The Hello You Sunday Supplement, Issue 14

Your weekly signpost to the good stuff

Dec 08, 2024

Hello, you. How’re you doing?

I’ve got a bunch of stuff for you to read that isn’t the usual journalistic sausage-meat. If you’re looking for something to do to put off picking up the fallen fence panels, here it is. You’re welcome. Put the kettle on and some bread in the toaster, and get stuck in?

But first: why not join the Hello You family by subscribing, if you haven’t already?

If you’re new here: the Hello You Sunday Supplement is a weekly delivery of links to articles that I think you’ll find interesting to read whilst enjoying your Sunday morning coffee, or procrastinating about weekend chores.

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Starting off, as ever, with …

Something to listen to while you read

If you were at this year’s Shrewsbury Folk Festival, you’ll have made some wonderful memories. If you weren’t, you missed a treat!

Either way, you’ll enjoy this: a video playlist of great performances from SFF 2024!

You know what would make a great Christmas present, even for yourself? Tickets to next year’s festival. Just saying.

What went right this week

The UK ‘reached peak petrol’, Belgium’s sex workers won full employment rights, and capturing carbon from the air got easier, plus more good news from the good people at Positive News

Share Hello You - Jim Hawkins’s Substack

Here comes more good stuff. Please click, read and share?

Nuns, jiu-jitsu and the first women’s football match

Wallace and vomit: 'Women of a certain age' are full of rage and sick of everyone's shit

'The onslaught of year-end lists is coming and I will not be engaging with any of them. I don’t want roundups and I don’t want rundowns. No recaps or “in review”s for me' - Agree strongly. Spare us this stuff

How to relate to others (and yourself) in a positive way this Christmas

Gareth 'Gazchap' Griffiths writes about his first time donating blood

So many men trolled Kirstie Allsopp after she spoke out about Gregg Wallace. She took them down magnificently, one tweet at a time

Would-be dictators: Never try to seize power when the people have been drinking. Even the journalists. Sarah Jeong's tremendous account of the coup attempt in South Korea, witnessed through an alcoholic haze, invents a new type of journalism: Inadvertent Gonzo

My top chums, Shropshire author and artist Phil and Jacqui Lovesey - and their magickal creation Matlock the Hare - are now on Substack! They’ll be posting lots of crumlush content soon, so why not subscribe to their newsletter and beat the rush?

Beyond the Black Eyed Dog: Why Nick Drake deserves more than ‘indiefication’

With as few as 4,000 thought to be left in the wild and up to 450 killed each year, snow leopards could be at risk of disappearing forever

Being close to a cycle network can boost house prices

... with the implementation of a WHAT NOW?! (Seriously, don't give them ideas ...)

Audiences like crime stories. But at what cost? (Hint: just because audiences might like something, doesn't mean we're obliged, or it’s wise, to feed them that thing)

The definitive guide to Christmas market scran

More of the good stuff in a moment, but first …

Hello You 75: Mummy Wine Culture

‘It’s the only drug where you have to explain why you don’t do it'

Kate Taylor as been on a remarkable life journey, from heavy-drinking London ladette to Shropshire-based sobriety influencer. That journey’s taken her to some very interesting places: New York, Italy, Costa Rica … a heroin den in Tottenham …

‘I used girl-power as an excuse to get hammered’

We’ve all had nights where things have got a little out of control. Not many of us have woken up in a different country to the one we started drinking in.

‘I don’t think I had a lot of self-respect’

Kate’s not an alcoholic, she told me, just a social drinker who drank too much, too often and for a long time.

‘The way I care about myself has massively changed, and I never really knew I was missing that’

But almost three years ago, all that turned around in one single day. Kate tells me how and why in this episode of my Shrewsbury, Shropshire podcast Hello You.

Hello You is about people, stories and ‘the complexities of life’. To make sure you don’t miss anything, whether it’s an episode of the Hello You podcast or the Sunday Supplement, why not subscribe? If you really love what I do, you can take out a paid subscription (and I’d be very happy and grateful) but you don’t have to. Hello You will remain free for everyone, for ever. You might just help keep it - and me - going, though

OK, back to your weekly good-stuff round-up!

If you were wondering why someone shot dead an American health-insurance CEO ... and why we have a National Health Service, and how things might be if we moved to the private-insurance approach some people have called for

Look. Look. Look at all the love there is

Mind’s tips for coping during Christmas

That viral LinkedIn post you read was probably AI-generated (This article calls that a 'success', but I wouldn't!) Maybe it's just, as it says here, 'It’s just that the corporate-speak style of AI writing on the platform can be tricky to distinguish from genuine human-penned Thought Leader Blogging'

What single thing would achieve better representation in the media industry?

"Wanders aimlessly about the house” - the tragic history of Gunner Charles Hailstone

Think you've seen all the niche gift guides? Think again

If you read one thing this week, make it this

Actually, make it both of these. One will make you laugh. The other one … won’t. But they’re both wonderful pieces that you’ll be glad you read. Share them - and this newsletter - with your friends, or your WhatsApp chat group?

Do our stories matter?

WTF festive food