Welcome to The Flagging Dad!

Hi folks,

Thanks for stopping by.

I am a 39-year-old writer and probation officer from Leeds, UK and have been writing a humorous blog about parenting and modern life for the past few years. I am represented by the Graham Maw Christie Literary Agency.

I never thought of myself as a blog-writing kind of guy, typically associating the word “blog” with a nineteen-year-old with a double-barrelled surname finding themselves on their gap year. However, in a (largely futile) bid to promote my first book, I started writing Monday Musings back in 2015 and found myself enjoying the process. At the time, I was in my late-20s wilderness years, so early pieces tended to cover profound topics such as: going to the pub, losing valuable items, and encounters with odd people on the Megabus.

Since becoming parents in 2017 my experiences as a Flagging© dad have become the focal point of my writing. Of course, I love Louise and the kids dearly and being a parent is amazing and life-affirming etc. However, talking about the good stuff doesn’t lend itself particularly well to a humorous blog so I generally focus on the more challenging aspects. We have two wonderful sons: Joshua and Jacob. We are categorically (and scientifically) not having any more.

My readership has increased significantly since I shifted the focus from nothing in particular to parenting and rebranded as The Flagging Dad, and I’ve had a few pieces published in magazines and newspapers, most recently this one in The Daily Telegraph. It’s been lovely to hear that people find my writing amusing and relatable and I’ve received some nice endorsements from well-known faces and media types which, I’ll be honest, has been terrific for my ego. You can read these here. I will stop bigging myself up now as I’m aware that absolutely nobody wants The Bragging Dad.

So, here we are. A little late to the party, I have finally set up a Substack account to complement (and potentially outmuscle) my website and social media channels. From what I’ve seen, it seems a nice place to write a blog, so let’s see how it all goes…

Why subscribe?

My plan is to add new blog posts frequently - these will typically be humorous pieces about the delights and despairs of parenting, my job as a probation officer, and modern life in general, which will (hopefully) brighten up your day for 3-5 minutes. New posts tend to go up on Mondays, and I am also serializing my book (also called The Flagging Dad) every Thursday. You can read the intro and first chapter here.

I have recently got to 1,000 free subscribers (THANK YOU!) so i thought I would take a punt and enable paid subscriptions. Worry not: the VAST majority of new posts and all book chapters will remain completely free.

If you’d like to support my writing, it’s £3.50/month or £20/year, and you can cancel anytime with no hard feelings. There’s absolutely zero pressure to do this, and I’m massively grateful to all free subscribers.

Paid subscribers will get:

• Access to all my posts and book chapters forever (some old posts will go behind the paywall.)

• Bonus posts

• My immense gratitude

Cheers!

Andy