Have a Great Weekend.

I cannot believe it has been 9 years. About 10 years ago I was working a mundane office job and most of that day was filled with reading your blog. You were a part of my everyday, except I’m in Australia so, when you’re happy about the summer arriving and posting photographs of swimwear I’m a little bit cold and looking at jumpers, so seasonally we are at odds.
I don’t think I’ve ever followed a Blog continuously for so long! I DO remember when you had your baby Toby and how happy I was. I mentioned your Blog to an old flatmate of mine recently said “You STILL follow that Blog?” Haha yes, I do, we’ve involved!

Re Larry David. We joke in my family that my grandfather aged until he hit about 55, then stopped aging all together. When he passed away at 95 years old, we used a picture of him taken some 40 years earlier for his obit and funeral program. You couldn’t really tell much difference!

For more than one personal and professional reasons, found that comment about creativity to be really disturbing.

As someone who has worked both on staff, as an independent contractor on a contract for a company, and as an independent contractor working for multiple clients, in a highly creative field on numerous projects, being paid by the hour was NEVER an acceptable option–and when offered, those hiring set unreasonable limits given the work demands.

And those hiring (including when I was the one hiring others) knew that “by the hour” was all about their budgets and demands and not always based on what was required for truly creative work.

This attitude of working “banker’s hours” / what gets done, gets done…or not” well, if I’d had that attitude with my creative work, I’d never have been able to make a living for decades.

Creative work often requires working well beyond 9 to 5 or even set hours: Ask my friends who work in design (of any type), publishing, etc. They have deadlines and they’d be thrilled if it all could get done in 7 or 8 hours a day but it often doesn’t that work that way, in no small part because they are working with others on projects where their late “delivery” of items needed to complete and/or failure to deliver at all, changes the timing of everything.

Creative people either accept that the muse is NOT on the clock or they often end up with a 9 to 5 mentality that sees them NOT meeting deadlines and/or holding up others because they do so. (Try to meet a deadline for a brochure to be created if either the writer or the illustrator do not deliver in a timely fashion, no matter how their workload is structured.)

The comment sounds like this person has been in a situation where they’ve been taken advantage of in some way as they try to deliver a creative project. Or perhaps I’m totally misreading it.

Fleabag s2 came out a few months ago in the UK and I’ve already lost count of how many times I’ve watched it! Episode 4 killeddd me <3 The entire cast is phenomenal, but extra points to Andrew Scott and Sian Clifford. I'm so sad it's the last season, but goodness – talk about a perfect ending!

Loved this from the etiquette column:

Q. How early is it appropriate to start drinking on vacation? 10 a.m.? —Alchy Alphonzo

A. Depends on whether it’s a fun vacation or just-got-divorced vacation. Oh wait, it turns out both are 10 a.m.

Oh goodness, re: airplane smells. When I was pregnant with my first, I was on a flight and a person ate both tuna AND a hard-boiled egg next to me and I nearly threw up on them.

Came here just to brag that I aced the Larry David quiz.

The trick that seemed to work–look at the color of his eyebrows or the deepness of his wrinkles.

A thought: In light of the climate emergency, and all the very good evidence that livestock farming is a big contributor to climate change, it would be a tiny but positive step if you were to not promote animal-based recipes/foods any more. Plus, animal-free recipes would include a lot more readers! Doesn’t do anything to address the main problem (capitalism!) but would be a really simple change you could make without unpicking your entire business model…