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1 week ago | 
katespicer.substack.com | Kate Spicer
For a few weeks I’d considered writing ten good and ten bad things about the country here. I didn’t. Every time I started to type I was struck by what a miserable cow I was. People ask me, Are you enjoying Bruton? Do you like the country? And I always answer with “meh” noises because I don’t know how I feel. It just, is. It’s a change. Is it better. Or worse. I don’t know. It’s different. I can have a go at writing that list now. In recent days a shift in my mood has struck me.
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1 month ago | 
katespicer.substack.com | Kate Spicer
One rolled in shit - wearily I bent to do the cautious appraising sniff. It was dried fox or badger probably, both are vile and have a musk that clings on to fur no matter how much soap is applied. There was much to be thankful for. Nothing is as bad as human. I breathed out and was just feeling the beginnings of calm when I realised the other had disappeared for too long and the tracker didn’t work and the panic in my voice rose. The concern was not that she’d leg it for miles. Or go for livestock.
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1 month ago | 
katespicer.substack.com | Kate Spicer
Aside from a flying visit, I hadn’t been to London for exactly a month until I drove up last Thursday. I walked into Tom Conran’s The Cow, a pub I’ve been going to since last millennium and my twenties. MY TWENTIES! And saw it with fresh loved-up eyes. Oxytocin flooded out of me for a pub, not a puppy or a baby but a pub with red lino, great music, good beer, sparkling oysters, vibes coming out of every crack and crease of it and murals by Paul Slater.
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1 month ago | 
katespicer.substack.com | Kate Spicer
My car got locked inat Hauser + Wirththe gallery where something notable and nice for your wallscosts the earthit sits at the top of a road near my house,my rented council palace,in BrutonAccidental larks with poorly composed pictures (2025) screen grab, liquid crystals and back light. cont…
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1 month ago | 
katespicer.substack.com | Kate Spicer
Interviewer: What do you hold responsible for your success? Bukowski: A brutal childhood, alcohol, half a dozen rotten jobs, a dozen rotten women, plus an overpowering fear of everything, plus a strange arrival of luck and bravery in sub-zero situations. The Mathematics of the Breath and the Way: On Writers and WritingCharles Bukowski is an actually genius at what is called auto-fiction, confessional literature with narrative thread.
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2 months ago | 
katespicer.substack.com | Kate Spicer
*Please forgive me if you are currently dealing with something worse than having to leave a nice neighbourhood in London to move to a nice neighbourhood in the West Country lite*. In what were my most self-pitying, and yet bold, financially sensible and curious moments, I searched RightMove in Wigan, then Grimsby, even Scunthorpe. It made me feel like I was better off: big house in a nice part of Grimsby for 800 quid. Could work?
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2 months ago | 
katespicer.substack.com | Kate Spicer
Access to the locked basement of my mind is £35 a year (or £6.66 a month, ie, £80 a year)Last year I wrote a story about people who have faith and belief that you can access other realms at multiple locations on both the island of Malta and its neighbouring island, Gozo. Malta is a weird place. Churches everywhere, huge churches, more churches per capita than anywhere else on earth. People kept saying, “What do they hide. What are they trying to control.
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2 months ago | 
katespicer.substack.com | Kate Spicer
I’m moving out of my flat on Thursday. The van comes at nine and my wordly goods will go to Somerset, and my leaden heart will follow in my new motor car. I say new, it’s £2000 quid twenty year old E class Mercedes that I found on eBay and bought from a very nice British Asian gentleman in Wembley at 11pm last Sunday night. The guy was so very nice I figured his car must be nice too. I try not to give advice here, but I’m going to give some for free now.
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Mar 30, 2025 | 
katespicer.substack.com | Kate Spicer
Announcing my fantasy writing and wining retreat at Chateau de Sacy by the roundabout routeHi! I’m Troy McClure Kate Spicer. You might remember me from such newspaper articles as I'm unmarried and childless at 54!and A horrific WhatsApp ruined my life and at 55 I moved back home to live with my Mum, and I’m unmarried and childless and ate nothing but meat, eggs and dripping and the all time classic I'm 55 and newly diagnosed with ADHD.
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Mar 24, 2025 | 
katespicer.substack.com | Kate Spicer
Have you ever read any of Carrie Fisher’s books? She’s dead now. I read Post Cards from the Edge (1987) when it first came out and I’d just left home. Books don’t really stick in my mind, but this one did. It’s not just the compelling chaos and glamour of her Hollywood life, she writes with grim humour about the the downs and ups of her love life, acting career, weight, mother-daughter relationship and addiction issues. She turns her mental health tragedy in to proper LOLs comedy.