Single ingredient ice cream recipe

Yes you read that correctly, single ingredient ice cream Ice cream made from a single ingredient.   So simple, even I can make it. I recently exclaimed as I looked at another revolting dinner “I really can’t cook”.    J looked at me and said “yeah, you can mum”. That’s lovely I thought Until he then continued:  “just not very well”. Oh So when I heard two people talking about

Read More

The Gallery — Sport

Sport. Hmmm not a big thing in this house. Until it comes to boys and going fast with petrol power. Show my boys (and by boys I mean a 46 year old and an almost 17 year old) something they can race and they will jump at the chance: Not content with once in an afternoon. But twice, only this time J dragged E along If jet skiing was an

Read More

The hundred year old man who climbed out through a window — August 2012

So here we go, August’s book for the MummyBarrowBookClub It all starts on the one-hundredth birthday of Allan Karlsson. Sitting quietly in his room in an old people’s home, he is waiting for the party he-never-wanted-anyway to begin. The mayor is going to be there. The press is going to be there. But, as it turns out, Allan is not…Slowly but surely Allan climbs out of his bedroom window, into

Read More

Explanations on a postcard please

You know sometimes you see something and you think “er, what?”   or even “how on earth?” Well I do that every time I see this.   So much so that this time we stopped to take a pic of it so I could capture it and ask your opinion of how this has come about: What was it? Where is the rest of it? Was it built there? Did

Read More

The best things in life are free

    ….. a great lyric from a much covered song. And actually it is true sometimes. Yesterday Mr B and I found “our beach”.    A spot we discovered on our honeymoon and thought that, due to lots of building work over subsequent years, it had been lost forever. Back in 2008 we had stopped for fuel and realised it was lunch time so thought we would grab some

Read More

The Gallery — Delicate

  Hmm now how to interpret this one?  It’s a tricky theme this week, I think. I actually planned on photographing something else when along came this last night: Four real “melt in the mouth” macarons served with our tea at the end of dinner (sorry about the lack of the other three, they sort of evaporated). Even the doily adds a certain something to how delicately we should assume

Read More

Dear Twitter

I love you.  Really I do.   I have loved you for a long time so I hope you don’t mind me approaching you in this way. I have a problem with you. And it is a serious one and I know I am not alone so I am going to cut straight to the chase. You need to sort our your Terms and Conditions of use and make it

Read More

The Secrets Between Us — Louise Douglas — A review

  It won’t have escaped your attention this week if you follow me on Twitter, that I have had an ear infection.    And this means I have not been sleeping or doing an awful lot apart from lying on the sofa feeling sorry for myself. And thank God for Louise Douglas is all I can say.   This book just about kept me sane. 500+ pages that I couldn’t

Read More

Aloe Aloe

I just wanted to share this picture with you. This is aloe vera growing naturally and it is everywhere on Barbados. You simply cut off a leaf, slit it open and then slide the cool gel out.   One of those leaves would probably be enough to fill 200ml tube back home. *Gregg Wallace voice*  Sunburn relief doesn’t get much fresher than that.

Read More

Friday night is fish fry night

    Friday night fish fry is synonymous with Barbados.   All over the island small gazebos pop up on a Friday afternoon and as the sun sets the locals start frying fish to sell to passers by. Oistins is the most famous on the island but for us that is too busy and too much like a tourist trap.   We like ours to be a bit more “ethnic”.

Read More

Germs are NOT evil

  And so it was announced by Andrew Lansley this week that all children from 2 to 17 should be offered the flu vaccine. it would save lives, prevent children being hospitalised and save costs Really? This initiative is going to cost, apparently, £100Million  a year.   One hundred million Pounds a year.  Spent by an already stretched NHS. Lansley and NHS reform has been much in the news recently

Read More

50 Shades of Twitter Competition

There seem to be “50 Shades of….. ” cropping up everywhere this summer so I thought I would do my own: A list of 50 places from where I have tweeted but one location is bogus.  Which one?  Get it right and you could win a prize. In bed.  Regularly.   First thing in the morning, last thing at night:  “Is it time to get up already?” In the library

Read More