Substack! Finally! [Read this first]
Hello!
I signed up to Substack five years ago. It’s so great to be posting at long last. For usefulness, this first post is an extended version of my About page - everything you might want to know about this newsletter, in detail and at VAST length.
What’s this?
It’s my newsletter about the things that improve everyday home life. You know how birds go to some trouble to pick all the good twigs, moss and grass for their nests, and then sit in them feeling chipper and thinking about dinner? Me too.
So this is me sharing my life-enhancers with you. I’ll give you suggestions about what to cook for supper, what to watch afterwards and what book to read next. I’ll tell you about a non-saccharine pink paint that makes rooms glow with warmth and cosiness, point you to somewhere lovely for a weekend away, to the best lettuce to grow for winter, to a quilt I’ve had my eye on for the past three years, and to pies by post.
I love small pleasures: garden flowers in a jam jar, a dog being goofy, tea made with proper tea leaves, delicious scent, finding a great new podcast, lightbulbs that don’t make your house look like a morgue, the small victory of discovering a hotel in Paris that is both poetic and affordable. Making yourself a masala omelette and eating it while reading something unputdownable1 as the rain lashes down outside.
The idea is that at least some of this will be cheering, useful or life-improving for you too. And since this isn’t Instagram and nobody’s actually prancing about in their own imaginary movie called Gracious Living, I might also write about things like stain removal, a specialist subject (briefly, green Fairy Liquid gets rid of anything from anywhere, including upholstery, no matter how precious or delicate the fabric). My other specialist subjects include Christmas - particularly finding presents for impossible people - but it’s a bit early for all that.
Every Saturday I’ll also post a list of things I’ve loved in the previous week, like this sweet table lamp, this extraordinary piece in The New Yorker about using AI to talk to whales, or Adrian Edmondson’s deeply wonderful Desert Island Discs.
I’m making a podcast about country life too, though that won’t be up for a few weeks.
Substack is also the new home of my Sunday Times kitchen column - HELLO, if you’ve landed here in search of that. That column is no more (gloomy bong sound), but a version of it will now appear here once a fortnight (hark! sound of tooters!). It will be free to read and the first one is coming next Sunday. I will of course continue to give you kitchen tips and suggestions, but on here I’ll also be able to link directly to loads of my favourite recipes, like this chicken of dreams from Diana Henry (honestly, subscribe or don’t subscribe but just make that chicken. It’s so easy and it makes people interrupt themselves mid-sentence to say, ‘Wow, this chicken is amazing’).
New to Substack? Here’s how it works
There are two versions of this newsletter. The basic version is free. If you subscribe to this free version, you can read my kitchen column once a fortnight, plus see a short preview of everything else. Think of it as me waving at you cheerfully from across the street.
The full-fat version is paid. If you subscribe to this paid version, you get access to my kitchen column AND to every single other thing I post on here, as described above, and including podcasts. I will be posting for paid subscribers twice a week. Instead of waving across the street, we’ve kissed hello, linked arms and gone for coffee. There are functions on Substack for Threads, Notes and Chat, whereby I sometimes talk to you in real time - that will be for paid subscribers only. You also get full access to the archive, currently non-existent but soon to be bursting at the seams, like Meatloaf’s faded Levis.
If you choose to support my work by becoming a founder member, you get extra-special benefits but I haven’t finalised what they are yet because it depends on numbers. Private group chats? Invites to my book events? Boxes of luxey makeup samples in the post? Dinner? I’ll gauge interest for a couple of weeks and then work something out to adequately reflect the depth of my gratitude.
You can read my posts in the emails you receive, in your browser, or on your phone or tablet in the Substack app. You can unsubscribe at any time.
About me
I write journalism and books. I’ve written five novels - the most recent one is called Darling - and seven non-fiction books, all published in the UK by Penguin Fig Tree. I am about to start on novel number six.
The journalism is for The Sunday Times, where I wrote comment pieces for millennia, and more recently the above-mentioned column about home cooking. I also write book reviews, and a beauty column for Sunday Times Style. I have a beauty book coming out in November, about what works for older women who can’t necessarily be arsed to overthink cosmetics but who’d rather their face didn’t collapse entirely.
I’m 57. My father was Belgian and my mother is Pakistani. I have three grown-up children - the eldest is about to turn THIRTY ONE. Ideally you want your children to become adults you’d choose to hang out with if you weren’t related, and mine are that and more.
I spent the first nine years of my life in Brussels and the next 40 years in London. Then eight years ago I moved to an old farmhouse in rural Suffolk, and went from being a person who knew their way round the fun bits of town to a being a person who is interested in birds and lives in a field with three dogs, five goats, 40 sheep and 15 hens (yes, it is a lot of eggs). If you’re considering moving from the city to the country I have info aplenty, which I will be turning into a podcast for paid subscribers - I’ll be talking to people who have done it about all the stuff you need to know and that no one really tells you.
Why Substack?
Because I love it. I read Substacks like I used to read magazines. And because I also love the idea of cutting out the middlemen - writing what I like, when I like, at whatever length I like, creating and engaging with an intimate community of like-minded people, and still earning a living from doing it. Keeping my copyright! Owning my own words! The freedom of it feels thrilling. (I slightly think Substack is the future. Find the people you like and read them all in one place: why wouldn’t you?).
Anything else?
Think of this newsletter as a mood-boosting and hopefully informative chat at my kitchen table over a cup of tea. We have toast. It is lavishly buttered. We are wearing elasticated waists - I nearly called this newsletter The Elasticated Waist - because life’s too short to not breathe properly, plus the toast won’t eat itself.
It totally works on its own, but it is really, really satisfying if you read the Slough House series first.
Thrilled — THRILLED — about all of this!
My dahlias are also on their last legs but I’m currently in the denial phase of my end of summer grief so pretending they’ll still be all bright and cheerful when I look out the kitchen window in two weeks time. Always works!
Thrilled to read this and loving the idea of reading more of your words more often! It might finally make me get into Substack.