Pull Up a Chair, Mate
A weekly, free space for men to say the thing they’ve been sitting on. New post every Sunday.
Why This, Why Now
I didn’t start this because I had a gap in my schedule. I started it because I kept having the same conversation with different men.
A mate, three pints in, finally saying the thing he’d been sitting on for months. A bloke after a corporate wellbeing session, hanging back until everyone else left the room so he could ask his actual question. My own dad, decades too late, telling me something he should have said when I was eight.
Same pattern every time: men carrying something heavy, alone, because nobody taught them there was another way to carry it.
I wrote Pull Up a Chair, Mate because I needed to say some of that out loud myself. Turns out a lot of other men needed to hear it too. That book is a door. This is what’s on the other side of it — the ongoing version, the bit that doesn’t end at the last page.
Why now specifically? Because Father’s Day and Men’s Health Week just reminded a few hundred thousand people that men’s wellbeing is a topic for one fortnight a year, and then everyone goes back to not talking about it. I’d rather be the boring, consistent voice that’s still here in November. No dad walks alone isn’t a slogan I trot out in June. It’s the whole point.
What This Is
Not a parenting blog. Not motivational posters with sunsets on them. If you want “5 Tips for Better Communication With Your Teen,” there are a thousand newsletters for that and you’re welcome to them.
This is the stuff men actually think and rarely say: about fatherhood, about grief, about why we’d rather fix the boiler than fix the conversation. Honest, occasionally uncomfortable, never performative. I’ll get things wrong here sometimes. I’ll say so when I do.
Think of this less as a newsletter you read and more as a chair you’ve pulled up. You don’t have to perform here. You just have to show up.
What to Expect
•New post every week. Same day, so it becomes a habit rather than a surprise.
•A mix of formats: personal essays, things I’ve learned coaching other men, the odd reader story (with permission, names changed).
•Free, full stop. Everything I publish here is free to everyone. If that changes down the line you’ll hear about it properly — no bait and switch.
•No spam, no funnel. I’m not building this to sell you something every Tuesday. I’m building it because I think it matters.
If that sounds like your kind of room, pull up a chair.