Reading time: 7.26 1,769 words Read this email in your browser Hey Reader, When I was a child I often went missing. Not missing missing — except for that one time my parents gathered the entire neighbourhood to look for me and were about to call the police before my brother found me underneath the dining room table behind the tablecloth reading a stack of books. And that’s where I often was. In a cupboard or under a table or hidden in a nook, reading. I wasn’t very good at interacting with...
2 days ago • 8 min read
Reading time: 1.55 454 words Read this email in your browser Hey Reader, There’s a bramble in our porch. It started poking through a gap in the wall a few days ago and I kept forgetting to cut it off and pull it back through to the outside. So it crept its way further in. And further. And now it’s in front of the glass door to the living room where we get a perfect view of the aphid farm. Isn’t this cool? This is ants farming aphids. The aphids all congregate on the bramble stem, sucking away...
4 days ago • 2 min read
Reading time: 3.45 889 words Read this email in your browser Hey Reader, Sometimes, all you need is cheese. Not just any cheese: Welsh Dragon cheddar with spicy bits of chilli in. That, and some crusty bread. You see, I have a tendency to overcomplicate things (I KNOW RIGHT, WHO WOULD EVER HAVE GUESSED???) So I think “picnic” and immediately my mind jumps to the kind of fancy affair that requires a butler, a maid, a driver, and a lad to carry all the baskets and bottles. There are pies and...
7 days ago • 4 min read
(ooooof it’s a chonker but do give it a read!) Reading time: 10.41 2,539 words Read this email in your browser Hey Reader, Skinny little 12-year-old me desperately wanted to be on the netball team. I was small, I was fast, I was fighty. Good for darting around the defenders and passing to the attackers. Not averse to the odd elbow to the face. But I never got picked. Not by the other girls and not by the games teachers. Because I wasn’t one of the Cool Girls. I was the speccy little weirdo...
9 days ago • 11 min read
Reading time: 2.39 630 words Read this email in your browser Hey Reader, I’ve recently made surfing my entire personality and so naturally I’m spending a lot of time searching surf-related stuff and going down YouTube wormholes to watch absolute batshit but talented riders slide down horrifyingly large waves without — somehow — dying. Apropos of absolutely nothing, my phone-Google tried to autofill one of my searches with “do surfers look really old?” And I thought: wtf? Then I clicked it...
11 days ago • 3 min read
Reading time: 4.25 1,050 words Read this email in your browser Hey Reader, Humans are weird. The things humans do are weird. Here are some of them:* Gathering around a person whose birthday it is and aggressively singing happy birthday at them. What is one supposed to do while this is going on? Asking for me. Clapping. Such a weird thing to do, when you think about it. Clapping when a plane lands. (Should be an immediate flying ban imhbco.) Working 40 hours per week. WHY? Why is this normal?...
14 days ago • 5 min read
Reading time: 7.06 1,688 words Read this email in your browser Hey Reader, I’ve stopped and started a book I’m writing so many times I’m sick of myself. Do you ever get so sick of yourself you just want to scream and scream and scream until you’re hoarse? Yes, well. Just because I’m a writing coach, doesn’t mean I’m immune from the brain nonsense that flattens us all at some point. I’m the proverbial cobbler with holes in her shoes. The physician who needs to heal thyself. I was, in short,...
16 days ago • 8 min read
Reading time: 2.12 519 words Read this email in your browser Hey Reader, “Aaaaaauuuurrrrrghhhhhhh I feel so old,” laments my friend who is — and this is important — just turning 30. I have a lot of friends who are younger than me — side-effect of being a) immature and b) obsessed with doing things like trapeze, pole, and gymnastics — and the number of times I feel like getting out my walking cane and giving them a good spanking… Sheesh. You’ve been alive for 3 decades. You’ve not been allowed...
18 days ago • 2 min read
Reading time: 2.32 601 words Read this email in your browser Hey Reader, I’ve started and stopped this damn email so many times today I’m sick of myself. Do you ever get so sick of yourself you just want to scream and scream and scream until you’re hoarse? Yes, well. Anyway, I decided to stop overthinking it and instead tell you about a tiny experiment I’ve started, because perhaps it’ll help you too. I am going to write a few words of my cosy fantasy story every day for 100 days. That’s it....
21 days ago • 3 min read