Frolics

Hello loves!

It's been a minute. I said my goal this year was to EMBRACE MORE FROLICKING as a lifestyle, and boy, have I. I spent the summer gallivanting outside, cuddling trees, swimming with octopuses, embracing my loved ones, getting up to goofs. I have also been writing a ton, in the gaps between frolic hours. I've finished copy edits on Femme Feral and entirely rewrote and updated Manage Your Money Like a F-cking Grownup, both of which will be on bookshop shelves next year. I've made good progress on my next novel Cuckoobird. I'm writing now from a cottage window-seat in the wily windy moors of Yorkshire where I'm on a glorious writing retreat working on a film script. It's been a pretty damn magical year so far, in my little life.

The world outside, though ... yeesh.

Back in April, I started writing a Very Serious newsletter about the Very Serious Events taking place in world politics. It wasn't a particularly good piece, mostly just a howl of bafflement and powerlessness and anxiety, but I kept trying to turn it into something that would MAKE IT ALL MAKE SENSE, adding more and more points and counterpoints, and then there were footnotes, and it all just got woefully out of hand and I was in far too deep. Every time I tried to write a new newsletter, I'd open up that Very Serious piece and argue with myself some more, coming to exactly zero helpful conclusions. I finally decided, fuck it, I'm just going to send it, because I remain baffled and anxious and powerless-feeling about the wider world, but I've also missed you, and I wanted to tell you about a bunch of stuff I've been obsessed with recently, and I need that turd to stop clogging the newsletter pipeline. I'll send it out next week.

In the meantime, here's some fun nonsense I wanted to share with you!

Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies

I feel it's very important you know that in the 1700s there used to be an annual printed guide to the sex workers of Covent Garden, like Platter's Wine Guide for boobs.

The descriptions are incredible. Basically I want to be best friends with all these babes and sing bawdy songs together with them in the pub.

Read the entries from the 1788 edition here.

The F-Show

Feel like sitting through an hour long talk about money? I didn't think so. What about a financial literacy course hidden inside a stand-up comedy set starring Mpho ‘Popps’ Modikoane, Vafa Naraghi and Khanyisa Bunu?

Last year, I got to work behind-the-scenes with Sanlam on The F-Show, a comedy show about financial foibles which sneakily smuggles some real money principles between the lols. South Africans, the whole thing's now on Showmax.

It was an utter privilege to collaborate with these three comedians (and the team behind them), who are all razor-sharp craftsmen at the top of their game. Most people don't want to talk about money, but shame and fear curdle in the dark. Humour's a crowbar that can crack open even the most painful topics.

I hope this show gets you laughing, and maybe gets you talking.

Learning poems off by heart

Phrases you learn by heart become a part of you in a way that things you just read don't. They shape your habits of thinking. They're the words that come most easily into your mind when you describe the world, so they shape how you see the world.

I learned a lot of poems off by heart as a teenager (it was Pretoria; there was nothing else to do). I was a weird little emo witch so obviously it was 90% Sylvia Plath ("I know the bottom, she says, I know it with my great tap root...") but thank goodness enough e.e.cummings and Mary Oliver imprinted that some cheerier lines do come to mind as I go about my day.

These days, the words that come most readily into my mind are pop song lyrics, not a bad situation, but I've been making an effort to try to learn new poems to enrich my default language. Emily Dickinson's great for this – short, punchy, rhythmic.

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,
One clover, and a bee.
And revery.
The revery alone will do,
If bees are few.

The trick is that you have to say them out loud. Use your mouth, your breath, your throat, your tongue ... your eyes and brain are not enough.

What are the poems, songs, sayings that you know by heart? How do they enrich your thinking? I'd love to hear them. Just hit reply.

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I've missed you!

Wishing you poem, frolics, and good company at the pub,

Sam