What I've learned in a year on Substack

A note to end on

May 12, 2025

I’ve been on Substack for a year. I know this not only because I’ve posted 52 times, more or less weekly, but I’m at that wearisome point where one risks staying too long at a party.

I’m dangerously close to repeating myself. This morning, for example, I had my ears suctioned. It was as startling and disgusting as you’d expect, but I couldn’t write about it because I already did. (I’m scheduled for suckage six-monthly, if you must know, owing to my tiny canals and their productivity.)

I’m a silverback gorilla, then, in online terms; one with some authority, even though I don’t spend enough time thinking about the consequences of pressing POST, or checking for mistakes before I do, or examining if anyone, really, needs to hear a six-minute voice memo from me about whatever pops into my head during those six minutes. Guilty, guilty, guilty.

Still, let me share what wisdom I’ve collected in the past year. This is random wisdom, mind you; not advice acquired by being on Substack — a platform which has done absolutely nothing to strengthen my impulse control. I’m not bloody Mel Robbins; there’s nothing here worth monetising. Its value is slight, but it gleams.

There’s definitely a link between Claire Keegan being both the finest writer in English alive, and a bit of arsehole.

Expensive lip-gloss is worth it. Expensive mascara is not.

If you order firewood delivery in summer, that winter will be the mildest since records began. If you don’t order firewood in summer, your city will be thrashed by a mighty storm in April, so terrible your mother-in-law will ring in concern from the South Island. Your husband’s flight will be grounded in another city; your furnace will flame out. April’s not even winter. Your family is basically fucked.

If you swear in a Substack post, your mother will ring and express disappointment.

Take the dog outside before bed every evening, even if it’s freezing and the street is underlit. Unless you like the house to reek of Dettol every morning.

People will tell you anything in a dog park.

Pūkeko like to peck the fine grit beside metalled roads. They store it in their gizzard; it helps them break down food. That’s why so many linger by the roadsides, winding up as roadkill. I absolutely hate to see such beautiful creatures slumped dead, especially the fuzzy, blue-grey juveniles.

If you know someone with the spiritual authority to harvest their feathers, pull over to the side of the road and call them. Then their lives won’t go unacknowledged.

A stranger told me this, about Pūkeko gizzards, in the pet food aisle of the supermarket. It was the best conversation I had that week. People will tell you anything in the pet food section.

There are lonely people everywhere you look.

Before getting married to your chosen one, find out how often they cook corned beef.

Try speaking to at least one person a month who is aged between 20 and 30. They say exhilarating things like, “Nobody reads anymore,” and “I’m so tired after writing that essay. I put my whole pussy into it”.

You’ll come away from them feeling intensely alive.

Drivers who hate cyclists and cyclists who hate drivers forget that the real arseholes among us drive motorbikes.

The only time anybody wins sympathy in their fifties is by dying. The rest of the time, everybody both older than you and younger than you believe you’ve got it easier than they do.

This is why Gen X hardly ever says anything. Why bother?

Everybody, at some point in their lives, has felt like an idiot in an art gallery.

Leaf-blowers are not the worst. They take maybe two minutes. Bark-chipping machines are. They take all day.

When you have two Tang Dynasty-style ceramic horses, a British Colonial-era folding chair, three chess clocks, an Edwardian telescope and an anatomically correct Kenyan fertility doll, it’s time to stop bidding at online auctions.

It isn’t just menopause. It’s reasonable and just to be furious about the Met Gala.

On the day the person you love most in the world dies, you’ll be euphoric for a few hours. You’ll feel unbelievably free, unbound by conventional behaviour, completely cut loose from daily concerns, because there’s no longer any fear. This is because the most painful thing you can imagine has just happened to you, so you’re untouchable today. You can handle anything; you’re unstoppable. You soar.

People don’t talk enough about this good bit.

You think you’ve seen everything, and then a visiting child takes out a miniature nail-clipper and cuts their toenails on your sofa.

When you’re at the dog park at rush hour and realise your button fly is largely gaping open, it’s too late to do it up. This is why you should always carry a cross-body bag.

Never trust a retirement village just because it has manicured gardens, a fancy vestibule, library, and a pool. A care worker told me this once. She said a threadbare rest-home she once worked at, in a very modest area, had the kindest staff and best-cooked meals she’d ever witnessed.

Rain isn’t the main problem for housepainters. Temperature is.

If you want to buy a Rolex, expect to spend months developing a relationship with the dealer before they’ll even consider you a candidate. This includes dropping into the shop to see them for a cup of coffee, for no other reason but to butter them up. It helps to buy another expensive watch first, just to encourage their trust in you. You may or may not be invited to purchase your chosen watch within a year.

An investor told me this. It felt both clever and stupid at the same time.

The reason your dog follows you everywhere and watches you on the toilet is because he doesn’t trust your leadership. If he truly respected your authority he would give up on his responsibility to protect you and lie on a quilt with the cat, like those dogs on calendars and Instagram.

It’s tempting, but don’t text a radio station to tell them what the host is doing wrong. The producer will read it out to the sound engineer and agree what an arsehole you sound like.

Try to let go of the time somebody called you “a loser” for not being able to choose a restaurant on your birthday. You didn’t want to impose your taste on the group, and kept insisting you didn’t mind where you all went, but nobody had any patience for this.

When you tell your husband, he will remind you there’s so little grace in the world, that people don’t recognise it when they’re shown some.

Try to think about this, and not that.

Don’t spend too much time looking at photos of your children as babies, toddlers, as under-fives, or under-tens. The undertow is always too sad.

The fact is, they haven’t gone anywhere, these tow-headed, tiny children. Why are you keeping their baby teeth in a Ziplock in a drawer? What are you trying to hold onto? They’re still here, aren’t they? They’re as surprising as they always were, as tiring, and bring you as much joy as you’re capable of feeling.

And the best is to come.

Soon, it’s goodbye from me

I’m thrilled and a bit dazed to tell you that I’ve had an approach from a publisher to collect these pieces (plus some new ones, not that I’ve written them) in a book. It’s early days, but I’d love to make this a reality.

The timing is perfection as I need a winter job; my short-lived career as a theatrical publicist soon comes to an end (TWO WEEKS OF THE SEASON LEFT. BOOK NOW!).

I’m touched by and grateful for everyone who has read and subscribed, befriended and commented, pledged, liked and restacked me over the last year. Without your encouragement, I wouldn’t have written a word.

In a week I’ll close this newsletter but will remain as a devoted reader to all the lovely Substackers I’ve come to know and love, among them

, the insanely funny

and my old mate

I hope you won’t mind a cheeky email from me if the book does eventuate, because trust me, you’ll be in the Acknowledgments section.