. (Spoiler alert: she has now).

Anyway, I feel frustrated on behalf of my friend. I’ve been trying to think of alternative ways for her to earn money. Perhaps cat feeding whilst folks are on holiday? Maybe her own cleaning service? Thoughts? Anyone else been in this position?

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Just to give the interview some idea of context, the interviewee is a woman of 45, living in London, single, no kids, arts graduate, works in a creative industry with a salary of around 100k.

Me: So you recently had some surgery? What did you have?

Interviewee: Back at the beginning of September I had a mastopexy (which is a breast uplift) and labiaplasty at the same time, under general anaesthetic. As a side note you can have labiaplasty under local, it really surprised me when you’re reading the ‘menu’, how many things you can have under a local anaesthetic.

Me: Okay, so why did you have each of the surgeries and why did you go for general anaesthetic?

Interviewee: Well, I had to go for general anaesthetic because you need that for a breast uplift and that was my primary surgery. I thought I may as well get the labiaplasty at the same time because it’s kind of two for one as you only pay for the general anaesthetic once.

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The reason I had the surgeries was because both of these things you can’t fix yourself with diet or exercise. My labia minora was, as I think with a lot of women,

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In my head

• How to make a salad a meal

• Why we have ant hills and our neighbours don’t

• If it’s possible to ever pick enough wild strawberries to make jam

• If digging a natural pond/pool into the garden is actually a good idea or would it be a muddy puddle?

• Will I ever be able to hang my washing outside again without the dog treating it as a pick and mix?

• If white eyebrow hairs should be embraced or dyed (I don’t dye my grey head hairs)

• How wonderful it is that gelato is a superfood

• At what point one takes their ‘sell on ebay/vinted etc’ pile to the charity shop and be done with it

• Why some people send offers 20p below the asking price (see above)

• The sheer joy I feel when someone who has 85k subscribers shares my piece on keeping cool.

• The sheer misery I feel when very few of those 85k people are compelled to subscribe to me. Oh the pain. (EGO!!)

This is reader supported, which means that the more of you who subscribe, the more time I can spend writing. If that sounds like a good thing then there’s a handy button below. There are free and paid options. Paid means I can take all my vinted bits to the charity shop, so you know, no pressure, but you’re essentially doing God’s work if you sign up:

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In my basket

I read one of those ‘what every pharmacist buys’ instagram posts and whilst I have forgotten the account and most of the details, what I remembered was that the orange Elvive conditioner for long locks is apparently brilliant at making your hair grow faster. I cannot vouch for this claim, nor can I give you the science, but having used said conditioner as a sort of scalp massage for the last month every other day I think it might work. Also my pal Becca said my hair smells amazing so there’s that.

Listening & Reading

It’s been one of those DNF months with John of John defeating me for being so incredibly depressing and dare I say it, dour. It was not for me.

I did finish:

• Elizabeth Stout’s The Things We Never Say - the latest from Strout who I have never really gotten along with. I so want to, but she’s not for me. Anyway, this is probably my favourite so far of her work. It tells the story of depressed Artie, an American teacher and his ‘little’ life actually being full of huge, hulking themes, albeit quietly. There’s no doubt it’s well crafted but it’s quite sombre.

• Ben Elton’s What Have I Done? - now I have to admit I am a huge fan of the generation of comics Elton came from. Rik Mayall was my teenage pin up, I adored The Comic Strip, The Young Ones, Blackadder, Bottom and the like. If you want to hear the proper gossip about this era then you’ll love this book. It’s very warts and all. I had no idea Rik was an alcoholic and can’t help but adore his wife for telling him his post quad-bike crash medication was incompatible with booze. Anyway, even if you’re not a British comedy geek this book is a gem. The main theme in Elton’s autobiography is that of missed creative moments. I found it quite shocking how many times an accomplished and proven writer/comic/performer has been rejected. If you ever have that feeling that everyone else has an easy life whilst you’re striving then give this a go. It’s a reminder that an awful lot of success is perspiration.

  

• Five by Fiona Bannister - can’t help but respect this thriller, it manages to pull together multiple lives so cleverly and pacily it’s kind of balletic. If you love clever whodunnits, but with interwoven life stories then give it a go.

• The Mercy Step by Marcia Hutchinson - I read this in the hope I might go to a local event with the author. I’m always hopeful that my life will allow this, ever the optimist me. But I didn’t make it, caring responsibilities didn’t allow. Anyway, this memoir about growing up black in a white northern town is an emotional read. The author explained at the talk (a friend told me) that it has caused great issues between her and her mother. I can’t say I am surprised. It’s a confronting read, Hutchinson experienced many adverse childhood experiences and extreme racism. Read with caution. There’s a reason it was the Observer debut of the year in 2025.

• Strange Buildings by Uketsu - it’s rare to read a book that’s genre defying, but I think Strange Buildings is not only that, but maybe even in a new genre all of its own. Okay, so it’s a crime thriller constructed through separate seemingly unrelated tales. Early doors the author invites you to try and understand their connection by the end of the book (third wall broken) and best of all each chapter has a floor plan that’s intrinsic to the concealment of the crime. Rip roaring, a proper poolside read.

  

• Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke which I was so angry about I wrote a whole essay.

Watching

Took my son to see Supergirl at the cinema, mainly for the air con. Turns out it was a great decision. Not too long, loads of action, funny too, a proper female hero I’d love to hang out with. Bravo! Panned by critics but since when did we listen to them?

We also downloaded the new Michael Jackson film to watch at home. I am finding it hard to get my head around a whole new generation adoring Jackson’s music and denying his behaviour. I had a very strange conversation recently with another 12 year old who stated vehemently ‘nothing was ever proven’. Can art and morality be separated? Me? I can appreciate the early music of Jackson whilst acknowledging his suspect behaviour.

On TV have you watched Two Weeks in August yet? A BBC series about a group of dreadful university friends on a Greek villa holiday. A little bit woo, a little bit funny, infuriating at times. Enjoyed it very much.

But my award for best TV of the month goes to the new Russell T Davies series Tip Toe, on Channel 4. The story of two neighbours and what happens when there are secrets and lies, and saving face is more important than being honest. It’s graphic from the first episode I warn you, not for little eyes.

And because I used to work in advertising I can’t help but appreciate the brilliant launch campaign for Tip Toe. More here.

Making & Mending

The pendants are ready! I could not love them more. Some unglazed (which I think I prefer) and some glazed. Available in my Etsy shop.

Also been busy making some more bowls for the house at Clay Club.

Oh and the table! I almost forgot my circus themed table:

More on this transformation here.

Visiting

Lovely brunch at The Phoenix:

BRIEF AD BREAK ALERT:

Did you know I sell my sourdough starter? If you’re in the UK you can buy it here.

From baking to… divorce:

I have physical copies of my book about divorce available here and if you wanted to get a copy immediately it’s always on Amazon as an ebook here.

Oh and if you’re after some jewels may I recommend mine and Scott’s little Etsy venture? Take a look over at our shop here. Lots of really affordable bits packaged up by yours truly.

Okay. Ad break over.

Links you might like

1. This piece of writing made my heart ache. Utterly beautiful. On absent fathers.

2. Great piece on what to do if you’re middle aged, from an older woman. From the same writer this on why you will age well (or not).

3. Fascinating if incredibly sad essay on Jackie O’s second marriage.

   

On my table

Marks and Spencers have gone and knocked it out the park again with their take a classic and make it better habit. This time it’s teacakes and rhubarb. I mean.

You may have missed

For those of you who prefer one email a month you can opt to just receive this newsletter along with links to everything I’ve recently written. It’s easy to do this:

1. Go to your Substack profile, (top right corner).

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Last months posts have included:

1. The problem with Yesteryear - my essay on all the reasons I am angry about this book.

2. My ONE piece of parenting advice.

3. Objects of affection - the emotional toll of buying a much loved table from eBay.

4. Relationship health check - the one question to ask yourself.

5. Dear diary - on cutting my hair and buying the sausages and a realisation that will surprise nobody except me.

6. Caring, always caring - notes from a SEN household. And the circus table!

7. Dear diary - on legs, dogs and fishing.

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My month in pictures

(Sorry this is behind a paywall but, well, they’re personal photos, not THAT kind, they’re my life and so they’re not for everyone and their dog).

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Me? I’ve mainly been contemplating my legs. I own one pair of ‘going out’ shorts. What I mean by that is a pair of shorts that are not so indecently short that they require hair removal. They’re beige and used to be so big I could hoik them up and down without troubling the zip but now I am a year older this feature is no longer. I’m too hot to care.

One of my white legs and Ted trying to reach my snack of cold pasta.

My legs are not just white but see through. Blue veins on display. The roots of my leg hair little black dots threatening to grow back and peak over the skin. They have never knowingly tanned in all their 46 years. Even that holiday in Tenerife circa 1995 when my shoulders burnt so badly they wept. Why is this? I don’t even hanker after tanned legs now, Johnson’s Holiday Skin self-tanning body lotion and it’s foul giveaway stench but a bad memory. But how are my legs exempt? Is it their Irish heritage? Made for trudging through dew rather than sand? One of my great great great grandfathers (maybe even greater than this), James Hawker, was a poacher. He wrote a book about it. Perhaps these legs were made for deer stalking?

If I had been Born an idiot and unfit to carry a gun - though with Plenty of Cash - they would have called me a grand sportsman. Being Born Poor, I am called a Poacher.

When you give a poacher permission to kill game you take the Sugar out of the ginger bread. You rob him of the pleasure it is to an expert poacher to steal a march not on the game but on the men who claim it for their own. I have poached more for Revenge than Gain.

So much for the Sacred Game. There is no man in England who Run more Risks, Been in more Dangerous Scrapes than me. Yet the only time I have Been in Prison was Not for Poaching but for getting a Poor Old widow woman a Bundle of Sticks as she had no coal. A Man who still Lives told the Keepers I had a Gun. It was a Long Piece of Ash, and they knew this Oadby man had told a Lie. But they sent me to Leicester Gaol for seven Days. They just thought it was time I was there. Ever Since I have Poached with more Bitterness against the Class. If I am able, I Will Poach Till I Die.

- A Victorian Poacher: James Hawker’s Journal

My other preoccupation has been, like every other dog owner, keeping the canine member of the family as cool and as entertained as possible without being outside. All I can say is that he’s lucky he’s domesticated. Without human guidance Teddy would not have made it through this week. Hell bent on sun bathing, refusing to play in his paddling pool and trying to catch flying insects regardless of their stinging status. He’s a hot and bothered idiot and we love him.

On the dog front we are thinking of getting another dog. It’s been on the cards since we managed to forget the terrible puppy months when Ted was a shark who ate the skirting boards, the antique 1920’s curtains and his own poo. He was so cute and yet I barely took any photos of him; such was my regret and irritation. Anyway, a bit like when you start to try for your second child, we believe it might not be as bad this time so we’re ready. We’re thinking a King Charles Cavalier Spaniel. In my heart what I want is a highly opinionated Chihuahua who will boss Ted the huge 45 kilo Golden Retriever around and maybe ride on his back, but this is some kind of AI fever dream, I know that. And Chihuahuas are apparently quite barky so maybe not. We have neighbours attached to our house so this feels antisocial.

In other news one of my sons has been fishing. I can’t work out if this is a ruse and actually fishing means something entirely different these days. Or if he’s just catching fish. He’s almost 18 so I have no way of knowing. He drove himself there, managed to not get sunburnt and even packed snacks and extra water. My work with him is nearly done. (Obvs not, but you know, he’s no longer at risk of heat stroke and abduction, just a couple of things off my mind).

What about you? How was your week? How hot are you? Is fishing a euphemism? Answers on a comment below:

Today, for the first time in 10 days I have a day alone. Not a whole day; don’t be silly. But enough time to go to the supermarket. I am going to try for a yoga class too, but I won’t book it. To cancel needs 5 hours notice and I just never have that luxury. So I will turn up and book from my car sitting outside. This isn’t fail safe. One time I turned up and it had been cancelled in advance. I stood outside the studio annoyed the teacher was so late and confused as to why the app wasn’t working. My addled brain didn’t compute.

Both activities will require having my phone in close proximity. This is tricky in a yoga class as it’s beyond toxic and bad manners to have a phone interrupt a class. So I shall position myself at the back with my phone on silent, ready to bolt should the call come in. I’ll glance at it maybe 50 times over the 60 minutes. It’s not ideal for relaxation but it’s better than nothing. It’s just how it is. I say that a lot lately, it’s just how it is, it’s nobody’s fault. This is true. None of this is anybody’s fault but it does fall mainly to one body to shoulder the fall out.

Because I am me and because my optimism knows no bounds I think I might be able to take on the world with this one day of freedom. I think I might move the newly painted table to the patio at the bottom of the garden, I might change the sheets on all the beds and dry them outside (even though the dog does not allow this), I might make a full 3 course meal even though the kitchen is hot hot hot, I might whizz up a pinafore dress that ties at the side and can be bigger or smaller on a whim, I might make homemade ice lollies from homemade elderflower cordial, before lunchtime I might finish the remaining 60,000 words of my book, I might I might I might. I have true might and the best intentions and grit in spades but it may all come to nothing, I can’t be held to any plan I’m afraid. That’s just the way it is, it’s nobody’s fault.

Anyway, want to see the table? Please know, before anyone is outraged that I have ruined a table, that it was already painted brown and had whole areas peeling. It’s no priceless antique! The colours and the triangles bring me joy now and that’s important to me. I adore it.

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The table before:

The table during:

The table after:

The gold isn’t my favourite look. I think it might grow on me as it knackers up a bit. But it’s done. And it brings me cheer.

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This isn’t the usual shop. I don’t want to come over all holier than thou, but processed pig based products (the carcinogenic ones) have been banned in the house, apart from special occasions, for maybe 6 months now. And having a virus for 10 days including on your 12th birthday, that’s a special occasion for sure. Maybe more filed under extenuating circumstances than special. Put it this way, sausages are back on the menu for the short term.

(I wrote the above yesterday, it’s now the morning).

Before I tried to sleep last night I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror. All I could see were split ends. So, I took the bathroom scissors to my hair. Do we all have bathroom scissors? For years we didn’t and then I decided to allocate a pair given how much product opening is required in the pursuit of cleanliness/beauty. I thoroughly recommend having an extremely sharp pair.

The first time my boyfriend noticed I’d done a DIY haircut in the bathroom he seemed surprised. Was I short of time? Short of money? Nope. Well yes obviously to both, but they’re not the reason for my refusal to book a hairdresser to cut my hair. I just can’t stand it. I can’t handle the anticipation, the possibility that my life might be more chic with a bluntly cut bob. That a fringe could make me more interesting. I hate myself for lying in the consultation when asked how long I can spend styling my prospective new cut each morning. Why do I say 10 minutes to the unimpressed hairdresser when the truth is zero? I can’t abide the hot drink that isn’t possible to consume without ingesting hair. I can’t be doing with the noise and the smells. I definitely can’t be handling the small talk because I am inherently polite and British and will try to make the hairdresser feel comfortable by agreeing with them about everything; politics, music, holiday destinations, the school system, benefits, flowers, drugs, anything. I will betray myself to ease the interaction. And that brings me to the haircut. Given how infrequently I book in I will try to get my moneys worth and have a proper chop. And then hate it. I will tie it into a scrunchie as soon as I leave and make a promise to myself never to go again. A year later I’m back in the chair, punishing myself. No more.

So now I cut my hair every few months, usually after 11pm, standing in the bathroom. I brush it. Then chop from one side. Then the other. Then a bit shorter around my face. Then pull up the bit at the back and chop the section a tiny bit shorter. Brush it again. Faff about twisting strands to shear off split ends. It takes about 10 minutes. The hospitality is dreadful; no hot drinks on offer. The aroma is variable depending on the previous user. There is silence save the cat crying to be let in. The chat is internal, kind of annoying, but all my own fault. It’s just better this way. And it’s not that I’m immune to vanity. I visit my Russian Botox practitioner twice a year to try and stave off time. I pluck my eyebrows weekly, stray hairs elsewhere on my face too. But visiting the hairdressers is too much.

Then this morning I was perusing the substack app, mainly to see the furore over their summer party. For those not trying to earn a crust from this place, essentially substack HQ held a summer party in London and invited the great and good of substack, but it turns out that to get an invite you didn’t actually need to be a bestseller, you just needed to be one of the in crowd. I can’t tell you how upset this has made some people. I get it. I’m mildly irritated but luckily I used to work in advertising where all the cool kids were invited to Cannes each year to forge friendships snorting coke together and comparing how many toilets they had in their London abodes WITH STAIRS. It may come as no surprise to you that I was invited not once.

I am a bestseller (ha! I mean you need over 100 paying subscribers to be one so it’s not like we’re talking Daily Mail volume readership) but of course I wasn’t invited! I live in Leicester and I am not good at playing the game, so hey, on the night of the party I went to TK Maxx in search of colouring pencils and then watched Tip Toe on Channel 4 rather than eat Ottolenghi cake flavoured with sumac. Not going to lie, I don’t think I’d have liked the flavour combo anyway. Sorry. I like simpleton cakes. Coffee and walnut is a winner for me.

Anyway, there I was, feeling amused at my little substack note I posted last night and a little disappointed at the likes:

And I came across a piece about autism. As the mother in a neurodiverse household these articles always hold so much hope, I gulp them down hoping for solidarity. What I wasn’t expecting was my own positive diagnosis. The piece is excellent. You can read it here.

Suddenly my late night hair cuts and my need to wear PJ bottoms in the day and pass them off as trousers, (I do have allocated night time and day time PJ bottoms, I’m not a complete slattern) and my previous extremely unhealthy relationship with alcohol and my jealously at not being invited to the party but also my pleasure at not having to go and be uncomfortable in proper clothes and chat to proper people and then worry that everyone hates me. All that, plus the fact my 12 year old asked me last week when I knew I was AuADHD, all that means I think I’m autistic.

Anyway, as you were. Here’s a photo of the party. God that straw looks itchy and uncomfortable doesn’t it? And a sleeveless dress needing a strapless bra? Heaven forbid!

Whilst I adored these quizzes and their ability to reduce every life choice into a simple A, B or C, it turns out that real life, even the teenage years, isn’t as simple. But I’m always looking for those easy to follow rules. If A, then B, or if not B then C. And so on.

I was reading a piece about being in a relationship for 20 years and what makes it work. Full disclosure; I have met the author and since our first and only meeting we have become penpals of sorts. We follow each other’s triumphs, we send cards and gifts in grief, if we lived nearer we’d definitely have started a book club. Anyway, it occurred to me after reading this excellent piece that there’s a really easy and simple health check you can do on a relationship. One question, yes or no answer. It tells you everything. It’s actually too simple even for a Just Seventeen quiz. The stuff of dreams!

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Ready?

(It’s deceptively simple, I’m warning you, but do read on after for the why).

Do you still fancy them?

I told you it was simple. But hang on, listen up on why. It’s not about what happens under the covers.

The reason you fancy someone so much when you first meet them is of course animal, hormonal. But it’s more than that - you haven’t seen behind the curtain yet. I’m not talking about the zip on their jeans. It’s that you have no reason to believe they are anything other than lovely. After all, they’re showing you the very best version of themselves aren’t they? You both are. That’s how dating and falling in love works.

After a year, or five or even twenty or more, any pretence has been dropped. Vulnerabilities are on display, the true self is exposed. Now this might be wonderful, your partner might be good at sharing the housework, be a kind and empathetic nurse when you’re unwell and perhaps unafraid to show emotion around dogs (just me who finds this hot?). I am happy for you, this is the stuff of dreams.

When that fancying part is no longer an enthusiastic yes, when contempt has stepped in and taken its place, that’s when the rot has set in. Because it’s very hard to fancy someone if they leave the lion’s share of the mental load to you, it’s very hard to fancy someone who isn’t a good parent, it’s very hard to fancy someone who lies to you, it’s very hard to fancy someone who doesn’t celebrate your triumphs and commiserate when you fall. It’s hard to fancy someone who doesn’t cherish you.

Can I share some of the things that made me stop fancying a romantic partner and became the death knell of the relationship?

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• When they started to treat me more as a mate than a partner, including showing me a video of them with a previous lover. (Yes, that kind of video).

• When they bought me 4 tea light candles for Christmas and then bragged about how much they were earning.

• When they started to pick their nose in front of me whilst driving and then proceeded to eat the contents.

• When they didn’t engage with Christmas whatsoever, in that I did all the present buying, wrapping, inviting, cooking, cleaning etc.

• When they didn’t come to the hospital when my father was very ill.

• When they arranged to attend a networking breakfast on the day we moved house.

• When they didn’t vacuum once, not once.

• When they explained that men just become really angry and grumpy as they age and there was nothing they could do about it.

• When they forgot to attend an important scan.

• When they cheated on me and their affair partners contacted me on social media.

• When they spat insults when drunk at overweight strangers.

• When their drinking was so problematic they lost control of their

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The other preoccupation of late has been The Table. It’s taken on proper noun status given the amount of time and discussion it’s been allocated. Let me start at the beginning.

We have a patio area at the bottom of the garden that used to be a bramble jungle. A few years ago I paid a lot of money for a brilliant gardener to remove the roots of the bramble and lay a patio with the intent of this being an area of chatter, lively discussion and general fairy world whimsy before any of those descriptors were keyword searches on Etsy.

The bottom of the garden took on a new status. It represented what a perfect family could look like. I bought a fire pit, a pizza oven, a big table, striped deck chairs and a hammock. I left antique charity shop foraged mirrors against the brick wall, solar powered fairy lights draped over the shed. Did I mention I renovated the shed? I did so much work on it, if it were human I think it would have completely new DNA. New roof, new floor, new guttering, re-painted inside and out. A tiled outside shelf! The bottom of the garden was a place for when we were perfect because it was perfect. It held so much hope.

And then it didn’t get used. I exaggerate. We used it maybe 10 times for eating outside. My eldest son had a few beers around it with pals post exams, mainly because I pathetically offered homemade burgers and hotdogs. When we got a puppy the pizza oven took on a whole new status of being the potential cause of our dog’s death. (Never knowingly under catastrophised). And then the bloody John Lewis acacia table warped in the rain, despite the assurance from the shop that it was weatherproof.

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So over the last month, as the weather improved, my new obsession has been finding a garden table. I wanted a green metal one but alas, the only ones I liked were expensive and these days my caring responsibilities mean I barely work. I decided on finding an old wooden table, sanding it and painting it zippy colours and then storing it in the shed when not in use. Sounded like a plan. Ebay came up with the goods, I arranged to collect a big slightly knackered and already painted brown dining table from a local lady. What I didn’t reckon on was the history.

Now look, I paid under £30 for this table, it was not in the best state, but that’s what I wanted. After spending hard on the patio area that would make us the perfect family I would not be making the mistake of throwing money at the problem again. Cheap second-hand furniture, paint from the garage graveyard of remnant tins and a bit of elbow grease.

But the table was not just a table to the lovely lady who lived in the retirement flat. It was The Christmas Table. The clue was in the photo, the tinsel of course.

She explained as she unlocked the garage that the table held a lot of memories. That it was the extra Christmas table and that selling it was hard. But it wasn’t used anymore as her son preferred a long thin table at his house, without the food in the centre. She no longer hosted Christmas Day. I felt a responsibility to this lovely lady and promised her I would be looking after it, that it would have food in the centre again and lots of people sitting at it in my garden.

She looked so sad. The garden confession had been a mistake. I explained it would be stored in the shed, not outside. She said I mustn’t put anything heavy on it, I mustn’t scratch it as I moved it to the car. She offered a tea towel to protect it but I declined and explained I’d be sanding it anyway. It felt like a forced rehoming.

(Evidence that The Table does actually need a spruce up - I feel like you need to know that. I’m not sanding it without good reason etc etc).

I messaged the seller later to say thank you and that I would look after her table, that I’d sand it and repaint it and it’d host lunches again. She messaged back to say perhaps just a light sanding, that she suspected it might have a thin veneer and not withstand anything more. It felt like a metaphor for life, especially after the week I’ve had.

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Two hours later, just past midnight on my due date, I felt that first twinge and by 10pm I was a mother. I was in shock for at least a year. I just couldn’t believe that I was responsible for another human being. And I couldn’t make sense of how my life had done a complete turnaround. Just a year before the birth I’d been single, about to start a new job in Shoreditch, driving about in my little two seater and soon to pop to Goa on a whim. I was shaken by the difference. I used to be one person and now I was another. I used to be me and now I was a mother.

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And, if I’m going to really expose myself here, despite now being the mother of three sons, it still blows my mind that I’m their parent. Like some magical thing happened and I won the very best and the very worst prize of them all. The worry, the heartache, the love, the joy, the sheer intensity of birthing and parenting another human. Sometimes the closeness of the parent-child relationship, the animal made-from-my-body quality is so overwhelming it feels like my heart might shatter, fragments lost forever, (probably under the kitchen counters or in the washing machine, domestic life being what it is). Rarely, but sometimes, I wake of a morning and as I open my eyes I’m surprised not to see my old London flat. As if this intense ride of the last 18 years has all been a dream.

Anyway, here’s one thing I do know about parenting, and I don’t profess to be an expert, of course I don’t. (Anyone who does is most definitely not one, now that I am sure of). It’s a simple idea and I think it’s a good one. I also think it’s a really important one. Here goes; don’t tell your children who they are. Sounds obvious doesn’t it? Simply stop allocating adjectives.

But it’s not as easy as it seems. How many times do you hear kids being told ‘you’re so insert adjective here just like your Mum/Dad/Uncle/Brother/Aunt’, and not always as a glowing reference? How often when faced with an uncomfortable situation with our children do we tell them why this has happened to them, specifically them? Maybe they messed up a test; ‘don’t worry, you’re not the best at maths, not everyone is’ or worse ‘perhaps school isn’t going to be your thing, you’re sporty and good with your hands though etc etc’. And what about that first heartbreak? Easier to tell rather than witness. In fact, the hardest parenting task of all is to stand next to them whilst they endure pain, emotional or otherwise.

Family dynamics of larger broods magnify this further. The birth order b*llshit comes into play. Responsible, serious eldest child… bonkers bombastic second born… youngest baby rule breaker. And let’s not forget the middle children. Poor b*ggers, condemned to a host of unpleasant predetermined attributes. There’s an excellent book by Oliver James on how this stuff plays out in families.

So every day I strive not to tell my kids who they are. Of course if I witness something positive I will acknowledge and praise it, but I try not to make these compliments into definitive attributes. We betray our children with self-fulfilling, lazy, one-dimensional descriptors given out like sweeties. They are in fact all of the things and none of the things. They’re whoever them want to be. They certainly don’t need some world weary parental sage telling them who they are.

What about you? What would be your one piece of advice? Did your parents do something especially well? Or particularly badly? Thoughts in the comments box below.

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First things first, don’t come at me for including spoilers like those idiots who post angry stories on Instagram after a Big Brother final saying ‘thanks for RUINING the final for me, I was going to watch on catch up but now you’ve all said who won, THANKS SO MUCH YOU SELFISH B@STARDS, YOU RUINED MY LIFE!!!’. Get a grip. If you read on then you’ve only got yourself to blame. I’m not your mother.

Ready?

Yesteryear is a book that masquerades as a historical time lapse with a moral lesson side-serving to beware the evils of the influencer lifestyle. This got me excited. How clever! Natalie, a tradwife influencer goes to bed one night living on Yesteryear Ranch, a present day performative and fake homestead bought by her running for presidency father-in-law in return for providing a large American family, and wakes up in the past, living a genuine tradwife existence. In the 1800’s though it’s not cosplay, it’s brutal and scary; red in tooth and claw.

Now I adore anything with time travel, I was raised on Quantum Leap for goodness sake. Add in a healthy dose of homestead frontier prepper lifestyle and well, I’m swooning. I had high hopes. I felt there were going to be parallels to The Handmaid’s Tale, maybe an inverted Herland, or themes from The Yellow Wallpaper. I wondered privately and excitedly if Yesteryear might be a set text by 2030.

So for the majority of the novel I was hoodwinked. I decided not to read any reviews, I’m not a masochist, I like to discover as I go, but I was aware it had already been optioned by the actor Anne Hathaway, so you know, I knew it had commercial potential. I’m not a purist who believes literature should stay on the page. If the screen helps grow the audience then bring it on! And as I pottered my way through the book, I got it. Of course it had been picked up. I could imagine how the switching of the timeline from present day wife of a thick (in thigh and brain) MAGA conspiracy theorist bro living in a constructed tradwife, multiple-children horror of her own making to the equally true misery of genuine 1800’s frontier life; married to a domestic abuser and rapist, freezing cold, food scarcity, fear of the native Americans, all that would work brilliantly on screen. I could see it! A clever scriptwriter and/or director could say so much through this juxtaposition. And it’s high time there was a screen commentary on the toxicity of the influencing community without defaulting to easy documentary format. Jennifer Lawrence was my Natalie (played with more than a hint of her role as Jesus’ Mum in Mother!) and Henry Rowley my Caleb. I was already planning my cinema snacks.

But it wasn’t a time travelling novel, was it? The press officer did us dirty. To cut a long (oh so long) story short for those who either haven’t lost hours of their life to Yesteryear or simply gave up or even those of us who read it and need a re-cap because the plot is all over the bloody place, Natalie doesn’t go to sleep one day and wake up in 1855. Her literal yesteryear life in the 1800’s is actually yet more cos-play, but this time an odd, fully-immersive pioneer settlers existence that she and Caleb self impose in response to her cancellation and subsequent mental breakdown. Natalie and Caleb chose to live that way, on a supposedly honest version of Yesteryear Ranch, without the staff and the instagram account and the trips to Target to placate the kids. But why?

Natalie’s whole world comes crashing down when her Producer (a member of her live-in staff and also her husband’s affair partner), accuses her in a TV interview exposé of violently sexually attacking her and of being a big fat tradwife fraud. Unsurprisingly, this results in Natalie’s cancellation. Add to that prescription drug addiction and post-natal depression and it’s not hugely surprising that retreating to an 1800’s cottage in the woods with your smallest children and pretending to live simply and ‘honestly’, whilst your MAGA father-in-law pays off your accusers and your older missing sons supply daily Trader Joe foraged sustenance via your husband’s ‘hunting’ trips, might have appealed.

Huge chunks of the timeline are missing, so we never really see exactly how life began on the fake 1855 ranch. We know the remaining children truly believe their existence is genuine, the reality created for them is convincing, so much so the neglect they suffer is multi-faceted and excruciating. They are cold, hungry, often in pain, always striving and working, washing clothing by hand, sweeping quick to dirty floors; their childhood is preoccupied with simply staying alive. One child, Maeve has developmental disabilities stemming from being born on the 1855 ranch without assistance. Deprived of oxygen at birth, she owes her life to her hardy 8 year old sister reviving her. It’s the stuff of present day American nightmares!

Life in ‘1855’ just gets worse and worse for Natalie. She doesn’t seem to remember why or how she got to live there. She believes she’s being held hostage. She tries to run away. She is despondent, depressed, leaves her eldest daughter Mary to play mother and run the household. She’s a shadow of the Natalie we were first introduced to, she’s what used to be called ‘mad’. You almost feel sorry for her.

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If you’re starting to wonder if this is the Letts Revision Notes of Yesteryear, then bravo, you’re right! I began to scribble notes as I read it, noting points of confusion, such was the extreme inconsistency in the narrative. And to be clear, this is not normal behaviour for me, I don’t think I’ve done it since my university days.

As the book reaches it’s big reveal we as the reader are as confused as Natalie. We’re trying to piece together what we know of her life. Is she in a Truman style show or in a fever dream or is she actually genuinely a mother from 1855 who predicts the future? We want to know what the hell is going on! If I were being kind I’d interpret the plot holes and confused timeline as representative of Natalie’s mind. But I think that’s a convenient cop out, and the less literary device truth is that the book just didn’t have a heavy enough editing hand.

Books where there’s a twist the protagonist isn’t ‘in on’ need to be squeaky clean to work or as a reader you find yourself playing a game of trying to catch the author out. That’s not the idea of fiction is it? We don’t want to prove our author’s aren’t up to much. We want to be so immersed that we forget the book is even a figment of another’s imagination. We want to suspend our disbelief. It’s the first tick box on the list.

But the baggy timeline isn’t the only issue. Natalie, is simply not likeable, nor nuanced enough to be hateable. Now before we all agree that a female protagonist should not have to be likeable, I think it’s also worth agreeing that Natalie is so extremely unpleasant it’s hard to feel any sympathy for her, even when she’s being abused. I’ve felt more empathy listening to serial killer origin-story podcasts! She’s a caricature of every possible unlikeable female coded trait all rolled into one. It’s lazy and cartoonish character development. Let’s make a list shall we, of her misdemeanours? They include, but are not limited to:

• She slut shames her peers.

• She is sexually prudish.

• She fails at female friendship.

• She finds joy in other’s downfall.

• She’d rather her own sister stay in an abusive marriage than embarrass her with a divorce.

• She under pays her staff.

• She physically assaults her staff.

• She sexually assaults her staff.

• She exploits her children for followers, views and ultimately income (modern day slavery)

• She is disconnected as a mother, cold and unloving.

• She is a neglectful mother (leaves her baby in the car whilst she goes shopping).

• She gaslights her children.

• She denies her children medical access, warmth, education, adequate food and shelter.

• She emasculates her husband.

• She is money obsessed.

• She is status obsessed.

• She’s a fake who lies about her lifestyle for monetary gain.

• She’s intellectually superior.

And so on and so on.

It’s like the author sat in a focus group with middle America and asked them every single thing they hate about women and then pen-portraited it fast and rough at the research facility. No refinement, hawkish. Burke signals this key theme when Natalie says:

‘America hates women. What a comfort to remember.’

I mean, it’s pretty true. But the characterisation of Natalie is so obtuse and clumsy it began to make me wince around 50 pages in. Or is what’s actually going on simpler than Yesteryear being a commentary on America’s (the world’s?) hatred of women? Is Burke just living as a working woman in the hellscape of modern day end-stage (American) capitalism and purging this experience through Natalie?

I listened to a podcast interview recently where Burke confessed to fantasising about deleting her social media. She referenced wishing to be like Sally Rooney. So it’s hard to unsee that this book feels like more of an exploration of the relationship between the author and public life/social media than the true journey of Natalie. But then isn’t that all fiction? Or, at the very least all debut fiction? It’s the author thinly veiled, isn’t it?

The problem with Natalie is, despite her backstory of being raised by a single mother, despite witnessing her fear of her peers and the intimate friendships they might bring, despite seeing how alien romantic love was to her in the fledgling stages of hers and Caleb’s relationship, despite watching how hard she finds connecting with her children, even knowing about her early religious indoctrination, she’s just too one dimensional. Natalie is often funny (especially when she see-saws between uncharitable thoughts and seeking God’s forgiveness “What I know is this: I wake one morning and think, Jesus fucking Christ, it’s cold. Then: Sorry, Lord.”), but the laugh really comes from her being comically unsympathetic. We’re not sniggering at Natalie though, more at whoever failed to edit Burke. Scrap that, whoever failed to feedback that this first draft was not publication ready.

The Yesteryear we’re reading was a good start, a scrappy skeleton of a book. Burke says as much:

“The film auction took place right as I sold the book, and the book was just a draft. The plot was there, but it was very skeletal. So [Anne Hathaway and I] had a number of conversations about who Natalie was and what it means to live as a public person, what it means to feel surveilled. It was really helpful to talk to everyone about what they were relating to, and how we could take advantage of her interiority versus what she says aloud”.

Yesteryear could have been profound with a really good editor. The themes are all there; the performative nature of social media, how public life breaks people (especially women), the modern male preoccupation of standing for something - anything, of average men searching for why they’ve failed to launch (clue: those pesky women?), middle-class child labour excused as the online modelling of old-fashioned family values, the fear of existing authentically, warts and all. There’s so much meat to wrestle with. And yet, this.

The publisher can be forgiven for getting excited at Anne Hathaway wanting to chat to Burke before the book was even being typeset. The industry is on its knees, archaic and unable (unwilling) to change with the times, but that is not an excuse for allowing an actor to meddle with characterisation and plot. And that’s not a slur on actors. I don’t want a builder designing my dream home, just as I don’t want screen stars shaping novels. Yesteryear was Hathawayed (verb) and it’s all the worse for it.

So, because Natalie is so utterly irredeemable, as we read we just don’t care. As her life descends further into misery, we shrug and mutter something about karma. She deserves every last moment of her downfall. There’s no lesson learnt by Natalie and with that, we, the reader, are forced into admitting that The Angry Women were right all along. We’re unwilling accomplices in a revenge fantasy that verges on torture porn. Worse still, the characters who could have helped form the story more fully are not fleshed out. Daughters Mary and Clementine are a missed opportunity. But then Hathaway was always planning to play Natalie, so hey.

After finishing the book I felt uneasy. There was something truly woman hating about the story and I’m not just talking about Natalie’s (correct) suspicion that women despise her. I kept playing a game where I pretended Yesteryear wasn’t written by a woman. Think about it, the big twist reveal would have been condemned if it were written by a man. An ending where the abusive female protagonist is hinted to be a closeted lesbian who sexually assaults her husband’s female affair partner, subsequently loses her mind and earns some form of redemption through being (willingly at first) imprisoned on a fake 1855 homestead where she’s raped and abused before finally escaping in order to seek an abortion, under the guise of finding a doctor for her child? The Guardian would have a field day.

Let’s focus on this almost ignorable moment. Motherhood, or rather fear of motherhood under the cloak of maternal nurturing, literally sets Natalie free to be tried and locked up in a real prison. Her desire to not be further imprisoned by mothering yet another child leads to her state dispensed incarceration. There is no moral commentary here, no feminist take. Just Natalie being so bonkers she believes in her 50’s that she is pregnant. She’s caught, tried and sentenced to 30 years. If she’d just stayed at the 1855 ranch instead of trying to kill her imagined unborn child, she’d still be free. This is so problematic. This is so MAGA.

And don’t even get me started on Natalie and Caleb’s sex life. Lacklustre in the present day; Caleb unable to maintain an erection with his ball-breaking wife. Natalie doesn’t display sexual desire or joy, intercourse is functional and if her husband can’t perform then darn it, she’ll resort to turkey baster insemination to create their brood. Once incarcerated on the 1855 ranch (the Mad Woman in the American attic), mentally unstable, weak and vulnerable, Natalie finally experiences orgasm with Old Caleb, a man living out his off-grid prepper dreams, albeit without the hard work. How? Why, he gives her a slap of course, dampens her spirit with futile housework and rapes her. Problematic? Hell yes. Again, imagine a man wrote this. A woman only able to orgasm when she is held against her will and raped. That’ll teach her, right?

I come back to my theory that a focus group helped write this book. I spent the first part of the adult life working in advertising and I’ve seen more than a few TV ads be ripped to shreds and killed by committee. Trying to please every member of the focus group led to some seriously bad and confusing adverts. Death by a thousand cuts. I can hear the discussion now:

“We need something for the gays, maybe Caleb should have Brokeback feelings for one of the farm hands?”

“Nah, we’ll lose the MAGA boys and the family dollar if we do that”

“Okay what about making Natalie a lesbian? Something for the boys and show willing to the gays?”

“That works. But we can’t have her get away with it. Caleb needs to win”

“She could go mad and then he could give her an orgasm once she’s compliant”

“She needs to know who’s boss, remember a lot of middle America will want to see this what with Anne in it”

“Have him rape her. And throw in something about abortion. Don’t show one obviously! That’d be crazy. Maybe have Natalie try and get one and it could be her downfall.”

“Perfect. You got it.”

Urgh. I feel cheated by Yesteryear. It could have been a classic, I truly believe that. Much of the prose is brilliant. But being a good writer doesn’t make for a good novel. Like Natalie, I feel Burke is ‘living in the aftermath of a failed punchline’, though admittedly a well remunerated one. But who can blame her? Maybe instead of my vitriol being aimed at Yesteryear it should be at the whole publishing industry. When advances are poor then of course authors sing for their supper. I’ll definitely watch the film and you bet I’m hoping Hathaway comes to her senses and morphs it into a comedy horror. A girl can dream.

And lastly, it’s not lost on me that I am a woman, hating on a book written by a woman, about a woman hated and betrayed by women, who herself hates women. Meta-tastic.

Burke’s already replied to this piece by the way, speaking through Natalie:

“The Angry Women… were not sane, nor were they happy, nor were they big believers in personal accountability. Instead of asking themselves why they spent so much of their precious time on Earth scrolling through other people’s lives… instead of asking themselves why they spent so much time bathing in their own rancid jealousy when they could be building their own lives into something they were proud of—they were apparently far more interested in… typing their little hearts out… about me.”

Touché, Burke, touché.

(Oh and Anne, if you’re reading, I have this idea, it’s not quite written yet…)

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In my head

How have you been? I’m just going to have to bang it straight out there, I’ve been quite out of sorts for the last couple of weeks. I think a combination of very run of the mill stuff, lots of issues in my own head about identity when not working, but definitely not helped by a half-term spent staying indoors with a heat dysregulated family (including Ted the dog).

It got me thinking about coping mechanisms and how they develop and change over the years. My approach to being housebound for a prolonged period back when the boys were little would have been a huge wine delivery. In my pre-children days a heatwave saw me camping out at the cinema in Clapham watching film after film alone, Diet Coke and Malteasers in hand. Before that? God I just don’t remember the UK ever being that hot. Or at least perhaps it was someone else’s problem to keep me cool and calm?

The main journey I’ve been taking for the past week has been into the garage to retrieve ice lollies. Mr Freeze for the humans and homemade liver and egg (shells and all) pops for the dog. Luckily they’re not easily mixed up. Imagine! I love a bit of pâté as much as the next child of the 80’s, but on toast thanks.

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In my basket

My Homestart parent I’m supporting got me onto this Skip the Soak spray. It’s marvellous, though could be the thin end of the wedge as I just can’t be bothered with scrubbing now. With that in mind I’m limiting myself to one spray per month or it could become an addiction. Found in Lidl, but is everywhere.

I have started taking psyllium husk. I mean, I could not be more middle aged could I? For those not in the know it’s an excellent form of fibre that can help reduce cholesterol. Also very good for your colon. You have to be careful to drink enough water when taking it as it absorbs huge amounts of liquid. I might do a whole piece on all my supplements as I’ve managed to reduce my cholesterol to normal levels without using statins.

Youngest’s birthday is coming up this month and he just loves all things Lord of the Rings at the moment. These books have great reviews as companions to the original texts. Have also treated him to a LOTR chess set (thank goodness for vinted), thus combining two of his very favourite things.

I am always on the lookout for interesting gifts for friends and family so I don’t do the last minute panic buy for birthdays and Christmas. Noticed this artist had a sale on his sketchbook drawings and snapped a couple up. Loads for £10 and £20.

Listening & Reading

Okay, I am midway through penning a whole piece on Yesteryear, so I will say nothing more for now, except that I have STRONG feelings. Have you read it yet? I feel like it’s everywhere which usually makes me avoid a book like the plague. Seems I was lured in this time.

The Plath-Hughes love/abuse story was a big focus of my reading youth, so anything new on the subject is always on my list. I listened to The Daffodil Days in two days flat, one ear cocked as I scrubbed the kitchen, chopped the veg, folded the washing. Loosely described as autofiction, it’s a historical reimagining of Plath’s last year told through the eyes of those around her, mostly not the people closest to her. I lapped it up. I think you do need to really love and know the story of Sylvia Plath in order to enjoy it though, otherwise I think it would read oddly. It made me adore her even more, and I didn’t think that possible.

I have more than one friend in my life who are passing the time until their children leave home before they call time on their marriages. Once upon a time I would have seen this is a travesty, what a waste of a life etc etc! But having been through a divorce where there’s so much animosity I actually think these friends may have the right idea. No splitting of time with the kids, a life that isn’t unpleasant, there’s no abuse, just they’re more housemates than lovers. So The Rest of Our Lives caught my eye, a tale of a husband and father, who after his wife cheats on him decides to just bide his time until the children are grown up before he goes. It was shortlisted for the Booker, though you’d never know from the knocked-up-in-Canva style cover. The ending isn’t quite as I thought it would be, no thriller style twist, it’s actually quite Elizabeth Stout tonally if you like her writing.

Watching

I mean who hasn’t seen the Netflix Kylie documentary? I’d happily have watched three hours of her talking about Michael Hutchence. They were great together, weren’t they? I very much enjoyed explaining the history to my boyfriend (younger than me, we lack some cultural touchstones) and how if ONLY he hadn’t left Kylie for Helena and ended up getting a head injury fighting the paps then he likely would be alive today. I’m reaching, but if ever there’s a time to reach it’s when hoping and wishing Michael was still with us, no?

And of course I watched the second series of Amandaland back to back. I didn’t think I could love it more than Motherland, but actually it might be better. Less frenetic. Actually scrap that, I’d just like the two to be moulded together into a hyper-sitcom of 90 minutes episodes and no ending in sight.

Making & Mending

Finally, the wedding of the year! (Well, the only wedding I’ll be attending this year actually). I made a slightly wonky plate at Clay Club for Polly and Paul to celebrate their union. They are blending their feline families, hence the snuggling cats. I have instructed them to smash it in their first married row if they hate it.

And a little card for them too.

Next up at Clay Club something very useful indeed - a pasta bowl! We’ve smashed all of ours (not when arguing) so I’m going to try and make a set. The can is for scale. Thinking a nice gloopy sea green glaze, though my history with glaze choices isn’t great.

Painted loads of these little pendants with underglaze ready to be uploaded into my Etsy shop. Just waiting on them being fired. They took ages to paint. Fingers crossed.

Little guy and I went and painted some pottery together. He would make a great creative director one day, he is excellent at delegating and suggesting whilst remaining firm in his creative vision. Quite a skill.

Visiting

The wedding of the year was in a massive sunny field! What a day, though goodness me we were all shade searching.

Always admiring the wall art at Re-Roll board game cafe. Lovely stuff.

BRIEF AD BREAK ALERT:

Did you know I sell my sourdough starter? If you’re in the UK you can buy it here.

From baking to… divorce:

I have physical copies of my book about divorce available here and if you wanted to get a copy immediately it’s always on Amazon as an ebook here.

Oh and if you’re after some jewels may I recommend mine and Scott’s little Etsy venture? Take a look over at our shop here. Lots of really affordable bits packaged up by yours truly.

Okay. Ad break over.

Links you might like

1. Profound therapy

2. When weight loss stalls on GLP-1’s, but also on any old weight loss regime

3. Small businesses benefitting from France’s anti waste laws

4. A little interview with Courtney Love.

On my table

Picked up a jar of this spicy peanut sauce at the Midland Maker’s market last month and am not sorry to report that I’ve single handedly eaten half of it. Very good on eggs, salad, steak, chicken, crackers and actually just from the jar.

Made my first ever batch of elderflower cordial. I guess it got left this long because I just don’t love it. I used to adore it but sickened myself of it, a bit like the sorry story of my affair with truffle oil. Anyway, I used the River Cottage recipe and it was very easy and is DELICIOUS.

You may have missed

For those of you who prefer one email a month you can opt to just receive this newsletter along with links to everything I’ve recently written. It’s easy to do this:

1. Go to your Substack profile, (top right corner).

2. Go to ‘account settings’.

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Last months posts have included:

1. A really useful cookie recipe

2. On the chasm between perception and reality

3. Everything I know about keeping cool

4. So you want a baby? Thoughts from a SEN mother

5. I thought I was rich - my first proper job

6. I want to believe - on SEN parenting and making a living and the grind, a sob story if you will

7. My 5 worst holidays

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My month in pictures

(Sorry this is behind a paywall but, well, they’re personal photos, not THAT kind, they’re my life and so they’re not for everyone and their dog).

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A recipe a week! Imagine? So much work went into that food blog. And then one day it had served me and I had finished serving it. The whole thing is still online, quietly being useful. I hope.

So the recipes I liked to write most were always those that can be meddled with, eased to fit what your cupboard holds. I’m an adaptive cook, and I assume others are too. So today I have for you a cookie recipe that is simple, resilient, happy to be b@ggered about with and also delicious. Crucially it doesn’t make 25,000 cookies, which many the recipe does. Feel free to mess with the ratios of sugar, to use different flour etc. But if you’re not that kind of cook, just follow the recipe as it is.

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Makes 16 smallish cookies

Ingredients:

• 125g soft salted butter (or margarine, but flavour won’t be as good)

• 70g soft dark brown sugar

• 70g caster sugar

• 1 egg

• 175g plain flour

• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

• 175g of chopped chocolate/nuts/marzipan/dried fruit/marshmallows

Preheat the oven to 190c/gas 5 and line 4 baking trays with non stick baking parchment.

Cream the butter and sugars together with a spoon until well combined and creamy. Add the egg, stir again until well combined. Don’t worry if the mixture curdles a little.

Add the flour and bicarbonate of soda, stir well until combined. Add the chocolate/nuts etc and stir to mix in well. (Or you can add the inclusions to each individual piece of dough as we did if you want to make different flavours).

Take a spoon of the dough (size about 3cm across) and roll into a ball between your palms. (NB: if your hands are warm or your kitchen is, then pop the dough in the fridge for a little). Place on the prepared baking sheet. Repeat with the rest of the dough, spacing the cookies at least 7cm apart to allow for spreading. We managed 4 per tray. Bake for 10 - 12 minutes until golden brown. Cool on a wire rack and remove to an airtight tin once cool.

Excellent with marshmallows hidden in the middle. Also very good with slices of chopped Terry’s chocolate orange in the dough. Oh and let’s not forget the beauty of an ice cream cookie sandwich. Yes, yes, yes, especially in this weather.

Another photo after the paywall, but includes my family. Everything more personal is about the cost of a coffee a month, including all the juicy bits of writing.

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Oh and I also sell brownies, jewellery, sourdough starter, various bits and bobs on vinted, and even a book I wrote about divorce (in ebook too!)

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Okay, so with this in mind, and given English people are not great at keeping cool in the heat, I am bestowing upon you my very best advice gleaned from my pals who grew up in properly hot countries. I’m talking 40C being nothing to comment on. The only deal is this, if you have anything to add to these tips you leave a comment in the handy box at the end, okay? Sharing is caring. No, in fact sharing is cooling.

A classic Brit enjoying the sun. Poor fellow. I hope he has some aloe vera. Anyway, just a reminder that you can subscribe below for free. To get the really juicy stuff it’s the price of a coffee a month, which in my opinion, is a bargain:

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Oh and I also sell brownies, jewellery, sourdough starter, various bits and bobs on vinted, and even a book I wrote about divorce (in ebook too!)

1. Curtains closed in the day, open at night. Think of your home as a small toddler who must be sheltered from the sun at all times.

2. Windows closed in the day, open at night. See above. Don’t be tempted to open the windows come the afternoon for ‘a bit of air’. The air is too hot. Don’t let it in!

3. Contrary to instinct, drinking icy cold drinks does not cool you down. You need to drink slightly warm drinks. You can google this for the science, but I’m not lying to you, promise. It’s to do with blood vessels.

4. Think about what you’re drinking. Water (not icy cold!) is great, but really you need to be replacing salts. There’s a reason a lot of middle eastern yoghurt drinks are laced with salt. Electrolytes are your friend.

5. If you want to eat a warm meal in the evening, you need to cook it in the morning. Honestly, your future self will thank you. Cook up a storm before 9am, keeping yourself and the kitchen unused at peak heat times, then reheat later. Tastes better too. Obvs follow proper reheating instructions etc.

6. This is advice only useful to the home workers, the retired, the folks not on someone else’s schedule, so skip it if you’re at the coal face 9 - 5. Take a nap mid afternoon. Change your routine and behave like people who live in sunnier climes. Don’t be an Englishman and, as Noel Coward said, go out in the midday sun. (“Mad dogs and Englishman go out in the midday sun”).

   

   Mr Coward, literally out in the midday sun. Fool.

7. This is kind of the same as number 6, but worth another go. I once travelled to Doha; on the journey from the airport to the hotel it was noticeable how empty the streets were. It was the middle of the day, not a public holiday and yet, not a soul. Why? It was over 40C. The place came alive in the late evening. The locals were not stupid. They literally avoid the sun.

8. Use a sun shield in your car when it’s parked. Sounds like it won’t make any difference, promise it does.

9. Spend the most time in the thickest walled room of your home, preferably the furthest away from large windows. We have one room in our house that fits this brief and my oh my is it a tonic in hot weather.

10. Wear natural fibres in light colours. Dark colours absorb the heat, so avoid. I know they’re flattering but we’re focusing on staying cool at the moment.

Right, what else do you have to add? Come on, share!

This is not a photo of the Cranks I visited. I’m not that old. This is from the original Carnaby Street branch opened in the 60’s.

Grad meant graduate or graduate trainee, just a shorthand to say we were university fodder and destined to rise through the ranks. How I wanted to rise, up, up and away. Far from the Midlands where I’d spent the summer in that limbo ‘twixt university and working life. A job in a bar, a love affair with my manager, a trip to Thailand, nights out with old college friends, waiting out the summer and knowing everything was about to change. I was on my way.

I bought an itchy fake woolen suit from Next to wear on my first day. It made my thighs sweat and was deeply suburban. A panic purchase the Sunday before my first day, not realising I’d be the only person to wear a suit under 30. It was a hot summer that year. August 2002 seemed to last forever. I remember sitting on the steps outside the office with an extremely thin and posh PA called Emma and feeling the concrete warm my bottom. So very hot.

My first pay cheque was just under £1000. I felt rich. The other grads moaned. Even the male one who was earning more than me and the other girl. Apparently he asked for more so he got it. We only found that out a year later. An early lesson in male gumption induced privilege.

Me? I wasn’t moaning. I felt rich. £350 in rent and maybe £100 in travel and the rest was mine. I survived on nightly 99p Weight Watchers microwave meals topped up with left over training lunches of curly sandwiches and slightly stale crisps. I was never proud. I’d swipe what I could. More money for boozing.

These days I don’t work in advertising, I write here! You can subscribe below for free, or, to get the really juicy stuff it’s the price of a coffee a month:

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Oh and I also sell brownies, jewellery, sourdough starter, various bits and bobs on vinted, and even a book I wrote about divorce (in ebook too!)

Speaking of which, it being 2002 there was a booze trolley that did the rounds at 5pm. A night out was always preluded by a few glasses of cheap office plonk as a warm up. Ashtrays on every floor, smoking absolutely fine, just crack a window for the non-smokers, yeah?

I had plans for that first pay cheque. I knew I wanted to buy something memorable. I knew one day I might not wear expensive shoes anymore and remembering that pay cheque might make me happy. I’ve always done this. Felt the need to self-consciously mark occasions for posterity. Like the day before I had to return to work when my youngest son was 11 weeks old (yes, yes I know, awful huh?) I took a selfie of us on the sofa. The photo is framed on the wall. I look at it often. My little perfect baby, not at all ready for me to leave him.

Back to the first pay cheque. I bought myself a pair of flat, red leather Kurt Geiger shoes. Pointy toes, with a bow. I adored them. Others did too. I was complimented on them more than once on the Central Line. They were dashing. Eventually my £80 shoes died from over use. The red cream polish couldn’t resurrect them anymore. I still have that polish.

The first three months of work were ‘grad training’ where we essentially spent a week in every department doing fake work. I was chomping at the bit to do REAL work, or so I thought. I felt these projects were babyish and silly. I didn’t need to create a pitch for a fake weed brand launching in the UK, ugh, how ridiculous! I certainly didn’t want to learn to street dance and suffer the humiliation of performing a routine to my new colleagues. Yes they really did make us do that. B@stards.

Anyway, how wrong I was about the real work. Come January when training was over the drop back down to earth was immense. Photo copying, binding, booking train tickets, filling milk jugs and plates with posh biscuits, clearing working lunches, taking minutes I didn’t understand, sending out meeting requests on outlook, dialing into conference calls, conducting competitive reviews which involved being chased out of the Covent Garden Tesco by security for taking photos of air fresheners with a digital camera. It was all so utterly boring, even the chasing. I remember crying on the phone to my mother a lot, shocked and dismayed that all this study had led to THIS. Ha! As if I was fit for anything other than a bit of admin. Silly fool. We’re all silly at 22 aren’t we? (Some of us still are… ahem).

I wanted to be running the show, not running around. This in spite of not knowing what running the show might entail, other than carrying a black leather case full of ‘files’, wearing high heels and being in a rush. I became quite depressed, not helped by the fact I was lonely. I watched as London heaved with social opportunities that I just wasn’t a part of. I started to take myself off to activities alone, a book signing with Tony Parsons (!) despite not being a fan of his work, much preferring his ex wife Julie Burchill’s writing, a cocktail at The Lanesborough Hotel on Valentine’s Evening no less and a claustrophobic Comedy Store gig to muster a laugh.

It was desperate. I was desperate. I so wanted to be happy, but I was no actress. I began to drink more, I mean, why not, I wasn’t doing anything else, and there were always free drinks at work for some reason or other. I joined Plenty of Fish and went on some incredibly dodgy dates, with barristers mainly. They were all obsessed with Mummy and/or big sister. They insisted on going Dutch, which I vehemently agreed with, not knowing their weekly take home pay would be more than my monthly before tax.

I want to tell you that I found my way alone, that this was just a blip, but the real story is not as heroic. The truth of the matter is, things only began to look up when I went to a birthday party at The Ship one Saturday for a colleague’s celebration, I mean I didn’t know anyone else so of course I was hanging out with workmates at the weekend. I was busy trying to look cool whilst shivering drinking Diet Coke instead of wine for the dual fear of disgracing myself and a 3pm hangover, when over walked

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