This is hopefully an approach that benefits whoever is reading, but it does make me worry that I’ll sound ungrateful, or tone deaf - “millions of people would love that holiday!” - even though actually what I’m trying to do, as with all the other things I test and mull over and review, is to decide whether that particular holiday is really worth the time, money and effort.

In a world of travel reviews that are frequently - let’s face it - severely biased, because the reviewer has quite often gone for free, I like to think that I’m offering a more realistic viewpoint with these unbiased family holiday reviews. But it does keep me awake at night*, wondering how it’ll all come across.

*for at least seven minutes.

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The other reason it takes me so long to review my holidays (I mean we still haven’t had the Center Parcs write-up and I went there last December!) is that they necessarily involve talking about kids, and the fact that holidays with kids are never as relaxing or good value as holidays without kids. Again, I fret that this will come across as ungrateful - “cherish every moment!” “blink and they will have left home!” - (my God, I bet loads of parents wish they could blink and their grown-up kids would leave home, hohoho!) but holidaying with kids is a very specific extreme sport and it needs to be addressed in an honest way.

Now I know that a lot of people manage incredible holidays abroad with their kids, where they camp out on remote Spanish beaches cooking freshly caught fish on an old car radiator, or hire a crumbling old Portuguese townhouse and spend their days pootling around food markets and encouraging their kids to try local, delicacies. A lot of people seem to manage these holidays really well, wherever they go, and report back with great enthusiasm.

Gite in the middle of nowhere in Provence, plagued by wasps and serviced only by a three hundred year-old water well and two small solar panels? We had the most amazing time! they write. So wholesome! We made jam - or should I say “confiture!” - and the boys loved splashing in the lake until sundown, when we would sit by candlelight drinking red wine and playing Uno.

What the actual. Who are these people? Why do they like spending their downtime making jam? How are they able to play Uno by candlelight without one or more of their kids having a total breakdown because they’re up too late/overexcited by their proximity to real fire/sensing you’re relaxing with red wine therefore need to do something to obliterate your downtime?

WHY DO THESE PEOPLE NOT MENTION THE WASPS?

Full disclaimer: I love my kids as much as the next man. More, if the next man is Michael Owen. They are my world centre, they occupy the majority of my thoughts throughout the day, they bring me the most intense joy and when I make any plans for the future, no matter how small, they are the most-considered factor. I would lie on a train track for them. I would (and you know what a sacrifice this would be) squeeze myself into a tight underground tunnel for them. (Caveat: would require sedation, most likely, and would also want some sort of hinged lid on the top side of the tunnel, like an escape door, that would be immediately flung open by a capable tunnelling pro-expert if I knocked upon it three times.)

And I do love going away with them. It’s brilliant! Their little faces when they see new things, when they get excited by big boats or things going on at the airport, or ask me loads of anxiety-inducing questions about aeronautical engineering when we’re in the boarding queue. But I swear you are fibbing if you tell me that holidays with kids are as relaxing and enjoyable as they were before you had them.

There’s no comparison, surely? In the one scenario you’re fighting the same battles you fight at home: finding things for them to eat at the local Mini Mart, spending half an hour slathering them in sun cream as they try to wriggle away, worrying that the pool inflatables aren’t fit for purpose and that they will disappear off across the completely flat, motionless, life-guarded sea riding a glittery lilac unicorn despite the fact that you’re standing there holding onto its muzzle. Negotiating every single element of the day including how much they can play Mario Karts and whether or not they can use your phone to look up how much a rare Beyblade L-Drago Guardian costs, checking that they are putting their used toilet roll pieces into the small pedal bin next to the toilet and not into the toilet, which is a new type of hell in itself, trying to download a new Audiobook to get them to sleep when it’s already 11pm and you’ve forgotten the password to your Audible account and the email address it’s registered to is only linked to your laptop.

Gah.

In the other scenario, in which you are totally free from all and any responsibility, you lie on a lounger for nine uninterrupted hours, maybe getting up for lunch but maybe not, because it’s not as though you need to fuel any activity with food, and then you float to some form of dinner, which might just be fries and mayonnaise and rosé, and then you fall into bed and dream about what sort of business idea would allow you to retire at 48 so that you can live permanently on holiday.

Tell me they’re the same thing! Go on! Tell me!

So anyway, all of this flies around my brain when I’m wondering how to present my holiday write-up. I wish I could just do two lists and say “this was shit” and “this was good” and then people could try and use their critical thinking skills to work out whether our holiday philosophies, holiday budgets and holiday goals vaguely align; but we all know that the internet is now devoid of any nuance and so all content must be over-explained and plastered in disclaimers.

With that in mind, here’s a review of my family holiday to Paros. I should say at this point that one of the primary objectives of booking this particular holiday (self-catering, not a buffet in sight) was to compare it to the holiday we had at Ikos the year before. Because for all of Ikos Olivia’s faults (mainly being just far too expensive, in my opinion, for what you actually get, the review is here), I have to admit that when I was there I was completely relaxed.

I mean, apart from having constant heartburn due to the fact I’d spent three times as much on the holiday as I would ever have normally spent, and feeling a searing sense of anger every time the food was sub par (which was often) and wanting to cry with sad, ironic laughter every time we queued to go to the buffet - THE BUFFET! - in this so luxurious, so exclusive resort, and apart from the fact my blood boiled each time someone in our “bungalow” block closed a door because it shook our entire headboard and made me feel as though I was in some weird concrete holiday prison cell… Apart from all this I was completely relaxed.

I didn’t have to make any decisions, I didn’t have to go to a supermarket and have the entire queue stare at me because I hadn’t had my nectarines weighed and would therefore have to do the walk of shame back to the woman with the weighing scales while everyone waited, I didn’t have to decide where we would go for dinner or get into a car to go to dinner or look at a map to get us to where we were going for dinner and, if the dinner was a bit mediocre (which it often was) I didn’t then have to pay a bill for it.

(Yes I know it was actually all paid for, royally, twice over, but that’s the joy of all inclusive - you can kid yourself that all the food is for free because you just get up and leave at the end of the meal.)

So the brief for this year’s holiday was this: find a holiday with the same sense of luxury and convenience as Ikos, but with more privacy, more living space and better food.

But readers, guess what? I booked late. I started looking at the end of May, to go in August. And I soon realised that replicating the convenience of a luxury all-inclusive resort was going to be nigh on impossible. There were no villas, pretty much anywhere in Greece, that were within an hour of an airport but that were also within an easy walk of restaurants and a beach. We would need to hire a car. (First inconvenience, because we all know what a palaver hiring a car abroad is.)

The villas that I did find that more or less fit the bill were so expensive that Ikos began to look positively thrifty. It felt like a lose-lose situation: more than I wanted to ever spend, but without any of the carefree conveniences of Ikos. The transfers, the luggage-taken-to-room, the “free” ice creams and drinks and lunches and post-dinner cocktails.

The villas that didn’t fit the bill at all in terms of convenience were much more purse-pleasing and so, in the interests of research, I booked a villa that required a flight, a taxi journey, a ferry and then a car journey along a stretch of unmade road that contained potholes so big you could live in them to get to it. Did the villa have any places to eat nearby? No it did not. Could we walk to a shop? Negative. Would we have an eighteen hour journey on the way home, due to the ferry/flight timings and needing to leave enough time for potential ferry delays? Not something to worry about. Eighteen hours? Where’s the inconvenience in that.

I have to say though: Paros. You do get a superb quality of Greek island when you need to take a ferry to get to it. I don’t want to sound snobby, because I love a direct flight destination as much as the rest of us, but it doesn’t half cut out a lot of touristy hell when you go to somewhere that requires that extra bit of effort to reach. Just that one ferry journey!

And I realise that Paros is probably massively touristy compared with some of the other smaller Greek islands (and definitely with a lot of the places in mainland Greece that I’ve visited) but if you’ve ever been to Santorini, or to Mykonos, then you will know the “touristy hell” of which I speak.

Paros just felt positively lovely, even the areas that were heaving with visitors, like the ferry port in Parikia and the whole of Naousa. I can’t imagine it’ll be long before Paros airport expands and direct flights come in and then you get an Ikos or a Grecotel popping up on there, because isn’t this the way of the world, but for now it just feels…nice. Like the tourist spots of yore. A few popular towns and villages and then the rest of the island left relatively undeveloped and bare. Head into the mountains to Lefkes and it’s so quiet you could hear a pin drop, it’s like going back in time. Pop to Aliki for lunch and yes, it’s thrumming with groups of people but it feels properly pleasant. Wholesome.

We went for seven days and the villa we rented was this one with Pretty Greek Villas. When Rich gets back from Sainsbury’s I’ll ask him what he rated it out of ten. He didn’t care that it wasn’t near any shops or restaurants: he absolutely loved the view. We looked over Parikia and he spent most days watching the ferries and cruise ships and mega-expensive billionaire yachts coming and going out of the port. There was a pool for the kids to splash about in and a small beach around 100 metres or so away. Had we wanted to, we could have turned left and walked all the way along a bigger stretch of beach to a place called Crios, which was a fancy restaurant and bar playing the sort of trendy chill-out music you get in expensive bars in Ibiza in the daytime.

You could hire loungers there and order food to your lounger, but it was something like eighty euros for the loungers and then a minimum food spend and Rich refused on principal and because he hates places like that with a passion.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Possibly the best part of the holiday, for me, was the adventure of the whole thing. I do think that’s what you miss out on with a package holiday. In a way, when you do a package holiday to a resort, what are you actually going away for? The heat? Because you don’t see much of the surroundings, you don’t explore any of the place you’ve flown to, you just go airport - taxi - resort - taxi - airport. I really enjoyed the ferry journeys, though getting on and off them was completely chaotic and everyone almost died of sunstroke waiting in the queue to get on.

We took the huge car ferry, which takes 3.5 hours from Santorini and I thought that it was so exciting, passing dozens of rocky islands that all look like the sort of islands from the Greek myths and legends where demi-Gods have been left to be pecked to death by crows, etc. When we stopped in at Naxos to let people off, it was like being on a mini cruise. I imagine. I am the least likely person to go on a cruise, because I watched Titanic in 1997 and the sinking scenes seared into my brain, and then I saw a video online about how you escape a cruise ship in an emergency if the lifeboats can’t be lowered and that just about did it for me.

Greek Ferries though: I’m in. So I loved the ferry bit and I loved - loved - exploring the old towns in Parikia and Naousa. Both Naousa and Parikia old towns are beautiful; tiny cobbled streets between white sugar cube buildings, cute little tavernas with tables so close to the sea they’re almost falling into it, sexy-looking bars hidden away in dark corners, it’s all a travel marketer’s dream. I really liked it, the whole place, though I’m going to be probably slightly controversial and say that I thought Parikia was actually a bit more interesting than Naousa, which is the “front of the postcard” place. The functional seafront and the noisy, chaotic port would lead you think that this was just the place where you get off the ferry and hire a car, but hidden behind these roads are the most gorgeous little lanes and passageways, you could write a brilliant book set there!

I would absolutely say that Paros is worth the extra bit of travel. Would I particularly go there with kids? Possibly not. I think that other places in Greece have better beaches and a bit more to do, but for swanking around as adults, it’s gorgeous.

In terms of cost, the villa was £3700 for the week (slept six, so if you were sharing with other adults in would be infinitely better value, or indeed if you didn’t go in August when it would be approx a third of the price!) and we spent around £400 on car hire and about £130-£150 a day on food, drink and ice creams for the four of us. (When I say “drink”, Rich probably had two small beers a night, I had one or two small glasses of wine, so we weren’t tearing it up!)

Total cost, so that we can compare with the Ikos holiday? Around £5100, without flights. Ikos (*cries*) came in at £9792, which I think was €11,000. And I am fully aware that even the lower cost holiday is hugely expensive. The Ikos holiday was the most I had ever spent on a holiday, by a long way, and would never ever spend this again. (Could never spend this again!)

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Pros of the self-catered holiday: we all had our own room, more space in general, our own pool with incredible views and a sense of total privacy. We explored, got a real feel for the place we’d travelled to, and we enjoyed the adventures we went on in the absolutely brutal heat that always felt very ill-advised, like we could die of thirst or spontaneous-combustion at any moment. Exciting! We could choose where to eat, and the local tavernas and restaurants were way, way better than anything we had at Ikos. (Don’t want to keep singling Ikos out here, maybe we got a dud one, but I have no other family resort experience to compare it with!)

Cons of the self-catered holiday: the adventures required planning and getting into a car. We had to do at least one supermarket trip, which is my absolute holiday turn-off, and the kids could only amuse themselves so much in one small pool before they started to get twitchy for something else to do. Everything at a resort is completely convenient, and almost everything when you self-cater is the opposite.

The question is, what price do you put on convenience? Is it worth double? I honestly still haven’t worked this one out, so answers in the comments. Because yes, a resort is convenient, but you’re still all squashed into one room (unless you have the funds of Jeff Bezos) which is positively un-luxurious in my books, and you’re still mostly eating food that is, let’s face it, cooked en masse by caterers. It’s never going to have the same care put into it as an age-old seafront Taverna that’s been serving the same list of specials for over a hundred years, etc etc, play traditional background music.

Is it really worth the money, to shell out twice as much for a resort but then feel overwhelmed with absolutely blinding rage when you see people reserving sun loungers around the pool, spreading out their beach bags and towels? To all be queueing for the breakfast buffet - A BUFFET! At that price! - where you’ll then sit shoulder to shoulder with people who are conducting full-volume Facetime conversations with relatives back home?

I’m dumping my thoughts, now, but I do think I’m slowly coming around to Rich’s philosophy when it comes to family holidays, which is this: accept that the holiday should be for the kids - happy kids, happy family - and don’t set the bar too high in terms of expectations. Keep travel plans simple and unstressful. Maybe he’s onto something. After all, both kids have listed “the trip to Yorkshire” (2023) as one of their best holidays ever! I think it’s because they went pony trekking, which they loved, and we visited two castles (also a big hit) and ate in loads of old dark pubs that did good chips and pies.

Could it be that holidays in the UK will be the way forward for us? I’ll keep you informed. I have to say that the flights to and from Greece that so depleted me at the time now feel like a distant memory, and I’m being bombarded online with content about Mallorca, and my neighbours go all the time to Mallorca, so now - in typical me style - I’m wondering why we’ve never been to Mallorca and whether that could be the place that finally gives us a stress-free, convenient, family-pleasing holiday!

Watch this space. Rich had better not read this, he might weep in despair…

Hit the heart button, if you can summon up the energy - it helps send the post to people who have yet to be introduced to my particular brand of thought chaos. Oh, also, let me know in the comments where you stand when it comes to resort holidays vs self-catering and also if you have any intel regarding Mallorca. Merci beaucoup!

I know it’s the safest form of travel. I know that you have to think of turbulence as just like being on a bumpy road. I am perfectly au fait with the various failsafes and emergency protocols that airlines employ to ensure that an accident is very, very, very, very unlikely, but forgive me if hurtling through the air at 30,000 feet in what amounts to a tin can with wings doesn’t fill me with absolute confidence.

Do you know what, as well, it’s the safety briefing that freaks me out. I should just not listen to it, really, but I am both a people-pleaser and a law-abiding citizen and so when I am told to pay attention by someone wearing a tabard, lanyard or any sort of official-looking uniform then I give them my full gaze.

The shitty little life jacket! I mean honestly, what would this do in an emergency? You’re not even allowed to inflate it until you’re outside of the aeroplane, until you’re hurtling down a yellow blow-up slide into the pitch black, freezing cold Atlantic: at what stage are you really going to be able to get your shit together to find that little toggle and give it a firm tug? I’d have trouble locating it if it was directly beneath my in-seat reading light!

And then the whistle and the torch. It all feels so futile, and what it says to me is, subliminally, “if we land on water then you are absolutely f*cked.”

I’m sorry, it does.

So I am not great with flying, really, despite being incredibly well-practised, and I have to do my own little very quiet sort of meditation to get through it. I read once that all of the bad plane things happen in the first thirty seconds, and so as soon as the plane begins careering down the runway, making that hellish racket that sounds as though you’re trying to make your Dad’s 1984 Ford Cortina do sixty miles an hour in second gear (me, summer of 1998), I begin a very slow count.

Five counts breathing in, five counts holding the breath, five counts out. Thirty times. Which amounts to way more than thirty seconds, but I find comfort in that. I keep my eyes closed, I gently clasp my hands together and I imagine - don’t laugh - that the world is ending from a Zombie apocalypse/nuclear disaster and that I’m on the last plane out of Dodge.

Somehow, this mentally reinforces that being on the plane is actually the safest place for me to be. Safer than the bus that ferried me across the tarmac. Safer than the dodgy Uber driver who dropped me at the airport, who looked at his Whatsapp messages every thirty seconds even when he was doing eighty-five down the motorway. Safer than the Gatwick Express!

I have somehow managed, in this way, with my little methods, to keep my fear under control and not let my dislike of flying interfere with my work or my life. But here’s the problem: when I’m flying with the kids, all of my little methods go completely out of the window. Or not out of the window, because that doesn’t open (hopefully!) but you know what I mean. I simply cannot call upon my usual coping strategies.

My daughter, eleven, is absolutely fine - she gets travel sick, but is otherwise non-fazed by the whole process of airport, flying, landing, airport - but my son, who is nine, has an almost infinite number of questions about aeroplanes, pilots, and flying as soon as we begin queueing up in the line for boarding.

And it would be OK if these questions were about, I don’t know, where they store all of the sandwiches, or what happens if you want to take your dog on a plane, or whether they sometimes get all of the suitcases mixed up and send them to the wrong country. I could cope with that, but his questions are both complex and morbid, tending to focus on aeronautical engineering failures and potential fatal mid-air disasters:

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Lying out in the sun with a massive hat on and a lightweight towel draped over the top of my head for extra shade? Reading. Lounging in a hammock under a tree with cicadas dropping into my lap every few minutes (downside of that particular scenario): reading. Belted securely into my aeroplane seat? You’ve guessed it.

But if I’m on holiday, and I’m not supposed to be on my laptop, and I feel guilty for doing admin on my phone, then what else is there to do?

Spend time with the family?! Pah!

I jest, of course: that’s the whole point of a holiday, isn’t it, to spend time with each other. But there’s always a major flaw in my holiday plans, which is that I tend to book holidays to places that are hotter than the actual surface of the sun, and also I book them IN AUGUST, when the pavements melt and the water comes out from the taps already boiling. And so it is always too hot for the kids to be outside until the late afternoon comes around. They usually spend half the day hiding inside, watching TV and doing all the stuff we’re on holiday to get away from.

I have no idea why I book the same eye-burningly hot locations every time - for the past five years it’s been Greece, Greece, Turkey, Greece, Greece. Always teetering on the brink of 40 degrees, always ridiculously brutal from around 11am until 4pm, to the point where you can’t walk barefoot on the sand, or potter around the shops.

It’s like a weird compulsion, that I must have a holiday somewhere so hot that the trees spontaneously burst into flames as you look at them, otherwise it hasn’t truly been a holiday. Is it because everyone was so obsessed with “getting some sun” in the eighties?

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We’ll return to this subject soon. I’ve done a lot of soul-searching over the past few weeks and I might well have come up with a handy checklist for any parents who are at a loss as to what makes the perfect family holiday. I know I wrote about this briefly earlier in the year, but I totally ignored my own advice, didn’t I (stay in the UK, go somewhere familiar, keep expectations low) and so I have reviewed and revised my guidelines and now have a really solid set of rules to follow. Yes, they’re decidedly pessimistic and yes they also cast parenting in a slightly grim light, almost to the point where you could show them to people as a mild form of contraception, but boy will they save you some money over the years!

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Back to the books. I read eight of them in nine days, which Rich doesn’t believe is possible but when you think that we spent seven whole hours at Santorini airport waiting for our flight home and that an 80,000 word book takes the average reader around 6.5 hours to get through… Of course I ploughed through an entire stash of them. Two flights, two ferry journeys (we went to Paros), countless hours when the kids were inside the little villa watching Is It Cake? and playing Mario Karts, more countless hours when I couldn’t sleep at night, because the bed mattress had only marginally more flex than an iron girder…

Here’s what I finished, what I abandoned and which books I’d recommend:

Look What You Made Me Do, John Lanchester

Massively enjoyed this, tore through it! Oh, I forgot to mention: all of the books I read were ones I downloaded to my new Kindle. So my choices were very much guided by which books were in the 99p sale or, even better, included in the Kindle Unlimited section, which meant that I could borrow them for free.

(I had a three month subscription to Kindle Unlimited thrown in for free when I bought my device recently.)

This one, though, Look What You Made Me Do, I bought for 99p before I left. It had been popping up in my recommended things for weeks and I actually had the paper version in my “saved for later” basket so I was thrilled to get it for a penny shy of a quid.

Good cover, very graphic and bold and fully representative of the middle-class content within, and an excellent, snappy, sharp-witted opening chapter. One of the things I first noticed about the book was that I disliked nearly every character, but once the story got going, with all of its twists and turns, I began to realise that this was sort of the whole point.

The story opens with what seems to be the perfect long-term “cosmopolitan” marriage. Decades long, this marriage, but still lively and full and packed with all of the little secrets and nicknames and shared memories that couples collect together over time. A successful, late-middle-aged couple, no kids, living in an affluent street in West London, going to Ottolenghi-themed dinner parties and having intelligent conversations about politics and so on, which feels a million light years away from my life now but I can totally envisage. Especially as it’s drawn so brilliantly well here. More than a hint of smugness to it.

But - and not to spoil things - the whole idyll is shattered almost immediately. And then there’s a horrible, sickening dark twist. And then we meet a new set of characters and there’s another sickening twist, and as it all goes un-merrily along, the storylines become entwined and the characters become more and more unlikeable and it’s just very well executed.

A strong start to the holiday reading, I must say. The writing was sharp and practical and modern, no flowery descriptions, no meandering passages of self-reflection. And yes, a set of characters who all maybe did or maybe didn’t realise how utterly gross they were.

I downloaded it here

North Woods, Daniel Mason

This was a completely different kettle of fish: intricate, dense with history, the story of one piece of land in America and the people who inhabited it over generations. There’s a lot about apples in it, and it did make me want to taste the specific apple they grew in the orchard that was planted on the land, all trees grown from the pip of an apple core that was in the stomach of one of three soldiers who had attacked the first woman who had lived in a cabin on the land, but then who had either got an axe in his head or shot with an arrow, I can’t now remember, but you now see why I say that the book is dense with history: but honestly I can’t believe that this special apple could be better than a Pink Lady from the Co-op.

I don’t use the Co-op often, I don’t think there even is one in Bath, but there’s one in Bridport, not too far from The Dorset Nook and The Dorset Nest (holiday cottages I own and run, one open, one about to be) and let me tell you that their Pink Lady apples are a cut above anyone else’s. Just the right balance of sweetness and crisp, delicious tartness, oh my God. I struggle to believe that the apples described in North Woods, that are so central to the story and to the conflicts between characters in the story, can be as good as the ones at the Co-op.

I say this as an authority on Pink Ladies, as I have tried them from every single supermarket and I always take note of the particular orchard or “farm” they have come from. Although I didn’t for the Co-op ones and so I will have to get more, check that they’re the same and then tell you the specific name. Protect this orchard at all costs!

Anyway the book is good. The last couple of chapters annoyed me and when you read it you will probably see why - a weak ending, I thought, but it didn’t detract from the overall enjoyment. A great, interesting passage-through-the-ages sort of book that has stayed with me.

I bought it here

Nesting, Roisin O'Donnell

A difficult read. Big trigger warning for domestic abuse, and the way this is written feels very immediate and urgent, altogether very stressful. But at the same time, you’re rooting for the central character so intensely, completely invested in all of the highs and lows, and when the highs come, you find yourself loudly cheering.

I actually think that this is a hugely important read; it shows that abuse can come in all shapes and forms and that being under the threat of violence, or being gradually, quietly controlled by someone, can be utterly life-ruining and terrifying.

I borrowed it from Kindle Unlimited here

The Correspondent, Virginia Evans

I enjoyed this book immensely but also sobbed quite loudly and alarmingly before I’d even reached the halfway point. I surprised myself, and also the two little resident Greek kittens who liked to bask underneath my sunlounger while I was reading. Out they shot, off down the garden!

Premise of this one, if I had to shove it unceremoniously into a nutshell: woman in her seventies, is a writer of letters and has been since her teens, gradually reveals her backstory and thus the events that have shaped her life through a series of letters.

Oh it’s a tear-jerker. I found her very rude, at first, Sybil Van Antwerp - too direct - but that is obviously a deliberate strategy, because it makes what she reveals and her growing vulnerability all the harder to take. The hard exterior gradually cracks and it’s heartbreaking.

One thing: the cover for this book makes it look like an airport novel, some generic story about love letters or whatnot, “woman with cupcake shop meets complicated bearded lumberjack with a shady past”, which is why I avoided reading it for so long. The cover doesn’t do it justice! It’s completely unsuitable. I can only think that there’s some sort of thing going on with publishers where they make book covers bright and simple so that they are more universally appealing. It feels like the Great Dumbing Down of Book Covers, 2026.

Not that there’s anything wrong with stories about cupcake shop owners and lumberjacks, but when the cover doesn’t match the quality of the writing inside, it’s like entering a Burger King shop front only to find an award-winning bistro within. Admittedly a brilliant surprise, but I love a good book cover.

I was similarly disappointed with the cover of The Names, one of my books of the year, if I was forced to choose some; thought that it was a story about a holiday romance from the cover art. Couldn’t have been further from the reality. Very jarring.

I downloaded The Correspondent here.

Theo of Golden, Allen Levi

I had to abandon this one I’m afraid. The main character irritated me before I’d even reached page four, with his exaggerated attentiveness to every single detail on the street and in the cafe and his sickly do-goody goody-two-shoes charade. I had to flick ahead to see if he (hopefully) turned out to be some sort of serial killer or deviant but he just got more and more virtue signally.

Disclaimer: I did have rampant PMT when I tried to read this. But come on! He goes into a coffee shop and it’s filled with pencil portraits (as in drawn in pencil, not portraits of pencils, that would be bizarre and boring, wouldn’t it?) and he tracks down the people in the portraits and buys them their picture.

Ugh.

The first recipient, honestly, you should hear the amount of discussion that goes on between her and her husband about whether they should go and meet the old man (who is called Mr Theo, which also enraged me for reasons I can’t quite work out) and get the portrait from him. You’d think they were deciding whether to sell their car as collateral to go all in on a roulette wheel.

Not for me, I’m afraid. It was free on Kindle Unlimited.

Summerwater, Sarah Moss

Tore through this clever, short-ish novel by Sarah Moss, author of Ripeness, a book I recommended a little while ago. Summerwater is set in Scotland, at some holiday cabins on a lakeside, and it jumps in and out of the lives of the families staying in them. From a judgemental old GP and his wife, whose mind and memory is clearly starting to fail her, to a couple of very disgruntled teens who would rather be anywhere than in a tiny damp cabin with their parents, it tells you so much about them through their actions and interactions without really needing anything dramatic to happen at all.

(Although something does happen, don’t worry.)

I really enjoyed it. It was like a series of character studies and all of the characters’ traits and failings and guilty secrets are so familiar, so bloody pedestrian! Slightly depressing in some ways, but you know when you read a book and it suddenly makes you realise how many people are just on the same old treadmill of life? Experiencing the same feelings, making the same sorts of compromises… I think Sarah Moss is really clever at drawing these sorts of studies.

There is a grand finale in terms of “action” but honestly I felt as though the storyline played massively second fiddle to the brilliant observations of modern life.

Ooh! Just realised I borrowed this one for free on Kindle Unlimited - it’s here.

This Other Eden, Paul Harding

For Pete’s sake, I was only supposed to be writing two sentences for each book! It was supposed to be a filler post before my proper holiday debriefs! OK, this one I actually started years ago but, for some reason, abandoned.

When I restarted it I remembered why I had abandoned it; it’s not the ideal holiday read. Mind you, neither is Nesting, if you’re after a light-hearted sun-lounger romp. But it is a novel of pure brilliance, and it’s not until right at the end that you realise quite how brilliant it is.

It’s about the lives of a tiny community on an island called Apple Island and how - a century after the island was discovered and inhabited - officials on the mainland decide that the inhabitants need to be evicted. It’s a clever depiction of the world’s intolerance towards people who wish to live differently, or who simply do live differently, who have no other choice, and the ending, where the “other Eden” is placed in sharp contrast with the rest of the world, is shattering.

I bought it here

Heartburn, Nora Ephron

I know, I know: how am I only just getting into Nora Ephron? Hugely enjoyed this short and spiky book about selfish people, life choices and deciding when enough is enough: it could have been a tragic tome but Nora Ephron kills the sadness with humour and I’m always appreciative of that.

My favourite part was the foreword, though, when she talks about how the story in the novel is mostly true and she’s barely disguised any of the characters, and how they were all really annoyed with her because she didn’t go to enough lengths to disguise them. And she writes very cleverly about how the term “thinly veiled” is weaponised against female writers, and how really if her ex-husband hadn’t wanted to be in her book as a cheater then he shouldn’t have cheated. Along those lines, anyway. Had I not wanted to scare the kittens away again I would have clapped, loudly.

Bought it here

Night Swimmers, Roisin Maguire

Another free book on the Kindle Unlimited thing - didn’t I do well? I enjoyed this book, set in the 2020 lockdown in a little coastal village in Northern Ireland. A man, a “townie” is separating from his wife after a terrible tragedy and he rents the holiday cottage from a woman, Grace, who has lived there on the coast for all of her life. She’s very blunt, used to living alone and does badass things like rowing out to sea to catch her own fish, swimming naked in the freezing water at night and rescuing badger-baiting dogs. That sort of stuff.

Grace and the Townie’s lives criss-cross over each other and clash - his grief and her stubborn independence - and the book is a lovely reminder of how people can bend towards one another even in the most unlikely of situations.

Two things that annoyed me though: firstly Grace is supposed to be fifty but she has been written as though she’s eighty-five. This is a fit woman who swims daily but it’s “ooh my knees” this and “ouch my back” that and it just didn’t ring true for me. Maybe I just know a lot of fit fifty year-olds, but I don’t think so. It didn’t tally with her general badass-edness. Second thing: the Townie character. I couldn’t get him straight in my imagination. I know he’s grieving but he was very insipid and it was hard to form a picture of him and what he was about.

Regardless, I stormed through this during my eighteen hour journey home from Paros and found it greatly enjoyable.

Free on Kindle Unlimited here

Well that was the longest eight paragraph post I’ve ever written! Sorry. I’ll make the next post just pictures, shall I? I have lots of holiday snaps! Please do tap on the heart button on your way out so that people think crikey, that post has a lot of likes, I had better just have a little look and see what all the fuss is about, and then wonder what the hell they’ve stumbled upon when I start chuntering on about apples and the Co-op in Bridport and whatever else I digressed towards…

Last year I worked with Latest in Beauty to create an amazing box containing my favourite and most-used beauty products; it sold out within days, and by the time I posted about it here on Substack, it was completely gone.

Rather than making the same mistake again, I am slipping this unscheduled post into the mix, before the onslaught of holiday posts about Paros and about hot weather makeup and about all of the books I tore through on my Kindle, to tell you about my brand new beauty box: The Beauty Reset.

This box is packed full of firm favourites, new discoveries and some extra-special treats that I know you will love, and is worth £318. It’s on sale with Latest in Beauty for (and wait until you see what’s in it!) £68, but if you’re reading this then you get an extra 12% off and free UK delivery with the code RUTHSENTME.

SHOP HERE

That’s £59.84 in total.

Fourteen products.

Should be £318.

I know!

Want to know what’s inside? Then let us proceed!

SKINCARE

Cleanse:

Weleda Skin Food Cleansing Balm 75ml, worth £13.50. One of my top discoveries of the year, this cleansing balm. I challenge you not to fall in love with it. Smells amazing, does a brilliant job of getting off all makeup and sunscreen, leaves no greasy residue behind. It’s a triumph and all at an amazing price-point, so once you do fall in love without you won’t think twice about repurchasing.

Vitamin C:

Gatineau Radiance Enhancing Vitamin C Serum 30ml, worth £52.00. Almost justifies the cost of the entire beauty box in one fell swoop, this fancy Vitamin C serum. This has a gorgeously lightweight, silky texture and is properly effective at brightening, helping to even out skintone and leaving your face with a megawatt glow.

Moisturiser:

Alpha-H Firming Collagen Repair Cream 15ml, worth £15.99. I’m a very long-term fan of Alpha-H, they make so many of my favourites, and this plumptious face cream is another 10/10 from me. Leaves my skin feeling bouncy and juicy but without any of the heaviness or greasiness that some richer creams leave.

Sunscreen:

Ultra Violette Queen Screen SPF 50+ Luminising Skinscreen 75ml, worth £42.00. If you’ve never had the pleasure of testing this, let me tell you it’s the best-smelling sunscreen I’ve ever used. It smells and feels like some kind of swanky spa serum! Slips on beautifully, leaves a luminous glow that seems to make any foundation that sits on top look dewier and fresher, comes in this gigantor 75ml bottle. What’s not to love?

Retinol:

RoC Derm Correxion Firm + Sculpt Lifting Serum Stick 30g, worth £39.99. I love these RoC serum sticks; you can use all over your face, neck and chest for your retinol hit but they work particularly well just under the chin where you usually miss when you’re applying product. (Or I do, anyway.) It’s just the perfect fit. I use mine every single day and it’s one of the most satisfying parts of my routine.

Neck and Dec:

PRAI Beauty Ageless Throat & Decolletage Creme - Intensive Gold+, 30ml worth £24.00. PRAI have long been the Queens of Neck Stuff, with incredible user testimonials and rave reviews. This potent cream feels gorgeous to apply and doesn’t leave the neck area feeling tacky or sticky, which is one of my pet peeves with neck products. Easy to incorporate into your routine before applying your sunscreen, or you can keep it beside the bed and apply it last thing at night.

Mask:

Emma Hardie Vitamin C Brightening Hydrogel Facial Mask, 1 Mask worth £15.00. Well this is a fancy treat. A one-use mask to brighten, tone and hugely hydrate, the next best thing to a facial, really, if time is of the essence and you need to look the part. Which is a polite way of saying, “if you’re hungover/knackered and need to pull yourself together for the wedding you’re a bridesmaid at, that starts in five hours’ time”. This has so much serum in the mask and the pouch it comes in that you can actually do your arms and legs, too, which is today’s top tip! I also put the face mask onto my chest once I’d finished with it, and kept it on whilst I did my makeup. I like to make the most of these luxury buys!

Brow & Lash Serum:

Brow Aid The S.O.S Advanced Brow & Lash Recovery Mask 5g, worth £23.00. I seem to have reactions to most lash serums: not this one! Hurrah! It’s prostaglandin-free (I think maybe it’s the prostaglandin I usually have an issue with?) and a cinch to apply - just comb through the brows and use the applicator tip to apply to the roots of the lashes - and helps to support growth as well as optimise brow and lash health. This is a new discovery for me, but I have tested loads of Brow Aid products and all have been superb.

BUY BEAUTY RESET BOX

HAIRCARE

Treatment:

Philip Kingsley Elasticizer Deep-Conditioning Treatment 75ml, worth £22.00. This is just a classic. You apply before your shampoo and conditioner and it helps to completely restore the elasticity and strength to your hair - a very necessary maintenance step if you colour or heat-treat your hair and a great treat even if you don’t. I apply a few hours before my hair wash and put a shower cap over it to really let it get to work. As a life-long hair-bleacher, I dread to think what my hair would be like if I didn’t use this!

Shampoo + Conditioner:

Living Proof Full Shampoo and Conditioner DUO 2 x 30ml, worth £14.00. This little duo will present you with a new haircare obsession; they really do help to give you extra lift and bounce, especially if you have fine, flat hair. If I use Living Proof Full Shampoo and Conditioner and then my heated rollers, the volume is actually borderline ridiculous!

Styling:

Hair by Sam McKnight Happy Endings Nourishing Balm 30ml Mini, worth £22.00. This is my styling saviour. Instantly defrizzes and smooths split ends and gives my hair that cool, tousled sort of separation I can’t get any other way. It’s particularly great because it works so well on fine, flat hair too - it’s hugely effective without being heavy or greasy or weighing the ends of my hair down. I use on both damp hair pre-styling and as a finisher on my dried hair. An essential.

Dry Shampoo:

REHAB Mini Essential Dry Shampoo 25g, worth £15.00. I really like that in some ways Rehab have gone quite old-school with their products. This is a puff-in-and-rub powder that does away with the aerosol and some of the associated ingredients that can sometimes irritate your scalp. It’s just very simple and gentle. Puffing it in takes a tiny bit of practice, but if you normally tear through whole cans of dry shampoo at a time then this is, in many ways, a more concentrated way of doing things.

BODY

Gatineau Golden Glow Gradual Tan 75ml, worth £20.00. One body product and, incidentally, the only one you really need, what with the end of the summer and the colder, bleaker weather days ahead. This foolproof gradual tanner gives a sunkissed glow with the same effort level as simply rubbing on a body lotion. I use a mitt to apply, out of habit, but if you remember to thoroughly wash your hands afterwards, there’s no peril of tan lines or streaks with this brilliant product. Even one application a week will maintain the sort of bronzage that you might have picked up over a long weekend in Ibiza. Perfecto!

So. All of this, with a grand total of £318 in value, all packed into the Beauty Reset box and yours* for £59.84 with the code RUTHSENTME. Over 80% off. This sold out so quickly last year, so that’s why I’m sitting here amid piles of holiday washing, typing away, making sure I tell you about it with enough time to spare!

BUY HERE

I hope you love it - many thanks to the excellent brands involved and to the team at Latest in Beauty who work so hard to bring it all together!

*Apologies to those outside of the UK, distribution is UK only with Latest in Beauty,

Peter and Olivia have left for their beach house, now, but tomorrow Mama arrives and she is bringing with her the new dog. And, with any luck, a ham and a pork pie and some fat old cucumbers. I would so much like a picnic.

Alas we only have one hammock and it is rusting away in the shed. And I don’t know a Peter and Olivia with a beach house. But you get the gist. Slow and sultry, that is what I wanted. Instead my month was like being thrown into a chaotic wok.

Here are my favourites, including the skincare I keep coming back to, the very best solution to wall lights if you don’t have the wiring for it and my book of the month…

AD: this post contains a paid collaboration with Renew & Me, a brand I have faithfully used (including as a paying customer) for years. Some outbound links are affiliate links.

Renew + Me

You need only look in my “empties” box to see how much of a fan I am of Renew + Me. This is a personalised skincare brand that, after an online consultation, tailors a (very, very) highly potent skin cream for you to use nightly. The fact that the cream is tailored to your specific needs is what’s important here, because it means that the product should be well-tolerated by your skin and provide you with precisely what your skin requires. No guessing, no trawling through Reddit threads or standing in the skincare aisle feeling completely overwhelmed by all of the thousands of products laid out around you.

(I have an exclusive offer from Renew + Me below, so stay with me!)

I’ve been using Renew + Me since launch, which - if I remember rightly - was over two years ago. Before that, I used the personalised cream from their sister brand, Skin + Me, for another few years, so I can safely say that I have tested it to its absolute fullest.

And I can tell you that it is not great to love a singular product this much, not when a large proportion of your job involves testing out a variety of skincare products from different brands! When you keep coming back to the same thing again and again, month after month, year after year, it kind of limits what else you can try out on your face.

I have tested other high-strength products containing retinoids, but my Nightly Active Treatment contains gold standard actives that are up to twenty times stronger than high street retinol and - more importantly - it has been formulated with my particular skin in mind. It has been personalised.

I think that it’s testament to the Renew + Me product that it’s the one I always return to. My base camp. My skin never feels more balanced, more evenly-toned or more smooth than when I’m using it.

I feel as though we’re all pretty well-versed on the retinoids side of things at this point - there’s pretty much nothing they won’t tackle, including fine lines, lack of firmness, unevenness of tone and even spots - but I need to tell you about a couple of other ingredients that are in my Nightly Active Treatment from Renew + Me, because I hadn’t paid much attention to them before this summer. More fool me.

Wind your brain back, if you will, to when I talked about my outbreak of summer-related spots. I wrote about them here. Well, when that happened - and this is the third year in a row that this Hot Skin Fallout has occurred - I decided to look a bit more into the ingredients I could use to support my skin barrier, calm the redness and fade the marks that the spot outbreak had left behind. The ones that came up again and again as being powerhouses for this task were niacinamide and azelaic acid and, me being me, I immediately set about purchasing three or four different serums that rate highly for these ingredients.

Guess who already owned three or four (at least) other serums with these ingredients in? Yes, me. (I could now set myself up as a niacinamide and azelaic acid dealer from my work cabin, I have so much of it.)

And also, more importantly, guess who already owned an amazing product that not only contained these ingredients, the hallowed niacinamide and azelaic acid, but combined them with her potent-as-anything retinoid, and also formulated all of these things into a beautiful rich and nourishing base cream that acts as a protective shield?

ALSO ME.

And yes, I am talking about my Renew + Me Nightly-Active-Treatment, obviously. It has taken on a whole new level of brilliance, in my eyes - I loved it before, but I have a renewed appreciation of just how clever this product is. Tackling everything from fine lines to dullness to lack of firmness but also supporting the skin barrier at the same time, helping with clarity, calming redness and fading out marks and imperfections?

Bloody hell!

In a final stroke of utter genius, the personalised Nightly Active Treatment is supplied in a special click-and-twist doser that dispenses precisely the right amount of product each night at strengths my skin can tolerate. No waste, minimal packaging (which is an absolute breath of fresh air, isn’t it, these days?) and no-double guessing the amount of product I need to apply.

So, despite me being a total Beauty Magpie and always wanting to try the newest thing, and despite me actually needing to be always trying the newest thing because I write about beauty and it’s sort of part and parcel of that particular job, I have spent an inordinate amount of time using Renew + Me as my sole nightly product. That should say it all, really.

If you’d like to give Renew + Me a try, they have given me a special code - RUTHSAVE - that gets you your first month of Nightly Active Treatment for just £6.99. That’s over 75% off. Just click here to get started! They’re so confident you’ll see results that they offer a money back guarantee if you haven’t seen any by week twelve.

The process for getting your dermatologist designed Nightly-Active-Treatment is quick and straightforward (I actually really enjoy the questions part, they’ve made it very streamlined!) and you are fully supported by the dermatology team throughout.

I think that it very much replaces guesswork, having a cream personalised to your exact needs, and stops you from having to buy a load of different things that may or may not be right, may or may not be working… A sound investment, in my opinion.

Renew + Me

Kindle Paperwhite

My old Kindle Paperwhite (circa 2013) had a small split in the screen and every time I read a book on there I was heavily distracted by this intense pinpoint of light that was bursting forth towards my retinas. (Retinae?) I put up with it for around ten years but this month, after loading it with books for my holiday, I thought enough is enough! and treated myself to a new one.

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I only really use a Kindle on holiday, which is why I put up with a damaged screen for a decade, but when I do use it on holiday, boy do I use it! And I must say that thirteen years is very, very good going for a tech product - had the screen not had this small dink in it I imagine it would have kept going for another thirteen. When you look at how quickly iPhones become outdated, or how often the screens crack or what have you, the Kindle seems such good value.

Good old Kindle. What I actually want to say, though, is that there is (I think) a huge difference between the entry, base-level Kindle and the Paperwhite version. I ordered the cheaper one for a hundred quid because I thought that it would still be miles better than my old Paperwhite, being new and all, but actually the screen on my Paperwhite (minus chink of holy light beaming through) was far better.

The base Kindle screen looked like a photograph of the Paperwhite screen, if that makes any sense. A Paperwhite screen looks very much like an actual sheet of paper. It really, really does. The whole effect has been brilliantly executed.

But I couldn’t handle the normal, base level Kindle screen at all, it felt stressful to my eyes. And so I returned that and upgraded to the new Paperwhite, which is a slight improvement to the old one but hardly discernable.

(If you have an old Paperwhite and it functions perfectly, I would confidently say that you will have no reason to upgrade that baby for the next decade. I just can’t imagine how they would improve on it. Yes the screen is bigger, but it’s not a life-shattering difference.)

I bought my new Kindle Paperwhite here. I got a three month free subscription of something called Kindle Unlimited, which has so far let me download eight books for free, which would have cost me about eighty quid at the airport, so I am well chuffed with that. Has paid for half the Kindle, more or less…

Stylish Wall Lights: No Electrician Needed!

I think wall lights are my favourite type of light, in terms of the quality of illumination and the warmth of it and the flattering nature. Table lamps are all well and good, but a wall light is a) slightly higher up, so you can also actually see things in the room rather than feeling as though you’re at a seance and b) tucked out of the way, so that it’s not creating extra clutter or requiring its own little table and so on.

(Not that I think of table lamps as clutter, I LOVE table lamps, but you have to impose a limit on them otherwise you collect too many and end up looking like you’re running a lamp shop.)

But the problem with wall lights is that you need the wiring for them. And so many houses don’t have it. It seems that when many people re-do their houses, more often than not they stick eighty spotlights in the ceiling and NO wiring for anything else, because wall lights just aren’t in their orbit, and then you buy and move into said house and it’s just too much of a faff to rewire it so that you can have wall lights - the wiring has to be chased in, the room has to be re-plastered…

Anyway, there’s a solution to this problem, if you want beautiful wall lights but don’t want to spend thousands of pounds on an electrician and plasterer: plug-in wall lights. Apologies if I’m preaching to the converted here or stating the obvious, because you may well have seen plug-in wall lights before (I had one in my bedroom in the eighties) but they vary dramatically in quality and I feel as though I’ve found an amazing option.

I actually don’t want to share it with you, because I need to order four more for The Dorset Nest, but I’ll put my your needs before my own and tell you: it’s the Jim Lawrence plug-in wall lights, namely in the style “Brooke”. These come in black or antique brass and look absolutely gorgeous in any sort of traditional or cottage-y setting.

The beauty of them is, is that you buy the shade arm only and so can choose from an endless variety of lampshades and, depending on your vibe you can make a wall light that’s whismsical, or elegant, or traditional, or even one that looks like it’s been lifted out from a fairy’s cottage in a secret glade. The world is your oyster, when you start looking into lampshades.

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I go for a 20cm lampshade with this wall light and my favourites are from Pooky and from Next. The ones from Next are, for the price (twenty quid) absolutely brilliant. I love the frilled shade striped ones, but they have loads of different fabrics and designs.

The wall light arm itself is just under a hundred pounds, but Jim Lawrence things are worth every single penny in my experience. Exceptional quality and attention to detail that goes way, way beyond any cheaper imitation.

And the cord is braided! Very important detail, that, because the cord is essentially going to be trailing down your wall, to the plug, and if it’s a cheap shiny plastic thing then it will look awful.

So there: a beautiful wall light wherever you have a plug. No electrician, no plasterer, just add a lampshade (the fun bit) plug it in (I mean, some might get a thrill) and go.

Jim Lawrence Brooke Plug-In Wall Light - here

Pooky 20cm shades - I have bought two of these candy stripe ones

Next 20cm shades - here

Unearthed Spanish Tortilla

Why have I got serious deja vu all of a sudden? Have I written about this before? YES! Oh God, sorry. This just shows how much I’ve fallen in love with this particular foodstuff.

I’m going to paraphrase what I wrote the other week, because this lunch option is worth repeating. (Daily, in my case.) It’s so easy, full of protein and/or potato (reckon it’s probably more potato than protein but when was that ever a bad thing):

These ready-made Spanish tortillas are bloody amazing for people like me who want a quick lunch but don’t want to put any more effort into preparing it than simply opening the fridge.

Lunch is often my downfall: if I can’t immediately fathom what it is I’m going to have, then I take out a block of cheese and the butter and I spread the butter into a white roll, fill the roll with cheese, maybe some sliced tomato if I’m worrying for my general health, and then I stretch up to the cupboard that sits above the fridge, out of child-reach, and I get myself a packet of Walkers Salt & Vinegar crisps (the elite crisp and I won’t take other suggestions) to add texture, crunch and variety to the plate.

The Unearthed Spanish Tortilla saves me from myself. There it sits, all fresh and lovely and air-sealed, layers of cooked, salty potato trapped in the firm, eggy goodness. Perfectly seasoned. So much protein! Just slit open the lid with a knife and cut the tortilla in half and tip one half of it onto a plate with the aforementioned tomatoes that would have gone into your cheese roll, add some rocket dressed in good balsamic and extra virgin olive oil! A ten second wonder.

Find the Unearthed Tortillas here online. You will not regret. Unless you hate eggs. And potatoes. In which case I cannot help you.

The Artist

Book of the month? The Artist. If this is Lucy Steeds’ debut novel (it is) then I am so excited to see what she does next. And I never feel that way. Or rarely, anyway. This is the perfect late summer read, you need to get it in time for the last blasts of heatwave, if any more are coming our way!

Set in post-war Provence (and so beautifully, evocatively drawn), it’s about a reclusive painter - one of the world’s most famous - and his monstrous, unpredictable ways. When a young journalist comes from England to interview the painter, he becomes entwined into this heady, insular world with its temper flares and hot, airless rooms and plates of rotting food and sneaky cigarettes.

He also becomes entwined with something else but I won’t spoil it for you, it’s just such a good read - somewhat predictable, but it felt exactly the sort of smoothly-executed read I needed this month. The Artist is here online

(Edit: this was written before I’d read both Nesting by Roisin O’Donnell and The Correspondent by Virginia Evans. I need time to mull these over a bit more, but they would both be contenders for the winning spot, I think. Choices, choices. So many good books, so little time.)

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So, a belated little Between Us post: not the intended lengthy essay on the intricacies and associated dangers of shaping your own eyebrows, thankfully (though that will no doubt be coming once I’ve edited it into something sensible) but a few unbelievably pretty little things that we can coo over together. Things with stripes and frills and then other things with sea views and flower-filled courtyards; things that are too good not to share, even though I’m kind of loath to share them in case they sell out/get too booked up, leaving me in the lurch. (This has happened before.)

Whimsical Lamp Shades

These brilliant lampshades will also be in my monthly favourites, but some of the sizes are already sold out and I feel as though I need you to be able to get them, if you so fancy, not all of the other people in the world I don’t even know! I feel very proprietorial over these lampshades because they are beautifully made, ridiculously whimsical and, for all of that, priced so reasonably that I’ve found myself buying an extra one even though I don’t have a clue where it might go. Yet.

It’s these, the pleated striped lampshades from Next. Twenty quid for a 20cm version (which is the perfect size for a wall lamp or a very petite table lamp, perhaps one that you’d pop on the kitchen worktop and use to read your recipe book, etc) and they are so plumphy with fabric and pleating and frills that they feel loads more expensive than they are.

The plain pleated shades that Next do are also lovely, but the stripes with the frilled edge win the show; it’s like the designer just threw absolutely everything at them, bar glitter. Top effort and much appreciated.

Lamp shades from Next are here.

Now for a brilliant holiday villa find, if you feel as though you’re always looking for something extra-special but also don’t have a million pounds to spend and/or the time to trawl through thousands of listings:

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(Also, it is very much not a given that I would be good at keeping an eye on my general health: lots of people don’t, especially when they are busy with work and kids and elderly parents and leaks in the roof and saving for a new boiler and of all the other things that life might entail. It’s hard to prioritise yourself when you perhaps have other people to care for and your days are jam-packed.)

Now I wouldn’t say I’m Simon Cowell-level good at keeping an eye on my general health, but that’s mainly because I don’t have a medical centre in my £1.6 million winnebago that comes with all the equipment necessary to monitor my vital statistics. Indeed, I don’t own a £1.6 million winnebago in which to install a medical centre in the first place. Or any winnebago. (Also, if I had constant access to my own medical centre, equipped with heart monitors, ear monitors and a special glove that can remotely detect heart attacks, I would get nothing else done.)

I just make sure I go to any screening appointments I’m summoned to, try to be familiar with what’s normal for my own body and attempt to keep a certain level of self-awareness that means I notice if there are any significant changes. That’s pretty much all any of us can do, surely, short of having one of those mega-MRI-scans I keep seeing advertised.

(Would you have an annual whole-body MRI scan if you could? If it was affordable? The more I see these services advertised the more I wonder whether we’re missing out and at a disadvantage if we don’t have one or, if people are relatively healthy to start with, scanning every tiny bit of the body is just unnecessary overkill? I suppose that it would always catch things early if there was anything amiss, which is an amazing thing, but would it also create lots more health anxiety? Thoughts in the comments…)

Anyway the point is, I’m usually pretty good at keeping an eye on my general health and wellbeing, so it makes what follows even more weird and surprising: because the fact is, I’ve had a number of bothersome health and wellness issues that until quite recently I had been completely ignoring. Just blatantly pretending not to notice!

No, worse than that, actually: issues that I’d noticed, but then decided to simply accept. Accept as being part and parcel of being alive, being 45, without even really questioning if I could do anything about them.

How defeatist of me.

I say the word bothersome, which sounds pretty cute and politely British, but some of these things were severely affecting my day. I thought I’d list them and tell you what I’ve finally started to do about them, because a) I’m feeling pretty pleased with myself and the level of proactiveness I’ve suddenly managed to conjure up and b) it might be helpful to anyone who has similar issues.

(Should have really written those the other way around, so that the charitable reason appears before the self-serving egotistical one but I like to keep things real.)

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My Thinning Hairline

First though: this post is very kindly sponsored by a brand I’ve had a beautifully long relationship due to the fact that their LED masks are the best in the business and have had a dramatic, visible effect on my skin. Yes, it’s CurrentBody.

You can find dozens and dozens of places where I’ve raved about their LED masks (I use both the Series 2 LED Face Mask and also the Neck and Decolletage mask) and I really would not be without them. They’re not “quick fix” solutions, these masks, they require commitment and consistency and patience, but I saw significant visible changes after a few months of use and am still using them religiously, years later.

(More info in this post, if you want to hear more.)

But we’re not talking skin here, we’re talking hair. Specifically my gradual thinning of, around the temples and hairline, and also my (hopefully temporary) Telogen Effluvium, which is when more hair than usual is pushed into the resting-and-shedding stage of the growth cycle.

Not the first item that was on my original “things I’ve been ignoring and now I need to take action on” list, but definitely something I’d have shunted down the line until later.

I have long been fascinated by the CurrentBody Skin LED Hair Growth Helmet; Rich started to use it last year, every night without fail, and within a few months I could definitely see new growth. He has fallen off that particular wagon because he’s been down in Dorset so much, doing stuff at the new cottage, but I was heartened and surprised by the results that he had, so much so that I am excited to try it for myself and see what happens.

What also excites me about the CurrentBody Hair Growth Helmet is that the clinical trials on home LED devices for hair loss seem so very promising. And not just clinical trials conducted by the brand, but much larger, peer-reviewed studies that show really good results. CurrentBody’s own clinical trials on a group of 31 people (who all had mild to moderate hair loss) showed a 123% increase in hair growth rate and 72% reduction in hair loss after just 12 weeks of using the Hair Helmet on a daily basis.

Incredibly impressive and I can’t wait to see what the difference might be for my own hair. Here are some before photos of the areas I’m going to concentrate on, namely the temples and front hairline, where I have had thinned patches since my pregnancies and also a constant halo of weird flimsy nothingy hairs:

The benefit of the Hair Helmet over surface treatments (serums, etc) is that the Helmet works below the surface, stimulating dormant hair follicles and encouraging them to re-enter the active growth phase faster. (I’m hoping this will support the Telogen Effluvium side of things as well as the thinning.)

The specific red light wavelengths from the LEDs also help to boost blood flow in the scalp and support repair, which in turn should have an effect on growth. And apparently the LEDs help to improve scalp inflammation and oiliness, though these changes are possibly harder to gauge if you’re not working under scientific test conditions!

CurrentBody promise visible results in 12 weeks, so I will be back to you with an update. I can’t imagine it’s going to be a very taxing trial period: I absolutely love wearing my CurrentBody masks, I find it very relaxing and imagine I’m lying on a beach! The Hair Helmet is even easier - the same 10 minutes a day, but just plonk it onto your clean head and relax. It even has build in Bluetooth speakers so that you can listen to True Crime podcasts and Death Metal or whatever it is you listen to in order to relax.

I have a 10% discount code for the Hair Growth Helmet, RUTHHAIR - it’s £649.99, so the code brings it down to £585. It’s obviously a very sizeable investment, so I think it’s well worth reading through all of the info on the website (and other sites) and looking at the before and after photos. I thought that these were particularly compelling:

Let me know if you’ve been trying the Hair Helmet - I see a lot of excellent videos and pictures online, where everyone looks like an extra from Tron, so do fill me in with your results so far if you have any.

The CurrentBody Hair Helmet is here online.

Onwards with my small catalogue of complaints:

My Exploding Knees

My knees started aching at the end of last year and gradually got worse and worse and by March this year they were so painful that I couldn’t do certain essential movements. Squatting down to get something from the floor, for example was absolutely out of the question and to climb up steps or stairs, I had to turn sideways and shuffle up them like a crab because the pain of climbing them normally was too much!

How long did it take me to seek help, once I’d got to this near-incapacitated state? Eight weeks. And it wasn’t that I didn’t have the time to seek help, I could have made the time: I just sort of accepted that I was going to have bad knees for the rest of my life and that they would probably get much worse. That it was my destiny.

Completely ridiculous. Luckily one of my school mum friends is a physiotherapist and also very no-nonsense and just looked at me when I started telling her about it and how long I’d been going sideways up the stairs and said, very sternly but with a slight look of exasperation, book an appointment.

I’m going to write a whole post about this, but it turns out that my five years of doing high intensity Peloton spin-cycling and no other type of exercise or strength training means that I’ve just been making my legs go round and round and round really fast using my muscles in one particular way and all of the other muscles have been screaming

“RUTH! What the actual fcuk! We’re wasting away down here while the knee muscles (or whatever they are called) are doing the equivalent of the Iron Man competition every week!”

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Dedicated post on knees is a-coming, but safe to say that the first physio appointment completely changed a) the way I thought about my knees and legs and muscles in general and b) the way I exercised. I’ve been doing strength training and Barre classes on my Peloton app to build up all of my leg and bum muscles and have been loving my workouts!

I can now squat, really quite proficiently, and am pleased to tell you that when I climb the stairs I do so in the traditional way. But more on this, as I say, later.

My Weak Wrists

Ditto the weak wrists. Except that I’ve had those, to the point where I can’t use my hands to push myself up off the floor, for ELEVEN YEARS. I first noticed the extreme weakness and pain when I had my first baby and I’d finished a year of breastfeeding where, let’s face it, you spend quite a proportion of your time holding a heavy item (the baby) in your arms with your hands at a weird stress-position angle.

Apparently it’s quite a common thing. Loose ligaments during/after pregnancy + holding a baby for long periods of time + (probably) also holding your iPhone whilst the baby is feeding and doom scrolling for hours on end. Recipe for disaster.

Anyway, I have exercises for my wrists to strengthen them and the muscles that work with them. The progress seems to be slower/negligible, if I’m honest, but I am not ignoring this matter again! Back I go to the physio, as soon as I have a moment and the back-to-school chaos is over…

My Fatigue

I was very, very tired all the time for quite a long while. And of course anytime I mentioned it, a million people screeched PERIMENOPAUSE, because that is apparently the answer to everything these days and no other causes of tiredness exist, but I personally do not buy into this new belief that absolutely everything is linked to perimenopause, or menopause itself and that other things can feasibly be going on to make people knackered.

Mine turned out to be low iron. I knew I had low iron, I’ve had low iron for years - probably since before kids, so over a decade - but when I had my bloods done it was even lower than usual.

I’d dallied with iron supplements in the past but none had really agreed with me; this time around I did quite a lot of Googling and (sorry) used Google AI to whittle down the many options to one that would be completely suited to me.

And, miraculously, the one it recommended was really suited to me. I have nothing bad to say about this iron - it’s the Solgar Gentle Iron 20mg - and my energy levels have steadily increased. Slowly but surely.

I mean I have two kids and about eighty thousand business ventures going on so I’m never going to feel massively perky, I don’t think, not in the near future, but I feel a hell of a lot better than I did in March.

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My Annoying Piles

Well, we all know how this one turned out. How rude. You take action on something, something really quite demoralising and embarrassing, and then you go through a procedure that’s like the sort of thing they might do on a farmyard, to livestock, and then you have twenty-four hours of intense pain, and then it turns out the thing you thought was a pile wasn’t a pile at all and all the piles they did the procedure on were ones you were completely unaware of and could quite happily have lived with.

You can read all about that experience here. I won’t be messing about in that department again, if I can help it, mark my words!

Righty-ho, on that jolly note, you can now all get on with writing down any health or wellbeing issues that have been concerning you and promise yourselves you’ll take the time to look into them. I can’t tell you how glad I am that my knees were a fixable problem - I was sure it was my joints going, or arthritis, and that I’d have to build some sort of funicular to get me up and down my driveway.

(Although: not a bad idea!)

I did it with the towels I loved, also in case they stopped making them (spoiler alert, they did, it was back in 2009) and I even did it with a pair of Belstaff motorbike boots which were horrendously expensive even back in 2005.

Guess what?

I haven’t even worn the backup pair of Belstaffs. The first pair were so well made, it seems inconceivable that they will ever bite the dust. I’ve had to reheel them every few years (less now, because the heels are over an inch tall and so I don’t want to risk an A&E visit and three months in traction) but apart from that, and the obvious softening and creasing of the leather, they are fine and dandy.

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Do not get me started on my collection of “spare” crockery for the dinner sets I didn’t want to risk being incomplete if someone smashed a plate, or a cereal bowl. Gah.

Anyway, all this to say that the things I should have bought in duplicate, this year, I didn’t. In fact, because I have been trying to be a little more discerning about my purchases, one of the items I did actually buy in duplicate but then I had a word with myself and sent the second one back! What an idiot! All those plates (one set has seventeen plates, nineteen bowls, sixteen side plates, it is why I invite so many people at Christmas, just to feel slightly better about what is a ridiculous situation) yet I’m having to speed-wash my favourite crop-top bra thing because I only have one, I’m constantly sweating, and there’s never a back-up version in stock!

Here’s the bra in question, and another (slightly different) bra that I require in order to be able to wear my neon pink Autumn Cashmere vest top, and also a duplicate of one of the best, comfiest things I’ve bought in 2026. Let me save you the pain of spending on the wrong thing, and guide you towards the tried and tested…

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Yes please.

And it doesn’t have to be all rustic and gingham-y either; rattan can be beautifully sculptural, case in point my linen basket which we will come back to shortly.

Anyway, since I drafted this post on wicker and rattan, which was a mere few weeks ago, the online world has been turned upside down by a certain movie trailer that has been released. A film starring Olivia Coleman, Alexander Skarsgård and Peter Dinklage, in which a woman (Coleman) gets herself a husband magically made and when he turns up for the wedding he’s entirely fabricated in wicker! Yeah, all of him!

ALL OF HIM. Rattan cock and all! Woven balls! And if you think I’m being crass and immature, wait until you see the trailer! Embedded (bit like the woman who married the wicker man, fnar fnar) for your viewing pleasure here:

I tell you, from here on in I shall not accept an erection unless it is accompanied by that tremendous creaking sound, rising noisily to full mast like an ancient oak.

How gloriously silly, I am in my absolute element with it all and have watched the trailer five times. How is it that someone has finally conceived of a film plot that is as depraved and farcical as my own imaginings? It’s almost as though I thought this storyline up myself. I fear it will be one of my life’s greatest disappointments, that Wicker wasn’t my own mad creation…

But to get back to the interiors stuff, my point is is that I drafted the below post on wicker things before the trailer came out and now that I’m editing it almost everything I say sounds like a double entendre and I’m having to cut bits of it out here, there and everywhere. (Especially phrases like “bulbous wicker bottom”.)

Enough stalling. Let’s be having it.

Some Rustic Jute and Wicker-y Stuff That’ll Add Texture and Charm to Almost Any Room

Since I am now on my (counts on fingers) fifth home renovation/restoration/interiors project I thought I’d share a little trick with you, one that has worked in every setting from my mid-century-modern-house-on-stilts to the most recent, an ancient rural cottage. It’s a very easily executed trick and also relatively inexpensive and it adds instant warmth, texture and interest.

I’m talking about using rattan and jute. Stay with me. We don’t have to go full-on with this stuff, don’t short-circuit yourselves over it, I just feel that these are materials that get massively overlooked and then, when you add them into a room, you realise they were just what you were missing.

The honeyed hue, the intensely tactile nature of it, but the fact that at the same time it’s delicate and doesn’t add bulk… I think it can look so brilliantly chic.

Take those big IKEA shelves as an example - I think they are called Kallax: we’ve all had them, or have them still, the units that are made up of large square holes that are actually quite useless for holding books and objects, unless you stack the books in like a Tetris game or have square objects or only read coffee table hardbacks.

To use them for anything remotely normal you have to procure yourself some of IKEA’s purpose-made boxes that are exactly the right size for the holes. And if you’ve ever seen one of those units filled with the plain fabric or cardboard boxes then you’ll know that it’s not a hugely attractive sight.

But have you ever seen a Kallax unit filled with the rattan baskets they also make?

Instantly a million times better. I say this as someone who has owned multiple Kallax units with nearly every combo of box and basket known to man. (Kallax are excellent for storing beauty samples. These days I have a vintage haberdasher’s unit with dozens of tiny drawers for my beauty storage and it looks amazing, but as a functional piece I have to say that it is totally shit.)

There’s something about the rattan that is pleasing and gentle on the eye, even when mass-produced and slightly clinical-looking, like the IKEA stuff - Minecraft Rattan. It’s the warmth, the weave, the way it breaks up a surface so that your eye doesn’t hit a solid wall of material…

And I’m not saying to rattan the absolute bejeezus out of everything, I just think that the odd hint of it is a useful trick for adding an extra layer of beauty. Or, for when you need storage solutions, and the alternative is - for eg - a plastic set of boxes for your dressing table to hold all of your makeup items, or a wastepaper bin that looks like something from the set of Severance.

Here are some of my favourite wickery rattan jute bits:

Ferm Living Braided Laundry Basket.

This is one of my favourite household possessions. I like it so much that I have banned my kids from getting inside it for hide and seek, thus depriving them of one of childhood’s greatest activities. (We used to climb into my Mum’s linen basket and then tip it over from the inside, so that we rolled across the floor in it. Tell me a better game on a rainy day.)

The shape of this linen basket is exquisite and it took me weeks to find this exact shape. I was trying to find a copy of a vintage one I have from the sixties that I bought via Vinterior from a dealer, the one that Rich started using TO STORE KINDLING IN which is why he now has holes cut into the toes of all of his socks.

Neptune Jute Rug.

I have a Neptune woven rug in my work cabin (above) and it looks the absolute business. It was expensive, but I can now declare that I have massive experience in jute rugs because I bought two cheaper ones for other rooms and the quality is annoyingly bad. The cheaper ones shed all over the place and already have pulls in them, don’t have any backing on them and will undoubtedly have to be replaced in the next few years. The Neptune rug is perfect and beautiful. It was an absolute false economy trying out the cheaper ones and will have cost me more in the long run!

The Neptune rugs are here online

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Garden Trading Templecombe Chair.

What an absolute beauty this chair is. I have ordered one for The Dorset Nest, the thatched cottage we’re currently getting ready for holiday bookings. Because the cottage already has some beautiful, relaxed velvety armchairs in it (in the living room and in the ssshhh secret snug upstairs) I wanted a chair for the bedroom that was a bit different. Not so…upholstered. Not a mass of sumptuous fabric, because I’d already ticked that box.

RATTAN!

I mean the ticking stripe cushions are the cherry on the cake here, I can’t resist a bit of ticking stripe thrown in somewhere, but look at the frame! I’m excited about this chair even though I’ll very rarely get to actually sit in it.

Sometimes I think I run this holiday cottage business just so I can live out my interiors fantasies.

The chair is here online - they also do a plain cushion version.

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XL Rattan Lamp

Hurrah, something that doesn’t cost a billion pounds, you’re thinking. Yes I do think that this Habitat lamp is quite the steal, for a piece so large and striking. My concern is that it wouldn’t let out much light, but I love it for its sculptural appeal. It’s £80 here.

Hasthilp Rattan Mirror

I really really really really really love these Hasthilp rattan mirrors but they are, alas, outside of the current cottage reno budget. What craftsmanship! Superb. This, hung just above the most beautiful antique chest of drawers, a little jar of dried lavender off to the side, windows open, cottage curtains fluttering in the light breeze, sound of birds coming in from outside, a la Disney… ooph.

Hasthilp seem to be the king pins of luxury rattan stuff, by the way. I feel as though I could do a degree in wicker at this point.

Hatherley Antique Brass and Rattan Wall Light

I think that rattan mixed with metal looks very smart. Want a traditional-looking wall light but then with a softer, more rustic lean? Bingo. Neptune also do something similar (more pricey) and Pooky do their mix-and-match lamps with little rattan shades available, but I really like the simplicity of this wall light.

It’s here.

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Kallax Baskets

And finally, if you do have Kallax and fancy giving them a bit of a spruce and a prettify, the baskets they do to fit them are online here. At £15 each they’re more expensive than the cardboard ones, obviously, and also more expensive than the fabric ones, but not by much and the good thing about them is that they don’t break over time (the number of fabric ones that have died a death!) and you could use them without the Kallax, in the future, so I see them as more of a solid investment.

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Right, off to re-watch the Wicker trailer and plan my Wicker-viewing evening and also work on my masterplan to get invited to the Wicker premiere so that I can wear a dress made out of rattan and a matching rattan hat. Maybe one of the lampshades from Pooky would work well?

It has taken me a couple of weeks to prepare this highly scientific post about piles banding (haemorrhoid ligation, for those who prefer to use proper terms) because I wasn’t quite sure how to approach it.

One of my friends told me it might be a bit of a turn-off to write about haemorrhoids, that people might never look at me in the same way again:

‘A lot of your content is about beauty and fashion,’ she said, ‘I’d just be very, very careful about your tone if you do decide to talk about it.’

To which I say a) has this friend ever met me? and b) how does one be careful about one’s tone when they’re about to describe how a man in a surgical gown spent five full minutes firing tiny elastic bands at the inside walls of their rectum?

And that was just at the drinks party I went to the week before! Hohoho.

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Anyway, what my friend has missed is that I am mostly doing this post as an act of public service. Because millions and millions of people have piles, but they’re not really something that gets discussed in polite society.

(Possibly because what you’d be discussing would be the “swollen and inflamed blood vessels in and around your rectum and anus”, which has to be the least appetising ice-breaker known to humankind. Even if you’re on friendly terms, no ice-breaker needed, talking about the inside of your rectum has to be up there with the boldest of subjects. It’s the mental image it conjures up, isn’t it?)

It makes me wonder: how many people suffer with their piles and never do anything about them? How many women sit there wondering what solutions are on offer for getting rid of their little downstairs “friends” but are too embarrassed to go to the doctor?

And I am here to tell you, categorically, that unless your piles are causing you frequent stress and pain, unless you feel they are ruining your life in some way, you should absolutely just get used to them being there and/or popping them back in when they make the odd appearance in the outside world because oh my GOD I found the alternative so grim and painful and not in the least bit balanced out by the benefits, which for me have been nil, and which we will come onto in due course!

Now by all means go and get your arse checked out. It isn’t pleasant and feels ten times more undignified than having your vag prodded about, but if you are really inconvenienced by your haemorrhoids, or they are very painful, or they are massively affecting your life to the point where you’re unhappy, or you are having any other symptoms in relation to your bowels that could be serious, then please do go and discuss options. I am all for staying on top of things and knowing my normal and asking for help if things seem off.

But if you, like me, are more concerned with just the odd alarming piles episode, the infrequent appearance of multiple external piles that make it look and feel as though you are prolapsing your entire colon out into the toilet, but then the rest of the time the thing that bothers you the most is, erm, the aesthetics of the whole thing, I can with confidence say that the alternative - even the “entry level” procedure - was not worth the trauma.

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Due Diligence

I cannot believe that I didn’t do my due diligence on the whole situation, on the piles banding and the laser treatments and on the most dramatic of the solutions, the pro-level surgical option, the Haemorrhoidectomy; because if I had done a bit of online research then I would have noted that the common denominator in almost every comment thread and forum post for all types of piles treatment was…drumroll… pain.

When I was writhing around, fifteen hours post-ligation, an ice cube wedged point-first into my emergency exit and a hot water bottle between my legs, I felt so incredibly naive and silly not to have anticipated any pain. I mean, someone was going to go into my back end with a camera, fill my rectum with air and then snap tiny elastic bands around living, growing things that are on the inside of my body that would then be starved of bloodflow and gradually fall off leaving an open wound that poos would have to graze past on their farewell tour: what part of this did I think would be completely pain-free? Why would I ever, in a million years, not prepare myself mentally and physically for what would so obviously be a highly uncomfortable situation?

I’ll tell you why. The following is from the information that I was given to read beforehand. I’m cherry-picking, obviously, but for our purposes here I’m giving you the significant bits, the bits that jumped out at me and that told me, indirectly, the whole procedure was nothing to really worry about.

“You will not need an anaesthetic as there are no nerves that sense pain at the top of your anal canal.”

Marvellous.

“A silicon band will be placed onto the lining of your anal canal. The band should block the blood supply to the haemorrhoid, causing it to shrink back up your anal canal.”

Splendid. Seems straightforward.

“It should fall off itself after 7 to 14 days. MOST PEOPLE DO NOT NOTICE THIS. (MY CAPS.)”

I mean for the love of God, this sounds easier than a wisdom tooth removal, doesn’t it?

Other pertinent hard facts from the brochure: “pain is usually easily controlled with simple painkillers such as paracetamol” and my favourite, “you should be able to return to work the next day.”

Top Trumps of Orifice-Related Procedures

I want to give you a brief run down of the procedures I’ve had in other orifices: not to show off, this isn’t Top Trumps of undignified orifice explorations, but to try and describe to you where on the scale the pain and discomfort from the Sigmoidoscopy (the camera) and Banding (the piles-shrinking bit) seemed to sit.

Hysteroscopy without pain relief or sedation, circa 2011: camera through the cervix into the womb. Grim at the time but no pain afterwards, just felt I couldn’t speak to another human without crying for approx eight days and spent a fair while rocking back and forth hugging my knees in the bath.

Laparoscopy without pain relief or sedation, circa 2012: as above, but cried during the procedure because they left me in the room on my own, because it was a camera into the womb but then my womb and tubes were filled with dye and then I had a giant X-ray done, and I felt very alone as they all watched me through a protective window. Grim x2.

Colonoscopy without pain relief or sedation, Jan 12th 2012: excerpt from diary “had to go for my colonoscopy today and it was awful! Had an enema (WTF!) and had to wear a backless gown!” This is a camera up the bum (I used to have IBS type symptoms when I was a model, probably was the fact I lived on Diet Coke and Marlboro Lights) but it goes much further up than the little one I had during the piles procedure. Pain: uncomfortable at the time, no pain at all afterwards.

Cystoscopy without sedation or pain relief, 2019: small thin tube up the urethra (wee hole) aka my actual worst nightmare, aka when I had to go again I paid to go privately and be put to sleep because I couldn’t handle the idea of being awake again. It was actually more psychological than acute pain, the pain was more of a weird discomfort, but I am FUNNY about anything in that area due to years of frequent UTIs (now thankfully not a thing) and it took me days and days to get over it.

Where did the banding pain sit?

In short, none of the above caused me actual pain beyond the time of the procedure. Because I wasn’t expecting the pain (mainly with the womb stuff) I think it was just a terrible shock in the moment but then I staggered home and cried, staring at a wall, and then carried on with my life. The difference with the flexible sigmoidoscopy (the camera I had before the piles were banded) and the piles banding (pipe put up that sucks the pile into the pipe and then shoots an elastic around the base of it) was that a) the pain seemed worse at the time, but was mostly from the air trapped inside me, but then b) the pain afterwards was excruciating. And I wasn’t expecting either.

The pain, I think, was a combo affair: pressure inside from the banding itself, which makes it feel as though you’re going to unconventionally give birth to a massive cactus, but then all the pain - which is intense! - from the trapped air, coupled with the fact you’ve had various implements in and out of your back passage for half an hour. I just found it unbearable, pretty much from the minute I got into recovery.

I had been told that I’d be able to drive myself home, which I think must have been another indicator to me that I needn’t worry about the procedure at all: thankfully Rich had dropped me off, taken the kids to the park, because I thought it was a 45 mins in and out job, taken the kids for lunch, taken the kids to the park again, taken the kids to B&M to buy pool noodles and then taken the the kids to the park again, and then there he was at the end to pick me up.

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Zombie Arsepocalypse

I walked out of the hospital like a zombie. I could barely stand up straight. I had almost fainted in recovery, where I had to beg for even a paracetamol, and my entire stomach felt as though it was trying to push its way out of my body. The pain just got worse and worse over the course of the following hours, making me think that something had gone seriously wrong because why would I be experiencing so much pain when it was, essentially, according to the literature, a relatively painless procedure?

When I called the hospital outpatients number the following morning, having not slept, I spoke to two different consultants who both said that - I quote - “your level of pain and discomfort is entirely normal.”

Excusez moi?

How can they say that pain is manageable with paracetamol in one breath but then describe that same pain, which was excruciating, as normal?

I decided to take a look online and do some pain research. Bit “shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted” but I needed something to distract me from the fact that something the size of Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin rocket felt as though it was trying to launch its way out of my rectum.

Though some websites and online sources did seem to acknowledge the existence of significant pain after banding, lots appeared to base their patient pain expectations on the following statistic, which I managed to squirrel down to source and find in this National Library of Medicine guide to complications after banding, here, that at “1 wk, 75% of patients reported themselves as being pain-free.”

No shit! A week! Who measures things by a week? Of course things are going to be better after a week! You could probably get ravaged by a tiger and feel mildly better about it a week later!

‘Oh don’t worry Mr Beakers: we’re going to amputate your arm now, and we’ve actually run out of anaesthetic so you’re going to have to make do with this quarter of a bottle of vodka, but don’t worry! 80% of patients feel no pain at all five weeks after procedure, you’ll be absolutely fine! Maybe not to drive yourself home afterwards, but we expect you’ll be able to manage to get back to work tomorrow if you keep on top of the paracetamol. Just call us if you bleed more blood than can be collected in a wine bottle.’

The thing that some of these advice pamphlets and website sources miss out, is that the guide also says “pain was the most common symptom occurring in almost 90% of patients, with the pain scores higher 4h following the procedure.”

Thank you, yes, and I’d say increasing exponentially until approx 12-24 hours later when the only thing to do is pace deliriously and wait for the next round of paracetamol.

Gnarly

It just feels weird to me that so many outpatient procedures are so unbelievable gnarly - in this case someone literally shooting elastic bands inside your rectum, like a builder with a nail gun or something - yet you’re advised to just take paracetamol, drive home and go back to work the next day, and given no pain relief or sedation options at the time.

Oh bloody hell, I do feel like I’m moaning a bit now, but equally I am really trying to play it down because I found the whole thing quite awful and the memory has not faded with time. I think it’s all made worse because I’m cross with myself: had I researched properly, and not just read the stupid leaflet from the hospital, I would have seen that the majority of people talking about it online had been in lots of pain and not had a good experience and that for a whole load of them it hadn’t worked anyway (5 in 10 procedures don’t even work! HALF!) and I would have weighed this up against the minor inconvenience of my piles and thought

not on your absolute Nelly.

Of course had my piles been more painful, or much more inconvenient, or life-ruining, then I would have weighed it up differently as should you or anyone who is thinking about banding, but the thing is is that you can’t weigh up the facts if the facts you have are inaccurate!

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For Your Delectation…

And here’s the worst part for your morbid delectation: I had three piles banded, and as the consultant talked me through it I thought, HURRAH! Now I won’t have the equivalent of a bunch of muscat grapes launching out of my rubbish hatch every time I go to the toilet!, but as he collected his tools and whisked off the dust covers, my construction worker, I mean surgeon, said, “oh, by the way, the one on the outside is a skin tag.”

SAY WHAT?

I almost passed out with dismay. The “one on the outside” was the only one I knew about! That was the thing I’d gone to the GP about, the thing I’d said was really bothering me, that I felt was just unhygienic but also kind of embarrassing, never really painful but sometimes uncomfortable and guess what friends?

IT IS STILL THERE!

Could you even make this up? I could not. It’s the most ridiculous, annoying, upsetting twist in the tale. I didn’t even know the other three existed. I could have lived with them for a lifetime none the wiser. I almost feel sorry for them: living peacefully up there, harming no-one, staying in their lane, waving around like fronds of seaweed in the ocean (I imagine?), and then bam. Strangulated with rubber bands around their very necks. Slowly starved of life-force. Eyes bulging as they withered and died, falling off like spent barnacles.

And even they have a 50% chance of coming back to life.

Bloody hell.

Silver Lining

So basically, the only beneficial thing to have come from this experience is that I can tell you about it, so that if you, like me, were weighing up your options, you’d maybe take some time to do a little more research. The aim isn’t to discourage, but to demystify. If you feel as though you might read up a bit on it, ask around, see what options are available for better pain relief post-procedure, or perhaps sedation during, if you know you’ll find it distressing.

The other beneficial thing that has just occurred to me is that the whole farce has been a 9/10 on the comedy rating scale, mainly because I got to wear something called Modesty Shorts. I could barely contain my glee, quite honestly.

These bermuda-style shorts were made out of papery stuff that was slightly see-through, but that wasn’t the best bit: over the bum crease, there was a square door, a peekaboo flap, that was fastened on with velcro!

Oh, the joy. How many times during my one hour wait did I open and close that access hatch! I’ll tell you: eight. Which is why when it came to the actual procedure, the velcro had stopped working and the flap just hung open, like an invitation.

Shame, because I was looking forward to someone having to noisily rip it open at the start of the procedure, really dramatically, and then I’d be able to crack some kind of massively inappropriate joke, like, “ooh, everyone loves an easy access!” or similar.

Alas, I lay on my side on the operating table/pleather bed and it just flopped open behind me, revealing the bright side of the moon before anyone had even asked for it. Embarrassingly forward, borderline crass.

Mind you, the consultant was chatting away to his colleagues about his house renovation, and I’m not sure you really notice bare arses much if you spend the whole day looking at them?

I cannot write the word arse again, today: I’m starting to worry that my friend is right, and that I shouldn’t be telling you any of this at all, even though my archived post Accidental Penetration and the Fibreglass Cow is one of my most-read posts of all time and also Topple, Tipple, Grab my Nipple, both of which go in deep with overshare and inappropriate content. But anyway, in case she’s right this is where I stop, and I now open up the comments for all of your own piles-related anecdotes and private parts experiences.

What a time to be alive.

Hit the heart button on your way out and do share this with anyone who might find it useful, just preferably not any of my relatives, my husband, or people I have to deal with in a professional capacity in any way, shape or form.

Thanks in advance.

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Questions my kids asked me yesterday as I was trying to reverse park my car, which is approximately the same width as a cross channel ferry, between two concrete pillars:

“What’s the smallest sound a human can hear?” (9 year-old)

“Is air lighter?” (9 year-old)

“When they open the new Primark will they close the old Primark on the same day and then quickly move all the clothes across to the new Primark, or…?” (11 year-old)

I’m starting to find it hard to string a proper sentence together. This is not a complaint, just an observation. It happens every August, once my days begin to revolve solely around children and not around work. My cognitive tools go blunt, I become mentally flaccid. My brain feels like a little blimp that I’m gently leading around on a piece of pink ribbon, floating just to the side of my head but not quite connected.

It’s weird, when I think about it properly, because on a normal term-time day the kids are only at school from (let’s round it all up for ease) 9am-3pm: it’s a mere quarter of the twenty-four hour period. But those six hours are so precious, aren’t they? Not just for working and “getting things done” but for being able to do absolutely anything you want to do, on your own terms, knowing that someone else is completely responsible for your children. It’s a short period of relief, like someone else has taken the wheel on a particularly perilous mountain pass.

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On that note, some recommendations:

1. Giffords Circus

Have you been to Giffords Circus? Have you heard of it? Forget everything you think you know about circuses (circi?), especially if you last went to one in the eighties: wipe the slate clean, because Giffords is not what you’d expect. Think magical, whimsical musical crossed with the world’s best talent show crossed with a bit of very stylish cabaret and all heaped with a very special sort of sexy-glint-in-the-eye bohemian charm. Every year has a theme - this year it was the English countryside - and special acts are interspersed with music from the live band, dancing, acrobatics and the kind of clowning around that has kids of all ages in hysterics.

We went last year as a family and loved it so much that it was the kids’ number one top thing to do again this year. It’s not too long (forty minutes each half maybe?), there’s a good interval in the middle and loads of food and bar stalls that make it feel a bit like you’ve been to a mini festival.

Peak entertainment for me, this year, was watching the aerial performers gracefully twisting themselves around one another, high up in the air, as the band and lead singer did a brilliant rendition of Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights. Just excellent. So stylish, so cool.

Tickets costs from £14 each for children, £23 for adults and there are various locations around London, Oxfordshire and the Cotswolds, though the remaining dates are all now in Wiltshire and near Stroud. A good one to bookmark for next year, too, as the shows start in the spring and it would be a lovely way to see in the warmer weather.

Giffords Circus

(I have attended both as a paying customer and a guest of Giffords. Whole family agrees it’s the best value for money of anything we do over the summer, and they’re hard to please!)

2. Unearthed Tortillas

Not a new discovery at all but I’ve been waiting for the right opportunity to mention these delights and now seems like as good a time as any.

I don’t know why they’ve called this product Unearthed: I mean I get it, it’s a nod to how simple and wholesome the ingredients are, straight from the ground, potatoes still with the soil stuck to them, etc etc.

I just find it slightly off putting when we’re talking about a Spanish tortilla, a dampish sort of foodstuff that has eggs in it and so on: the idea of unearthing a moist egg-centric dish from the ground is borderline heinous. Imagine the state of it! Eggs need to be consumed immediately upon deliverance to the table, if you ask me: no type of cooked egg ever got better with time and burying it in the ground to then be unearthed is just lunacy.

Name aside, these ready-made Spanish tortillas are bloody amazing for people like me who want a quick lunch but don’t want to put any more effort into preparing it than simply opening the fridge.

Lunch is often my downfall: if I can’t immediately fathom what it is I’m going to have, then I take out a block of cheese and the butter and I spread the butter into a white roll, fill the roll with cheese, maybe some sliced tomato if I’m worrying for my general health, and then I stretch up to the cupboard that sits above the fridge, out of child-reach, and I get myself a packet of Walkers Salt & Vinegar crisps (the elite crisp and I won’t take other suggestions) to add texture, crunch and variety to the plate.

The Unearthed Spanish Tortilla saves me from myself. There it sits, all fresh and lovely and air-sealed, layers of cooked, salty potato trapped in the firm, eggy goodness. Perfectly seasoned. So much protein! Just slit open the lid with a knife and cut the tortilla in half and tip one half of it onto a plate with the aforementioned tomatoes that would have gone into your cheese roll, add some rocket dressed in good balsamic and extra virgin olive oil! A ten second wonder.

Yes I know how “easy” it is to make a Spanish Tortilla from scratch and save money, it’s also easy enough to wash dishes by hand, or to open a road atlas and read a map. What I want at lunchtime is convenience.

The last time I got shot down for a food recommendation it was McCain’s ready-made frozen jacket potatoes and I’m still reeling - though people had a fair point. Even Rich couldn’t believe my laziness.

“It takes me barely ten minutes longer to cook one from scratch,” he said, “and I can buy the potato for 25p.”

I stand by them, the frozen jackets - absolutely genius idea. Because having to microwave a potato on one plate and then transfer it somewhere else to finish cooking, it’s just too much to think about when I’m mid work-flow. I’m trying to solve world problems such as how to make a curl last longer on mid-length hair, I don’t have mental capacity for potato cooking times in the middle part of the day.

So, the ready-made Spanish Tortilla. They do a plain one and they do one with spinach. Both are juicy, tasty and feel so wholesome and good that you have to find something really processed to nibble on afterwards. I just ate a mini bag of Haribo Tangfastics, balanced it all out nicely.

Do not buy the tiny 250g tortillas, even if you’re just feeding yourself and thinking the other half of the big one will go to waste. The 250g is almost the same price as the 500g. And I can guarantee you’ll eat the other half of the big one for lunch the next day…

In fact, I don’t know how filling you like your lunches! Maybe you’d eat the 500g tortilla in one go - I tend to err light on my lunches because I like to have a stop gap at about 4pm and line up some cream crackers with cheddar to see me through to dinner time (I think I’m probably classified as a grazer), but I have gone in for the whole thing in one sitting and it felt hard going. Proceed with caution.

The Unearthed Spanish Tortillas are here - I get them from Sainsburys and they are frequently on special offer there.

Edit: have just seen this Guardian article about the best supermarket Spanish tortillas: Sainsburys own comes out on top! I haven’t even seen the Sainsburys own! Will try and report back.

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3. Child Master Photograper Competition™

Full disclaimer: this idea is a Crilly Original and I only thought it up yesterday, but it was so successful I needed to immediately tell you about it. I was at my friend Harriet’s house and all of the kids were under our feet in the kitchen, wanting various things and needing constant inspiration despite there being a huge garden with hiding areas, laser quest guns and a semi-lethal tree swing whose natural trajectory sends the swinger straight through a holly bush and into the sturdy, wide trunk of an ancient oak.

I am useless at thinking up activities for my own kids but I seem to have some weird brain wiring that makes me the most creative parent on earth when other people’s kids are around. Honestly, the stories I think up! The games I invent! My own kids look at me when this happens as though they are witnessing one of the world’s greatest betrayals. It must be as though they don’t even recognise me as a person.

Anyway, yesterday, on the spur of the moment, I invented this thing called the Child Master Photographer Competition™, where they all had to take the iPhone out and capture the very best photo they possibly could of a set subject. The subject this time being chicken/s. I’ve never seen kids disappear so fast! The best photo wins.

The cynical among you are thinking that they disappeared with my iPhone and hid behind a hedge Googling words like “bum” and “boobies” but my phone was locked, they could only take pictures. And they were gone for a good half an hour. My eleven year-old, bless her, was gone indefinitely because by the time she got her turn with the camera the hens had all hidden in the bushes, traumatised by their enthusiastic up-close portrait sessions. I went out to find her cross-legged on the grass, waiting patiently for one of them to come out.

I didn’t even have to judge the Child Master Photographer Competition™, just look at the various entries and say all of the encouraging things that we as modern parents are supposed to. “Goodness that one is fantastic! Really professional!” (Blurred red beak and a large, shiny eye, widened in terror, whole iPhone reflected in its surface.)

I think I might do more of these comps. “Find me the fastest snail!” “Get the most interesting twig!” “See who can sort this bag of recycling the fastest - glass into the green bin, cardboard into the bag!”

Well there we are, three recommendations. I don’t have a je ne recommendez pas this week, only a long rant about customer services and my missing sports bra, but it’s a rant I need to sit on for a couple of days so that I’m not speaking in anger…

Mind you, if I did happen upon a time travel machine then I’d have bigger fish to fry in terms of the recent things I’d do differently; namely the Bum Procedure of Doom (post coming, context here) which I would absolutely 100% run a mile from, backless gown flapping behind me as I sprinted through the exit of the outpatients department.

I’ve just realised that the pile of books I was supposed to be ploughing through isn’t the same pile I’ve actually been ploughing through (my God, can I please stop using the words “pile” and “ploughing”, it’s far too soon): nevertheless, I have some very strong book recommendations for you. And also some book dislikes, though these are always more controversial…

Let’s start with the loves.

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John of John, Douglas Stuart

The first and only hearty recommendation so far from my summer reading list. I am yet to read Land by Maggie O’Farrell because my mum made off with it the day I bought it and I am downloading The Correspondent to my Kindle to read on holiday later this month. The others, well. You’ll see.

(I’ve just seen that my Kindle is fifteen years old. Should I give it an upgrade? I think it must be the first ever edition of the Paperwhite. It has a little dink in the screen that lets light escape, which is quite irritating, but otherwise seems to work perfectly. I’m just wondering whether a newer one would be ridiculously amazing, like going from one of those early Apple Mac computers that had the plastic see-through backs and came with 2GB of storage to, I don’t know, my current MacBook Pro? Would I see some dramatic difference, or would it be exactly the same, minus the dink?)

But John of John. I really enjoyed it, if enjoy is even precisely the right word when it comes to Douglas Stuart’s books. They really put you through the wringer. I would really advise starting with Shuggie Bain, moving onto Young Mungo and then starting John of John, because although they are all completely unrelated stories, there’s a definite kind of process you’re moved through; violent Glaswegian upbringings, poverty-stricken backgrounds, themes of forbidden love and loneliness and brutality.

AM I SELLING ALL OF THIS TO YOU FOR YOUR SUMMER SUNBED READ ALL RIGHT THEN I WILL CARRY ON.

John of John is set on the remote, wild Isle of Harris rather than Glasgow, but almost as soon as you start reading the themes feel familiar - you could absolutely tell, without ever being told the author, that this is a Douglas Stuart book. Violent father, secretly gay son, small, forbidden pleasures, relentless work, bone-tiredness and a sense from the characters of for the love of God when will this all end?

The story, in short: son (Cal) comes back from his studies to the Isle of Harris, where his Dad is a weaver and also farms his area of rocky, inhospitable land. Both are secretly gay, made more complicated by the fact that they are also (supposed to be) strict Presbyterians and completely wedded to their faith.

Some of the situations that arise are genuinely hilarious, despite the sense of impending doom and peril, but this is countered by absolute dismal heartbreak and a background of drizzle, cold winds and constantly chapped hands.

Look, I love Douglas Stuart. I don’t know another writer who can pen things so very bleak with as light a touch. It’s always an education, reading him, and John of John was no different.

John of John is in hardback here.

Ripeness, Sarah Moss

I raced through this and immediately ordered two more books by the same author and then bought tickets for her appearance at Toppings in Bath in the autumn! That’s how much I liked it.

I realised that I had read another one of Sarah Moss’s novels years ago, one called Night Waking, and I didn’t like it so much. It was about a woman who moves to a remote island with two small children and struggles to cope with their demands and all the other things that life is hurtling her way.

I do wonder whether I’d enjoy it more now, with a bit more life under my belt - I note from my records (Kindle download history) that I read it in 2011, so I was juggling modelling with blogging, was unhappy with where we were living in London and also would have been right in the midst of it with unexplained infertility and pregnancy loss. (All for another time, maybe.) Have you ever wondered whether you disliked a book simply because you read it at an inopportune time? I might give Night Waking another go this summer, seeing as though I’ll have my Kindle fired up already…

Anyway: Ripeness. Absolutely excellent. Two storylines: young Edith, who is sent to Italy to help “sort out” her older sister, a ballerina who is in the late stages of pregnancy, and present-day seventy-something Edith who lives in Ireland, alone, and is (if you ask me) just so incredibly wise and thoughtful and grounded and has mostly managed to work herself out.

I found her character very comforting; I know she’s fictional, but she has been absolutely brutally honest with herself and we get access to all of these thoughts, all of these revelations and slow realisations that she has gradually made about her own life and the people she has shared it with. I found it poignant and such a compassionate and optimistic way to write a character, especially because she is a woman in her later life - no “bitter, blunt, accidentally hilarious old woman gives memoirs from rocking chair” trope here.

I really felt as though this book gave something new and different. And the modern-day storyline was the one I liked least! Imagine how much I loved the Ballerina Troupe Sequester Themselves in Lake Como Palace storyline! With a seventeen year-old Edith, set the horrendous and completely age-inapprorpriate task of seeing her older, snippy sister through the last of her pregnancy and the giving-up of the baby. Oooph! What a read.

Ripeness is available in paperback here.

The Artist, Lucy Steeds

The Artist, currently 99p on the Kindle, by the way, is Lucy Steeds’ debut novel and I am totally bowled over by it. Finished it last night after devouring it over the course of three, long nights, and it is so exquisitely executed - not a dud moment did I skip over, not a dull passage did I skim!

Set in the South of France, in a hot hot summer (already perfect holiday read), it’s set at the crumbling old farmhouse of one of the world’s most revered painters. He’s a bloody tyrant, this bloke, but you fully get sucked into his orbit of genius alongside the other characters, magnetised by his moods and his methods and the way he snatches plates of half-eaten food from his guests so that he can take them off to his studio and paint them as they decompose.

You can smell the rotting fruits and the sardines and the out-of-season oysters as you read through the unbearably hot weeks and uncover the secrets that are stewing away beneath all of the tubes of oil paints and huge stretched canvasses and overflowing ashtrays.

In short: boy meets girl, girl has a secret, whole thing is loomed over by this borderline-psycho world-famous painter. Oh it’s so good, I almost don’t want to tell you anything else! Delicate, trembling, naive love scenes, descriptions of art and of food and of people that makes you glad to be an alive, feeling human, it’s the absolute antidote to AI dross and will make you want to spend the rest of the summer visiting old churches in France and touring art galleries.

Strong, strong recommend.

The Artist is here.

Right. That’s three books I’ve loved, here are three books I haven’t:

Thanks for reading, everyone - I’m off to make Kedgeree, which I love but have to call by a different name because it’s the only thing Rich rolls his eyes at. He just has a total mental block about eating it, says it’s something to do with the name. Anyway, he made the kids’ dinner and so it’s my turn to do ours. (We don’t all eat together, are you mad? It’s like willingly eating inside an animal enclosure at the zoo.)

Tell me which books you’ve been reading in the comments - good ones that I can add to my list, not-so-good ones I can avoid.

If you’re wondering where the second half of my arse-related saga is: it’s en route. Fear not. So many of you read the first part about the enema (here) that I thought I’d been given a shout-out by someone, Ronaldo, or India Knight, but no. You all just love reading about my discomfort, apparently.

But let us not sully this post with bum talk too, lest it become tiresome: onwards and upwards, towards the light, my friends! Let us leave that particular tunnel of darkness (lol) and proceed with the favourites:

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David Sedaris, The Land and Its People

I went to see An Evening with David Sedaris a couple of weekends ago. Sedaris is one of my all-time favourite writers, absolutely masterful at recording daily observations and his own reactions to them in a way that is endlessly funny. I long ago banned myself from reading his books in public because they make me laugh so suddenly and so violently that anyone in my immediate vicinity swiftly moves away from me, as though they’re worried I might be the sort of person who is about to poo into my own hands and then daub it on the interior walls of the London Underground carriage we’re all travelling in.

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So anyway, I went to see David Sedaris and came away feeling quite inspired about my writing. But not epiphany-level inspired, where you feel so suddenly driven and energised that you arrive home and dramatically sweep all of the crap from your kitchen table, thunk a typewriter down onto its surface, snort a line of Pro Plus* and then spend four straight days tapping out half of a novel that, when you read it back, is complete nonsense. That kind of “inspired” is always a double-edged sword, if you ask me. You can’t go from 0-60 in writing and expect it to be sustainable! You can’t have not written for two years and then gurn your way through most of a working week and then, when the excitement subsides (and/or the typewriter needs a new ribbon) you don’t write again for another two years. It’s pointless!

No, I came away feeling the better kind of inspired. Low-key inspired. I prefer to be low-key inspired, really. It’s less stressful. More like meh, I should really pay a bit more attention to my schedule and carve out the proper time for doing what I love most.

Or, maybe I should buy some new pens.

What I like about David Sedaris and his evening of entertainment is that he doesn’t even talk about his writing process. He just reads from his diaries and his notes and you realise, without Sedaris having to explain a thing, that he is showing you how he writes; by observing constantly, and writing these observations down in a disciplined manner. And you also realise that not only does he not mind doing this, the observing, it’s his very life-force. He loves it!

And it made me realise that I love it, too. And that I used to also write everything down, all day long. My book, How Not to be a Supermodel, was written largely from notes that I had taken throughout the noughties. Nearly every story, every anecdote, was taken from the (very extensive) notes I’d made at the time, twenty years earlier in many cases.

Anyway, I got home, immediately ordered David Sedaris’ new book (The Land and Its People) and then ordered a Collins Day-to-Page diary, which is what I wrote in for years when I was doing my writing courses and my MA. The diary has been with me for two weeks and I’ve written in it every night. Expect the sequel to How Not to be a Supermodel imminently.

You can buy The Land and Its People online here, but if you are new to David Sedaris I would highly recommend starting with Me Talk Pretty One Day, Naked and Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim.

Oh, and Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls. I could keep going.

Love Story.

On a very distantly related note, I have been totally blown away by Love Story, a Disney Hulu series that is based on the story of JFK Jr and Carolyn Bessette. I don’t know why it hit me so hard, but from the moment their (JFKJ and CB) eyes locked across the room and Kate Bush started singing This Woman’s Work, I was absolutely invested.

Disclaimer: I had no idea who either of them even were before I started watching because that entire era passed me by, in the mid-to-late-nineties, busy as I was drinking Kiwi 20/20 and smoking Benson & Hedges and frequenting terrible local nightclubs wearing flammable bodycon dresses.

I would have had not a clue about the ending had a thousand people on Instagram not replied to my stories with “such a shame about how it ended though, so so sad!” and then put two and two together with the aeroplane.

But the outfits! The after parties! NYC in the nineties! Calvin Klein! I know the execution of this series is supposedly quite inaccurate (and I do actually think it’s a bit shitty when they do this “based on truth” thing and then make stuff up, for the families and friends of the people involved) but my God. It has stirred something within me, Love Story, and I can’t shake it. Is it because I was in New York as a model a mere three years after this story finished? Is it because it all feels so weirdly recognisable? And I was about to launch into a Love Story of my very own, and it brings it all back?

The mad thing is, the nineties and noughties don’t even seem like nostalgia: they seem like yesterday. I can still feel the brutal heat rising up from the pavement outside my New York agency as I hefted my massive suitcase out of the taxi. Can still hear the crackle of paper as I lit a Marlboro Light, the feel of the window frame pressing into my back as I sat half out of the window to smoke it.

Oooph.

And that feeling of sinking into love with someone, when it’s so uncomplicated, and you have it all still to discover, and whatever that is when you have the instant chemistry that makes your entire being do a sort of jolt. I wrote about this period of my life in my book, How Not to be a Supermodel, but I feel as though watching Love Story has unlocked a load of other memories that I had buried deep down. I mean how utterly mad was it, how totally wild, that I was in New York City when I was twenty-one and I was just galavanting around the place, hanging a bedsheet up at my window instead of a curtain and also getting taken to dinner where starters cost thirty dollars. (And that was then.) I just went off and did whatever, going to the Hamptons with a load of people I barely knew, going to see a band play in a basement uptown and walking twenty blocks home afterwards, listing to Ministry of Sound CDs on my diskman as I walked. With not a soul to look out for me. I didn’t even have a working mobile phone!

Love Story sort of brought it all back. How mad is it, also, that Calvin Klein was a proper designer label, doing shows and dressing famous people for red carpets but then they started making a shit tonne out of selling underpants and now they just make this high-volume, mass-produced stuff that everyone and anyone can buy. And yeah, the waistband of the underpants is iconic, and they still do great ads for the underwear, but you can buy it from a cut-price bargain basement off the Edgware Road so it’s not exactly the minimalist mecca it was in the nineties, where red carpet looks were carefully considered and “only black paper clips” on the stationery would do.

I have to say that the Love Story itself did wear a bit thin by the time I was halfway through the series; it seemed to be 90% made up of the lovers being (frankly) totally incompatible and perhaps not really liking each other as much as you should if you have just got married, and then lots of crying and lip biting until yes, they died. Still. Loved the whole thing.

It’s on Disney Hulu here.

The Lexon Flip

I bought a digital alarm clock in an attempt to remove my iPhone from the bedroom. I am seriously trying to cut down on my iPhone usage and “before bed” as well as “the first moment I wake up” are big danger times for me - I use the phone scrolling as a weird sort of soother to ease me out of the day at the end of it and into the day the minute my eyes are open.

It’s mostly Family Wordle’s fault: I have a group with my parents and my sister and everyone does Wordle first thing and so, for the past few years, I have become accustomed to opening my eyes and then immediately, before I’ve even worked out what day it is, loading up the NY Times on my phone screen.

Terrible phone hygiene. Obviously once the Wordle is done I then have to share my results with the group on Whatsapp, and then I check all the Whatsapps I’ve missed overnight, then I look at my emails, and usually a load of Substack posts have come through to my inbox, so I click over to the app to read them so that I can “heart” them and share them or leave a comment, and then usually I get drawn into seeing some posts on the timeline that have been published by people I don’t follow…

…and by this time it’s at least twenty minutes after my alarm has gone off and before I’ve even stretched my legs out I’ve read about a woman in America who escaped an abusive husband only to accidentally marry his brother, bought a pair of socks that promise to reduce calf ache after exercising and added three things to my admin to-do list that arrived in my inbox overnight.

I mean how is this good for me?

It’s worse before bed. I scroll when I have my Current Body LED Mask on and look for clothing items that would definitely, if I had them, fix every single dressing catastrophe.

Again: how is this good?

So the idea is to remove the phone from my vicinity in non-working hours. Oh OK, so I need to look at messages from the school mums, village chat, etc, to find out what type of uniform the kids are supposed to be in and to see if any trees are blocking the route out of the village (happens) and other vital morning news, but most of the non-working hours need to be phone free. Otherwise my brain is going to melt into a weird pool of brain slushie and start leaking out of my nostrils and ear holes.

Anyway, I bought an alarm clock. It looked very stylish when I found it online, and despite it being four times more expensive than the one that did exactly the same but looked like shit, I was drawn in. I obviously have a supreme eye for design because I picked it out instantly from about forty alarm clocks and - lo and behold - this one has won prestigious awards that single it out as an iconic object.

Smug.

Not so smug about the price, which was forty pounds, but I reasoned that it looked excellent and would be one of those objects I instantly treasure because I just love the design and function of them.

But look at the bloody size of it! I laughed when it fell out of the outer box. I thought it was the little box of pavement chalks I’d ordered on the same day! I thought it would be the same size as our alarm clocks of the eighties and nineties - remember the annoying stringy radio aerial they had hanging out of the back of them that you never quite knew what to do with?

This is less than a quarter of the size. It might be an eighth of the size, when I weigh it up. How hilarious! I’m trying to think of it as a piece of tech rather than the kind of alarm clock we used to buy at Argos. After all, that Brick thing (I actually have one, it got sent to me, I got confused on the first minute and then gave up and put it in a drawer, must revisit!) costs £54 and is smaller still. And doesn’t even tell you the time!

What I loved about this Lexon Flip Classic was a) it came in a very seventies, Tom Ford-esque cool-toned brushed gold, which I am a sucker for, b) it had this large ON / OFF on either side (you flip it to turn on or off) which looked incredibly funky and c) the battery (it’s rechargeable) lasts for about six months. So not only do I not have to plug it in and have another wire hanging down off my bedside table, I can carry it with me if I travel and I don’t have to worry about it running out.

I’m already very enamoured. You just tap the top of the clock to snooze it, which I do four or five times, because there’s no Wordle to encourage me to wake up properly, or flip it over to OFF to turn it off completely. Satisfying.

And at least this one doesn’t have a radio. Nothing was more terrifying than being launched out of a deep sleep as a teen to the sudden raucous din of Our House by Madness, or Vindaloo by Fat Les. Just right into it, no warning, straight into the middle of the song. Except accompanied by shitloads of crackling, because we never knew what to do with that stringy aerial thing, so radio stations were only partially tuned in. 40% at best.

Those were the days.

I mean they really must have been because look at me! Shunning my phone for the simplest of (designer) alarm clocks. Considering swapping the washing machine for a mangle. (Joke.)

I bought my Flip clock here.

My God, why is this month’s favourites so long? Are you still here? There’s even a new bonus section for paid subscribers, called Je Ne Recommendez Pas, where I tell you about the things I’ve tried that were rubbish, which might push this post into thesis-length territory!

I’ll keep the shirt bit quick:

Seersucker Berry Stripe Shirt

Saw this shirt a month or so ago, obsessed over it daily, because who can get this image from their mind once it has been seared on:

Doesn’t she look the very picture of cool and sultry? And I have wanted to experiment with this sort of colour (colours) for a while. The shirt almost reads as red, a pinkish red, but isn’t: it’s berry and pale-pink fine stripes.

Not sure seersucker is my favourite material but I do have to say that it feels quite cool in the summer sun, it seems to stay separate from the skin, almost as though it is scared to touch you, which means that you have this air pocket layer all around you and the fabric feels light and unobtrusive.

I used an intro discount code for my purchase, you can find them online (or on the home page, if it pops up) but would happily have paid full price - it feels like a special purchase, all beautifully boxed-up and with the collar cardboarded out and so on.

I bought a 10-12 (and I am a 10-12) and would say the fit is oversized. I bought mine here. Goes amazingly well with a huge variety of things, including my summer floaty trousers, all of my shorts, and thrown on over dresses and a light cover-up.

Piglet Towels

I replaced all of the towels at my holiday cottage, The Dorset Nook, and bought new ones for the new cottage, The Dorset Nest, (website incoming), all from Piglet in Bed. Which made me feel as though I was Jeff Bezos, because these towels ain’t cheap and I bought enough to fill a huge, fridge-sized box, but at the time I bought them they had a brilliant sale on and an extra 10% off on top.

I am a hound for a sale. If there’s a big purchase I know I need to make and time is not of the essence, I keep my eye on that thing (or things) for months until the appropriate discount appears. (In this case it was near enough 30%, which bought the towels down to M&S prices!)

I’m afraid they’re not in the sale at the moment, but Piglet do have a 15% intro code for new customers. When I tell you that these towels are supreme… crikey. Piglet don’t even really boast about the quality and thickness, you have to go looking for the official figure which is a whopping 600gsm, but it’s the stripe colour combos I love the most. They could jazz up the most drab bathroom, single-handedly.

Piglet towels are here.

Right. Onto the new segment for paid subscribers, Je Ne Recommendez Pas. Things I don’t recommend. (Yes I realise this French isn’t accurate.) This week we have the online clothing company I thought was a scam and a book that very sadly bored me so much that had to skip big chunks of it:

Until Sunday…

I’m editing the piles post tonight. I’m not sure there are so many laugh out loud moments as the enema story, I’ll be honest, but that’s mostly because someone went up my bottom with a glorified poker and snapped elastic bands around parts of my rectum. It’s a difficult one to get a giggle from, though I did crack some pretty good jokes while he was up there.

Jobs for you to do before you depart: press the heart button (if you’re not reading in the Substack app then why not, it’s so much better); leave me your comments re Love Story and also whether you’ve read anything by David Sedaris; tell me what you think of my new alarm clock. Don’t be rude about it, it’s my new favourite thing.

AD info: this post is sponsored by Dove Whole Body Deo.

Who better to test out a new deodorant than me?

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking: there are a million people better suited to testing out a new deodorant than you, you desk-bound twerp! What about world class sprinters? Jockeys? Spies!

People who do high-stress activities that see them perspiring from every single pore on their body? They would be good deodorant testers! Gamblers. Lion Tamers. People who do physically demanding activities all day long. Ballerinas. Paramedics. Road fixers!

And yes, you could argue that any and all of those people would be far better placed to test out Dove Whole Body Deodorant than I am, but hear me out: those people know they’re going to get dramatically less and less fresh over the course of the day. It’s absolutely expected.

The undercover agent working in enemy territory gets ready in the morning knowing they’re going to spend the day rifling through the desk drawers of a megalomaniac, hoping he hasn’t guessed that “Brian the music teacher from Milton Keynes” is a fabricated persona.

The Red Bull extreme downhill cyclist knows that by the time she reaches the last 100 metre stretch she will have sweat rivers running through the ravine of her cleavage, that her top will be stuck to her back, that her feet will be hot and sticky. (I’d have a lot worse things coming out of me if I had to do one of those downhill courses, let me tell you!)

And yes, they would put Dove Whole Body Deodorant through its paces, but it would all just a bit obvious, if you ask me. If you ask me (and I know you haven’t, but I shall continue), a better test of their new deodorant would be on a person who maintains a relatively steady stress level for the majority of the day, with no real ongoing efforts or physical exertions, but who must then withstand sudden spikes of stress and adrenaline so monumental, so heart-stoppingly significant, that it’s a miracle she’s still alive.

It’s me, I’m referring to, in case you haven’t put two and two together. Me, with the same stress profile as an FBI Negotiator: relaxed for hours at a time, all fine and dandy, but with sudden and violent plunges into high-tension situations that I (unlike an FBI negotiator) seem apparently completely ill-equipped to deal with. Situations that send the protruding vein on the side of my forehead into pulsation overdrive.

Take last Wednesday as an example. There I was, minding my own business, working my way through my admin to-do list and putting off writing a blog post that’s been in drafts for a month: I could see the whole rest of the day stretching ahead of me and only one urgent task that couldn’t be deferred. Absolute bliss.

But then the intercom rang for the gate and it was a man selling olive trees - “yours for £850”.

“No thanks!” I said, very politely, but it is a quirk of the gate intercom that anything you say into one end of the receiver comes out the other end an unintelligible, garbled mess. It sounds like a goose is honking through a megaphone.

And so the olive tree man didn’t understand my “NO THANKS” and carried on talking into the camera about the age of the olive tree and the fact it came with the gigantic pot (it was probably quite a good price, in all honesty, considering it was about a thousand years old and eight feet tall, but putting it in my hands would be like signing its death warrant) and so I thought I’d stop being lazy, put some shoes on and go down and tell him I didn’t want the olive tree in person.

Except that instead of turning off the speakerphone button, I pressed the button to open the gate!

If I say that as though it’s an epic problem, me opening the gate, that’s because it is. We have a long and very steep driveway, and once someone starts bringing a large vehicle through the gate, they commit themselves to at least five minutes of pained, extreme manoeuvring at the top. Any big vehicles that absolutely must come up (small skip lorries, heavy deliveries) have to turn around so laboriously (and usually churning up the grass at the sides of the driveway in the process) that it becomes this really tense, high-stakes spectator event that you didn’t want to have to partake in in the first place. Especially if they get too close to where the drive drops off into an almost vertical hill. Whooph!

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Anyway, the gate started to open and I was bellowing through the speakerphone - “STOP! DO NOT GO THROUGH THE GATE” and at the same time trying to put my trainers on, but the kids had stuffed my trainers with tissue paper as a joke (story for another time) and I could only get the very tips of my feet into them. So off I went through the door, on tip-toes, with the dog barking his head off, and then the dog managed to get out in front of me which added another layer of peril because it was quite likely he’d go and run behind the reversing Olive Tree Truck, so I had to launch myself down the driveway - gradient akin to that of Mount Manaslu - with my feet en pointe inside my Flipflop trainers, waving my arms in the air and screaming “STOP! STOP!”

And all without a bra on, whilst realising I’d forgotten to put the bins out for collection day and also suddenly remembering I had a dentist appointment at half past two.

But there I was, three minutes later, back at my desk, dog alive and safely under my feet, heart rate back down to a solid 48.

(Apparently this means I’m afflicted with something, the fact I have a default resting heart rate of around 48. But I spoke to the doctor and she said all is fine. She said, “many athletes have this sort of resting heart rate” and I have to say I swelled with pride, despite her clanging error. That is what you get for wearing cycling shorts and a baseball cap to a doctor’s appointment! Flattery! I should probably have corrected her, in that I am absolutely not an athlete, I just do my Peloton classes a few times a week, but I was feeling too good about it all, and concentrated on flexing my quads a bit so that I could really ham up the athlete look.)

Anyway, oh my God, I digress, what I’m trying to say is that my days seem to be peppered with these high-stress moments that send me hot and bothered all over. So who better to test a deodorant that goes beyond the underarms? That delivers all day odour protection and keeps things feeling fresh in places like the back and the feet? Between the boobs? Under the boobs? In between the thighs? (This area specifically seems to be a danger zone for me this year. It must be the cycling shorts!)

I mentioned in a previous post that the spray version of Dove Whole Body Deodorant had won permanent status in my bag (as a teen of the nineties, I am well au fait with the idea of an all-over spraying session, including feet, stomach and a quick spritz in the general direction of the Garden of Eden) but I have been lengthily and dutifully appraising the benefits of the stick and the cream version too.

What I like about the stick and cream is that they have a very soft, silky texture that doesn’t dry down to a tight film, or leave a gunky mess behind: it’s all very neat and lovely and above all gentle, more like applying skincare than anything else. A nice replacement for my usual trick, which is just spraying copious amounts of perfume over myself in the hope that it’ll tide me over until I get home again and into the shower!

They’re not meant to replace underarm deodorant - but then I wouldn’t really want to put underarm deodorant anywhere else on my body, because the texture feels weird (I did try it, to check) - but I do think it’s the more skincare-leaning alternative to what we did in the nineties, which was to spray whole entire cans of Impulse or Charlie Red over ourselves after PE to keep any odour in check.

I think for me that the spray version most easily fits into my routine - it has a similar “silky” feel to the cream and stick, which is unusual for a spray product and the fact that it’s no-contact means it’s easy to apply during the day for freshening top-ups. In the last two days alone, the Dove Whole Body Deodorant spray has seen me through an incident with a bat on the landing (the cat dropped one out of its mouth, Rich was away, I had to catch it in a cereal bowl and release it outside, stress level a solid 10/10), an unexpected encounter with some cows and an extreme driving event that saw me having to reverse alongside an open trench in the lane, where they were replacing pipes, with only about an inch of leeway either side of me because my car is as wide as a cross channel ferry, all whilst a huge tractor bore down on me from the front and my kids argued in the back about how glacé cherries were made. (They’re slowly simmered in syrup over a lengthy period of time.)

So there you have it. Dove Whole Body Deodorant spray, permanent fixture. It has very quickly become the product I think about when I’m going to be out for the day and I know there will be a point where I want to feel more fresh and comfortable. The skincare-led formula feels beautiful on the skin, really gentle, which I think is what keeps me coming back to it, actually, above all else.

Dove Whole Body Deodorant is now available at selected retailers (see here for more info) - my most-used scent is Raspberry and Rose, but all three fragrances are mild (I don’t find they particularly interfere with my perfume) and have that “clean” sort of smell that is comforting and light.

I know what you’re thinking: too much information! I’ll never be able to look at you the same way again! That’s OK. I’ve not been able to look at myself in the same way for over a decade now.

Now I don’t know whether you’ve ever had to self-administer an enema (it’s not the kind of question you tend to ask during polite conversation): a bit of cursory research on Instagram leads me to believe that for many hospitals and clinics it is something that is often done “in house”.

Indeed, this was not my first rodeo at the enema show: I’d had one about fifteen years ago before a colonoscopy at Whipps Cross hospital in East London. No sedation, no painkillers and an enema administered by a nurse with the biceps of a heavyweight champion and a touch so far from gentle that I struggled to walk straight for a week.

But at least Nurse Iron Grip removed an unfamiliar, slightly stressful step from what was already an unfamiliar and stressful day: having to do a home enema, which seemed rife with the possibility of serious misstep and/or death, had me feeling emotionally drained before I’d even reached the hospital.

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But anyway, there was a full-scale facial revolt that went on during the heat of the heat-iest wave of heatwave (it reached forty degrees on the stone steps at the front of the house), with more and more spots appearing on my face almost as I stared at it in the mirror.

I knew what it was though, because this has happened before: my skin, which loves all types of sunscreen for most of the year, hates chemical sunscreen when the weather is scorching.

If you have no idea what chemical sunscreen is, then it’s the type of SPF that is more the norm - the default type. If your SPF doesn’t say “mineral sunscreen” on the bottle, then it’s most likely a chemical one. They’re usually lighter in texture, absorb more easily and are virtually invisible once applied. Mineral sunscreens tends to be slightly thicker and will more often than not leave a white tint to the skin because of the filters they use, so only a fraction of the sunscreens you see on the shelves tend to be mineral ones.

Some people freak out over these terms, chemical and mineral, imagining that chemical sunscreens are made on an evil despot’s oil rig from things like battery acid, potassium chunks and melted-down litmus strips, and that mineral sunscreens are formulated by fairies at the bottom of the garden using hemp, grass seed and the juice of the baobab tree. But both are made up of chemicals.

Chemical sunscreens work (simplified version because I’m not qualified on the science, I mean I just wrote “juice of the baobab tree”) by absorbing the UV rays whereas mineral filters reflect the UV rays, using zinc oxide or titanium dioxide. (See! Chemicals!)

Anyway, when it gets really really hot my skin seems to break friends with chemical sunscreens. Maybe it’s because everything gets so clogged up (sunscreen is designed to stick around on your skin, so the normal cleansing job sometimes just won’t be enough) but I also think that, for me at least, it’s something to do with the particular ingredients in the chemical sunscreens. They become intolerable to my face. Weirdly not to the rest of my person (though I’ll extend “face” to cover chest as well) but on my visage I get flourishes of spots, sometimes some irritation and, quite often at the same time, really stinging eyes with formulas that previously didn’t sting me.

Weird!

But all is not lost. Here’s what I do - immediately - when my summertime face begins to fall apart.

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1. Ramp up my cleansing routine.

Usually I’m a “cleanse once in the evening because WHY would my face even be dirtying as I sleep?” sort of person, but in the summer, I really up the ante. I use a balm cleanser in the evening (this one from ELF is my current most-used, it’s a steal and has a luxe melting texture and removes mascara as well as everything else) but in the morning I use something splashy and light.

(This hot weather is the only time I will consider hanging my head over a sink and splishy-splashing it, I cannot abide the sensation of water running down my arms or neck, normally, but if it’s boiling outside it’s just about acceptable.)

I’ve been using the Medik8 Total Moisture Cleansing Gel in the mornings - it’s deep-cleansing and very refreshing and weirdly far more hydrating than it strictly should be for a product of this type. See also Yepoda Bubble Double, and for something less splashy (more creamy) but still light and fresh, try Inkey’s Cream-to-Milk Cleanser.

2. Introduce a BHA exfoliant.

This one is even more important than the first step. A BHA is a beta-hydroxy acid and it’s a type of exfoliant, but one that is oil-soluble, which means that it can get deep into the pores to keep them clear and unproblematic, making it an amazing solution (or part-solution) for people who experience breakouts and blemishes and blackheads.

I sweep the BHA liquid on after cleansing (thoroughly, balm and flannel!) in the evening, so that I know it’s getting to work overnight. Just tip a little onto a cotton pad and swoosh it over the face, making sure you get the side of the nose and the eyebrows (why the spots in the eyebrows? cruel nature!) and then follow with your usual routine, though I’d give heavy creams a miss.

I go: cleanse, LED mask, BHA, light oil-free moisturiser. Or if it’s my retinoid night (I alternate nights, sounds complicated but isn’t) then I might use the BHA the following morning instead. I don’t like to stack those together. Perhaps I’m too cautious with my skincare routine, but I always think it’s best to go easy and tackle one thing at a time! If you want my full skincare routine (obviously take these tweaks into account!) then it’s here.

BHA exfoliants I love and trust:

Paula’s Choice BHA 2% Liquid, here

Skin Rocks Control Acid, here

Medik8 Press & Clear, here

Ole Henriksen Detox Drops, here

3. Switch to Mineral SPF

Is this step even more important than step 2? Can’t decide. But it’s a crucial change, because I basically eliminate the entire cause of my woes in one fell swoop by switching from a chemical sunscreen to a mineral one. Why don’t I use a mineral one all year round? Because generally I find them less refined than the chemical ones, which are usually weightless, invisible and a joy to apply.

Mineral SPFs often feel slightly clunky by comparison, texture-wise, but they have some huge benefits. They won’t sting the eyes. They tend to create a good grippy makeup base. And, perhaps most importantly for the purpose of this post, they can be better for those who get spots or irritation. (The downside is that white cast they can leave, but I do think that some of the brands are getting more clever with mineral sunscreens and the way they are formulated.)

My favourite Mineral SPF of the season so far? Tatcha The Silk Sunscreen. The closest I’ve found to the texture of a silky, lightweight chemical sunscreen. Has added moisturisers and also niacinamide which would be a lovely ingredient to add into the mix anyway if you were having breakouts and redness and so on. Finish is not too matte (which I hate) but equally not shiny-oily feeling. This also seems to have far less of an opaque white cast than others I’ve tried, though obviously I’m relatively fair anyway so my findings here are of limited value.

Just perfect. Oooph, I love it. But not the price-tag, which is a whopping great £65, and unfortunately blows it out of the water for the majority of people. I feel as though some would pay that for a big-name night cream, but when it comes to sunscreen it’s more of a practical purchase rather than a luxury and the majority of people would absolutely balk at it. Does that sound silly? Am I wrong? I’d love this to be more accessible, it’s so beautifully done. Tatcha rarely make anything I don’t instantly fall for, when I think about it, it’s a problem!

(It’s here. I have no discount code other than the SpaceNK new customer one (pops up on the website) but do let me know in the comments if you see any!)

Not quite so silky, but equally not at all horrendously thick, we have Yepoda BFF SPF50. Sits really well under makeup, this one, and costs considerably less than the Tatcha at £24. (Here.) This also has a slight tint, which helps to counteract the white cast.

Cetaphil’s Mineral SPF50 is my newest discovery - grabbed for £11 a couple of weeks ago and tested almost daily since. It actually feels more fluid than either of the above options, in terms of consistency, and spreads quickly and easily over the skin. Does it feel quite so light and delicate once applied? Possibly not, but I think if you started out with the Cetaphil and hadn’t ever laid eyes on the Tatcha then you’d be pretty pleased with it.

I mean, I’ve used it over and over again when I could have been reaching for the others so I’d say that’s a good test. Had I hated it, or found it even slightly upsetting to use then I’d have resigned it to the outbox. No greasiness, gentle on the skin, affordable enough that you’d use it in the right quantities and happily reapply.

I got mine here for £11, I can see it’s usually around £16, still a brilliant price, if you ask me.

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So that’s my emergency protocol for when my summer skin won’t play ball. It’s pretty fast-working. You might ask, why the hell do you not just use mineral sunscreen for the entire summer and then you wouldn’t get these problems in the first place?

It’s a fair question. I suppose I get lulled into a false sense of security for months and months where my skin is flawless and the weather is warm and then BAM!

Maybe next year I’ll start my switches in spring…

Maybe you don’t want to read any of them: then we’re really in trouble.

I must say that I am not dreading the six week break as much as I normally would, because the kids are older now (9 and 11) and will actually amuse themselves pretty well for a good few hours a day, even with their one hour screen rule*.

(*Don’t come for me on the one hour screen rule. I’m not trying to be one of those smug uber-mums who hand-washes all the laundry using homemade soap, or sends the kids into school with a packed lunch consisting of Ottolenghi salad, a tub of pomegranate seeds and cutlery made from recycled bamboo. The one hour screen rule was something we introduced after we realised that for the first six or so years of the kids’ lives we had let them sit and watch Peppa Pig for at least 50% of their waking hours - it’s amazing they didn’t learn to oink instead of talk. We’re simply trying to relieve some of our own guilt. Rich is much more of a stickler for it than I am, I have to say - I’m much more swayed towards “having an easy life”.)

But then there’s always a tipping point, with the long holiday and the kids being at home, and it is always when I am knee deep in one work task and have just realised I’d forgotten another more important work task, and one of them will come in and say they’re bored (always the 9 year old) or hungry (also the 9 year old but often the 11 year old) and my whole carefully-built, overly-optimistic defensive wall of stress-management and time-keeping will just immediately crumble, like it’s been hit with a wrecking ball.

OK tell me which of these you’d like to see first:

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But no. I spent very little time walking in heels as a fashion model because I was terrible at it. I was the sort of model who excelled at being completely still, at being captured in that one moment in time looking outrageously cool or sultry or whatever it is I was being paid (or not) to be.

So I cannot really blame my feet issues (weird alignment, suspected plantar fasciitis that I have diagnosed via the AI section of Google, crappy weak ankles, etc) on the modelling career. True, I often used to walk 8-10 miles a day shuttling between castings, but there are many jobs where you clock up an insane number of steps each day. Postman. Nurse. Dog walker.

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Anyway, I did walk a lot when I was a model, but not in the way everyone thinks. No sashaying for me, because if I was forced to wear high heels and move in them I instantly adopted the gait of a newborn T-Rex - casting directors only made that mistake once! - but lots and lots of stomping the pavements in my Adidas Stan Smiths.

I’d go out on a limb here (lol) and say that the damage to my feet was directly caused in my late teen years. A time of my life when quite possibly my joints and bones were just about finishing their growing and fusing, yet I insisted on going out clubbing wearing six inch platform shoes with insubstantial buckles. And then often walked home with no shoes on at all.

(But you just said you had the gait of a newborn T-Rex? And you wore six inch platforms? Yes, I did, but it wasn’t so much of a problem when I was merely jigging my way around Odyssey at 2am holding a triple Archers and lemonade. The stakes tended to be higher when you were walking in front of a few hundred fashion people at - eg - Hugo Boss.)

And then, going back to the damage, I think that possibly years and years of squishing my feet into any sort of footwear I fancied, including pointy-ended things that folded all of my five toes on top of one another so that they formed a weird Quintruple Decker toe sandwich inside the shoe, didn’t do much good.

All this to say: I’ve been testing out special flip flops that offer a bit of extra sole-cushioning and foot support. Havaianas are sadly dead to me, as one singular hour in them the week before last rendered me immobile for almost two days, suffering lightening pains across my soles and an underlying but moderately severe overall ache that reminded me of the time I thought it would be a good idea to park my car on the outskirts of Birmingham and “walk into town”, to a) atone for my drinking sins and b) save myself the parking fee. (Student. Summer of ‘99.)

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Before we start on the flip flops, I must say that my Birkenstock Eva Arizonas (here online) are supremely comfortable and have a slightly moulded sole that is a million miles away from the totally flat sole of a classic flip-flop. But I have grown a bit weary of their chunky looks and practical aesthetic: what I wanted was a bit more skin on show. A little moment for my pedicure to shine. (Even though it’s a very old pedicure now and the nail polish is hanging off the ends of my toes unattractively, but the sentiment is there.)

I wanted the casual, careless, throw-on footwear of my youth, invoking memories of beach bars and riding around the streets of heatwave Paris on the backs of scooters (yikes) but I wanted this footwear to offer moral, emotional and physical support for my forty-five year-old feet.

First through the gate: FitFlop Flip Flops. They were my first port of call, seeing as though my most-worn trainers are FitFlop, my ballet flats are Fitflop and various other sandals and casual shoes. Surely their flip flops would be the best you could get?

I ordered the iQushion, crafted with special ergonomic technology, in my usual size -UK6. Colour: a lovely soft bronze. How dismayed I was to find that they were so small I couldn’t get my whole foot in! I reordered in a 7. Black. No bronze left. Still a little on the small size, but I thought it would be ridiculous to size up to an 8!

Now what I will say about the iQushion is that they are a cut above your usual flip flop. A properly engineered sole that bounces you along, clever shaping that supports the arch almost imperceptibly, and a lovely slender flip flop strap that looks chic and fashionable. The whole shoe (if you can call it that) feels more sleek and refined than its competitors. (Namely Archies, Croc, Oofos. Though perhaps not as sleek as Crocs, see below.)

What’s stopping the FitFlop iQushion from being the best overall supportive flip flop and allowing me to simply finish the review right here and go to bed?

The toe post.

Oh, the toe post. Now I’m sure after a few weeks I’d get used to it, but the completely vertical positioning of this post meant that it was permanently wedged right up into the space between my toes. A constant annoyance.

And I probably would have put up with it, or ridden it out, had I not on the same day slipped on a pair of Archies, the arch-supporting flip flop brand that must be spending 50% of their profits on re-marketing via the social media platforms.

Never have I seen so many adverts for one product (apart from maybe Celeste d’Or bras, and those reusable eco pan scourers) but let me tell you that they targeted me at precisely the right time.

I had been researching comfy sandals and flip flops for about a week when all of a sudden about sixteen thousand Archies ads landed in front of my eyes in the space of an hour. I must admit I was swayed mostly by the fact that Jennifer Aniston owns three pairs of them, because I love a bit of Rachel from Friends, but also the millions of reviews saying that these flip flops were the comfiest sandals on earth, bar none.

I clicked, I bought, I slipped them on, and boy were they instantly the absolute dream. Archies look almost exactly like Havaianas, or any standard flip-flops, except that they have a big lump moulded into the sole where the arch of the foot should be. It’s slightly weird, the sensation of the foot lump- it feels more like a foot mountain at first - but I imagine that the flatter your foot, or the more fallen the arch, the more you feel the mountain?

Apart from that weird feeling, it was immediate love. Something about the shaping of the sole seems to guide the foot into an optimum position, so that as you walk along your feet aren’t flapping around all over the shop, side to side, up and down, they’re firmly positioned on the sole, with the straps of the flip flop laying securely over the top and the toe post (which is slanted) comfortably in place.

After a week or so of Archies wear, I’m wondering how I ever coped with a totally flat flip flop sole. The idea of it is almost absurd, considering my foot limitations: walking around with two flaps of rubber on the bottoms of my feet, held on by toe scrunching and positive thoughts.

Oh - that’s another thing. No toe-scrunching required at all for the Archies. The foot settles in, the flip flop seems to mould to the foot, everything is solid and secure and comfy.

They’re the winner, for sure, though if FitFlop fixed the toe post (just slant it slightly!) it would be incredibly close, if not a draw. FitFlop with its narrower strap just looks sexier.

I know you’ll pipe up and say “OOFOS!” “Crocs!” but I have examined both, just to cover all bases, and the Oofos are too chunky for this particular brief. The Crocs, though very sleek and stylish-looking, don’t have quite as much arch support. (They would probably be my winner if I didn’t need the extra foot-shaping sole - I love the shape of them!)

So there we have it. Archies are currently saving the day, giving me something non-foot-destroying that’s sleeker and more minimalist to wear with my floaty dresses and linen trousers than the plastic Birkenstocks. Are flip flops ever going to be the podiatrist’s favourite shoe? I doubt it. But if you must (I must!) then these feel like a great option.

You can buy them direct from Archies here and from Amazon here. They’re £35 and there are loads of colours. I’m about to order the dark brown, because I went rogue and did bright pink for my review (I always seem to be drawn to plastic sandals in bubblegum pink!) and they look a bit juvenile with my nice, modern sundresses.

The Fitflop are here - I would definitely size up. I’d size up in the Archies, too, though I found Archies to be more generous.

One thing, before I go: quite a lot of people slipped into my Instagram DMs to say they find their flip flops very noisy. I didn’t really know what to say to this. You’re basically slapping two pieces of thick rubber at the floor with the entire force of your bodyweight, what can I tell you? You’re never going to take someone by surprise with these on…

I feel as though long locks are “in”, at the moment, don’t you? Everyone and their aunt seems to be sporting these impossibly long, straight swathes of hair and for a hot minute I thought to myself, I quite fancy those too. But then it turned out that lots of people I saw with this hair actually had extensions in, which seem to be really expensive and time-consuming and I can’t get past the fact that you can apparently feel the little knobbly bits near the roots where they attach the other person’s hair to your own hair, which would drive me mad.

(I once had eyelash extensions. Three times, actually. The first two times were great, really loved them, but on the third session they used slightly heftier lashes to get a fuller effect and oh my God. I picked and picked at those lashes, rolling them between my fingers until they plucked themselves off the lid, taking the host lash along with them. It became compulsive. I just couldn’t stand the feeling of the stuck-on-ness of it all. I plucked and rolled for twenty-four hours until the next afternoon I realised I only had twelve eyelashes left on one eye and fifteen on the other. I was virtually bald on both lids.

I made an emergency dash into the West End (I lived in London at the time) to find a salon, any salon, who did lash extensions (it wasn’t that common then) and ended up in Chinatown in a room above a restaurant, where a woman tutted at me as she removed the final, sad extensions.)

Anyway, I don’t think long hair is for me, full stop. Every time I have shorter hair I think that longer hair is for me, but then as it grows out I realise that I can’t stand it hanging around my face. That I hate it sitting on my bare skin if I’m wearing a sleeveless top, the way it tickles my back or my shoulders. And so when it’s longer, and by this I mean past the shoulder, I end up tying it up into a ponytail or a bun, and that is where it stays for approximately 98% of the time. Giving me the Worst Tension Headaches of all Time™.

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As soon as it gets hot, my intolerance of having any restrictive clothing touching me increases to absurd levels, so that my ideal garment would basically be a cotton sack with a hole cut into it for my head and two holes for the arms.

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And it’s not the sweatiness, or stickiness of the situation that irks me: it’s almost entirely a sensory one. The roughness of a seam feels eighty times worse if the mercury is rising and tempers are flaring. An elasticated waistband? Absolutely not.

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Anyway, I have the sweatiness and stickiness issue completely covered thanks to (smooth segue here) Dove Whole Body Deodorant, which is a brand new range built for places for places beyond the underarms - in addition to regular deodorant. Think: gap between the boobs that becomes a sweat conduit as soon as temperatures creep above twenty-five degrees. Creases behind the underboob. Channels of pure humidity and clamminess that sit at the tops of the thighs. Let’s face it, these places are absolute carnage zones when the heat turns up.

So, Dove Whole Body Deodorant comes in three formats and three fragrances: the Whole Body Spray, Whole Body Stick and Whole Body Cream. Obviously my most-used so far has been the spray, because I am a child of the eighties and therefore a teen of the nineties and grew up spraying myself liberally with the popular body sprays of the time. Charlie Red, Dewberry, Impulse. This is not the same thing at all, it is the considered version, the mature version: beautiful scents (Raspberry & Rose, Lavender & Chamomile, Sea Mist & Peony) but with a formula that delivers all day odour protection as well as nourishing oils and (incredibly, considering all of this) a quick-dry finish that feels, to me, completely weightless.

And with the same brilliant satisfaction that only an all-over spray session can give. That instant veil of scent, the cooling sensation, the feeling of being immediately freshened and fresh - CAN HIGHLY RECOMMEND A CHEEKY MIDDAY SPRAY ON THE FEET AND BACK, thank me later - and the convenience of the no-touch application.

The Whole Body Stick and Whole Body Cream take things to another level again, feeling more like ultra-moisturising skincare, to me, than anything deodorising. Very clever and designed for chest, thighs and intimate areas, all tested to be gentle and suitable for the particular areas they’re meant to be applied in.

I’ll be back with another post and a deeper review on these, because I am currently working my way through all three formats and fragrances (most-used so far is Raspberry & Rose but it’s a close call) but I can tell you that they are already a brilliant addition to my bodycare line-up, and will be all year round. A deodorant that you can use all over, with added skincare so that it feels beautiful to apply and comfortable to wear? Yes please to feeling fresh and confident all day!

You can pick up Dove Whole Body at selected retailers - details here.

And so to this year’s heated, frantic search for clothes that won’t stick to me like a moist, clammy shower-curtain: I'm looking for a light-as-air dress that will feel like a silken sack but not look like one, ideally sleeveless and sexy, which I realise is a ridiculous request to send out there into the universe. And then I want some slightly smart, tailored shorts that won’t cut across my gut, or make me feel as though my undercarriage has been garrotted when I sit down, but they must not be linen because linen is the absolute work of the devil - I am convinced of it - when it comes to any sort of clothing that has to sit around the crotch. Being left with an explosion of creases and wrinkles that radiate outwards from your groin like a giant star is just not the look you want.

The last piece in my triumvirate of summer fashion figureheads is to be the lightweight jacket. Because for every one of the heatwave days, when we curse the fact we don’t have air con fitted, there are at least twelve-to-fifteen days of overcast mizzle, average temperature fifteen degrees, not cool enough for a jumper but too cool for just the cotton sack. I want something slouchy and undone, something I can throw on over a summer dress but also over the tracksuit I don’t own yet (can’t find one with the correct waistband height) or the soft-as-butter leggings I do own but can’t bring myself to wear, because they basically provide a full gynaecological map of my nethers to anyone who happens to glance down below my naval. (From behind, I may as well have been body-painted. They leave nothing to the imagination. I cannot fathom wearing them out in public.)

Here are my discoveries so far: mostly from Hush. I have to say that my hunt hasn’t been entirely successful - even looking at these pictures now, with the benefit of distance and hindsight, viewing myself as others might view me in the things I’ve been trying on, I’m not entirely sure they’re right.

1 The Shorts

These are Hush. The Cordi shorts. Nearly all of my favourite shorts have been from Hush and I’ve worn them all to fabric-death, where holes have appeared and seams have unravelled and waistbands have gone stretched and loose from years of washing. (Long-term readers and Instagram followers will remember the Green Shorts.)

I usually go for a cargo shape, with the shorts, but is this higher waistband and looser leg slightly smarter? Am I ready for this shape? They’re certainly very cool and comfy. I like that they are just about high waisted enough that they nip in at the right place and cover the area around my belly-button, which is so mashed-up from babies that it looks like the Sarlacc Pit, that horrible hole that Jabba the Hut threw his enemies into for a certain and disgustingly painful death.

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How do we feel about these Hush shorts? Are they getting consigned to the returns pile or do they look very useful? I’m erring towards the latter but could easily be convinced otherwise.

The Hush Cordi Cotton Shorts are here

2 The Dress

Onto the Hush Air Flow dress. Funny silky feel to the fabric on this one that doesn’t necessarily feel light, if anything it has a weight to it - it reminds me of the bias cut Ghost dresses of the nineties - but this does make it drape nicely and hang elegantly as you move.

Am I cock a hoop about it? I’m still searching for alternatives, put it that way.

Hush Air-Flow Dress is here online.

3 The Jacket

I actually think I may have found what I want, here - hurrah! An oversized jacket that is soft and drapey and comfortable but looks denim. For my entire life I have tried to be the sort of person who can wear a denim jacket, but as soon as I put one on I feel as though I’m wearing something that has been constructed from blue paper and cardboard. Did you ever make a robot costume out of a cardboard box when you were little? Wearing a denim jacket always feels a bit like that, to me.

This denim-ish jacket (we’re with Hush again, I did try on other brands but these were the best bits!) is not rigid. It is soft, almost so soft you’d want to sleep in it, and I like the detailing at the back and on the sleeves that stops it from just being a big slouchy blob of nothing, but: there’s the worry that despite all of this, it does still look like a big slouchy blob of nothing.

Thoughts?

The Robbie Jacket from Hush is here

Right, I’m off to do some squats in the sauna and see how Dove Whole Body Deodorant Stick fares. Hahaha….

Shop Dove Whole Body Deodorant now at selected retailers.