Lost Connections

and a sparkling clitoris

Hello!

It’s been months and I would apologise for dropping out of contact but I imagine that you have been managing to live your lives quite well without an extra email in your inbox.

I’ve been head down in book writing mode. I say that… but there’s been a lot of head up, looking out windows and at people in coffee shops too.

But still mostly book.

It’s taking forever. My friends had babies and sent them to school in the time it took me to write Help Me! With this one, those kids might well be getting their first job.

I really don’t know if what I’ve written is of any value to the world but I’m tired and overthinking. I had a good cry about it yesterday with my friend Gary*, who told me that six planets are in retrograde at the moment?! So maybe it’s just that.

I ran the retrograde theory by Jamie in the wine shop and he reckoned, no, I just needed a drink.

Anyway, I had a whole post written for this newsletter about the brilliant book by Johann Hari called Lost Connections - Why we’re Depressed and How to find Hope. It’s about why so many of us are struggling with modern life.

Basically we are living in a way that doesn’t give us the close connections with other humans and with nature that we really need. We run around chasing wealth and status (and book deals) and actually none of this stuff makes us happy.

What makes us happy is looking after each other, being in nature and doing work that means something to us.

But having spent two days writing it, I don’t want to share that post now. I worry that it is - ha - depressing! And what with the six planets in retrograde we don’t need that!!

So is it ok if I break the newsletter ice by just giving you a round up of stuff I’ve been reading/watching/chatting about?!

xx

WHAT I’M READING

This article by Stephanie Theobald about how she spent lockdown living in a cave in the California desert made me smile, especially the line about charging her vibrator with solar panels. I know Steph a little bit. She wrote a book called Sex Drive about her drive around America looking for her orgasm. The book was described in the Guardian as being Thelma and Louise meets Eat Pray Love and involves Steph driving around the States meeting alien pleasure cults and ‘eco sexual’ sexologists. I went to the book launch which was a flash affair complete with a giant glittering clitoris! (Remember those good old days of leaving the house and feeling up sparkly genitalia?!)

She recently came back to London for a trip and invited me to a Cave Woman gathering, telling me to feel free to bring a ‘mystery lesbian guest’. Alas, I didn’t have any mystery lesbians to hand and also felt knackered after celebrating my birthday and going to a Radical Honesty** workshop in the same weekend, so I didn’t go make it which is a shame. Still, I get a kick out of knowing her and love people who are living different kinds of lives; it inspires me. You can follow her on Insta and buy Sex Drive! As Emma Thompson says on the front blurb: Read it and quiver!!

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And as Steph goes cave woman, the Daily Mail had an article about women who pay up to £10,000 to work with dating coaches. The basic theory, as I understand it, is that some women need help getting in touch with their feminine side, to let let men take the lead, to trust more etc… I don’t know.

What do you think? Here is a feminist take down of the idea.

On other dating related news, I subscribe to Ask Polly, a kind of agony column and it’s some of my favourite reading every week. I really recommend it. Two recent newsletters I related to were ‘I’m unlucky in love and I’m feeling hopeless’ and ‘How Do I Just Be a Fucking Adult?'. Polly (real name Heather Havrilesky) is so wise and real and kind and human in her answers. I’d like to be her friend.

I thought this was really good too, about how to manage your expectations when online dating: The writer-inner says: ‘I am concerned about my overattachment to men I hardly know and the impact it has on me. Friends talk about having “fun” on these sites, but I experience either extreme highs or utter despair when I am rejected.’

I relate. The only people who think that dating is fun are people who are not dating. As one friend describes it, online dating is ‘psycho spiritual Russian roulette.’

Much better to stay at home and watch telly…

WHAT I’M WATCHING

Everything!!! Will someone please create some sort of booby trap thing that’ll taser me if I bring my laptop into bed with me? This has been the year when I didn’t finish my book but I did watch everything ever made on telly.

Anyway, I thought that submarine thing on BBC was pretty crap. I ended up skipping through the last two episodes; I didn’t care if it was the Chinese or the Russians or the guys from the protest camp who were doing whatever it was that was causing everyone on the submarine to stress out.

I recently watched Insecure and really liked that.

Um. What else?

Did you guys watch the Nine Perfect Strangers? It got mixed reviews but I really liked it. I got a text from a friend asking me if it was like the F*ck It retreat. Alas, no. I would be well up for a psychedelic escapade with swimming pool and sauna.

WHAT I’M LISTENING TO

GARY!!* Do you remember the newsletter I wrote about crying to the guy in the coffee shop in the misery of lockdown? Well, we’ve now become good friends and see each other most days. Turns out that as well as being kind to strangers, he is a gorgeous musician and is doing an event in Baker Street London on 28th October.

I went to the GLOBAL PREMIER (in our friend Ann’s front room) a couple of weeks ago and it was like being taken off to a dream world. I genuinely didn’t want it to end and I’m not saying that because we are friends.

If you fancy joining at the end of the month, I’ll see you there.

WHAT I’M BUYING

Nothing! I’m at the eating tins of tuna state of affairs!

WORKSHOPS

So I took a long summer holiday with the Writing for Fun and Sanity workshops. Would anyone be interested in them starting up again? I would love to get back to seeing you on a Saturday but then I also wonder if we’re all quite zoomed out and keen to be spending weekends in the real world. Let me know your thoughts, and no pressure.

And HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO SHELF HELP!!

Shelf Help is a great organisation run by Toni Jones. It’s like a self-help book club and they do lots of events and it’s a lovely bunch of people. If you don’t know them, check them out.

Love and hugs.

Please do tell me your news. Anyone enjoying some good Psycho Spiritual Russian roulette?!

x

PS

I’ve done a couple of book reviews for The Times! They are both behind a paywall but I think you might be able to access some articles for free.

This one is on a gorgeous book by Kathryn Mannix on how to Listen. I’ll write a full post about it another day but in short the advice is: just listen. Don’t give advice, don’t make it about you, don’t rush to reassure the other, don’t tell your story as a way of identifying with the other person.

And then this one on Oliver Burkeman’s book about how best to spend our 4,000 weeks on this planet.

** I will write about the Radical Honesty workshop soon.