I just looked after 5 cats in Mallorca

Can you do something experimental for yourself too?

Phiro, one of the beautiful cats I’ve been looking after this week

Hola gente! (Hello people!). I’m writing to you sitting at a wooden table surrounded by mismatched chairs in an old Mallorcan home, where a pale ginger cat sleeps on a velvet sofa behind me, his body stretched along a bright, checked blanket.

Today, this newsletter is rather an experiment, and as you might know, I’m a fan of sometimes approaching life as a series of little tests to see what happens. Thank you to the new people who joined this week - hello! And thank you, and if you like what you read, please share it.

Years ago, a therapist advised me to see dating (for example) with more of an experimental mindset, encouraging me to think about dates with curiosity, to try to get away from the racing ‘is this man my future husband’ assessments I used to put men through in my mind.

This helped me be more open-minded and less anxious and this experimental attitude has meant I’ve tried all sorts of things with a sense of possibility and fun.

The 82-year-old lady with bright blue eyes patted my thigh after a local yoga class, then looked up at me and said: ‘you are very nice’

But I’m afraid I’m not writing about dating today (though if you do want to enjoy some of the ‘juicy’ (haha) details of my love life you can read all about it here) - no, in fact, I’m doing a little experiment with how I write this newsletter, because I’ve just taken two writing classes with one of the world’s best writing teachers, and I want to see what happens.

So let me take you back to my temporary Mallorcan home, where I’m sitting on a chair at a table in a stone-walled building in a small town surrounded by vineyards first cultivated in Roman times.

In this home, there are golden statues of Buddha next to painted papier mache elephants and brown glass medicine bottles on the shelves, and outside is a paved garden where a geranium with tiny pale flowers pours out of a patio pot.  

A woman walked past on the seashore, quickly pumping her forearms up and down, up and down, as a man paced behind her

I’m here to look after five cats (plus two hangers-on), whose loving owner has detailed their nicknames, lifestyle habits and what and when they like to eat, printing this information on sheets of paper on which the black and white one likes to sit while mewing for treats.

This is my 12^th day here, and there are so many stories I want to tell. So many snippets of people and places I want to work into a narrative.

Such as the 82-year-old lady with bright blue eyes who patted my thigh after a local yoga class, then looked up at me and said: ‘you are very nice,’ as if I were a ripe fruit, to the beach I lay topless on while a woman walked past on the seashore, quickly pumping her forearms up and down, up and down, as a man paced behind her, or the Englishwoman I met on a mountain who read tarot cards and told me I’m like a jaguar in the shadows who is ready to blossom.

Or the time I went into a cyclists’ café in Palma and asked for an ‘ananas’ cake (ananas means pineapple in French not banana in Spanish) or stood at a crossroads with my friend Jess as we giggled and spontaneously took photos of each other at the same time - then threatened to run into a restaurant and spoil it with our laughter.

I borrowed a white Audi convertible from the cats’ kind owner, driving to my favourite Spanish supermarket to stock up on €2 tubs of lotion

I want to tell you about tiptoeing across a shingle beach into a choppy and cloudy and turquoise sea, as Spanish schoolchildren in lifejackets stood around on the shore, and I want to describe how I lay in a sheltered dugout to dry, next to a sign that warned of loose rocks falling from the cliffs.

I need to weave in the fact I borrowed a white Audi convertible from the cats’ kind owner, driving to my favourite Spanish supermarket to stock up on €2 tubs of lotion as Gladys Knight sang about how everybody wants to be… bougie bougie… and how I returned to my Mallorcan village home to lie on a bathmat and attempt sit-ups and press-ups – doing so almost daily, countering my efforts with soft and airy Mallorcan ensaimada pastries and patatas bravas smothered with sauce.

The most beautiful place in the world…

I need to tell you about taking writing classes on the island with one of the world’s best teachers, Alice LaPlante, who asked us to read great fiction and think about the techniques we could borrow from, and how she told me she started the group in part to avoid the ‘golf-and-gin-and-tonic’ set her husband fell in with.

Mostly, I need to tell you how I went to Mallorca because of Holly, the Zoom writing friend I made only a few months before, who I didn’t meet until last week, who told me about the cat lady who needed a cat sitter and about Alice and the writing class and the most beautiful place in the world.

What little drops of sparkle can you drop into your life from time to time?

I went to the most beautiful place in the world on Thursday, a pine tree-lined beach I drove up and down winding mountain roads in the white Audi to find, slow slow slow behind a bus, queue queue queue for an expensive car park and then lying face first on a narrow strip of white sand to tan as much of my back and the backs of my legs and my bottom as possible.

Next to me lay a buff couple and their stereo and close by was a long-haired man in a t-shirt with writing on it selling boat rides, and as I lay there, I texted Jess, who was home by now and made me laugh out loud because she went to a book launch the night before dressed ‘like a mom going camping’ (she is a mom who goes camping) while everyone else wore bras with no shirts.

I’m going to finish this now and I’m going to wonder: what experiments are you doing in your life? What are you testing out? What little drops of sparkle can you drop into your life from time to time?

Things I like

Martha Stewart posing in a swimsuit?

I just subscribed to The Unpublishable, a Substack newsletter going behind the scenes of the beauty industry. Author Jessica Defino unpicked Martha Stewart’s Sports Illustrated cover this week - at 81, Stewart became the magazine’s oldest swimsuit cover model - with the brilliant headline ‘Martha Stewart’s Sports Illustrated Cover Means Next To Nothing.’ For more on this, read Zoe Williams in the Guardian: ‘Is Martha Stewart’s Sports Illustrated cover a diversity breakthrough? No, it’s just window dressing’.