I'm a landlord now
I have an apology to make.
You all know I am a raging socialist, but I have gone back on my word.
I am now a landlord.
Although my tenants are not paying any bills, and I’m not making a profit, so maybe I’m actually offering social housing?
My tenants are, of course, two collared doves. Easily mistaken for the traditional wood pigeon, these little cuties have a black mark on the back of their necks, hence the ‘collared’ in their names.
We don’t have a particularly special garden. In fact, some might say, our garden is… well, it’s a shit hole.
We have two (sometimes three) greyhounds who roam the trodden grass, piss all over, and even, in recent years, dig holes. That, paired with our shared executive dysfunction and lack of family support, means that we never really expected to gain any admirers for the greenery outside our house. We have one tree, which Craig cuts back every year. This is where the doves have set up home.
In a time of biodiversity collapse, it’s so special to see little lives flourishing so close to our homes. Amongst the constant bad news, this is something to feel positive about.
Our tenants aren’t the only ones reproducing despite the world working against them.
Green files, in particular, have really been putting my seven-year vegan streak to the test as they have infested my favourite trail running routes and keep flying into my mouth and nose when I’m trying to jog in the sheltered trees.
I’m not sure if this is a universal experience as I can’t find any studies on whether we really are seeing biodiversity growth this year, but this thread from AskUK on Reddit suggests there are more insects flying into windscreens in 2025 than we’ve seen for years.
Your experiences
I asked on Instagram Stories for people to share stories of times when they have unwittingly become landlords to local wildlife. I received so many responses, so I thought I’d share some here:
Sam said, “We once had a racing pigeon stop by for a two-night stay, flying from Belgium to the UK.” He’s also got a resident hedgehog who digs holes under the fence and once got stuck, “we had to remove some fence to help it.”
Bex said: “We had a tiny spider in the kitchen for three months, I loved her.”
Nathan and Hollie have blue tits living in a hole in the brickwork of their house. They also had a polecat in the garden once!
Lauren has truly embraced the natural world outside her home. She said, “Omg, I’ve become obsessed with bird watching and generally being in the garden. My 30s era has officially begun. I’ve got insects, bees, butterflies, and so far eight varieties of birds.”
Josh is having a less idyllic relationship with his avian lodgers: “There's been a pair of crows tried and failed to build a nest in the shitty new build birch tree Persimmon put in our front garden but this year they finally managed, not before depositing enough sticks for about seven nests on my garden.”
I’ll leave you with this absolutely epic story from
:“When I was 15 our family cat brought a mouse into the house but left it alive. It was hopping around the kitchen, jumping like 20 times its own height and made itself impossible for us to catch for over an hour. I jury-rigged a long cardboard wrapping paper insert roll with a net laundry bag on the end and finally caught the now exhausted mouse, and we put him into my sister’s old gerbil cage.
“My mum insisted he was a Russian Jumping Mouse – something that I later discovered does not exist in nature. I was studying Russian in school at the time anyway, so I named him Vladimir, which means ruler of the world. Despite his initial non-Linnean classification, we found out he was a regular dormouse, and had no idea how old he was when he leapt into our lives.
“Still, he lived another six years in the repurposed gerbil cage in the corner of my room. He was skittish with almost everyone, but would chill out in the open when it was just me and him.
“He and the cat also developed a grudging respect and would just sit and stare at each other for hours. Vladimir had a hole in his left ear where the cat’s tooth pierced it carrying him in. In the end, he lived far longer than any of us expected, quietly chilling with me as I revised for my GCSEs, then A-levels, and then was always around to say hi when I came home from uni. He even outlived the cat.
“He finally died while I was on my year abroad in Germany, 6 years later when I was 21. That night my friends and I went out and drank some 50 toasts to him. He was a good mouse and he was my friend.”
Rest in peace, Vladimir x
Last week, we took the trek down to York to see The Wiggles Live and it was incredible. I watched them back in the 90s, and my daughter loves the new Wiggles (plus OG Anthony), so I dropped three figures on tickets back in October for the concert of a lifetime.
The next day, I gave myself context-shift-whiplash by attending the Newcastle Writing Conference by New Writing North with
. While a lot of the day was focused on fiction writers, I did benefit greatly from Richard Benson’s talk on memoir mistakes to avoid. It really felt like the kick-up-the-arse to start writing that personal essay collection I keep harping on about…Here are some things I've enjoyed over the last week:
📚 Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino - Wowwwww, I loved this novel about a girl who is an alien living on earth. While not explicitly stated, I am pretty sure this is a story of autism. I highly recommend.
🎥 Calm With Horses (MUBI) - Another unintentional tale of autism in this dark Irish thriller about a goon and his troubled relationship with a local crime family.
That’s all from me,
See you next week,
Ellen x
💌 About this email
I’m Ellen, and I write about mental health for the chronically online. I am a freelance copywriter, strategist and web designer, and I work from home with my husband, Craig, at Content By The Sea. We have two rescue greyhounds, Potter and Harmony, and a toddler.
I started this newsletter in March 2020 and have sent over 200(!) emails; currently, I have over 1,300 subscribers. I write about a wide variety of topics, including diet culture, my love of running, jealousy, my life falling apart, mam guilt, and this dystopian world we all live in.
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