Otterly out of order...🦦

Where Emma makes lists & chats

Hello, you delightful lot! Ok, not you people who are having a ‘proper’ summer filled with sunshine and frolics. It is neither sunny nor warm or full of frolics here in North East Scotland. Frankly, I’m miffed.¹

This is a kind of emergency-what-the-hell-is-going-on-update letter - not truly an emergency but if I don’t write it now inevitably I will forget.

As previously mentioned I am turning some of this nonsense into a book. A couple of books actually because PD is such an arsehole it needs more coverage than your average hell experience.

I would LOVE your thoughts and (prayers 😆) and any ideas you may have about the following:

1. A revamped A to Z of Parkinson’s - expanded and extended (you can read the basic posts here)

2. Who Stole My Dopamine? - essentially a book of my direct experience of PD, not unlike this very letter but with order and structure (imagine?!)

3. 100 Days (weird working title) This is NOT for the faint-hearted. This is a bleak exploration of chronic illness, death, a nihilistic set of thoughts, poems and art.

4. And of course, the long-anticipated Tumbled - the rom-com story of how I discovered I had PD, you can read some of it here.

Extracts and updates will be available via this letter, except for 100 Days…it will have its own ‘safe’ little place as it is brutal.

Anyway, all that aside. I have been replacing the tap and plug hole on my bathroom sink…PD Plumbers…oh yeah. Ahem. It’s funny how sometimes you just have all the energy and dexterity lined up and can achieve the ‘old you’ stuff. Having said that I was out of action for two days afterwards.

sink action…

Thank you for all the messages, subscriptions and general love you all show me, I really do appreciate it.

A lot (like a lot!) of you have let me know you miss me on Twitter - I miss you guys too, but the mental health improvement is superb. I don’t know if it helps but I have enabled chat on here.

This is a conversation space exclusively for subscribers—kind of like a group chat or live hangout. I’ll post questions and updates that come my way, and you can jump into the discussion.

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How to get started

1. Get the Substack app by clicking this link or the button below. New chat threads won’t be sent via email, so turn on push notifications so you don’t miss a conversation as it happens. You can also access chat on the web.

2. Open the app and tap the Chat icon. It looks like two bubbles in the bottom bar, and you’ll see a row for my chat inside.

3. That’s it! Jump into my thread to say hi, and if you have any issues, check out Substack’s FAQ.

with love

E xx

1. Miffed is a peculiarly British term meaning slightly annoyed. It is somewhere between ‘Slightly Put Out’ and ‘Disgruntled’. See here for the full stages of British anger.