Ask me anything - the first one!

The one in which I make everyone feel better by showing them my beginning.

Well well well – here’s an “Ask Me Anything” for you. Expect these to develop and improve over the coming months and, dare I say it, get a bit more profesh! For now, here’s a video with a pretty good transcription below (c/o Otter.ai, before you ask).

I plan to do one of these every month or so – do please send in questions for me to answer otherwise it’ll just be me waffling on about whatever the hell I feel like. I’d love your feedback on these.

As ever, thank you for reading, or in this case, watching.

Transcription

So, hello, I am Susie, from The Diary of a middle-aged Londoner, which, you know, because you're watching this almost certainly, on my page.

I am pretty ineffectual when it comes to things like making videos, editing, all that stuff. So, you know, I'm going to start here, meet me here. And will hopefully get better over time. I wanted to do a kind of Ask Me Anything, I know lots of people are doing this on Substack. And I wanted to do it too, because I'm SO nosy. I just, I know there are things I just don't know, things I don't know about being an adult. I don't know how people know, for example, like seriously, how do you saw how leg hair, you know, if you get well, okay, so there's lasering these days. But if you have your legs, your legs waxed, that you're supposed to leave it kind of four weeks to six weeks before you go back in, and wax again. And if you do that you have a whole period when you have the kind of hair growth for someone like me, that makes you feel, it doesn't make you feel that, you do that yourself. But makes you feel slightly self-conscious. I can't stop looking at the bad angle I've set up on this. But we're going with this I'm doing it in one take. But yeah, the sort of hair growth that makes you feel self-conscious about getting your legs out. Though I am actually working on that, I think you know, I think we should all just grow our hair and be done with it. Obviously I like hair. But anyway. So I put a call out on my Instagram for any questions to get me started on my Ask Me Anything posts, and did actually have a few responses. When I say a few I had two responses, but I think it's pretty cool. People took the time to send in questions to me. So I'm gonna get on with those.

And firstly, Dana asked me, “Who is your biggest inspiration?” And then she said, because she knows me pretty well, “You can only choose one person.”

 So I'm going to take that on board. I can only choose one person and I'm going to cheat in another way. Not to say who my biggest inspiration is, I find these things so difficult.. it's your favourite... But I'm going to say someone who has been a really big inspiration for me. And that is no surprise Dana. Mimi Thorrison who is a cookbook author and entrepreneur. And yeah, just a strong woman. And I came across Mimi because she used to write a blog called Manger. And it was all about, she says it's a food blog, but it was so much more than that. It was a whole sort of lifestyle blog. All about her “scuse me scratching my elbow. Probably could hear my dry skin! Dry skin dry hair”. No, I'm a work in progress as are  we all aren't we? I am anyway. Yeah. So I felt it was more of a lifestyle blog. It was her and her husband and my children living in the countryside in France living this as idylic life that many people, including me, would think that they aspire to. I mean, she was just that at that time, she was really like a, she was just really generous I thought. If you wrote a comment on her blog, she would always reply to you. And she and I kind of got talking about children, I think, kind of how we bring up children. And from there, I think I was in Paris, and she had her first book launch event in Paris. I went along to that, and I met her. And then they started doing workshops, so cookery workshops out of their house in France. And so I went along to one of those, and then I ended up going along to five of them two of them in Italy. But anyway, the reason that she had such an impact on me was because she's just got a really, really calm away about her when she's in the kitchen. It's almost as though she floats along. My kids say that I’m in a cult of Mimi. But, you know, I do sometimes say to myself, what what would Mimi do what would Mimi think? I don't care because it has helped me along the way. But she just, she's really good at delegating stuff, which in the kitchen I wasn't, she never apologises, which I always do. So you know, if something is slightly burnt, serve it up. Don't apologise for it. And I think that that had a big impact on me in the way I the way I was in the kitchen. So much less apologetic now, or I worry less, like a bit less stress. Not that I think I get that stressed when I'm cooking because cooking is one of the things that relaxes me. But anyway, she also she and her husband, like absolutely live a life, in a kind of pursuit of beauty. I had always felt embarrassed about liking beautiful things. I always thought that it meant or it showed how shallow I was, and perhaps how un-intelligent I was. And then I met these two and, you know, they are far from, I mean they are very, very bright, and very cultured. And it just sort of clicked that this, that it was okay. And I've also had kind of loads of issues around food and eating and body image and whether living in a larger body you’re allowed to enjoy food, for example. And I had none of that when I was with them at their workshops, and I've kind of carried that through with me. And she's just an incredibly beautiful woman. She's nothing like me. Not that I’m saying I'm not incredibly beautiful. But you know, she's kind of, she's very polished. And I'm not. I'm always working towards it, but I haven't achieved it. She just had a huge impact on me. And I probably will say more about her and the workshops in another video or something. Because they kind of did change the trajectory of my life, which sounds so over the top, but it is actually true.

Anyway, Corrine says, “Tell me an anecdote from one of your favourite places.”

And I was thinking about this. And I thought actually, what what kind of jumped into my mind was my dad used to live in Nyon, in Switzerland, just outside Geneva. Just on the way into town. There was a little square and pizza place that had a club downstairs, I think, and they made this great penne pasta. I don't remember the name of it. Anyway. And then one year they had like this little mini festival and they set up a stage with a band and it's probably why I love that like if I'm in France, I always love it if there's a village festival anyway. So they had set up this stage, and they were playing and I was there with my sister and we were dancing away. And then they put on that “feeling hot hot” song and my sister and I were dancing and honestly Yeah, I felt like a Goddess. I was like moving my hips and doing stuff in this way that the people from Nyon were not, people who were watching us and like Yeah. I just felt amazing. Anyway, so that's an anecdote from one of my favourite places because I did love it there.

And then I've got a couple of questions for myself that, things that I would ask other people. I'll start throwing those in.

The first one is “where do you live?”

 And I live in London. Yes, Well done Sherlock. I live in North London. I live with my son. Who is you'll hear me refer to as Horatio. It's not his name. That's what you'll hear me call him.

And then another question is? “Susie, what do you think about online dating?”

I'll tell you what I think I think it's rubbish. I absolutely hate it. I think it's SO charmless I think it's just destroying dating. Anyway, that's why I've now got this ring it arrived today. It's a Pear Ring. And it's the “World's biggest social experiment”, something like that. It's basically people who are single who are up to being approached by other people who are single.

Yeah, there's nothing to stop people who aren't single wearing it. And you do have a problem with being approached by people you don't want to be approached by, I get it but still, I think it's fun. I think It’s interesting.  People. This signals to people that you're open to being approached basically. The idea is to get people off of dating apps, which I think is superb.

Anyway. crossing fingers, wish me luck, because I have to patch together four different videos. Got hardly any space on my camera.

And yeah, I hope I get lots more questions because actually, this is quite good fun.