Hello
Hello. My name is Maddie. I’m 24 years old, and I’ve decided, perhaps ill-advisedly, to start writing a newsletter about stuff I’m interested in. I used to work as an environmental journalist in London — a misleadingly glamorous line, given I mostly wrote about recycling infrastructure — but as for most people, my life hasn’t gone to plan in the past six months.
My partner and I moved home to New Zealand about two months ago, in a frazzle of changed flights. We had nice lives in London: ones replete with exquisitely efficient public transport, close proximity to a hundred museums, and the world’s best dessert, a Terry’s Chocolate Orange. Now we have no fixed address, no stable income, and no particular plan for the future. I’ve been asked what we’re doing next approximately 200 times and my grandma keeps ringing me in the evening to ‘see how I’m doing’ — something she has never done before, and which fills me with the distinctive icy shame that comes from making your Asian grandparents worry you don’t have enough money. So I thought, I’ll write about what I’m thinking. And maybe it will be the opportunity I’ve always hoped for — to write about exactly what interests me, in exactly the style I want.
Almost everything interests me. But I’m particularly curious about the following motley list: books, language, cooking, climate change, travel and homecoming, and classical music. Here’s hoping one interests you.