You might be a loose end tonight after the tennis has finished so I thought you might like this little quiz that have just found in my inbox from Mr Cooke. First subscriber to my blog (yes, you need to be a subscriber) who emails me with the correct answers will win something off my desk. All the answers are London tube stations. Girls’ doll is able to Are
Musings
My Everyday
The theme for yesterday’s Gallery pic was “Everyday” and as you know, no two days for me are ever the same. Are they for anybody? I suspect not. So I thought I would chart a day in the life of me: 04.45 — Hear Mr B telling J to go to bed 05.00 — Curse the world that I am still awake 05.05 — Check Twitter and change
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Musings
The Slap — July 2012
This is the first book in our new book club <excited face>. Read it and then come back and comment, or write your own blog review and link up below. I will write my review in a month, when the link closes. Winner of the 2009 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, Christos Tsiolkas’s The Slap is a riveting page-turner and a powerful, haunting rumination on contemporary middle-class family life. When a
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Musings
The Gallery — The Everyday
What a great theme. Prompted by the fact that many photos these days are planned, cropped, edited, photo shopped or Instagrammed. Or maybe one of ten all taken in quick succession so the final edit is as near perfect as it can be. This is an opportunity to show a photo that is spontaneous and maybe not of an amazing event. Possibly not perfectly framed. The light not so
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Nurturing
Dear 16 year old me
Dear 16 year old me It’s 2012 and you have just heard about people writing to their 16 year old selves so you thought you might do the same. First of all T I want you to know that you actually turn out to be alright. It might only be August 1985 for you right now, but stop fretting and just relax. You are 42 now, married and you
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Musings
Rock of Ages
I really want to say “what the actual f*ck” but that might offend my inlaws and parents. <waves in apology> I wasn’t sure what I was expecting when I went to see this on Friday night with E. A girlie night out to the cinema as E really wanted to see it and I was feeling guilty for being away last weekend. The stage play is a huge success and
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Musings
I am a mum in London. I know how to have a good time, dammit
Picture the scene. You are in a trendy hotel. In a funky/buzzy part of London. You have money in your pocket so you can do stuff. You have no kids to sort out child care for. You have no plans. You don’t have to drive so you can drink. The whole of London is at your disposal. It is Saturday night. So what would you do? If you are
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Musings
Dear David Beckham OBE
I love you. Really I do. Whenever I am in Alderley Edge I look at the end of the drive where you once lived and wish I had been in the area then. In Marks and Spencers in Handforth I always keep an eye out for you. Lady B tells me that she knows people who have seen you in there and that without exception you have always been lovely.
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Musings
Lets be honest
This is the overwhelming message I brought home from my weekend away. It wasn’t how to get the stats up on my blog or how to make my pictures more amazing. Though that was why I went. Those were the workshops I attended and whilst they were all brilliant they weren’t the main thing I learnt. No, it was about being an honest blogger. Honest to who I am and
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Musings
Standing Ovations
I read a fabulous line in a book recently. A novel called Wonder by RJ Palacio that tells the story of August, a ten year old boy with a facial disfigurement. There is a review of it on this blog: (Wonder) and I implore you to read it, it is just most brilliant book. The line is “everybody deserves at least one standing ovation in their life”. Isn’t that so
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Musings
Parcel Farce
Things go wrong. It is a fact of life. Companies cannot foresee every eventuality but when they go wrong how they communicate the problem is far more important. Any reasonable person will forgive the issue but wont forgive being ignored. And being ignored can make what might have been a small issue, a whole lot worse. Why am I telling you this? I will tell you why I am telling
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Musings
This is it. This is THE weekend
This is the weekend we have all been looking forward to. It is finally here We have our tickets in our hands. Tickets we bought before we even knew who the headline acts would be. Before we knew who would be speaking at all. We just knew we had to get tickets as soon as they were available. We have left our children behind, rolling their eyes and saying “you