These are the surfaces

On writing, deep terrain and AI

I became a writer because I wanted to engage in the act of writing. Some of my fellow writers do not agree. Just lately, there have been a wave of scandals, from the winner of the Commonwealth Prize (whose author photo may also be AI), to the Modern Love column in the New York Times, to the novel Shy Girl, all of which were apparently written with the aid of AI. Even a book about the effect of AI on our understanding of truth turns out to have used AI-generated quotes. As the old saying goes, you couldn’t make it up, except perhaps with the help of some nifty software that may well end up eating civilisation as we know it.

Writing is a hard thing to do well, but it still astonishes me that so many people have thrown in the towel so quickly. They all seem to have an excuse: they incorporated the changes suggested by a freelance editor, who must have used AI; they used AI to generate ideas and keep them on-topic; they have an ‘unusual writing process’ (which is presumably unusual because it does not involve any writing). You would think, to listen to them, that writing was a previously impossible endeavour - comparable to finding the cure for cancer - which is now, finally, possible due to this miraculous technology. Instead, these people were confronted with the things that have always made writing hard - motivation, inspiration, distraction, precision - and have simply chosen to make it easier on themselves.

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Hello,

‘Revel’ is the recurring theme of this episode as writer Alice Vincent brings visceral, carnival-esque Glastonbury vibes to The Clearing this week.

A self-confessed extrovert, her dream retreat includes bundling up all the sounds and experiences of the people and places she loves; the chaotic joy of a house party, the blissful comfort of chatty gatherings with friends and family, the daily buzz of a busy household.

But after the noise comes the calm. That liminal space of watching the sun rise after being up all night with friends at a house party, morning dew on the grass, where your body glows with the memory of the night before and you savour the quiet stillness.

A lovely, messy, joyful gathering of sound, happiness and the coming together of humans.

Links from episode:

Alice’s website where you can find her books including Hark

Alice’s Substack

Alice’s Instagram

Production Credits

Guest Booker and Admin Support - Meghan Hutchins

Substack Manager - Rebecca Armstrong

Producer - Alice Lloyd

Music - The Leaf Library theleaflibrary

Click here to listen in your favourite app, or paid subscribers can listen to an ad-free version here in this post.

Transcript:

Transcript The Clearing Podcast Alice Vincent

3.42MB ∙ PDF file

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Hello,

This week I’m welcoming the return of the swifts to my street, we hear which single cookbook our listeners would take with them on an imagined getaway and the Moomins make another unexpected appearance.

Plus of course there’s my latest little tip for a ‘Mini-break’ - something delicious you can do each week to escape momentarily, no matter where you are. Audiobook fans take heed. And listener Annabel transports us to a magical landscape of Swiss bliss.

Links from the episode:

Vesper Flights by Helen Macdonald

Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London series on audiobook

Jan Michalski literary foundation in Switzerland https://fondation-janmichalski.com/en/fondation

Production Credits

Guest Booker and Admin Support - Meghan Hutchins

Substack Manager - Rebecca Armstrong

Producer - Alice Lloyd

Music - The Leaf Library theleaflibrary

Transcript:

Transcript The Clearing Mini Break 5

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I enter June with a teetering stack of water bottles in the hall, a gallon of hand sanitiser under the sink, and a newly purchased camping shower in the wardrobe, just in case.

May was the month when the climate crisis came to my door. The water ran dry in Whitstable, and we were confronted with the eerie experience of turning on the tap for nothing to come out. It’s happened before due to burst water mains or planned engineering, but this time it was scarcity pure and simple, a case of supply outstripping demand. It’s happening everywhere, and while there are clear issues of mismanagement and profiteering in our local water company, this is probably the direction of travel for many of us as the planet heats.

I’ve been thankful for the enormous water butt in my back garden, full of precious rainwater. I felt like sacrilege to use it to flush the loo, but then again, it was necessary. I hear that even this is an amateur move: those in the know resort to cat litter, a water-free solution that I hope to never explore. I have it stowed away in the back of my mind though, like the many other things I’m now stowing in the garden shed.

Yes, friends, I have discovered my inner prepper, a weird, haunted part of myself that does not trust the outside world to keep me alive. Instead, I must stockpile rations for an unknown future moment when the world tumbles down. This has not exactly been latent in me until now. A friend of mine gazed into my kitchen cupboards recently and said, ‘We’d do well in an apocalypse, you and I,’ and I knew exactly what she meant. Each of us keeps enough tins and jars in stock to see us through six months of famine at least. It’s not a conscious choice, but then again, it’s always on my mind just a little, the thought that I must create safety, just in case.The problem is, it is impossible to attain enough safety to truly rest easy. I am not really comforted by the bottles stacked in the hall. I’m unsettled by them, constantly reminded of my own vulnerability.

It’s a strange thing, really, to hoard water, this life force, this essence. It feels like a travesty to trap it in plastic, to stopper its flow, to keep it for myself. We used to worship river goddesses and the genius loci of springs and wells. Now they’re just branding to us, genies in bottles, their wild fluidity tamed and contained.

I wonder what would happen if we began to remember them again, these old, subtle gods? I wonder what would happen if we let life feel fluid rather than safe?

What I’ve been up to

Not very much, to be honest. I’m spending a lot of time visiting my mum in hospital - please hold her in your thoughts this week as she undergoes her surgery.

But I have got started on an exciting new writing project, for this this is the preliminary reading list. You’ll hear more about it soon 🤫.

Recent offerings

I wrote about Soil Practice and People Practice, and shared good things to read on birdsong, communication, and doing things for the sake of it.

We got started on our MFK Fisher book club, launching with a discussion about the questionable truth and undeniable beauty of The Gastronomical Me. There’s still time to join the chat about the themes of love and learning in the book.

The new season of my podcast, The Clearing, launched with episodes featuring Jackie Morris and Robert Macfarlane, Jeffrey Boakye, Kate Bowler, Yasmin Khan and Joycelyn Longdon (these links are to the ad-free versions - you can listen with ads in your favourite podcast app or on YouTube).

Alongside the podcast interviews, I’m now also recording special subscriber bonus episodes called The Mini-Break, and they’ve been an absolute joy. Each week I share an idea for a little break in your day, feature a listener’s dream retreat, and highlight the issues you’ve all been talking about. More about how to receive them here (or just upgrade your subscription to this newsletter!)

New Subscriber giveaway

Congratulations to Kim, who won May’s new subscriber draw!

And this means a new box is ready to give away to one lucky person who starts or renews a year’s subscription in June. This one contains a signed copy of Enchantment, a refillable ink pen, Writer’s Blood ink, Blackwing pencils, a notebook and wildflower tape, plus exclusive Clearing postcards, bookmarks and stickers. We’ll pick a winner at random at the end of the month!

Coming up

On Saturday 20th June, 4pm-6pm UK time, I’ll be hosting an online retreat for our sister newsletter, The Retreat. We’ll be exploring the meaning of the summer solstice, and feeling our way into the feelings it produces in us, good and bad, urgent and abundant. Do join us! More info here.

June notions

• Watermelon, watermelon, watermelon. It’s hot out there.

• Growing a trough of rocket because I don’t have the time or space for a whole vegetable patch. A little is better than nothing.

• Eating every possible meal outdoors.

• Lusting over these Vibae fisherman’s sandals.

• Sneaking off to swim in the sea, because I’ve been signed off after my surgery 🎉.

• Cursing mosquitos.

• Dry shampoo spray, a summer essential for those of us with fringes/bangs.

• Wearing a sleep mask to avoid waking up at 4am with the sun.

Take care,

Katherine

The Colophon

Listen to The Clearing podcast

Find out about my online retreats

Visit my website

Gift a subscription to The Clearing on Substack

Sign up for The Way Through Winter course

Read:

My quarterly essay

Weekend Journaling prompts

Collected Newsletters

More about my books:

Enchantment

Wintering

The Electricity of Every Living Thing

Credits:

Editor: Rebecca Armstrong

Admin & Support: Meghan Hutchins and Chris Allison

Podcast producer: Alice Lloyd

This newsletter commits 1% of its revenue to schemes that remove carbon from the atmosphere.

The Clearing is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, please consider subscribing.

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Subscribing via the Substack app may mean a slightly higher cost because of Apple/Google fees. We recommend signing up via the Substack website rather than in-app because of this.

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Just lately, people have started telling me I have no luck. This rankles: I consider myself to be an extremely lucky person, and also I hate being pitied. But I have to admit, the past 18 months have not been great. Obviously there was the whole thing about my husband having cancer, and then the thing that I haven’t said much about, which is the chronic pain he’s left with, curtailing so many of the things that once gave him purpose and joy.

Then there was my uterine infection, a final straw which led to my hysterectomy. And then, three weeks ago, we had to call an ambulance for my mother one Saturday night, and she has been in hospital in London ever since, waiting to be well enough for the kind of surgery that makes doctors compulsively talk about the odds. I’ve been staying in London for the past three weeks, swapping with H at weekends so that I can spend a bit of time with my son, who has also had Quite The Year. It’s another one of the endless improvisations we’ve all had to undertake, and although it’s exhausting, we wouldn’t have it any other way.

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Hello,

Trees as ancestors, blurring the boundary between our bodies and the living world, and constructing your sense of ‘self’ through art; these are just some of the beautiful areas of discussion between me and my guest Joycelyn Longdon this week.

Joycelyn is a researcher and writer, currently finishing her PhD at the University of Cambridge, who bridges the worlds of ecology, technology and environmental justice.

Resisting the urge to pick a far-flung place, she goes extremely local for her small idyll, choosing a tiny patch of woodland by the river near her home, under her favourite willow tree, connecting to culture and mother earth.

Wonderfully dreamy and deeply grounding.

Links from the episode:

Richard powers The Overstory

Explore Adinkra Symbols https://www.adinkrasymbols.org/#gsc.tab=0

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Jeff Buckley and Elizabeth Fraser All Flowers Bend Towards the Sun

Production Credits

Guest Booker and Admin Support - Meghan Hutchins

Substack Manager - Rebecca Armstrong

Producer - Alice Lloyd

Music - The Leaf Library @theleaflibrary

Click here to listen in your favourite app, or paid subscribers can listen to an ad-free version here in this post.

Transcript:

Transcript The Clearing Podcast Joycelyn Longdon

3.34MB ∙ PDF file

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Following on from last week when I recommended getting up early to hear the dawn chorus, we find out what you all do with your early mornings, from weeding the allotment to spotting coyotes in the garden. I present my perhaps unexpected mini-break for this week along with a secret long-held ambition to be a comedy writer.

And listener Liz sends us her vision of a dream retreat, where the warm dry smell of deciduous forest in summer is the backdrop for settling down to watch The Dark Crystal by Jim Henson. I, of course, very much approve.

Links from the episode:

SNL sketch with Adam Sandler Same Sad You

The Dark Crystal

Production Credits

Guest Booker and Admin Support - Meghan Hutchins

Substack Manager - Rebecca Armstrong

Producer - Alice Lloyd

Music - The Leaf Library theleaflibrary

Transcript:

Transcript The Mini Break Bonus Ep4

3.19MB ∙ PDF file

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About The Practices

Previous practices:

Water Practice

Soil Practice

Some people are prone to biliousness or heartburn; I am prone to people poisoning.

It comes upon me like a wave of absence. First, I just want to go home, and then my words disappear. After that, I get the strange sensation that my eyeballs are trying to retract into my head, as though I am a snail and have the luxury of a shell to hide in. After that, I need a little lie-down, perhaps for a decade or so, until everyone has left me alone for good.

It’s not that I hate people. The problem is that I find them beguiling, and then overdose on their abundant humanness. People are endlessly saying curious things, or behaving in ways I find mystifying, or displaying singular talents that feel so far away from anything I can do that I can’t look away. There’s a part of me that always wants to rush to their aid, or befriend them, or brighten up their day.

Other times, I find humanity terrifying: rude, selfish, unfathomable. Some days, I walk down the street or drive my car, and everyone seems to be pushing and snatching. And, of course, I read the news, which is full of the worst things that people do. People, I say, and shake my head.

How can we get the measure of this massed humanity, the unruly crowd of Everybody Else? They always seem so other, so unknowable. Can it really be that we are the only reasonable people left in the world, and everyone else has spiralled out of control? I doubt it. Instead, I think we can learn to make our peace with the lives that surge so mysteriously around us.

Today’s Practice is about decontaminating strangers.

People Practice

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In this week’s Mini-Break we honour guest Jeffrey Boakye’s flaneurship around London by finding out which cities you, our listeners, love to wander the most. From Bruges to San Francisco, Rome to Chicago, Kathmandu to Helsinki, it turns out that while many of us adore the countryside, from time to time it’s a city that lifts the spirits.

Speaking of Helsinki, Katherine also recommends one small thing you can do this week to get away from it all. Let’s just say it involves a much-loved Finnish author and her beautiful, allegorical novels. And our listener Kate in New Zealand sends in her dream retreat that changes size according to need. Ingenious.

Links from the episode:

The beautiful Tove Jansson website

Tove Jansson’s novels

Production Credits

Guest Booker and Admin Support - Meghan Hutchins

Substack Manager - Rebecca Armstrong

Producer - Alice Lloyd

Music - The Leaf Library theleaflibrary

Transcript:

Transcript The Clearing Podcast Bonus Ep3

3.16MB ∙ PDF file

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Hello,

Warm waters, humid, verdant jungle and the nighttime hum of insects are where we find ourselves this week as our guest, Yasmin Khan, transports us on a much-needed break to the tropics.

Yasmin is the bestselling author of travel cookbooks exploring the food, people and stories of the Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean. In 2025 she found herself in the middle of a bizarre legal storm when she was threatened with legal action by a deli for calling her latest book ‘Sabzi’ - the word for veg or greens in multiple languages.

In this conversation, we discuss the controversy (the case was eventually dropped) and the issues it raises, including the ownership and commodification of food culture. Plus finding community when the chips are down, the ebb and flow of cooking for pleasure, snatched moments of rest with a small child and UK national treasure, Nigella Lawson. A wonderful, and important, conversation.

Links from the episode:

Yasmin’s Substack Risingup.substack.com

Yasmin’s Instagram

Kaco Pens

The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron

How to Eat by Nigella Lawson

Production Credits

Guest Booker and Admin Support - Meghan Hutchins

Substack Manager - Rebecca Armstrong

Producer - Alice Lloyd

Music - The Leaf Library theleaflibrary

Click here to listen in your favourite app, or paid subscribers can listen to an ad-free version here in this post.

Transcript:

Transcript The Clearing Podcast Yasmin Khan

3.38MB ∙ PDF file

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Hello,

I’ve thought a lot lately about this essay by Julian Baggini, in which he argues that ‘nothing seems to be of value in itself any more but is only seen as useful in the service of some utilitarian function’ - what he calls ‘the instrumentalisation of everything.’ In the current discourse, all the good things in life are affected, from hugs (releasing oxytocin, but only if you hold on for long enough), to time outdoors (low-impact exercise; reducing stress) to looking at art (helps you to live longer).

There’s a sense, I think, that we know too much to let go of these ideas. Can I drink a cup of green tea without thinking, Yum, antioxidants anymore? I don’t think I can. Even if I try to do things for the joy of them, I can’t help but remember that joy itself is beneficial in a range of measurable ways.

We communicate in benefits now, in binary categories of ‘good for you’ and bad for you. This month’s Stray Attention is all about other ways to communicate. Let’s escape the instrumentalisation for a while, shall we?

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Hello,

Kate Bowler is the multiple New York Times-bestselling author, professor of divinity and stage-four cancer survivor who has mastered the art of finding small delights in the everyday. No grand gestures for her.

In this wonderful conversation, we talk about ‘how to cope’, the brittleness of time and why revelling in absurdity is really the answer to everything. A celebration of silliness, tattoos, the important differences between canoes and kayaks and the most beautifully realised depiction of precious time spent with a best friend.

Links from the episode:

Kate’s new book Joyful Anyway

Kate’s website where you can find her previous books katebowler.com

Kate’s podcast Everything Happens

Kate’s Instagram

A Truce that is Not Peace by Miriam Toews

My Bright Abyss by Christian Wiman

Canadian ice fishing cabins via The Smithsonian

Production Credits

Guest Booker and Admin Support - Meghan Hutchins

Substack Manager - Rebecca Armstrong

Producer - Alice Lloyd

Music - The Leaf Library theleaflibrary

Click here to listen in your favourite app, or paid subscribers can listen to an ad-free version here in this post.

Transcript:

Transcript The Clearing Podcast Kate Bowler

3.35MB ∙ PDF file

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For the second of our subscriber-only episodes - which we have christened ‘The Mini-Break’ - I kick off with a hugely controversial topic: best walking snacks. Birdseye chilis do NOT make the cut (if you know, you know). Plus listener Caitlin rises to the challenge of sending in a fantasy retreat with her sublime mountain monastery getaway.

Visit The Clearing website www.theclearingpod.com to find out where, as a subscriber, you can send in your own dream retreat.

Links from the episode:

The Book of Birds by Jackie Morris and Robert Macfarlane

RSPB Dawn Chorus guided walks

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

Katherine’s monastic soundscape of choice https://shorturl.at/PfGmU

The Children of Green Knowe by Lucy M. Boston

Production Credits

Guest Booker and Admin Support - Meghan Hutchins

Substack Manager - Rebecca Armstrong

Producer - Alice Lloyd

Transcript:

Transcript The Mini Break Ep2

3.17MB ∙ PDF file

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The Gastronomical Me is a deceptive book. It starts off full of youthful naivety and a seemingly simple premise: from the taste of jam-skimmings in 1912, to a shivering oyster swallowed at school, to the voyage of a young bride, we are to witness the making of a gourmet.

But there are hints at a more complex truth early on. Ora, the family cook (this book was published in 1943, long before the age of checking one’s privilege) commits a brutal murder. The oyster feast reveals forbidden love. The marriage ends abruptly, and subsequent voyages chart the rise of European fascism. Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher takes obvious and abundant joy in food, but also has an eye for the world’s myriad darknesses, as well as for the queer, in both meanings of the word.

So this is certainly a book about food - sumptuous feasts in French restaurants, chic kitchen suppers gleaned from the kitchen garden, boozy snacks in Mexican beer halls - but it’s also about a world that is shifting, and a restless spirit whose first love may well be storytelling itself.

All is not what it seems in this book; among the people who knew her best, Mary Frances has a reputation for embellishment and sometimes insensitivity. Some of her subjects were upset at seeing their private lives - complete with their real names - arrayed in her stories. Others questioned how much was true. “Trouble is,” mused her nephew Sean in Joan Reardon’s biography, Poet of the Appetites, “she embroiders the facts to the point where what she ends up with is virtually fiction.”

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But don’t let that put you off. Writers are complicated creatures, and the stories they tell are always carefully constructed in one way or another. It is perhaps appropriate that such a venerable culinary memoir should be taken with a grain of salt.

About M.F.K. Fisher

Mary Frances Kennedy was born in Albion, Michigan in 1908. She met her first husband, Al Fisher, while attending Occidental College in Los Angeles, and moved with him to Dijon, France upon their marriage in 1929. While Al, an academic and poet, worked on his doctorate at the University of Dijon, Mary Frances explored the restaurants and studied fine wines with a local sommelier.

After moving to Strasbourg (where Mary Frances became depressed) and the French Riviera, they returned to California at the height of the Great Depression. Here, Mary Frances fell in love with her neighbour Dilliwyn Parrish (known as Chexbres in her books), and she later left Al to marry him. However, Dilliwyn soon developed Buerger’s Disease, a circulatory condition which led to multiple clots and amputations, as well as severe, chronic pain. He took his own life in 1941.

This period coincided with an incredible acceleration of writing on Mary Frances’ part, including two novels and Consider the Oyster. At the same time, she had a contract with Paramount, writing jokes for Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour. She became pregnant in 1943, and gave birth to a daughter, Anne Kennedy Parrish, never revealing who the father was, and sometimes claiming that Anne was adopted.

She continued to work apace, producing an acclaimed translation of Savarin’s The Physiology of Taste in 1949, alongside many other books. In 1945, she married literary agent Donald Friede, and had a second daughter, Kennedy, although the marriage soon collapsed due to Donald’s mental-health difficulties, which left the couple in enormous debt.

She continued to move between Europe and America, finally settling in Glen Ellen, California in 1971 (although never ceasing to travel throughout the Seventies). She died there in 1992, having long suffered from Parkinson’s and arthritis.

Read M.F.K. Fisher’s obituary in The New York Times

Book Club dates

I’ve been trying to work out how best to structure our book clubs so that it feels fun rather than prescriptive, and invites plenty of discussion. My plan for May and June is to run two themed discussions on Substack Chat (which you can access either in the app or on the website), and then invite you all to a live recording for a grand finale in early June.

Here are the dates:

19th May - join us in the Chat to discuss the theme of love and learning in The Gastronomical Me.

2nd June - we’ll be discussing the theme of loss in the Chat.

16th June (5pm UK time - check your local time here) - join me and and here on Substack for a live discussion of The Gastronomical Me. A full recording will be sent out as soon as possible afterwards. .

Take care,

Katherine

The Colophon

Listen to The Clearing podcast

Find out about my online retreats

Visit my website

Gift a subscription to The Clearing on Substack

Sign up for The Way Through Winter course

Read:

My quarterly essay

Weekend Journaling prompts

Collected Newsletters

More about my books:

Enchantment

Wintering

The Electricity of Every Living Thing

Credits:

Editor: Rebecca Armstrong

Admin & Support: Meghan Hutchins and Chris Allison

Podcast producer: Alice Lloyd

This newsletter commits 1% of its revenue to schemes that remove carbon from the atmosphere.

The Clearing is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, please consider subscribing.

Subscribe now

Subscribing via the Substack app may mean a slightly higher cost because of Apple/Google fees. We recommend signing up via the Substack website rather than in-app because of this.

About The Practices

Previous practices: Water Practice

I was the kind of child who hated getting dirt under their fingernails. It’s not that I was particularly fastidious or feminine; I just always hated the texture of soil, the damp grittiness that pressed against your nailbed until you could scrub it away.

We are told now that contact with soil diversifies our gut bacteria, improving our immune system and preventing allergies. At the time, it was all just dirt: wet, it splashed up my legs as I rode my bike. Dry, it took on the horrifying texture of sand. It seemed best to avoid it.

These days, a sickle of mud under my nails is evidence of a day well spent. I love to get my hands in soil. I’ve spent years digging organic matter into my garden, opening up the heavy clay, making space for a battalion of fat pink worms. I’m missing the early season planting this year, the way the soil still feels cold below the surface, the way it warms as the season goes on. It feels like a loss.

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Soil is more than dirt: it is identity. Soil is the food that we know best, the scent of each season, the ground beneath our feet. It is our own, personal terroir, a connection we forge in infanthood, when we are close to the ground. Many of us become disconnected from our soil as we get older, scolded for ruining our clothes, diverted to more worldly concerns (though what would be more worldly than the stuff our planet is made from?), housed in places where the soil is beyond our reach. Some will spend a lifetime rebuilding this fundamental relationship, this mother-bond. Others will never realise how much it matters.

To be humble is to literally be ‘of the soil’, and we are all humbled eventually. Wisdom lies in those who choose their humbling.

Soil Practice

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Transcript The Mini Break, Ep1

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Hello,

Our first guest to choose a city for his dreamscape, the brilliant writer, BBC broadcaster and educator Jeffrey Boakye reveals he’s most at peace when walking for walking’s sake through the ever-changing textures of London’s streets. The very essence of a ‘flâneur’, as we discover.

A gorgeous and meandering conversation in which Jeffrey and I explore a wonderful array of topics: from skateboarding as a life lesson in failure to finding joy in packed tube trains, why we need to foster more pointless hobbies to what the movie Groundhog Day teaches us about the mundane and the sublime. Often philosophical, frequently laughter-filled and as always, deeply thought-provoking.

Links from the episode:

Jeffrey’s website where you can find his books: www.jeffreyboakye.com

Jeffrey’s Substack

Jeffrey’s Instagram

Jeffrey’s BBC Radio 4 music show Add to Playlist

Sandwich by Catherine Newman

Transcription by Ben Lerner

The Door by Magda Szabo

Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki

Ole & Steen Danish bakery

Transcript The Clearing Podcast Jeffrey Boakye

3.45MB ∙ PDF file

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Hello,

A beautiful, bird-filled episode from the wonderful collaborative duo of writer Robert Macfarlane and illustrator Jackie Morris. Together they have created some of the best-loved books on the natural world in recent years, including The Lost Words.

In this transcendent episode they share their quite different visions of what rest looks like for them. Robert conjures a wild, bird-filled landscape in the Scottish Cairngorms while Jackie imagines taking a sentient ship to a melding of the Rain Wilds and Earthsea. Full of wonder, wild knitting, ‘glacial erratics’, laughter and of course plenty of nature chat, this episode is a true salve for the soul.

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Links from the episode:

The Book of Birds by Jackie Morris and Robert Macfarlane

The Lost Words by Jackie Morris and Robert Macfarlane

The Lost Spells by Jackie Morris and Robert Macfarlane

Jackie’s Instagram

Jackie’s website

Robert’s Instagram

Deep Deep Light paint brushes and paints

A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin

The Rain Wild Chronicles by Robin Hobb

The Illustration Department Podcast

Artist David Gentleman

Read about Albrecht Dürer’s painting Young Hare here

The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd

Read about artist Mark Rothko on the Moma website

Production Credits

Guest Booker and Admin Support - Meghan Hutchins

Substack Manager - Rebecca Armstrong

Producer - Alice Lloyd

Music - The Leaf Library theleaflibrary

Click here to listen in your favourite app, or paid subscribers can listen to an ad-free version here in this post.

Transcript:

Transcript Robert Macfarlane And Jackie Morris

3.41MB ∙ PDF file

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Follow @theclearingpod on Instagram for podcast videos and extras • Watch The Clearing Podcast episodes on YouTube • Listen to previous episodes here • Switch to an annual paid subscription to The Clearing and receive a digital copy of Notes & Fragments, a commonplace book • Begin or renew an annual subscription this month, and you’ll be automatically entered into a prize draw to win my writing essentials.

Hello,

Our first guest to choose a city for his dreamscape, the brilliant writer, BBC broadcaster and educator Jeffrey Boakye reveals he’s most at peace when walking for walking’s sake through the ever-changing textures of London’s streets. The very essence of a ‘flâneur’, as we discover.

A gorgeous and meandering conversation in which Jeffrey and I explore a wonderful array of topics: from skateboarding as a life lesson in failure to finding joy in packed tube trains, why we need to foster more pointless hobbies to what the movie Groundhog Day teaches us about the mundane and the sublime. Often philosophical, frequently laughter-filled and as always, deeply thought-provoking.

Links from the episode:

Jeffrey’s website where you can find his books: www.jeffreyboakye.com

Jeffrey’s Substack

Jeffrey’s Instagram

Jeffrey’s BBC Radio 4 music show Add to Playlist

Sandwich by Catherine Newman

Transcription by Ben Lerner

The Door by Magda Szabo

Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki

Ole & Steen Danish bakery

Transcript The Clearing Podcast Jeffrey Boakye

3.45MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

This week sees the launch of The Mini-break, a weekly bonus episode for paid subscribers to The Clearing. You can find it further down this post.

Amelie, Energetic Forest and Financially Independent Bay

In our first bonus content for subscribers only, hear Katherine’s idea for a ‘mini-break’ - her weekly suggestion for something you can do at home to get away from it all. Minimum effort required! Plus we hear our first contribution from a listener as Katherine delves into Jess from Cornwall’s vision of what she would do if she could go anywhere and do anything to get some much-needed rest.

Production Credits

Guest Booker and Admin Support - Meghan Hutchins

Substack Manager - Rebecca Armstrong

Producer - Alice Lloyd

Music - The Leaf Library

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The air smelt of summer yesterday. I got up, opened the back door and there it was: the scent of warmth itself, of birdsong, of lengthening days. It was full of wiry, floral energy, the pull toward the ecstatic high of the solstice, the slow surrender to indolence. The bright half of the year was throwing out tendrils, trying to find its footing.

At this time of year, I start to dream of a life spent outdoors, meals eaten on my garden table, evenings spent reading under the parasol until it gets too dark to see. But we are not there yet. When I ventured out this morning in blazing sunshine, the air was still shockingly cold, the bite of a north wind concealed under golden light. I hurried back inside to pull on my coat and scarf.

No matter. There is an optimism to May, a dreaminess. We watch for the signs of summer, just a few degrees away.

What I’ve been up to

It’s been a quiet month for me as I recuperate from my hysterectomy: lots of time spent reading, listening to podcasts, and watching TV. I’m only sorry that it’s all fading away now, and the world is coming back in.

I take a slow walk every day, and can now get all the way down to the sea and back, but only if I have a nap afterwards. Healing is a slow business, and I’m trying to be patient, but in truth I’ve often been frustrated at the gap between what I was meaning to do and what I actually managed.

That’s to say: I’m doing really well. It’s not quite business as usual around here yet, but I’m getting there. By the time June comes around, I’ll be turning cartwheels. Probably.

Recent offerings

A conversation with Gavin Francis about the ways that mental health diagnoses can both help and hinder us.

A journaling prompt I set myself as I came to the end of my hormonal years and met my child self again.

The new season of The Clearing podcast has begun in spectacular form with Jackie Morris and Robert Macfarlane - listen to the version with ads here. Paid subscribers to my newsletter get ad-free episodes delivered to your inbox, as well as a weekly bonus episode - The Mini Break - starting this week.

Win my writing essentials

Take out or renew an annual subscription in May, and not only will you get my special ebook, Notes & Fragments, but you’ll also get a chance to win this month’s giveaway box, which features the usual selection of delicious stationery (Rhodia notebook, refillable ink pen, Writer’s Blood ink, Blackwing pencils) - a signed copy of Enchantment, and our exclusive Clearing postcards and stickers - there is also a beautiful Folio edition of this month’s book-club pick, The Gastronomical Me by M.F.K. Fisher. No need to do anything; we’ll enter you into the draw automatically.

Congratulations to Helen, who won April’s new subscriber draw! A box of goodies will be winging its way to you very soon.

Coming up

Next week, I’ll be kicking off our latest book club readalong - M.F.K. Fisher’s The Gastronomical Me, a collection of essays from 1943 that chart the author’s love affair with good food, while slyly revealing her loves, losses and fears. It’s such an excellent read, and I hope you’ll join us.

On Saturday 17th May, I’ll be hosting an online retreat for our sister newsletter, The Retreat. We’ll be resting together, while making contact with the seasonal shift towards summer, and trying to tap into the feeling of abundance that comes with it. More info here.

May notions

• Letting it go. I can’t primp the garden this year. I can’t spring clean. I’m just letting life be.

  

• Ice cream. I’m not usually a huge fan, but right now I’m craving the cold stuff. My favourite flavour is hazelnut gelato with dark chocolate sauce (Kent folk will know this is a thinly-veiled Morelli’s reference), but I’ll give anything a go.

• I’m experimenting with chia pudding. I have a feeling this comes to us all eventually. I can’t say I love it, but it’s good enough and has a positive effect on my digestive system.

• I adored ’s Right Side Out podcast mini-series, which saw him exploring what it means to be ‘just like’ his estranged mother. A brilliant meditation on ADHD, creativity and outsidership.

• I’m also loving Molly’s Naylor’s Making Trouble, a series of interviews with creative people talking about the difficult bits of making work. I think she’s recently joined Substack as *waves hello*.

• If you want me, I’ll mostly be moisturizing myself. Wow, sudden menopause makes your skin dry. I am currently being rescued by Byoma Barrier Repair Treatment, and Mixa Urea Cica Repair, which has worked miracles on my horrifying elbows. I know literally no-one looks to me for skincare recommendations, but just in case you’re desperate and have no access to actual skincare writers.

Take care,

Katherine

The Colophon

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