Hey,

I’m writing this email on Monday 22nd, so the contents may sit very differently with me by the time they reach you. Writing really is an act of release. I’m documenting my thoughts in this moment, but how they feel—to me and you—by the time they reach your inbox is entirely out of my control.

We left France on Sunday morning—one ant in a colony of cars at Cherbourg, awaiting a delayed ferry. After we sped across the channel to Poole, I was drowsy on anti-sickness tablets and majorly grateful that I could hand the wheel to Bex for the four-hour drive towards the bright lights of Margate.

We made it. And I’m not sure I like it.

Hey,

Gentle waves lap in the background. Taoist thrums and pulses intersperse the news, review, and AOB sections. Two dudes get together to chat, laugh, and earnestly explore the milky depths of cereal culture.

When I first learned that there exists ‘a meditative podcast about cereal’ (via Jez Burrows’ wonderful newsletter, The Department of Enthusiasm), I was immediately hooked. It sounded like a perfect dose of silliness in my steadily steady life.

I started on episode one. All the way back — pre-‘rona — listening to stories of cereals that have since been discontinued and that I wouldn’t have been able to access at the time, anyway, given the US situation of the hosts.

Hey,

Coliving has been a wonderful experience so far. At the time of sending this email, we’ve got nine days left at Château and have watched 33 fly by. (We’ve also booked five weeks in Tenerife’s Cactus for October/November, if anyone fancies joining…)

Most weekends, a few people leave. It could be two, it could be five or six. This place is in a constant state of change, fluidity. The building remains the same, our three hosts remain the same, but the occupants are a constantly shifting collective. There is no defined, easily identifiable Chateâu group. Each week, new people join and established faces depart. Some stay for a week, some stay for months. The only constant is change.

Over the first couple of weeks, the goodbyes hurt. They were a millstone around my neck. I found my mood souring, my desire for distance from it all growing.

Hey,

I recently read Nicholson Baker’s Room Temperature. It’s a curious little book. A shade over 100 pages and set in the soft-lit mundanity of a new father’s internal monologue as he feeds his infant daughter.

A tiny postage stamp of a setting. A pinhead of a plot. But somehow so incredibly expansive and enrapturing.

The entire book is an ode to slowness. The detailed tangents in which Baker delights to explore are reflections of the tiniest nothings. A collection of coloured paper tags he finds in a suit jacket pocket, peanut butter variants, a set of rubber doorstops that somehow generate a pages-long missive on colour theory and language.

You can’t hack your way to anything meaningful.

It’d be cool if you could. My Twitter feed seems to be awash with the best ways to launch a business, the 5 top things to know about aerospace engineering, or the ultimate takeaways from the 50 best books of all time.

I’d really love to master all those topics in an afternoon.

But these claims aren’t really that true, are they? They don’t reflect what it means (and what it takes) to learn something.

Hey,

We arrived in France — at Chateau Coliving, to be precise — 12 days ago. The building, the people, the scenery, the wildlife, the area… it’s all incredible.

By my patchy reckoning, I haven't been outside of the UK since 2017. No doubt it would have been a shorter gap were it not for the events of the last 2.5 years, but it is what it is. I’ve been on our island for a long time.

I can’t explain how wonderful it feels to be part of an international group of people again. Hearing different languages and accents is enough to make me feel like I have a wider perspective again. Hearing about people’s experiences of life, work, love, and everything else that fills our time has expanded my perspective even further.

There are plenty of obligations and unavoidable commitments in life. Some of us have loads, some of us have not so many.

But not everything has to be an obligation - especially not creative endeavours. In fact, the most dangerous word to attach to anything creative is “should”.

“I should work on my writing today.”

“I should have started that podcast by now.”

Hey,

Most Saturdays, I’ll pack my bag and head to a patch of grass somewhere nearby. I’ll get changed into my all-black uniform - sometimes in a lovely new clubhouse, sometimes in a cobwebby shipping container. I’ll stroll out onto the pitch and check for dog poo, sticks, and stones. I’ll blow my whistle and bring together 22 people to kick a ball (and sometimes each other).

Refereeing’s a dear hobby of mine. Facilitating a safe, fun, fair, and competitive game of football is so rewarding and it feeds my interest in the sport in a way that playing never did. But, my word, it isn’t easy.

I get one second - maybe two - between seeing and acting.

Hey. I’m not really at work or on my laptop this week, but I scheduled this in advance. If you’re kind enough to reply, I apologise if you end up waiting a while for a response.

“They crack me up, you know.”

I’d just watched one of the dogs waddle over to their water bowl and start taking a long, loud drink.

“Like, they’re hanging out on the floor and suddenly think: ‘I’m thirsty now and I’m going to have a drink’.”

Hey,

When we moved out of our rental back in April, we set out for a stint of roving. ‘Digital nomad’ never sat quite right on my tongue; roving slips a little more smoothly.

It was a pretty major undertaking. Moving house is hard enough, but, this time, we weren’t really moving to anywhere. We had to whittle our possessions down to whatever would fit in our Fiesta and sell, donate, or rehome the rest.

In true millennial fashion, our houseplants were a big issue to resolve.