Really Good Tomatoes is a newsletter is a newsletter about life, and the things that give it meaning. Things like tomatoes.
I’m taking a break.
The new season of Mag Hags started this week, production is now in full swing, and there just simply aren’t enough hours in the day. Even my smart calendar can’t cope. So I’m suspending this newsletter for a bit. You can still read everything I’ve ever published here and I *may* still write from time to time as the mood takes me, but I’ve cancelled paid subscriptions. You might have already received an email about this. It’s not a glitch, I’ve set you free. If you were a monthly subscriber your payments will stop. Annual subs should get a partial refund.
If, however, you would like to continue to support me and my work in some way, I really, strongly, highly recommend you sign up for the newsletter, the proceeds of which go directly into the making of the show (and in case it’s not crystal clear, hi! It’s me! I make the show!). You do not have to listen to the podcast or read the newsletter, all you have to do is think that smart, funny, conversations about history and culture are a good thing to have in the world. That, or you just have a crush on me.
I love writing this newsletter but something has to give. I am constantly trying to cram way too much in and then wondering why 70% of my newsletter output this year has been about stress management. I don’t know if that’s what you signed up for but it’s not what I signed up for. I wanted to write a newsletter about squeezing the most juice out of life (or, at the very least, slicing it up and serving it with some fresh basil and balsamic vinegar) and I have somehow ended up writing about how busy and overwhelmed I am all the time. It’s for that reason that I decided to write something today that is more a celebration, than a complaint, although it is not without a critical edge to it.
Right now, I’m focussing on making the new season of Mag Hags (Out now! Wherever you get your podcasts!) and over the summer I have some interesting decisions to make about where I direct my energy next. This will require a bit of mental space and this is me clearing that space.
A thousand thank yous to those of you who have stuck with me over the last year as I transitioned out of sex writer-dom and into this next phase. I saw you renewing your subscriptions and I felt a small swell of hope every time so believe me when I say I appreciate you. Do stick around as a free subscriber as Substack remains my main messageboard and any news or announcements about what I’m up to, thinking about, or doing next, will be posted here. See you soon!
On Friday mornings I go to the gym. This has been my routine for about a year and half, but it is not seamless. In order for me to get to the gym on a Friday morning, my husband has to do double drop-off. That means taking our son to school and then carrying on to drop our daughter at nursery. It’s not difficult. The nursery is down the road from the school. But getting two children up, fed, dressed, and out of the house is… well, sometimes it’s fine. Sometimes it’s a legitimate nightmare. But whatever. The point is not whether it is a hardship, the point is merely that it is something that has to be arranged in advance. Whoever is dropping the kids needs to know they are dropping the kids and plan around that. No 9am meetings or phone calls that day, for example. Similarly, all my Friday meetings and phone calls need to take place after 10:30, when I’m back from the gym, and that’s a thing I arrange in advance, so that my day works, so that I can fit everything in.
A few weeks ago my husband was away and I had my mum and my stepdad, Steve, staying with me to help look after the kids. Since I didn’t want to miss my one 40-minute block of unadulterated self-care in the week, I asked them if they could do the double drop-off. They hadn’t done it before so it required a degree of explanation, direction-giving, preparation and reassurance, both of my daughter (“Steve’s going to take you to nursery this morning, okay baby? Can you show Steve how we get to Mini Stars?”) and of Steve, who was pretty sure he remembered the way, but not a hundred percent confident.
Before I left the house that morning, I got the kids up and gave them both breakfast. I corralled them through the bathroom, badgered them into their outfits, and sent them downstairs to play. I then packed my daughter's bag for nursery, put it on the buggy, and put the buggy by the front door to make it as easy as possible for my stepdad. I also brushed my own teeth, wolfed down a boiled egg and some coffee, and put my gym gear on.
When I arrived at the gym, I discovered my instructor had not turned up. Annoyed? I was close to fuming.
Luckily, one of the other instructors offered to train me alongside his other Friday morning client.
“As long as he doesn’t mind?” I said.
“No, he’ll be fine.”
Sure enough, when the client arrived, a tall, grizzled Greek man who took off a string of olive wood beads from around his neck before approaching the bench press, he didn’t mind at all.
“You have to be like water,” he said, waving his hand to demonstrate flow. “You can’t be too rigid.”
Ha, I thought. There speaks a man who did not have to conduct a military operation to get out the door this morning. There speaks a man who has not had to balance multiple people’s needs before attending to his own today. I’m happy for this man. I’m even kind of attracted to him. But four different people have been affected by my need to be at the gym this morning, and I have managed to make it all work, so don’t tell me to go with the freaking flow.
The concept of “going with the flow” has always irked me. Mainly because I don’t. And I can’t. It isn’t in my nature. I’m too curious, too proactive, too autonomous. But also because it seems to me to be extolling the virtues of passivity: Remain unaffected. Don’t get annoyed. Don’t push back. When people talk of going with the flow, I can’t help hearing, “Calm down, dear.”
If I were to be generous, I’d say I think what we’re really lauding is resilience, adaptability, versatility. But these things are not incompatible with strong emotions, or even, dare I say it, strongly-expressed emotions. You have to be like water. Flexible, yes. But calm? Are you sure?
Water does not merely flow around the land, it carves through it. It sculpts the land to fit its path. Overwhelmed rivers burst their banks, seas rise, biting off great hunks of coastline. Another word for resilient is irrepressible.
You have to be like water. Except I’m not sure we all agree on what that means. While you’re lapping gently in some sandy lagoon somewhere, I’m busy carving a majestic archway out of limestone. “The thing about you,” my friend said the other evening as we sat on my sofa after dinner, talking about the hell that is working in the creative industries in 2025. “You never look stuck, even when you say you are. You’re always moving, always trying new things, always having experiences, taking opportunities.”
Being like water is precisely what gets my kids up and out the door and me to my gym session. It’s what gets a book written, a comedy career embarked upon, a podcast series made. When things go wrong, water doesn’t just flow blandly on, it bubbles up, rushes in, overflows, swirls around and only through this activity is it able to find a new path.
Speaking of water, this piece in the FT on swimmable cities interested me. At first glance I confess I fell into the utopian trap of thinking what a wonderful idea, but needless to say there are some pretty good arguments against spending millions of pounds on making urban waterways swimmable. The FT piece is behind their paywall so here are a few other links to get you thinking about whether swimming in the Thames (or whatever your local river is - please do comment and tell me!) is actually something anyone wants or needs. There’s also a Monocle podcast episode where they touch on it which I’ve cued up to listen to on my lunch time walk.
My podcast,
, you know the one I’m leaving you for? Well, it got shortlisted for an award. In the comedy category! I KNOW! The ceremony is next week and we won’t win because there are shows by *actual comedians* among the nominations but until then I can bask in the feeling of being a contender. Oh and I get to put this badge on everything I own, so that’s nice.I got a new tattoo last month. I have quite a few tats already so this wasn’t a big deal but it also isn’t one you’d necessarily see unless you knew where to look for it and so the only way to show it off is to literally show it off.
It’s a little safety pin behind my ear because you never know when you might need a safety pin. It represents resourcefulness, but also, more literally, the enormous healing power that sewing has had in my life, particularly over the last few years. I’ve been promising/threatening to write about this for ages but as you can see from the lack of essay, I still haven’t quite figured out how to talk about it. So, for now, a tiny, inky homage.
Good discussion around how water can 'flow' very differently according to context. I think I remember reading somewhere that when the Romans wanted to get rid of a forest, they didn't cut the trees down. They dammed a river, let a lake build up, and then suddenly collapse the dam, knowing that the explosion of water pressure would uproot the trees. Not sure I approve of the ecology, but it's good engineering!
I'm sorry that the newsletter hasn't worked out as you'd hoped but I shall of course be checking out 'Mag Hags'!