I Have Given Up

#CLICKBAIT! (Not really given up, but sort of)

I realised that, lately, I have had no inclination to read many of the ‘stacks I used to. Not because they aren’t beautiful writing, or delicious cooking because they are but there is simply no more room in my brain or time in my days to read. I’ve found myself just scrolling past the emails, leaving them unopened.

When my Kindle also lies ignored for a week or three, unless I am on holiday, I can’t justify the number of paid subs I have on here so I have had to let some go.

I also unsubbed from some huge accounts that have a massive paid following, because yes, it’s ‘only’ £4 or £5 a month, but it adds up, and they certainly won’t miss my contribution. I found myself getting frustrated with these already very wealthy people, who popped in here and suddenly went to the top of the ranking because all their followers came with them.

Yes, they are good writers, and yes, their food is excellent but they have teams. They have development chefs, whole armies of support behind them and I think I just got tired of it. So often my brain was simply not believing or questioning their words. I admit, I am a fan of down to earth home cooks; the ones who understand where struggles can hit, and that access to ‘good’ food is difficult. People who don’t live in pretty places with access to a garden, who have only the generic Food Giant shops to rely on. Ingenuity in a food desert is truly amazing.

I want to mostly follow people to whom my £5 a month will mean something or whose words I absolutely must not miss.

I think that with those huge accounts, I am missing some of the reality. They feel manufactured somehow, and in way it feels akin to the way I am tired of the rise of AI generated thumbnails on YouTube, from content creators whose food looks nothing like that glossy and smoothed picture on their page. This also annoyed me when overly saturated photography of food in cookery books was a trend - to achieve the ultimate crispness and sheen of crackling or the vibrancy of a seared peach or roasted pumpkin slices, for example, often for the average home cook, it meant you have to overcook something to get it to that desired colour, or add a glaze. Maybe that’s why I am a fan of brown food.

I dislike misrepresentation. It’s not good for inexperienced cooks, because their food won’t look like the photo. Well, nobody’s will, unless you have stylists and the ‘perfect’ light. Or ChatGPT. Yes, I am a grumpy old woman.

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I used to love Jack Monroe’s writing because they felt utterly true to themselves. They were disorganised, and fallible but that’s what being human is about, and it’s what made me love them. They were open about their struggles, and that means a lot to me. There are many ‘opinions’ about them, most of which seem to have a very anti-lefty, anti-woke root cause but no actual basis in fact, which will surprise nobody.

I should say that anti-woke, to me, means being anti-kindness and anti-consideration. That is not and never will be me. Anti-woke peeps can leave the room now. I use and stand by the real meaning of Woke, not the Farage/Trump version, or the version that makes comedians - and often Joe Public - say OH NO! I CAN’T SAY ANYTHING ANY MORE which translates to “I can’t be racist/sexist/ableist/fat-ist anymore.”

Woke: an adjective originating from African American Vernacular English (AAVE) meaning alert to racial prejudice, social injustice, and inequality. Originally urging vigilance ("stay woke"), it now broadly covers awareness of sexism, LGBTQ+ rights, and is often used politically to describe progressive ideologies, or pejoratively by critics to denote performative progressivism.

Perhaps along the way the novelty of Substack has worn off. It started out as a lot of fun for me and it helped me get back to writing again. Not with any plan in mind, certainly no idea to one day write a book because I know I will never get around to that, but it was a good brain exercise. Then one by one, so many people came out and said it was bad to be here, to support the company behind it all, but to be honest, at this point, I have ‘questionable people’ fatigue because whoever you choose seems to eventually become problematic in some way.

There comes a point where you have to either be present somewhere, or not at all.

To be fair, I don’t have to ‘be’ anywhere but I have a lot of words in my head, and when they finally get around to coalescing, I need somewhere to put them. Might as well be here.

Fish pie. Cobbled together when someone mistakenly ordered 12 packs of haddock, not 1.