Money, Please
This garden gate has a toll booth now
I want your money. There’s really no two-ways about it.
After drafting and re-drafting my formal letter of resignation to chambers several times, those revels now are ended. My career as a barrister is melted into air, into thin air.1 It feels monumental.
But it isn’t, of course. It’s just a formality. Everything is exactly as it was yesterday. Will the letter one day appear in an edition of Letters of Note? Who is to say. Probably it will. It was very gracious, I thought.
This formality does however mean a very real and tangible change for you. I am going to start charging you money (ridiculous) to read this disjointed drivel (seriously?).
Money, yes. I know. The thing you need to buy things for yourself, your children, to feed and house and clothe them.
Who - really who - would pay to receive near-constant emails full of these bewitching and troubling insights into my inner life?
You, maybe?
I cannot make it work to do paid posts and not-paid posts about different things, nor can my ADDled brain keep up with a proper schedule of posting. Therefore I have decided to adopt what I think of as the Substack ‘Newspaper Stand Model’ - you can read what is above the fold for free, but the stuff below the fold? Buy the paper. And you know that’s where all the juicy stuff is.
When I have things to say that I consider are either (a) such drivel as to be worthless, or (b) of such universal import that I momentarily become a populist and wish to spread my message far and wide, I will simply post them in full for free.
For those of you considering becoming a paid subscriber, it is only fair that I tell you some of what I will do with the money you give me. For example, I will:
(a) buy plants
(b) buy seeds
(d) pay off my credit card (🤞)
(e) buy food
(f) buy electricity (a reasonable amount)
(g) pay for parking tickets (currently two, totalling ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY POUDS! FOR BEING PARKED OUTSIDE OF MY OWN HOUSE!)
(h) buy coffee (honestly, a lot of coffee this should be further up the list but at least I re-use the cups)
(i) anything else I damn please. It’s MY money now.
Asking for money is awkward. I hate it as much as you do. More awkward still is that some of you who choose to pay me money to send you drivel might then complain and ask for the money back. Let me say right now, if you have paid for this and it is not up to the standard you expected you really have only yourself and your own defective expectation-setting to blame.
Requests for refunds will be dealt with by our complaints department (me) and let me tell you, they will be polite to your face but they will talk so much shit about you behind your back. It’s hard to find good people for these jobs nowadays.
If you are wondering whether this is a good investment of your precious and (in some cases) hard-earned money, can I please urge you in the strongest terms to read as much of the back catalogue as you possibly can before making the decision. Content ranges from my deepest and most personal memories, to gardening content written by a complete amateur with more enthusiasm than knowledge. Mostly though, as above, it is drivel. And you get - as they say - what you pay for.
So please, don’t buy me and then ask for the money back.2 I already spent it. See above list plus, have you seen the price of petrol?
If you are one of the truly generous angels of the world and you have already very generously sent me money at any time before today on buymeacoffee please message me and I will comp you a lifetime membership for free in exchange for having sent me money when you didn’t have to just because you were being nice.
In fact, anyone is welcome to send me a message for a free membership (let’s say for one year) as long as the reasoning is sound, and as long as you commit to liking every single post and commenting adoringly and at length under each one whether you actually value and enjoy the content or not. Seems like a fair deal to me.
Otherwise I’ll just have the money - thank you - for electricity and things, and you can write whatever horribly abusive things you want in the comments as you please and at a frequency that suits your schedule. Again, it seems fair.
I welcome (some) feedback and content suggestions, but please be clear: this is my Substack. This is my newspaper. Just think of me as a benevolent, much sexier Rupert Murdoch. Rupert Murdoch decides the agenda for the traditional media, but around here I decide. I agree, there are many better suited to the position, but here we are. They can start their own Substacks.
Now, I will say that I have a problem with posting too much. I will do my best to suppress this urge, and to gather together my drafts into BUMPER issues, rather than sending you a short email every other day being like ‘Hi, I need your attention please because FLOWERS or because I’M SAD’ but sometimes those emails do feel extremely urgent and need to be sent right away. I will commit to working on my impulse control.
And if you want even more drivel - like, ‘how is she doing this? Doesn’t she have anything else to do?’ level of drivel (I don’t. Just this, two dogs, no kids, single, unemployed, part of the ‘lost generation’ I think, or have I aged out?) please do follow me over on Notes. That is really where the drivel is at. Maximus drivel-us. It’s like Instagram and Twitter had a baby, and the baby grew up and went to therapy and is actually really happy and well-adjusted.
Something about AI here, and the value of art that is human-made. Very topical, very zeitgeist-y. The typos and errant commas are what make life beautiful like fingerprints in clay etc. Something-something I love em dashes, I use them a lot, it’s just me writing badly and is not - and never will be - an AI thing. See? Would AI make that kind of nuanced, hilarious grammar joke? And more broadly, what kind of machine could ever write such constant, frivolous, personal drivel? None. Machines think in straight lines. But this brain? Oh, well, she is wired differently. Literally, the ADHD brain is physically different. And who would ever train a machine to be defective in this very particular, vivid, beautiful, difficult, imperfect way?
Anyway. Give me your money please, and I will write write write. Pay the monkey to dance. Be the Queen Elizabeth I to my Shakespeare (did she seriously), be the Medici Popes to my Michaelangelo (she can’t seriously think). The point is, be a patron of the ARTS. THIS art. Not the good stuff. Just the wild ramblings of a 37-year-old lawyer who took up garden and wants to tell you all about it and about her sad and difficult childhood.
Thank you in advance for your consideration.
CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE3:
Thank you. I love you. What have I done? xxx
Upcoming post topics:
A Touch of Froth: Mid-border Plants I Like
The Best Mint You’ve Never Herb Of
Bumble, No Sting: An Abortive Attempt at Dating, Again
Danna-boo: Why I Hate My One David Austin Rose
Possibly my favourite line of poetry and I have bastardised it horribly. Well. The devil and cite scripture for his purpose.
Tangent: I wonder if sex workers are ever asked for refunds. Why am I comparing my writing to sex work? They are both extremely intimate, I guess. And exposing, though in very different ways. The ‘above the paywall’ bit is my window with red lighting; tantalising, seducing, drawing you in so that you cannot resist but enter through the door (or in this case, the metaphorical garden gate). Anyway, back to the main point.
Or, rather, to subscribe again. Or, to become a paid subscriber. But neither is as pithy as just: CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE. Now THAT is a call to action.
Silly mare! Perfectly happy to pay. My overdraft will disappear on Monday when I get my monthly pension. Which is good, as my best friend Tina and I are off for a garden centre jaunt on Tuesday. All those tulip containers to fill.
Danna-boo: Why I Hate My One David Austin Rose - not to steal your thunder, but is it because all the blooms face the ground and lose the petals if someone sneezes within a 5 mile radius of the plant?! Or just mine? Beautiful in a vase for 3hrs... I wait with baited breath 9-)