Thank you, Rebecca, for your post! I suppose it's called so, "post". I like the way you describe your sort of relationships or understandings of these digital friends of yours. It's not "real" life friends but digital. I suppose much the same (almost) as if one was blind and suddenly got the possibility to see once friends all of a sudden. Had they told you in the very beginning of your aquantencies with them who they are (or believe they are) it would possibly have been an advantage to you. I am not aiming at becoming a friend of yours, but I thank you very much indeed for your way of describing how you understand internet and digital sort of communication. All the best, A.
I'll happily fill in a few blanks about myself for you.
My name isn't really CakesWeLike, or Cakes. It's actually Nicola, and I answer to all variations of that name; Nic, Nikki, Nicky, even Nicole (most Americans default to that one).
I'm an almost 40 year old Yorkshire lass who moved to Devon for love (I met my husband, Jon, at university in Nottingham in the early 2000s).
I'm a T1 Diabetic who has lost about 70% of my eyesight due to poor decisions about diabetes control in the past. I love to bake and i write baking recipes for Wonkette. I study History for fun, and parent a teenage daughter with a gift for cooking (when she feels like it), and own 2 border collies and 2 cats who enjoy late night parkour sessions on my back and head.
And I've recently discovered a determination to enjoy gardening, I hope to be able to enjoy a salad made entirely from home grown vegetables this summer.
I am a northern lass too but from the North West. Moved to London nearly 30 years ago to be with my boyfriend (now husband), thought I would stay for a while and 3 decades later I am still here.
I love gardening but hate cooking. I would do anything to get out of cooking the evening meal. I have two daughters who are both great cooks - frankly they have had to be. I would love to grow my own food but my back garden is the size of a postage stamp so we would all starve!
I hope you get your salad. My dad grew tomatoes one year - he yielded about 5 and calculated each individual tomato had cost him about £6...you can't do much worse than that. Be sure to post a pic of your salad, I will show it to my dad!
You've already seen my solution to the tiny garden my house has - vertical planting. So far the lettuces and tomatoes seem to love it. Our soil quality is awful, it's all heavy clay, so I'm growing all my fruits and vegetables in containers. So far I've got strawberries, onions, lettuce, carrots, radishes, beetroot, peppers, and butternut squash. I'll be adding some swedes and a cucumber plant over the next month or so.
I'm now really curious as to how reality compares to your imaginary version of me.
I originally thought you were American and had visions of you working in high rise buildings, always a takeaway coffee in hand, taking no shit and being a bit of a maverick ( I told you my imagination is batshit!). I didn't see you married, but having a boyfriend but your work was your biggest commitment and he knew that and knew he couldn't contain you. Any of this sounding vaguely correct? Thought not!
Although I initially went to university to study forensic science (I dropped out), so it would have been some brightly lit forensics lab with high tech lab equipment.
Thank you - that made me smile. Especially as I AM a crofter on one of the Hebridean isles just off the north west coast of Scotland ☺️. A woman of a certain age, although I don’t wear tartan or eat haggis and I have no bonny wee grandchildren. I share your experiences of social media which frustrates and draws me in equal measure. Keep writing
Will definitely check it out, what a change of lifestyle. Why didn’t you want to stay in London and pay north of a million for a damp terrace with a postage stamp garden…it’s a mystery 🤔?! Nice to ‘meet’ you too ☺️
Oh that’s amazing… a real crofter. My imagination is running wild with that. I’m from the north of England originally, living in London for decades , midlifer, gone grey and don’t care. Husband, kids and a cat. Great to meet you, would definitely love to read about life on a croft… you might have met my friend Angela, she’s left now to be near the grand kiddies but she had some wild adventures up there (in my mind!) ☺️
A rarity indeed. We have a six acre croft on Skye and grow most of our own food. I’m relatively new to Substack but have a blog called www.ravencroft.com which goes back about five years and chronicles our move from London to the wilderness and this new way of life, including self building our home here. It’s nice to meet you, however virtually.
I was in a high pressure role in a city with a pace of life I couldn’t cope with, approaching sixty years of age. I’d always loved the island and when the opportunity came up to buy the croft my brave husband and I leapt at the chance for a completely different way of life. And being in nature, albeit a cold, wild nature. We love it
Hi Rebecca, Great writing. One of the things that places like substack allow one, is to even collect a few digital likes of one's argument or position which is rare IRL (see?). Most in my own in-person network - family, friends, acquaintances are clueless about - in my case (Gaza and Ukraine/Russia and the misery within). So it's always a breath of relief when you discover through a like or an agreeable comment that what you are opining is on the right lines, that one is not crazy. But your point of running your imagination run riot is yeah well said. Panjandrum
It’s is so great to find your ‘tribe’ here on Substack, (especially if your IRL friends are just not on the same page). I can’t lie… I get a buzz when people ‘like’ or agree with my notes and posts and it reassures me that there are other sane people out there.
Having said that, my imagination can run riot… from gothic castles to isolated crofts, I have a back story for everyone…I can’t help myself! ☺️
I can relate to this. Although my imagination isn’t as vivid as yours, I do conjure up a story for the people I interact with based purely on their profile picture. In my case it is deliberate, my profile picture is far more interesting than I am!
Love this post , made me laugh. Newish to Substack never posted before on any other platform myself . Rebecca feel free to make up good racy life story for me too ! ✌️ ✨
Thanks Frances. It’s funny but the name ‘Frances’ has a big significance in our house (for reasons I can’t go in to, not my story to tell) so every time we interact I smile a bit! You are a very intriguing person to me, by virtue of your name only. Crazy how this stuff works isn’t it? ✌️ 🌻
Rebecca, you’re hysterically funny 😹! We’ve interacted before. I’m honest as the day is long. Raised (or should I say bought up?) in Birmingham (UK, not Alabama US), now in Worcestershire.
I’m still chuckling at the photo of Angela’s grandchild 😂xxxxx
Hi Maria. Glad you enjoyed the post. I’m from the Northwest originally but have lived in London for nearly 30 years (still kept my accent though, but my girls don’t sound like me!). Great to get to know you a bit more.
I love that photo too. Poor Angela, that’s the life she could have had if she would have stuck with me! 😆
I am fairly new to the Substack party and just found you and your perfect Trump ranting this Saturday morning and love this post. I have recently been interacting with a British Mum called Lucy and I have created a whole character and life for her that is probably complete rubbish. Oh and a hilarious Mum in Dublin who I thought: “wow we would definitely be best friends if we lived closer and I wasn’t all the way in California!” I am grateful that my algorithm is now showing me more my people from UK so I can pretend for a mere moment that I don’t have to live in this awful country.
Hello Josephine… nice to bump into you again! The algorithm is working at last and our tribe is coming together. Glad someone else creates Substack characters in their heads… sign of a good writer methinks. Imagine yourself as Brit if it helps you cope with the MAGA madness… you like tea? You are halfway there! ☕️ 😊
I am a Brit! Born and raised in London with a French mum but married one of the few lovely Americans out there and now live in California which is lovely but sad my boys don’t have a trace of a British accent. I made them watch Peppa Pig and Charlie and Lola to no avail. 🥲
Thanks so much Trudi… yes, that’s exactly why I wrote this post…a photo and a name (which may even be false) and I’ve constructed a fully thought out life for my new ‘friend’… I’m quite relieved that others do the same!
I would love to read an ongoing series of the imaginary lives you have created for your followers/subscribers!
I’ve done something similar before (made up lives for people) and the utter disconnect I felt when I realised I was waaaaay out of whack was quite perturbing. And we don’t talk about the ‘oh, she’s a man’ experience I had once.,. I almost went into mourning over that one 😂
Ooh tell us more about mourning a woman that never was… that’s a post I would love to read.
Thanks for your comments Zivah. I’m still creating imaginary lives for my Substack friends… the next time I get one spectacularly wrong I will share it… knowing me, it won’t be long…
Thank you, Rebecca, for your post! I suppose it's called so, "post". I like the way you describe your sort of relationships or understandings of these digital friends of yours. It's not "real" life friends but digital. I suppose much the same (almost) as if one was blind and suddenly got the possibility to see once friends all of a sudden. Had they told you in the very beginning of your aquantencies with them who they are (or believe they are) it would possibly have been an advantage to you. I am not aiming at becoming a friend of yours, but I thank you very much indeed for your way of describing how you understand internet and digital sort of communication. All the best, A.
Thanks Carl. Glad you enjoyed the post 👍🏻
I'll happily fill in a few blanks about myself for you.
My name isn't really CakesWeLike, or Cakes. It's actually Nicola, and I answer to all variations of that name; Nic, Nikki, Nicky, even Nicole (most Americans default to that one).
I'm an almost 40 year old Yorkshire lass who moved to Devon for love (I met my husband, Jon, at university in Nottingham in the early 2000s).
I'm a T1 Diabetic who has lost about 70% of my eyesight due to poor decisions about diabetes control in the past. I love to bake and i write baking recipes for Wonkette. I study History for fun, and parent a teenage daughter with a gift for cooking (when she feels like it), and own 2 border collies and 2 cats who enjoy late night parkour sessions on my back and head.
And I've recently discovered a determination to enjoy gardening, I hope to be able to enjoy a salad made entirely from home grown vegetables this summer.
I love that Nicola, thanks so much for sharing!
I am a northern lass too but from the North West. Moved to London nearly 30 years ago to be with my boyfriend (now husband), thought I would stay for a while and 3 decades later I am still here.
I love gardening but hate cooking. I would do anything to get out of cooking the evening meal. I have two daughters who are both great cooks - frankly they have had to be. I would love to grow my own food but my back garden is the size of a postage stamp so we would all starve!
I hope you get your salad. My dad grew tomatoes one year - he yielded about 5 and calculated each individual tomato had cost him about £6...you can't do much worse than that. Be sure to post a pic of your salad, I will show it to my dad!
You've already seen my solution to the tiny garden my house has - vertical planting. So far the lettuces and tomatoes seem to love it. Our soil quality is awful, it's all heavy clay, so I'm growing all my fruits and vegetables in containers. So far I've got strawberries, onions, lettuce, carrots, radishes, beetroot, peppers, and butternut squash. I'll be adding some swedes and a cucumber plant over the next month or so.
I'm now really curious as to how reality compares to your imaginary version of me.
Vertical planting- why didn't I think of that!
I originally thought you were American and had visions of you working in high rise buildings, always a takeaway coffee in hand, taking no shit and being a bit of a maverick ( I told you my imagination is batshit!). I didn't see you married, but having a boyfriend but your work was your biggest commitment and he knew that and knew he couldn't contain you. Any of this sounding vaguely correct? Thought not!
Ah, the life I could have lived...
Although I initially went to university to study forensic science (I dropped out), so it would have been some brightly lit forensics lab with high tech lab equipment.
I am a shit psychic. I thought one guy was part of the eastern European nobility and lived in a castle. He was Swedish. Probably lived in a flat.
Your life sounds more interesting anyway... I would rather grow my own salad than work in a corporate jungle any day!
Thank you - that made me smile. Especially as I AM a crofter on one of the Hebridean isles just off the north west coast of Scotland ☺️. A woman of a certain age, although I don’t wear tartan or eat haggis and I have no bonny wee grandchildren. I share your experiences of social media which frustrates and draws me in equal measure. Keep writing
Will definitely check it out, what a change of lifestyle. Why didn’t you want to stay in London and pay north of a million for a damp terrace with a postage stamp garden…it’s a mystery 🤔?! Nice to ‘meet’ you too ☺️
Oh that’s amazing… a real crofter. My imagination is running wild with that. I’m from the north of England originally, living in London for decades , midlifer, gone grey and don’t care. Husband, kids and a cat. Great to meet you, would definitely love to read about life on a croft… you might have met my friend Angela, she’s left now to be near the grand kiddies but she had some wild adventures up there (in my mind!) ☺️
A rarity indeed. We have a six acre croft on Skye and grow most of our own food. I’m relatively new to Substack but have a blog called www.ravencroft.com which goes back about five years and chronicles our move from London to the wilderness and this new way of life, including self building our home here. It’s nice to meet you, however virtually.
I was in a high pressure role in a city with a pace of life I couldn’t cope with, approaching sixty years of age. I’d always loved the island and when the opportunity came up to buy the croft my brave husband and I leapt at the chance for a completely different way of life. And being in nature, albeit a cold, wild nature. We love it
That’s brilliant… what an adventure, I’m in awe.
I’m trying to read your blog but it’s taking a while to open. Will keep trying… I’m intrigued!
I am John. Dang it.
😂. Love it.
Everyone wishes they were Scottish. Everyone.
Even Trump. Poor Scotland 😔🏴
Hi Rebecca, Great writing. One of the things that places like substack allow one, is to even collect a few digital likes of one's argument or position which is rare IRL (see?). Most in my own in-person network - family, friends, acquaintances are clueless about - in my case (Gaza and Ukraine/Russia and the misery within). So it's always a breath of relief when you discover through a like or an agreeable comment that what you are opining is on the right lines, that one is not crazy. But your point of running your imagination run riot is yeah well said. Panjandrum
It’s is so great to find your ‘tribe’ here on Substack, (especially if your IRL friends are just not on the same page). I can’t lie… I get a buzz when people ‘like’ or agree with my notes and posts and it reassures me that there are other sane people out there.
Having said that, my imagination can run riot… from gothic castles to isolated crofts, I have a back story for everyone…I can’t help myself! ☺️
Hilarious! But also so true, love the picture of Angela’s grandchild.
Thanks Mercedes.
I know, what a cute child! Furthers my sadness for the life Angela could have had, if she would have stuck with me! 😆
I can relate to this. Although my imagination isn’t as vivid as yours, I do conjure up a story for the people I interact with based purely on their profile picture. In my case it is deliberate, my profile picture is far more interesting than I am!
I’m glad I’m not the only one who does it Fran!
Love this post , made me laugh. Newish to Substack never posted before on any other platform myself . Rebecca feel free to make up good racy life story for me too ! ✌️ ✨
Thanks Frances. It’s funny but the name ‘Frances’ has a big significance in our house (for reasons I can’t go in to, not my story to tell) so every time we interact I smile a bit! You are a very intriguing person to me, by virtue of your name only. Crazy how this stuff works isn’t it? ✌️ 🌻
Rebecca, you’re hysterically funny 😹! We’ve interacted before. I’m honest as the day is long. Raised (or should I say bought up?) in Birmingham (UK, not Alabama US), now in Worcestershire.
I’m still chuckling at the photo of Angela’s grandchild 😂xxxxx
Hi Maria. Glad you enjoyed the post. I’m from the Northwest originally but have lived in London for nearly 30 years (still kept my accent though, but my girls don’t sound like me!). Great to get to know you a bit more.
I love that photo too. Poor Angela, that’s the life she could have had if she would have stuck with me! 😆
I am fairly new to the Substack party and just found you and your perfect Trump ranting this Saturday morning and love this post. I have recently been interacting with a British Mum called Lucy and I have created a whole character and life for her that is probably complete rubbish. Oh and a hilarious Mum in Dublin who I thought: “wow we would definitely be best friends if we lived closer and I wasn’t all the way in California!” I am grateful that my algorithm is now showing me more my people from UK so I can pretend for a mere moment that I don’t have to live in this awful country.
Hello Josephine… nice to bump into you again! The algorithm is working at last and our tribe is coming together. Glad someone else creates Substack characters in their heads… sign of a good writer methinks. Imagine yourself as Brit if it helps you cope with the MAGA madness… you like tea? You are halfway there! ☕️ 😊
I am a Brit! Born and raised in London with a French mum but married one of the few lovely Americans out there and now live in California which is lovely but sad my boys don’t have a trace of a British accent. I made them watch Peppa Pig and Charlie and Lola to no avail. 🥲
Love this post! It’s amazing what we create based on a few interactions.
Thanks so much Trudi… yes, that’s exactly why I wrote this post…a photo and a name (which may even be false) and I’ve constructed a fully thought out life for my new ‘friend’… I’m quite relieved that others do the same!
Haha we do!
I would love to read an ongoing series of the imaginary lives you have created for your followers/subscribers!
I’ve done something similar before (made up lives for people) and the utter disconnect I felt when I realised I was waaaaay out of whack was quite perturbing. And we don’t talk about the ‘oh, she’s a man’ experience I had once.,. I almost went into mourning over that one 😂
I’ve subscribed… I’ll keep my eye out for it ☺️
Ooooh, thank you for subscribing! I’ll work on it soon 😊
Ooh tell us more about mourning a woman that never was… that’s a post I would love to read.
Thanks for your comments Zivah. I’m still creating imaginary lives for my Substack friends… the next time I get one spectacularly wrong I will share it… knowing me, it won’t be long…
I’ve saved that story for a future post!
Thoroughly enjoyed this!
That’s great, really glad your sister is liked it.
Brilliant 😁😁😁
Thanks 🙏
This is hilarious. And Angela’s imaginary grandchild is just - chef’s kiss!
Oh I know, that child! Was worth writing the post to find that little cutie alone ☺️