Reading time: 2.03 407 words Read this email in your browser. Hey Reader, Have you seen Kris Jennerās new face? I have, and my heart sank. Not because of her, specifically. I donāt generally care what the Kardashian Klan are up to, and my grip on celebrity culture is tenuous at best, by design. My heart sank because itās yet another denial of ageing women. The latest sacrifice at the altar of obsession with youth and this homogenised ābeautyā thatās currently trendy. One more erasure of the...
12 days agoĀ ā¢Ā 2 min read
Reading time: 0.51 202 words Read this email in your browser. Hey Reader, Opinions and instructions, as far as the eye can see! Google āhow to write a bookā and youāll find all manner of exhausting advice about what you should (and should not) do. And itās all contradictory, because all most people can do is tell you what THEY did and then insist that will work for you, too. (It might; it might not.) The others have something expensive to sell you that you donāt need. So hereās a bunch of...
13 days agoĀ ā¢Ā 1 min read
Reading time: 3.26 814 words Read this email in your browser. Hey Reader, āIt was the day my grandmother exploded.ā ^^Helluva first line, right? Not mine, obvs ā itās the first line of The Crow Road by Iain Banks, a story about āa perfect murderā and a mystery to solve. A first line like that is whatās known as a āhookā ā the thing that grabs you by the eyeballs and reels you in, much as you would catch a fish. There are many factors that go into making something readable and clickable, but...
16 days agoĀ ā¢Ā 4 min read
Reading time: 2.56 696 words Read this email in your browser. Hey Reader, Itās Shout Out Thursday so here are 5 brilliant people you should know and follow and read. And one cool thing from me. Sophie Blackmore, the Happy Marketer, who ā totally bizarrely ā lives in the town I grew up in! But thatās not why you should know her. Sheās a sparkly comet of kindness and delight and her deep, deep knowledge of marketing combined with her sense of fun is kinda rare in an industry that takes itself...
17 days agoĀ ā¢Ā 3 min read
Reading time: 0.34 131 words Read this email in your browser. Hey Reader, Dragging my carcass off the sofa is the toughest part of any single thing I ever want to do. Motivation is always juuuuuust out of reach. Over there, behind the biscuits. So what to do??? Inspirationās cheeky sibling, motivation, is in my firing line this week. When we say āIāll just get motivated to do the thingā weāve got it all barse-ackwards. Iām going live on LinkedIn tomorrow at 11.45am to explain what I mean....
18 days agoĀ ā¢Ā 1 min read
Reading time: 4.56 1,171 words Read this email in your browser. Hey Reader, In 410BC, on a warm Tuesday evening at approx 9.15 pm, Socratesās wife Xanthippe slapped an empty dinner plate down in front of him. Xanthippe had had enough. She ran the household and raised his kids, and Socratesā¦ well, Socrates refused to bathe or trim his beard, and spent his days loafing around talking shit with his bros. He wasnāt bringing any money into the household, so Xanthippe refused to put any food into...
19 days agoĀ ā¢Ā 5 min read
Reading time: 1.27 342 words Read this email in your browser. Hey Reader, Would you eat 18.2m of stinging nettles in return for a shiny trophy? No, me neither. I donāt even want them near my hands. My entire forearm tingles and itās all Joeās fault. In the midst of a big old gardening sesh yesterday, while gathering the weeds I had pulled, Joe accosted me with the hosepipe, causing me to flail wildly and coat my left forearm in stinging nettles. Front and back, inside and outside ā I couldnāt...
20 days agoĀ ā¢Ā 2 min read
Reading time: 4.24 1,047 words Read this email in your browser. Hey Reader, āWhy are you dithering?ā said Joe. āMe? Iām not dithering,ā said I. āYes, youāre dithering. What are you doing?ā āI have many things to do and Iām not doing them. Shout at me.ā āIām not going to shout at you,ā he said. āWhatās the most important thing?ā āAll of it!ā I wail. āNo,ā he said. āOne of them is more important. Tell me.ā I think we all need a Joe in our lives. Sometimes we just need someone to take charge and...
23 days agoĀ ā¢Ā 5 min read
Reading time: 5.16 1,253 words Read this email in your browser. Hey Reader, Attention please. There is a lot of good stuff going on in the world as well as the obvious horrors. To scroll our social media and news channels and the man down the pub, youād think it was only horrors and outrage. Itās very important to focus on the good stuff going on without losing sight of the horrors, because we canāt make the world a better place if weāre constantly gasping OH MY GOD WHAT IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE....
24 days agoĀ ā¢Ā 6 min read