What’s this?
This is my newsletter about how to get your hands dirty, growing stuff you can eat, pretty much for free! I will take you on a journey where we will learn, together, how to plant your dinner. That’s basically it. How to companion plant, so we won’t be using any chemicals. When to do it, when to pick it, and how to cook it. I will be consulting lots of gardening and cooking experts: I am basically going to stalk Monty Don and Marcus Wareing until they give into my demands. Helping me will be my three border collies, whom I am hoping won’t dig everything up.
As I am in the Yorkshire Dales/County Durham border, I will also be visiting beautiful gardens and places to eat (Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal Water Garden, for example, and the Broughton Sanctuary near Skipton). I will be growing cut flowers, too, and will be learning how to fill my new Vicarage with seasonal flowers.
My newsletter will also explore our relationship with our bodies and food as we grow older. As I live alone and don’t have children, I have never bothered with cooking, but I want to start now! I will be meeting lots of brilliant cooks along the way, and I hope you will come along too. From Mary Berry to Marcus Wareing (again; he’s a bit scared), I will learn how to feed myself well, on very little money. Everything in this newsletter will be about growing and planting beautifully, so there will be lots of gorgeous copper pans, plates and bowls (Summerill & Bishop, anyone?). All on the cheap.
I will be looking at the history of growing: everything from apples to watercress and quince.
I have written at length (in six books, but mainly in the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday) about the misery of being obsessed with fashion, beauty products, dieting and exercising, but this Substack will be about joy: finding by accident I spent all day digging and planting, not realising I have spent 10 hours working out, the sun on my back. I hope it will inspire you too: getting older does not mean atrophying, it will mean staying active and interested, surrounded by like-minded people. I will be harvesting lots of interesting tips and mining minds. Winter won’t be boring, as we will pickle and preserve. I am going to find a second-hand glass house, so we can stay in the warm, planning. I’m going to grow my own wreath, and show you how to make one!
Here’s how it works
There are two versions of this newsletter: the skinny and the full fat. The skinny is free. If you subscribe by email to the skinny, you get Thin Lizzy: a weekly email of thoughts, and a preview of everything you will be missing out on.
The full version is paid (go to the subscribe button), which means every Friday you get my full newsletter, with photographs and a plant-based recipe from my favourite expert, and lots of photos and a monthly video!
There will also be added salt with Threads, Notes and Chat. If you choose to subscribe, there will be monthly online chats, and in real life events both north and south you can come along to, when you can meet my gang. You can read me online, on your phone or tablet, on the Substack app! A podcast is in the pipeline, when I will be taking you on a beautiful monthly walk, with added collies. (Hang on! Teddy has done a poo! Ow! Teddy, nooooo!)
About me
I have written five non-fiction books, and one comic novel. My latest novel is packed brim full of sex, and I will let you know how to buy once it’s published (after all this gardening and cooking, you will be too tired to even think about getting jiggy with it). I write features for The Daily Mail, and have a column about my love life or lack of it in The Mail on Sunday’s You magazine (I have been Columnist of the Year many, many times… okay, twice). I was editor in chief of Marie Claire magazine, and was Deputy Editor of Sunday Times Style. I am 65, and wasted most of my life trying not to be: a face lift, breast reduction, addiction to running and Pilates. I used to be anorexic, and my glorious hair fell out after I was made bankrupt and lost my home with its gorgeous garden sloping down to the River Swale, with its heron and kingfisher and really inquisitive fish.
So you can see this newsletter is about having a home and some permanence again, my fingers in the Bodie and Doyle (soil) that is ALL MINE. Unlike many writers, I won’t be encouraging you to BUY MORE STUFF. The places I visit will be FREE. Seeds are almost free, after all. Nothing will be scary, as we will learn about propagating, and plants that cost nothing. My beautiful rescued horse will provide the manure, though she tells me she doesn’t do ploughs.
Anything else?
I also really want to hear your tips, advice, questions and feedback. We can sit together in our camping chairs of an evening as the sun sets and chew the fat (not literally). Think of this newsletter as your helpful friend, giving you a bit of hilarious gossip that will soothe your soul and your wallet. I will recommend not just glorious gardens all over the country (you will come on a virtual monthly walk with me, with audio and visuals), but books and tips about what plants smell amazing, how to get over a fear of bees (there will be no hives, as honey abuses bees), and you can watch me in my flower room, making beautiful arrangements in foraged vases. There will be some actual foraging, too, but I will try not to kill you with toadstools, accompanied by my three beautiful collies.
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