I enjoyed this piece a great deal. I enjoy lots of detail so it suits my reading style. Both my partner and I both have "please stop me and tell me weirdly personal things about yourself while I smile inanely at you while wanting to climb out of my own skin to escape" tattooed on our foreheads. We are, on the other hand , completely invisible to anyone serving in restaurants, bars or cafés, which seems odd. I am simultaneously glad that we're not the only ones but also annoyed that it happens to you too!
This reminded me of a joke I heard many years ago. Once there was a guru who lived on a mountain peak and was reputed to be the wisest man on earth. One day a man battled his way, through many hardships, to reach the guru and asked him the secret of life. The guru replied, "The water bird flies at night." The seeker completely lost it, shouting in anger, "I spend months climbing the mountain to find you and learn the secret of life and you tell me the water bird flies at night!" The guru looks askance at him and says, "The water bird doesn't fly at night?"
A very enjoyable read, Tom, and if you want my advice, I haven’t any to give. I haven’t starfished in the gulf near here since someone pretended to change its name. We’ve had two hurricanes since I’ve been in it and I’ve been leery of weird debris ever since and here we are in hurricane season yet again. I’d better get over there before the next one hits. Thanks for the reminder to do it. Your long paragraphs don’t bother me at all but as you can see, they do prompt long comments in such a comfortable manner.
So true ! Unsolicited advice comes from all corners. My husband always says thanks for the advice but i am really not trying to be a better version of myself today
Loved this piece, and you’re absolutely right - there is an advice pandemic. I’m realising this even more now I’m pregnant. The unsolicited comments are flying in! Only this weekend I was enjoying a relaxing peruse around Waterstones, looking for my next smutty novel, only to be affronted by an eccentric lady (I also seem to attract them wherever I go) who warned me while I might survive, I will certainly not thrive in motherhood. Impossible, apparently. She then started spouting off a long list of complicated smoothie recipes I should start drinking to help.
This post makes me feel seen and validated! Hopefully by putting this out there you’re manifesting some more peaceful swims in future. (Because manifesting is also essential to a life well lived, right?!)
I believe this was the first essay by you I encountered on Substack and the reason why I began following you (that sounds creepy). I mostly follow people who comment on political issues, which has grown so much darker since you posted this essay originally. Still, I consume that and look forward to your posts to key my head above water. Even nearly a year later, you might be the only novelist I read here. I need to finally buy a book not only to experience what you actually so for a living, but to keep me away longer from everything else.
Do yourself a favour and buy all or as many of Tom’s books as you can. You need zaniness to counteract the political weight that you follow and he’s just the sort of zany capable of dispersing the threatening clouds and lightening your day. Works a treat!
Most women alive have been putting up with unwelcome ‘advice’ forever. Now it’s called “man-splaining” and before that “busybodies”. Lately it’s a gaggle of pathetic attention addicts who fancy themselves ’influencers’. Ugh. Feigning deafness is getting appealing.
45 years ago I was playing golf with my boss and colleagues. First tee, it started in. “You sure you want that club?” I usually start out stiff. But the Golfing gods smiled upon me and I thwacked a real beauty! He raised his huge eyebrows and said “well I guess I will just shut up now”. Incredibly, I was able to say… nothing! 😎. It’s still one of the better outcomes to that scenario ever!
In the past I have put up Facebook posts with an update on a highly complex visa situation and put PLEASE DON’T OFFER ADVICE UNLESS YOU PERSONALLY HAVE BEEN IN THIS SITUATION and I *still* got stupid, wrong, idiotic advice in the comments. Asking people not to offer advice did seem to reduce it from a torrent to a trickle though. I have a friend who routinely puts “no advice please” on posts where people might be tempted to offer it. It seems to work. Maybe she’s unfriended the chronic advice-givers.
Can we start a cultural movement against unsolicited advice? It’s just as horrendous as asking people with wombs that are potentially fertile when they’re going to have kids.
The one thing I most enjoy about being past that age is that NOBODY asks me that question any more. Me in my 20s probably narrowly avoided assault charges from being asked that.
I developed a good line in the eyebrow and the "Why would you ask such a personal question?" if feeling polite and "That's my business" if not. Then THEY left the room, which is even better.
I am still waiting for someone to explain what living life to the fullest means. Living your best life according to whose standards? No one on earth knows what a best life is.
Thanks for reposting this. Apart from the paragraphs being a little on the long side I enjoyed reading it, not least because it reminded me of the time I slipped up on a real life banana skin at Waterloo station. In my 45 and a half years on this planet I remain the only person I have ever encountered to which such a misfortune has befallen.
But you're still here to tell the tale, Nick. When I was 17, on my way to school, I happened to fall into a manhole. Actually, it was a small one, and so only my right leg fell into it, but I had to sport a ginormous, painful bruise on my thigh for at least the next 6 months, which changed through a whole spectrum of red, purple, blue, green, yellow – a quite fascinating view, I have to admit. I also lost a shoe in the accident. I went limping to school, where the janitor kindly lent me a pair of his brand new slippers. I have very small feet (a UK size 3.5), whereas he was a huge man (a good size 7). Taking her sweet little time, my sister brought me another pair of shoes, thus stopping the hilarious show of me, hobbling in what looked like two boats, in front of the whole school. To quote your words, I'm also "the only person I've ever encountered to which such a misfortune has befallen." Lucky us!
I too slipped on a banana skin. I was 16, walking through school corridors on a rainy day, I slipped on the wet lino. I wondered why a group of boys found this so incredibly funny, then discovered (and was told) I’d slipped on a banana skin. Does it have to be in a public place? I hope you were OK after your banana moment. I loved Tom Cox’s post - and laughed out loud lots, almost as much as those boys circa 1980.
Welcome to the exclusive club! Fortunately the only thing that was hurt was my pride. It was extremely busy as there was some sort of delay so my attention was firmly on the departure boards and not what I was about to step on. Fortunately I think everyone else’s was too so I am not sure anyone noticed!
It's bon mots like this that keep us coming back here and buying books! Tom has a way of saying things in a way you've never heard before that nevertheless make instant sense and you wonder why no one else has been saying that.
I just texted that (and the description of the woman) to another writer friend and got back a string of emoji longer than yours. We'd been in a Gothic Romance Cliche Bingo game together on Sunday. We each won a mummified rubber ducky. Which was after we had all the fun of the whole crowd howling when "Wolves" was drawn, hooting for "Owls", and other appropriate noises. You haven't lived till you've heard upwards of 20 people all yell "HEATHCLIFF!" when "Moors" comes up.
Well, in Swedish, ‘full’ is drunk so you could be living your drunkest life. Which as a post menopausal woman isn’t really attractive as it seems to lead to night sweats and becoming nocturnal but not in a cute owlish way. I kind of like living my favourite life which really means I get to choose what that means like eating ice cream twice a day or swimming naked in the sea without closing my fingers together cos I’m wild like that.
If someone asks me, “why are sitting on that rock looking at clouds” I just point at my tshirt which says “Don’t mind me, I’m just living my favourite life” and then commit the dragon shaped cloud to memory so I can try and emulate it in watercolours later (and fail because I suck at watercolour)
I related start to finish. I took a bit of a woo-woo workshop in 2013 and one of the prompts at the beginning was to draw the type of super hero people think you are. I drew myself flying sideways with a cape and the emblem “C.A.” on my chest which stood for Captain Approachable. Of course I was flying *away* from hoards of people lined up to tell me about *their* colostomy bags and ungrateful grandchildren. But they pulled me back in.
Your writing brought me great joy and peace as I watched my cats and dog play at my feet on a huge shearling rug while enjoying the sunshine and my morning coffee. It was quite literally Chef’s kiss perfection for 15 mins. Ironically, isn’t that just a friggin best-life scenario if you’ve ever heard of one!?! Thank you.
PS I’ve committed mental felonious assaults on people telling me what to do at the gym. I finally said to an instructor who was giving me advice about my rowing technique, “bro, this is as good as it’s gonna get. Don’t help me.” When he pressed, I did the international sign for “piss off, a-hole” with the dagger face and the🖐️. He just laughed at Captain Approachable and proceeded to corner me after class. 😫
Same attitude from the very able bodied car haters (broke ass, most of them) who are so smug. I just light up and gush excitedly “ooooo! You’re buying me an electric vehicle? WOW THANK YOU!”
Are they going to ride the fentanyl smoky bus with me and carry all my groceries? I can’t.
I feel you. Maybe they can bike to the store and come back with groceries, but it's going to take all my spoons just to drive there, walk up and down the aisles, load the stuff into and out of the car and put it away. Unless they're going to pay for me to have a chauffeur/flunky to do all that, GO AWAY.
And yes I have things delivered. Because I need things that weigh a ton or are hard to find here at reasonable prices. Having someone bring it to my door means I can eat and buy stuff. Sorry if I'm not driving to the next county for your overpriced organic groceries and bespoke household goods.
If we lived in the same neighborhood, I absolutely would band together with you for shopping. Guaranteed no smoky fentanyl in my hybrid.
During the pandemic my cat got sick and my car wouldn’t start. So I managed to get on the bus with her carrier. Ended up between two crack heads one with a gun out! 🤯
I had this happen with a physical therapist after I'd messed up an ankle. He kept telling me to do this and that, but he'd never looked at my other leg. I finally made him watch that one going through the same motions and he agreed we were wasting both our time.
When we are born with well-working bodies, our lives seep into the concept that everyone has the same capabilities as a preset. I was very fortunate to have elders in my life who modeled the aging process, but as I never got serious mobility injuries until some accidents in my 60s, around the time we begin to blur into invisibility in society, so I was probably clueless too.
A handsome PA totally misdiagnosed my 3out of 4 ripped shoulder tendons after a drunk driver totaled my car in ‘19, so I know it’s very possible in medical institutions as well. ‘Blinders?’ Sexism?
I sure hope that you can get better. It took years for my ACL replacement to restore the knee but one shocking day it didn’t hurt! So 🤞for you. I retrashed it a month ago however. 🙄
Actually a grocery shopping playdate with you kinda sounds like fun!! 🛒 But I make 4 stops in one run and yes it is exhausting.
I enjoyed that lots, in part because we share the attracts-strangers gene, deep love of swimming and annoyance w “live your best life pap,” but mostly because of the loose and attentive way you narrate your existence and the no-shipping fee tip on Swallow which will soon join my TC collection. I have yet give copies of Yokel to my book group but sure look forward to doing so. And to starfishing after today’s salt water swim.
The 'fuck off' forehead tattoo clearly sidestepped me too. Only last week, tantalizingly close to the end of a huge Lake District hike, and in desperate need of a wee, my teen daughter and I were stopped and asked if we knew 'why there are 12 months in the year'. That should have been my cue to make swift polite excuses, but I am a slow verbal processor, so we endured almost 20 minutes of sermon on how we must believe in just one god or face eternal hellfire. People. Aren't they great?
I enjoyed this piece a great deal. I enjoy lots of detail so it suits my reading style. Both my partner and I both have "please stop me and tell me weirdly personal things about yourself while I smile inanely at you while wanting to climb out of my own skin to escape" tattooed on our foreheads. We are, on the other hand , completely invisible to anyone serving in restaurants, bars or cafés, which seems odd. I am simultaneously glad that we're not the only ones but also annoyed that it happens to you too!
This reminded me of a joke I heard many years ago. Once there was a guru who lived on a mountain peak and was reputed to be the wisest man on earth. One day a man battled his way, through many hardships, to reach the guru and asked him the secret of life. The guru replied, "The water bird flies at night." The seeker completely lost it, shouting in anger, "I spend months climbing the mountain to find you and learn the secret of life and you tell me the water bird flies at night!" The guru looks askance at him and says, "The water bird doesn't fly at night?"
A very enjoyable read, Tom, and if you want my advice, I haven’t any to give. I haven’t starfished in the gulf near here since someone pretended to change its name. We’ve had two hurricanes since I’ve been in it and I’ve been leery of weird debris ever since and here we are in hurricane season yet again. I’d better get over there before the next one hits. Thanks for the reminder to do it. Your long paragraphs don’t bother me at all but as you can see, they do prompt long comments in such a comfortable manner.
So true ! Unsolicited advice comes from all corners. My husband always says thanks for the advice but i am really not trying to be a better version of myself today
This! I need this on a T-shirt. Or hat, or neon flashing sign :)
Loved this piece, and you’re absolutely right - there is an advice pandemic. I’m realising this even more now I’m pregnant. The unsolicited comments are flying in! Only this weekend I was enjoying a relaxing peruse around Waterstones, looking for my next smutty novel, only to be affronted by an eccentric lady (I also seem to attract them wherever I go) who warned me while I might survive, I will certainly not thrive in motherhood. Impossible, apparently. She then started spouting off a long list of complicated smoothie recipes I should start drinking to help.
This post makes me feel seen and validated! Hopefully by putting this out there you’re manifesting some more peaceful swims in future. (Because manifesting is also essential to a life well lived, right?!)
What an appalling personal intrusion! What is she putting in her own smoothie? Tincture of asshat?
This made me laugh out loud this morning!
I believe this was the first essay by you I encountered on Substack and the reason why I began following you (that sounds creepy). I mostly follow people who comment on political issues, which has grown so much darker since you posted this essay originally. Still, I consume that and look forward to your posts to key my head above water. Even nearly a year later, you might be the only novelist I read here. I need to finally buy a book not only to experience what you actually so for a living, but to keep me away longer from everything else.
Do yourself a favour and buy all or as many of Tom’s books as you can. You need zaniness to counteract the political weight that you follow and he’s just the sort of zany capable of dispersing the threatening clouds and lightening your day. Works a treat!
Thanks Kerri!
One of Tom's wonderful turns of phrase can brighten my entire day sometimes!
Most women alive have been putting up with unwelcome ‘advice’ forever. Now it’s called “man-splaining” and before that “busybodies”. Lately it’s a gaggle of pathetic attention addicts who fancy themselves ’influencers’. Ugh. Feigning deafness is getting appealing.
45 years ago I was playing golf with my boss and colleagues. First tee, it started in. “You sure you want that club?” I usually start out stiff. But the Golfing gods smiled upon me and I thwacked a real beauty! He raised his huge eyebrows and said “well I guess I will just shut up now”. Incredibly, I was able to say… nothing! 😎. It’s still one of the better outcomes to that scenario ever!
Yes! This!
If I wanted advice I would ask for it.
In the past I have put up Facebook posts with an update on a highly complex visa situation and put PLEASE DON’T OFFER ADVICE UNLESS YOU PERSONALLY HAVE BEEN IN THIS SITUATION and I *still* got stupid, wrong, idiotic advice in the comments. Asking people not to offer advice did seem to reduce it from a torrent to a trickle though. I have a friend who routinely puts “no advice please” on posts where people might be tempted to offer it. It seems to work. Maybe she’s unfriended the chronic advice-givers.
Can we start a cultural movement against unsolicited advice? It’s just as horrendous as asking people with wombs that are potentially fertile when they’re going to have kids.
The one thing I most enjoy about being past that age is that NOBODY asks me that question any more. Me in my 20s probably narrowly avoided assault charges from being asked that.
I am also past that age, but when I wasn't, if anyone asked, I just got up and left the room.
I developed a good line in the eyebrow and the "Why would you ask such a personal question?" if feeling polite and "That's my business" if not. Then THEY left the room, which is even better.
I am still waiting for someone to explain what living life to the fullest means. Living your best life according to whose standards? No one on earth knows what a best life is.
Not anymore. Buddha came closest to it.
Thanks for reposting this. Apart from the paragraphs being a little on the long side I enjoyed reading it, not least because it reminded me of the time I slipped up on a real life banana skin at Waterloo station. In my 45 and a half years on this planet I remain the only person I have ever encountered to which such a misfortune has befallen.
But you're still here to tell the tale, Nick. When I was 17, on my way to school, I happened to fall into a manhole. Actually, it was a small one, and so only my right leg fell into it, but I had to sport a ginormous, painful bruise on my thigh for at least the next 6 months, which changed through a whole spectrum of red, purple, blue, green, yellow – a quite fascinating view, I have to admit. I also lost a shoe in the accident. I went limping to school, where the janitor kindly lent me a pair of his brand new slippers. I have very small feet (a UK size 3.5), whereas he was a huge man (a good size 7). Taking her sweet little time, my sister brought me another pair of shoes, thus stopping the hilarious show of me, hobbling in what looked like two boats, in front of the whole school. To quote your words, I'm also "the only person I've ever encountered to which such a misfortune has befallen." Lucky us!
I too slipped on a banana skin. I was 16, walking through school corridors on a rainy day, I slipped on the wet lino. I wondered why a group of boys found this so incredibly funny, then discovered (and was told) I’d slipped on a banana skin. Does it have to be in a public place? I hope you were OK after your banana moment. I loved Tom Cox’s post - and laughed out loud lots, almost as much as those boys circa 1980.
Welcome to the exclusive club! Fortunately the only thing that was hurt was my pride. It was extremely busy as there was some sort of delay so my attention was firmly on the departure boards and not what I was about to step on. Fortunately I think everyone else’s was too so I am not sure anyone noticed!
Minding the gap you missed the skin!
More people slip on grapes. H&S fact there....
"...definitely somewhere with no shortage of cured meat and turreted buildings teetering over limestone crags..."
😂😂😂
It's bon mots like this that keep us coming back here and buying books! Tom has a way of saying things in a way you've never heard before that nevertheless make instant sense and you wonder why no one else has been saying that.
I just texted that (and the description of the woman) to another writer friend and got back a string of emoji longer than yours. We'd been in a Gothic Romance Cliche Bingo game together on Sunday. We each won a mummified rubber ducky. Which was after we had all the fun of the whole crowd howling when "Wolves" was drawn, hooting for "Owls", and other appropriate noises. You haven't lived till you've heard upwards of 20 people all yell "HEATHCLIFF!" when "Moors" comes up.
Well, in Swedish, ‘full’ is drunk so you could be living your drunkest life. Which as a post menopausal woman isn’t really attractive as it seems to lead to night sweats and becoming nocturnal but not in a cute owlish way. I kind of like living my favourite life which really means I get to choose what that means like eating ice cream twice a day or swimming naked in the sea without closing my fingers together cos I’m wild like that.
If someone asks me, “why are sitting on that rock looking at clouds” I just point at my tshirt which says “Don’t mind me, I’m just living my favourite life” and then commit the dragon shaped cloud to memory so I can try and emulate it in watercolours later (and fail because I suck at watercolour)
Excellent, reassuring, and hilarious non-advice about what one friend calls "being a magnet for weirdos."
Thanks Caroline!
Tom,
I related start to finish. I took a bit of a woo-woo workshop in 2013 and one of the prompts at the beginning was to draw the type of super hero people think you are. I drew myself flying sideways with a cape and the emblem “C.A.” on my chest which stood for Captain Approachable. Of course I was flying *away* from hoards of people lined up to tell me about *their* colostomy bags and ungrateful grandchildren. But they pulled me back in.
Your writing brought me great joy and peace as I watched my cats and dog play at my feet on a huge shearling rug while enjoying the sunshine and my morning coffee. It was quite literally Chef’s kiss perfection for 15 mins. Ironically, isn’t that just a friggin best-life scenario if you’ve ever heard of one!?! Thank you.
PS I’ve committed mental felonious assaults on people telling me what to do at the gym. I finally said to an instructor who was giving me advice about my rowing technique, “bro, this is as good as it’s gonna get. Don’t help me.” When he pressed, I did the international sign for “piss off, a-hole” with the dagger face and the🖐️. He just laughed at Captain Approachable and proceeded to corner me after class. 😫
Same attitude from the very able bodied car haters (broke ass, most of them) who are so smug. I just light up and gush excitedly “ooooo! You’re buying me an electric vehicle? WOW THANK YOU!”
Are they going to ride the fentanyl smoky bus with me and carry all my groceries? I can’t.
I feel you. Maybe they can bike to the store and come back with groceries, but it's going to take all my spoons just to drive there, walk up and down the aisles, load the stuff into and out of the car and put it away. Unless they're going to pay for me to have a chauffeur/flunky to do all that, GO AWAY.
And yes I have things delivered. Because I need things that weigh a ton or are hard to find here at reasonable prices. Having someone bring it to my door means I can eat and buy stuff. Sorry if I'm not driving to the next county for your overpriced organic groceries and bespoke household goods.
If we lived in the same neighborhood, I absolutely would band together with you for shopping. Guaranteed no smoky fentanyl in my hybrid.
Hahahaha fentanyl smoky bus hahahaha 🤣
It’s for real here.
During the pandemic my cat got sick and my car wouldn’t start. So I managed to get on the bus with her carrier. Ended up between two crack heads one with a gun out! 🤯
I had this happen with a physical therapist after I'd messed up an ankle. He kept telling me to do this and that, but he'd never looked at my other leg. I finally made him watch that one going through the same motions and he agreed we were wasting both our time.
When we are born with well-working bodies, our lives seep into the concept that everyone has the same capabilities as a preset. I was very fortunate to have elders in my life who modeled the aging process, but as I never got serious mobility injuries until some accidents in my 60s, around the time we begin to blur into invisibility in society, so I was probably clueless too.
A handsome PA totally misdiagnosed my 3out of 4 ripped shoulder tendons after a drunk driver totaled my car in ‘19, so I know it’s very possible in medical institutions as well. ‘Blinders?’ Sexism?
I sure hope that you can get better. It took years for my ACL replacement to restore the knee but one shocking day it didn’t hurt! So 🤞for you. I retrashed it a month ago however. 🙄
Actually a grocery shopping playdate with you kinda sounds like fun!! 🛒 But I make 4 stops in one run and yes it is exhausting.
We could take turns driving?
I enjoyed that lots, in part because we share the attracts-strangers gene, deep love of swimming and annoyance w “live your best life pap,” but mostly because of the loose and attentive way you narrate your existence and the no-shipping fee tip on Swallow which will soon join my TC collection. I have yet give copies of Yokel to my book group but sure look forward to doing so. And to starfishing after today’s salt water swim.
The 'fuck off' forehead tattoo clearly sidestepped me too. Only last week, tantalizingly close to the end of a huge Lake District hike, and in desperate need of a wee, my teen daughter and I were stopped and asked if we knew 'why there are 12 months in the year'. That should have been my cue to make swift polite excuses, but I am a slow verbal processor, so we endured almost 20 minutes of sermon on how we must believe in just one god or face eternal hellfire. People. Aren't they great?
Noooooo! Would tear my hair out on your behalf if I wasn’t jealously guarding every strand.