Embarrassing outfits or ahead of my time

When I think back to my teenage years my memories are littered with ridiculous outfits.   The worst offender is a pair of burgundy knee length “pedal pushers” (the term thankfully doesn’t even exist anymore and nor to those ridiculous trousers) that my granny made for me.   Teamed up with a little blouse with a burgundy ribbon, and burgundy lace up shoes.   I looked like a right idiot.

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Is this how we should use social media?

It is safe to say that social media has changed my life.   Without it this blog wouldn’t exist because it started from Twitter.   Without social media we wouldn’t be packing for a week away next week on what is known as a “press trip”.   Time away arranged via a travel company (in this case Canvas Holidays who are arranging accommodation for us in Italy which we are

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The kitchen appliance you can’t live without

I don’t mean the small things like the kettle (or in my case the toaster, tea maker, coffee machine, waffle maker or Thermomix.   Blimey I am not sure I could live without any of them).  I mean the bigger things, the “white goods”.   Beko recently commissioned a survey to find the kitchen appliance people couldn’t live without and a resounding majority said the fridge freezer. My knee jerk

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No more school runs

that is it.  There are no more school runs. Today is the start of my first week where I don’t need to leave the house and take children to school. I have been doing a daily school run for 18 years.   Initially juggling a school run with a toddler and then two school runs with a baby.   From being able to walk over the road and stand at

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It’s the insignificant things

I saw this picture on a friend’s Facebook wall this morning and had a lovely few minutes as I scrolled through what people had said (the friend by the way is Zoe who runs Saying Goodbye, if you don’t know the charity do look them here:  Saying Goodbye  They do the most extraordinary work) My response on Zoe’s thread was that I only like eating whole peanuts.   I don’t

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Like magazines? You will love Readly

It’s like Netflix for magazines I was trying to explain to Caity just what exactly Readly is.   “It’s an app and you can download all the magazines you like.  And you can have up to five profiles on one account so different people can have a virtual shelf of different magazines.  And it is only £7.99 a month”. I was waffling because I was so excited about such a

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Dear Kids. I am sorry

I don’t know what else to say, really. I am so sorry that your future has, effectively, just been ruined.   Everything we have worked for in the past thirty years towards your future has been destroyed by a pencil mark on a piece of paper. I went to sleep at 2am proud to be European, and I woke up at 5.30am ashamed to be English. As I was walking

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My head hurts

like really hurts.  All the time.   And I just felt I should explain as it means I can’t think.   Can’t think to put words onto here. For a few months now I have been suffering with up to 18 headaches a day.  Think ice cream brain freeze and you are pretty close.  Not cluster headaches according to the consultant who looked at MRI, but something similar.    And

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The one about the referendum

If you asked me right now which way I am voting the answer would be leave.   As in I want to leave the UK right now and come back on June 24th when it is all over.   You can’t move for column inches in the press and for live debates on the TV.  And quite frankly I am sick of it all. A month ago I genuinely didn’t

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Surviving Euros 2016

I have a confession to make, although it probably won’t come as much of a surprise if you’ve seen my Twitter: I’m not a fan of football. It’s not that I really actively dislike it, it just seems so pointless to me. And you know the worst bit? It’s after the game, when you have to watch four men sit in a box at the match, agreeing with each other that

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Turning nature into silver

On Saturday morning Mr B was up and out of the house before 7.30am to avoid the laughter and noise of eight women around the kitchen table from 9am to play golf.   When he returned just after lunch I found myself channeling my inner Lord Percy and imagining him as Blackadder:   Except I hadn’t created the finest “green”.  I had created the finest silver.  Along with some other

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5 uses for an ironing board that don’t involve ironing

We have what is known as a “formidable” ironing board.   It arrived recently and really did remind me of a robot.  Or an alien.    And as I put it up in the spare bedroom I considered how under utilised ironing boards can be.  Especially in this house <cough> You see we leave ours up all the time, it is a great piece of equipment.   Really well made,

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