Living Well

Why I’m expanding the scope of my Substack

Me living the life as interpreted by A1*

Last week I floated the idea of changing the title of this newsletter to Eat This, Drink That, Live Well. Thanks to your encouragement this week I’ve done it.

So what does that mean?

Well it simply flags up that the subject matter occasionally extends beyond food and drink. Actually it always has whenever it took my fancy, witness the posts on ageing and solo travel but I guess it gives me licence to go off-piste a little more often.

Judging from the level of interaction on these more personal posts it looks like that’s what you enjoy. 

And I do too. 

Strangely it helps to clarify what I’m thinking about something I’m experiencing to write it down. A bit like journalling but doing it in public if that doesn’t sound too offputting!

It means that I can - and will - write about language learning and some of the other extra-curricular activities I get up to. Like signing up with a personal trainer. (Haven’t confessed that one up to now, largely because I thought it might be a New Year’s flash in the pan. So far so good although I can’t say there have been many work-outs this week here in Valencia 🙄) 

For those of you who signed up for the wine, the recipes and the food and restaurant tips - don’t worry. They’ll still be at the heart of what I do.

Living well to me is all about eating and drinking well. (By which I don’t mean following a particular eating regime. I would never claim to be an expert on ‘wellness’. There are other, much better, Substacks for that including the excellent Nourish with Jeanette.)

What I’m talking about is living life to the full which I feel we should all try and do. We only have one life ….

Anyway the logo will stay the same for now. And I’ll probably still abbreviate it to ETDT as ETDTLW sounds a bit like an easyJet booking number.

Hopefully you’ll stick around and even take out a paid subscription if you’d like to support what I do. (The way Substack works, if you’re unfamiliar with it, is that it gives you the opportunity to pay a writer whose work you enjoy directly for their content.)

As I mentioned the monthly sub is going up from £4.50 to £5 as from tomorrow (February 1st) which brings it into line with what most other ‘Stackers are charging. It’s only an extra 50p a month which hopefully shouldn’t break the bank - but you might as well take advantage of the ongoing saving. (You continue to pay at the rate at which you first signed up.)

And whether you’re a paying or a free subscriber I’m really grateful you’re here, all 17,400 of you (wow!) and thanks for giving me the incentive to keep going.

*I have to thank Monica Shaw of Writer’s Residence for telling me you can now create some amazingly cool images at the head of your Substack posts simply by clicking the picture icon followed by ‘add image’ and ‘generate’. I think that probably counts as high class procrastination rather than living well but it’s a lot of fun!