I don’t even know how I ended up in a go kart; the day started very normally and I had no intention of spending my evening surrounded by kids who were hyped up on blue slushies, breathing in air that was approximately 87% carbon monoxide and squeezing myself into a contraption that looked like something I made from Meccano, Christmas ‘87.

But my nine year-old wanted to go, he was allowed a “treat” of his choosing for reasons I won’t bore you with and that is what he chose. He’s quite into the Go Karting idea, in the way that nine year-olds are into anything, ie for around three hours until the next enthusiasm comes along. I am not into the Go Karting idea, because it has to be one of the most expensive hobbies a child could come up with, after, I don’t know, horse-riding. Skiing? None of these things are within my remit, I have no idea, I’m just guessing. They all sound expensive and look expensive. We had Youth Club and Brownies in my day and both of those cost 75p per session.

(My Mum will be going crackers if she reads this. YOU ALL HAD MUSIC LESSONS AND THEY COST ME A FORTUNE! Which is true. But at least with music lessons there’s some sort of cap to the equipment needed. You just buy one flute, for example. You don’t then have to buy shoes and saddle for the flute, or tyres and petrol for the flute, or pay for the flute to go somewhere that has snow and a ski lift. I’ve lost my way with that analogy, haven’t I?)

Anyway, yes. I have no plans to allow Go Karting to become a hobby unless the nine year-old suddenly displays some kind of superhuman prowess for taking chicanes at top speed, but the odd go, now and then, totally on board with. And yesterday was a “now and then” so I went online to try and book a session. Popular, this karting thing! The only session left for kids was in something called “family hour” and, the booking site stated, an adult had to “race” too.

Picturing happy mums and dads pootling about the track, waving to their little offspring and generally having a wholesome time, I booked two adult tickets (no way Rich was getting out of it) and one for the nine year-old and off we went. Checked in. Bought balaclavas. Gloves. Got handed racesuits, which were actually quite cool-looking. Changed into the racesuits, which frankly looked ridiculous on us adults but cute on the nine year-old. Went and stood with the other families down in the pit and - OH!

What other families? No other families, that’s who. Just eight other kids ranging from approx. nine years old to maybe twelve or thirteen, and then me and Rich looking like the village idiots, standing there gigantically with our stupid balaclavas on, about three feet taller than the next tallest human. You know the adults who go on the tiny children’s rides, at Disney, without children? That’s who we looked like. I felt as though I’d gone to a party in fancy dress when everyone else was in normal attire. Never have I felt so conspicuous.

The balaclavas didn’t help. I was hoping there’d be a bit of Days of Thunder frisson, perhaps Rich would look a bit titillating and I’d later want him to, you know, fine tune my engine. But no. He had a black balaclava covering his head and lower half of his face and looked like a medieval baron awaiting his chainmail before battle. I had a bright blue balaclava on that exposed my entire face and looked exactly like Dangerous Brian.

The indignity didn’t stop there. Have you ever tried to climb into a Go Kart? Recently? The angle at which you are required to descend into the seat is barely achievable unless you’re at an age where your skeleton is yet to fully fuse together. You must lower yourself to ground level, with your feet and legs extended all the way in front of you, basically cantilevering yourself to defy gravity, all via the knee joints. I almost snapped. Try doing that with nine boys lined up in their karts behind you. Wearing a crash helmet that’s making you feel incredibly panicked. (I’m a bit claustrophobic. Hadn’t ever thought putting on a crash helmet would trigger it but there you go!)

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Now before we go on know this: I am no stranger to the concept of the racetrack. I was car obsessed as a late teen and into my early twenties and the entire road system of Redditch, Worcestershire, was my racetrack. How I’m still alive I have no idea. It wasn’t clever, and it makes me physically cringe now when I think about it, but you feel invincible at that age and I did learn how to recover from high speed spins, slides and potentially fatal skids at a relatively tender age. Sorry Mum. Fast forward a few decades and I’ve also done a little bit of low-key racing about the place at Silverstone, with Porsche: I get the general gist of what you’re supposed to do. Go as fast as possible but take the best, most efficient lines and do not spin or hit the barriers or other cars.

“This is NOT bumper cars.” Said the safety man in our safety briefing, which we all had to sit through for twelve minutes but then promptly forgot half of.

So the only part I wasn’t worried about was the driving part, not in the slightest. I love driving. Go Kart track? Not. A. Problem.

Well. I can tell you that a go kart is nothing like a car. No heated seat, which is one of the great joys in life in my opinion, but also, steering so heavy that it was like trying to drive one of those eighteen wheeler American trucks from the 1950s. I’ve driven a World War 2 tractor (don’t ask) and that had lighter steering than my go kart! I immediately felt my wrists start to seize, the muscles going into spasm. Every corner felt like a monumental effort, like I was the captain of a ship trying to navigate away from an iceberg during a world-ending storm.

But it was all good fun once we got started. Rich warned me not to be competitive, which I didn’t quite understand because I am the least competitive person ever, and hello we were racing with children so it wasn’t as though I was going to be blocking them from overtaking me, whilst at the same time aggressively overtaking those in front, all whilst screaming “TAKE THAT, YOU LITTLE MOTHERFUCKERS!”

Was it.

So apart from the lasting damage to my skeletal-muscular system I have no real complaints, other than it was very noisy (which I hate), fume-y (gave me a headache) and people kept crashing into the barriers which meant we all had to be on a go-slow every thirty seconds. Have you ever driven a go kart at walking pace? It feels like the most pointless exercise ever invented. I’d have rather just been able to put my brakes on and have a little rest. Stretch out the wrists. Do a bit of meditative body-scanning to see whether all of the parts of my spine were still connected.

I know what you’re asking yourself: where did she rank on the leaderboard? And I shall tell you, if you insist. Third! Absolutely bloody delighted, even though the majority of the competition hadn’t had twenty-eight years of driving experience and were half my height. You have to take the wins where you can in this life, even when it’s a bronze. Had people not kept crashing all over the shop - amateurs - I’m pretty sure I’d have been up there on the podium, shaking champagne all over myself whilst all of the normal parents watched on, thinking what is that mad bint DOING?

I do wonder what the other parents thought of us, me and Rich, whizzing about on our human-sized karts while all the miniature people did their thing. It was all a bit Gulliver’s Travels. And I couldn’t understand why these parents weren’t having to race too, when I was sure that the booking form had explicitly said family hour and that adults had to race alongside their children. I was going to take it up at reception on my way out but I was too busy inwardly gloating. I had come third, not rammed any children out of the way - not even my own child! - and had even mostly kept my cool when one of them had overtaken me when the yellow light was flashing, when it was STRICTLY NO OVERTAKING YOU LITTLE SHIT!

Would I recommend it as an adults-fun activity? Not really. I woke up with hands that felt as though they’d spent the past eight months digging me out of Alcatraz and a backbone that apparently had fused itself into one unbendable unit overnight. My neck! My back! But third. Out of eleven. The thrill. Maybe it was all worth it…

*this is a joke, I do actually do quite a lot of heavy lifting. But the side to side steering movement is another thing altogether, I think.

We’ve been tearing our way through what I thought was a new TV series on HBO but is, in fact, over ten years old. Why does this keep happening to me? Why did I miss so many good things between 2014 and 2016? Was it because I was solidly either pregnant or breastfeeding? Was my eye not on the television ball? Why did I endure the stomach-churning violence of Game of Thrones whilst massaging oil into my perineum* when I could have been enjoying Narcos? Who on earth made that call?

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(Narcos, the story of Pablo Escobar and cocaine trafficking in Columbia, is actually on a par with Game of Thrones, violence-wise, but is in a totally different league in terms of script, storyline, acting quality and just everything, really. It’s absolutely outstanding. Apologies if you’re a Game of Thrones super-fan; I think it’s good fun, for the most part, but I sort of bundle it into the same category as, I don’t know, going to Legoland. A chaotic sense of high whilst you’re in the midst of it all, but you’re left exhausted and not really wanting to return any time soon. “The flaying and castration of Theon Greyjoy” kind of took it out of me, if I’m honest, and then didn’t someone get slowly fed to a dog? Or have I imagined that? And don’t get me started on the CGI dragons. As soon as dragons entered the picture they completely lost me. Can’t stand most dragons. It’s a niche thing to hate, probably, but I think the only ones I like are Puff and also Falkor from Neverending Story.)

So anyway, I missed out on Narcos and also, somehow, this little treasure managed to escape my eagle-eyed attentions:

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I’m writing this in the hair salon, both a) satisfying my need to multitask and b) effectively distracting me from the mortifying thing that just happened in the supermarket. I only nipped in to Waitrose to grab myself a noodle salad so that I could eat it as my roots were being coloured: it was, on paper, a straightforward mission. I knew exactly what I wanted to eat and precisely where that item was on the fridge shelf. The only problem was that there was a man (seventies, very smartly dressed) dithering about right in front of the stack of salads.

I didn’t want to ask him to move aside because he looked to be in one of those fugue states that people go into when faced with decisions over supermarket meal deals, when they have been there so long they cease to even see the options set out before them. He was holding a small box of mixed sushi, staring directly ahead into the top of the fridge where the energy drinks and protein shakes lay.

Something about his gaze made me reluctant to startle him and so I tried to reach the noodle salad from one side of him and then the other, darting from side to side like an amateur pickpocket. No good. My hands would have been too close to the danger zone of his crotch area, which especially wouldn't do considering his distinguished gentleman status. He was wearing an actual hat. He only lacked a pipe, otherwise he could have stepped straight out of a Sherlock Holmes novel.

So yes, brushing cloth with my hand en route to a noodle salad would have been catastrophic: I opted for the less embarrassing alternative, which was to say - really loudly -

“I hope you don’t mind, I’m just going to do a reach-around”

- at the same time as putting my arm in front of him (wide berth) to signal my intentions. Why does my brain not have any kind of safety check before I blurt these things out? Surely there should be a small delay, like on the telly when they do live shows. Really what I need is a by-my-side-at-all-times editor, to sense check what comes out of my mouth and, ideally, veto all of the bad decisions I’m about to make.

Anyway here are this month’s favourites. A nice mixed bag. As always they are also on video here - it’s quite nice, I think, in this day and age of six second reels, to hear someone speak for a while and go about their business. Fortunately not all business, because you would have to suffer the painful second-hand embarrassment of watching me in Waitrose, offering a reach-around to a stranger on the sushi aisle…

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Makeup Bag Staple

Here’s something I think should be a non-negotiable makeup bag staple but that has been missing from my own stash for quite a while: a truly matte, low-key bronzing powder that’s only a shade or two darker than your natural skintone.

Sometimes you don’t want to look as though you’ve “spent a weekend in Biarritz” or “a week in the Bahamas” or whatever other comparison gets thrown out there. Sometimes you just want to add a little bit of warmth to your complexion so that you don’t look like a Renaissance Prince who’s dying of consumption.

And you want to be able to bosh it on with a very large, fluffy brush without having to worry too much about how it’s all turning out.

These low-key matte bronzers aren’t all that hard to find - see MAC, Guerlain, Bobbi Brown, just off the top of my head - I just don’t think that they’re the sort of glamorous, PR-able makeup items that get much airtime. They’re the workhorse of the cosmetics bag. The discreet, understated Volvo of the complexion-enhancing world. A velvety finish that’s barely there - this isn’t the sort of OMG, like, that’s, like, so amazing! transformation that would set the social media world alight.

My previous matte bronzer, used until all of the middle part of the compact was completely exposed, all silver and shiny (very satisfying), was the L’Oreal Back to Bronze. Which I think is now called Bronze to Paradise, which is a strange string of words.

My new one is the Clarins Ever Bronze compact, which has two shades in one. It may as well have just one shade, really, all in the same colour that’s about midway in between, because all I do is puff my big fluffy brush over both sides and swirl them together and apply. The key is that the shades are only just darker than my skintone, really. The powders look more peachy than beachy, but this what works so well - that aforementioned foolproof “boshing on” with a big brush relies on the bronzer not being too dramatically deep in tone when compared to your natural hue.

The Clarins range is very limited (three shades, and I’m a medium!) and so it’s not this particular product that’s a monthly favourite so much as the type of product. In a moment of sheer timeliness, Rare Beauty have just brought out a line of matte bronzing powders; their contour stick and liquid contour are some of my most-used cheek products, so I have high hopes for the powders. They are here and come in seven shades. I will report back once I’ve tried!

Big Boshing Brush

Talking of huge makeup brushes with which to bosh things on: this gigantor from No7 has become my indispensable finishing tool for when I want a seamless, professional look to my makeup. I whisk it over my face once my foundation and bronzer have been applied, to fine-tune the finish: not only does this melt away any blending lines where I’ve been a bit haphazard, it sort of “lifts” off a very fine layer of excess makeup so that it all looks really bedded in and more natural.

I have a similar boshing brush for my eyes - one from Caroline Barnes’ collaboration with brilliant brush-makers Otis Battersbee. You can’t buy it now, and it is my mission in the next couple of weeks to find a similar one so that I can make a video about it. But it’s so big that it’s almost the size of a small precision contour or powder brush - far too big to actually apply any eyeshadow with. Why it’s great is that once I’ve finished all of my eyeshadow, I close my eyelids and bash about on top of them with the Caroline Barnes mega-brush and again, all lines are buffed and blended into the skin and any excess makeup is air-lifted away.

This appears to be my new approach: apply things and then take half of them off.

Actually I think I’ve been doing this for years, but it has only recently occurred to me that it’s a thing in my routine. A step. Must do a video on this so that you can all see what I mean, try not to lose any sleep whilst you wait for it.

The No7 Big Boshing Brush (not official name) is here.

Weight lifting

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention: I’ve started weight lifting! I use the word “weight” in its loosest sense, because we’re talking bags of sugar here, not two Mini Coopers on a pole and a prolapse-inducing deadlift. I’m not harnessed to an artic lorry, seeing how far I can pull it up my driveway.

I used to do Body Conditioning and “Body Pump” classes in my twenties and loved them: once I stopped the gym, any sort of weight-lifting went out of the window. My muscles generally dissolved back into my bloodstream (or something) and I became a female version of Mr Burns from The Simpsons.

I’ve always stayed quite fit, or fit-ish, because I’m moderately active anyway and can’t sit still for long and, over the past five years, I’ve done spin classes on my Peloton bike every other day. (Need to write more about my love of Peloton, it’s possibly one of the best investments I’ve ever made, in my entire life.) But never has it been stressed to us - so much - that we should be doing weight-bearing exercise. And do you know what? It feels good! It feels satisfying to witness all of your own muscles working together like a machine, and to feel your balance improving and your strength amassing. This all deserves its own post - which is coming, it has a great title! - but suffice to say for now that I am muddling on through with my Peloton weight classes and my pairs of 3kg, 5kg and 8kg weights that I bought on Amazon.

(I have to pay for the Peloton app anyway, so it’s a no-brainer to use the strength classes on there. You can, however, find all sorts of classes on Youtube, for free. I also like that the Peloton app keeps a record of my progress and recommends suitable classes and all sorts of other things. I think it’s much cheaper if you don’t need to do bike classes on it…)

Trapeze-ish Dress

Summer is creeping nearer, oh so steadily. Usually I’d be delighted but once again I have failed to be prepared and have not yet bought the plants I need for my garden slopes and so all I feel this year is a faint sense of disappointment in myself. These two massive slopes have been under weed membrane for three years now and every spring I say that I’ll plant them in the autumn and every autumn I say I’ll wait until the spring.

The truth is,

a) I have no idea what I’m doing and there are too many plants and too many options and it’s far too steep a learning curve

b) a lot of stuff I plant dies, for various reasons unknown to me

c) I just can’t be arsed. It’s so much work! It’s like planting two small gardens, but almost vertically. I’m going to have to wear crampons and anchor myself to the top of the slope with an abseiling rope.

Rich thinks I should just turf both slopes and be done with it. Is he insane? It would look like Teletubby hill! I think we should put a slide down one side and a climbing wall up the other and then I can ease my sense of failure by saying I sacrificed my beautiful wildflower/grass plantations for the enjoyment of my children. They’re only little once!

Where was I? Summer. This dress, I feel, will be invaluable. I’m not saying it’s the shape for everyone! But I do like to have one very lightweight, loose-fitting, trapeze-shaped dress for incredibly hot and sticky days where all clothing annoys me but I still need to look sharp and pulled together-ish. This one is from brilliant Wyse London.

I have a great one from Whistles that’s more structured than the Wyse, and they come out with different versions of it year after year, but I’m trying not to wear so much black. Pale blue stripes it is, then…

Trainer Alternatives

I honestly thought these Mary Janes would divide opinion on Instagram and that I’d be defending my decision to the hilt, but amazingly, the love for them was almost unanimous. OK so the leopard print that looks sort of “painted” onto the suede is a wildcard, but the general shape of these ultra-comfy (will return to the comfiness) flats is elegant and they are so incredibly useful as a viable alternative to trainers.

When I say I can run in these flats, I don’t mean hobble along, I mean break into a sprint. For flat shoes, they have very clever shaping in the soles that makes your feet feel fully supported, yet the comfort level is borderline “slippers”. The strap could be slightly narrower, I feel, which would make these pumps quite the dupe for some £650 leopard flats on Net-a-Porter that have been following me around the internet.

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But would the narrower strap be conducive to unparalleled comfort, that’s the question? The Delicato Mary Janes are genuinely so comfy and capable that I wouldn’t hesitate to wear them in almost any intense city-walking situation. The time last year that I walked off a severe hangover in London by covering eleven miles in a pair of ballet flats would have been a cinch in the Fitflop Mary Janes!

Oh yeah, they’re from Fitflop. A lot of you might have already assumed that, if you’ve ever owned shoes by Fitflop! I wear their trainers all the time, which is mainly why I’ve been looking for alternatives, but it does mean that if I try to wear normal shoes it feels as though someone is battering my arches with a rolling pin.

The Delicato are here online - I used a 15% off code that was on the homepage, WELCOME, but I’m sure there are a few floating about if you look. (I always look for a code. It’s mandatory at this point!)

I’d be in my absolute element. Anyway, until then:

Ou est la bibliotheque sil vous plait?

Absolutely bloody marvellous. I had a good conversation with the driver of the blacked-out Sprinter we were being shuttled around in, like VIPs, his side of the chat going pretty deep into things like (I think) the tragedy of the Notre Dame fire, new Parisian parking restrictions and something to do with vineyards and global warming. My side of the chat focusing almost solely on directions and items of furniture.

Allez tout droit! Il y a cinq chambres dans la maison, trois avec un lit!

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I know which one I’d rather read. There’s nothing more fascinating than listening to other people talk about their ailments. OK, perhaps being forced to hear a detailed account of their dreams always rates highly on the scintillating entertainment scale,* but illnesses and minor health woes? Who doesn’t like sitting through a blow-by-blow account of an emergency ear wax removal procedure?

*note thinly-veiled sarcasm.

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We shall start with the swollen ankles. I haven’t had these since late stage pregnancy with my first baby, who was born at 42 weeks weighing nine pounds eleven ounces. By the time my waters broke my feet were the same width as my calves with no discernible ankle in between. One long sausage, skin stretched tight.

I was in no rush to get the baby out. People kept stressing me saying it was dangerous and risky the further overdue I went but I reasoned that the baby would eventually emerge, it couldn’t stay in there forever, and anyway I had work to finish off and I was very happy doing that. Ta ever so. In retrospect maybe I wasn’t mentally prepared for the change. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that we were renovating a house throughout the pregnancy, and I mean FULLY RENOVATE NO WALLS OR FLOORS LEFT, not “renovate” like people bandy the word around on Instagram where they’ve changed the colour of the fire surround and added a velux in the loft. Renovate as in, there was no way anyone could live there. No windows. No pipes. No electricity, often.

We hadn’t planned to have a baby at the same time as renovating, it’s the curse of Grand Designs. It’s just something that happens. Kevin McCloud, that utter rake, he stops in to discuss Passivhaus strategies and then ends up ravishing the lady around the back of the static caravan.

We weren’t on Grand Designs, alas, but I still managed to get pregnant and all of the building work was already scheduled in and couldn’t be postponed, and so off we went for seven months to live in a series of very small holiday lets, sans the cat because holiday lets don’t take kindly to cats.

Where am I going with this?! Ankles!

Haven’t had turgid ankles since 2015. Why this week? I’ll tell you: ham. You have to try and stay with me on this one, because it sounds mad and unlikely, but I’m positive that I’m the first human to have almost fatally overdosed on prosciutto.

Ecoutez. On Monday last week I met my friend for “dinner” but actually dinner ended up being a bottle of champagne each and an enormous charcuterie platter from which I think I ate approximately 400g of Parma ham. And a fair bit of cheese. A small bowl of olives. Bread with very, very salted butter.

On Tuesday I went to Paris, ate a pat of salted butter on the Eurostar (with bread! I’m not insane!) and then I ate a plateful of ham at the Hotel Costes. Hotel Costes isn’t especially famous for its ham, neither, I expect, would it want to be associated with ham particularly, because it’s an achingly cool, dark, highly sexually-charged sort of place where, if anything, you’d go to have Oysters. I also had two margaritas and licked all of the spicy salt from the outside of the glass. I’m sure the hotel staff were thrilled to have me there.

On Wednesday, still in Paris, I had ham for breakfast (both straight and within an omelette) and then had a bit more Parma ham (and Serrano, and dry-cured French) from a charcuterie platter in a bistro for lunch. In all, over the course of about forty-eight hours, I think I probably ate around the equivalent of (not exaggerating) twenty supermarket packs of Parma ham. The Tudors had nothing on me and my overconsumption of meat. The irony that I was in Paris to see the Stella McCartney show was not lost on me.

I’d like to insert a disclaimer here: I do not usually eat this much meat. I don’t really know what happened to me, it was as though all of the ham stars aligned and it just kept appearing and making its way into my mouth. I woke up on Thursday, back at home and in my own bed, and I honestly felt as though I’d been on a Vegas bender. I was so thirsty! My skin smelled odd! And then, when I swivelled my legs out of bed to put my slippers on, I noticed that my ankles had totally disappeared.

There was a bulge of flesh where the ankles had once been, and they were scored with a red welt all the way around where the swollen skin had obviously pressed against the top of my trainers. Beneath that, I had feet that could only be described as rectangular. I’m going to just throw this out there: I’ve always had a fine turn of the ankle and foot. Shapely. Narrow. I’d like to say I’ve taken it for granted in the past but that would be a lie; I have admired my own ankles and feet frequently with the idiotic glee normally only displayed by the sort of adult who “loves unicorns”. There is no other part of my body I particularly admire or see as being a cut above anyone else’s; nothing standout or miraculous. It all does the job, but no longer would I stand in front of a full length mirror and feel particularly amorous towards the reflection. My ankles though. Marvellous. Wrists also. Very petite and delicate.

But my ankles were nowhere to be seen on Thursday. By the night time I was worried. Where had they gone? Would they come back? I googled. Found out that it could mean a myriad of serious things but also that disappearing ankles could be caused by consuming too much salt.

Well that didn’t seem like something I had a problem with… until I remembered the HAM!!!! I had eaten so much ham that I had made my own ankles vanish! I must have consumed ridiculous quantities of salt, once you added in the margarita-licking and the butter pats and the (ahem) various cheeses.

Who would have thought you could overdose on ham? No wonder I had an elevated heart rate for three days straight! (Info courtesy of my Oura ring, gatekeeper of my vital statistics.) This just goes to prove the point that everything should be done in moderation. Even water can be dangerous if you have too much of it - ham? Proceed with caution.

My second ailment (yes, there’s more of this post) is something that might or might not be linked to the ham consumption. I have to be honest, when I pitched the “overdosing on ham” possibility to the A&E nurse, he wasn’t massively convinced by it. But he was also quite stressed and busy and I’m not sure he gave it the consideration it truly deserved.

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Why was I in A&E? Suspected ankle fracture, foot fracture, torn ligament, tendonitis and about another six or seven scenarios that were presented to me by the Ai search section on Google. Which we all know is highly accurate. All I knew for sure was that I couldn’t bear weight on my right foot and if I did, and it was at the wrong angle, the pain was excruciating. Enough that I endured a three hour wait in A&E on a Sunday late morning/early afternoon, the prime part of the day. I was worried that I had somehow sheared a splinter of bone from my ankle and that it was sawing through a nerve every time I put my foot down, for that is exactly what it felt like.

Of course all the pain entirely disappeared the moment I sat in the chair in the examination room and removed my rubber Birkenstock. That nurse took my foot in hand and wiggled it in every direction possible and was there even the slightest hint of a pain? No there was not. Even when he stretched my toes downwards so that I was en pointe I couldn’t feel anything - it was as though my whole leg had turned to wood.

We finally coaxed a bit of pain out by tipping the foot sideways and then putting pressure on it, but honestly it was an intense kind of goose chase. Nothing makes you feel more fraudulent and stupid than finally getting to the front of the A&E queue to find that your symptoms have waned or disappeared. And to think I had hobbled in sweating because the shooting pain had been that intense, mere hours before. I’m pretty sure the nurse thought I had issues. I don’t think it helped my case that I started wanging on about prosciutto.

Apparently it’s just a little tendon thing and I need to rest the foot. But what I want to know is could it all have been caused by ham?! If so, there should be some sort of warning on it. Don’t eat more than half a kilo of this over 48hours, or similar. Did you read about the man who almost died from eating three kilos of Haribo? How I mocked him, privately, when I read that article. What a berk, I thought!

Is any food safe to overdose on? Carrots? I’d expect cucumber would be safe as it’s mainly water, but you never know. I can tell you that chickpeas are NOT a food you should eat in vast quantities before a long journey with sporadic toilet access. Restaurants should be banned from serving falafel with a side of hummus dip, that’s all I can say.

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Cerave Blemish Barrier Patches

These discreet transparent face stickers are infused with spot-reducing ingredients: stick them onto your blemish before bed and the next morning it’ll be vastly deflated and less red. They really do work. There are lots of different versions of these patches, from different brands; I have to say that I’ve never used a spot patch that hasn’t worked. It’s an all-round excellent invention, because it keeps the ingredients close to the spot but also seals it off from the outside world and stops you from touching it or picking at it. How I wish these had been in existence a few decades earlier…

(Find them here online.)

3D Scene Sticker Books

The sticker books that single-handedly saved my half term holiday. Have you seen this “scene stickers” viral trend? You create very cute little cartoon scenes using pre-made backgrounds and the corresponding sticker sheets. They’re reasonably tricky as you have to layer up the stickers in the right order to create a 3D effect, but for keeping kids quiet (and tapping into their fine motor skills) they are absolutely next level brilliant.

I didn’t see my kids for about two days, they were just hunched over their sticker sheets with pairs of tweezers. Which actually doesn’t sound the healthy when I write it down, HA!, but it rained for almost entire week so they couldn’t run rampage around the garden or bounce on the trampoline.

I bought the mega-pack (see below) that has forty scenes and sticker sheets organised into two separate books, perfect for splitting between two kids. These would be brilliant if you were going on a flight (you can arrange the stickers without the need for tweezers, if you have small and nimble fingers) or if you desperately need a form of distraction so that you can get a bit of work done.

(find them here online.)

The Anchor at Seatown

I had some important things to do down at The Dorset Nook over half term and had blocked out a few days in between guests so that I could get them done.

I took my nine year-old with me and sold it to him as a seaside walking holiday and also (very serious job) told him that I needed someone to officially test all of the different Dorset ice cream brands to work out which was the best. (I think Purbeck’s, he thinks Baboo.)

Whilst down there we did my favourite bracing walk: straight from the cottage gate, down to Eype beach and then westwards up and over Thornecombe Beacon with its stupendous sea views, and down the other side to Seatown.

Seatown not only has a very picturesque beach (all of the Jurassic Coast is blessed with these wild-looking cliff-edged beaches), it has what I think is one of the best pubs in Dorset, possibly even England. It’s just the whole package, because it’s right on the sea and when you look through the windows you feel as though you could be hundreds of years in the past, and it also has creaky little rooms with wooden ships on the walls and other pirate-y artefacts, but then it has the food. Oh, the food! I’ve been there quite a few times now and it never misses.

Most recently, the crab brioche roll. If you follow me on Youtube and Instagram you’ll be so tired of hearing about this crab roll but honestly, I have actually had a little dream about it. It was that good.

So you come for the ye olde smuggler vibes and stay for the food. In the summer, a half pint of prawns and a bowl of chips with a chilled glass of rosé and you couldn’t convince me there was a better holiday feeling.

You can book the Anchor at Seatown here. I am not in any way affiliated with them but I am affiliated with The Dorset Nook (running it is my other job!) and if you want the perfect place to stay when you’re not eating the perfect seafood then take a look at availability here.

Narcos

I can’t believe it’s taken me and Rich over ten years to watch Narcos. It’s proper 10/10 award-winning television. (Rich gives it 9/10, if we’re going to be pedantic. I give it 9.5/10 and place it next to Rivals as the most enjoyable thing I’ve seen in ages. If enjoyable is the correct term for watching people have their heads cut off and put in fridges, etc etc. I mean, please don’t now watch Narcos thinking it’s similar to Rivals, you couldn’t get more different storylines!) Narcos is based on the story of Pablo Escobar, the most notorious drug lord to have ever lived and it is absolutely captivating. And so brilliantly filmed! And the casting, the script, the art direction… Ugh. We were totally immersed in it. I started dreaming in Spanish, I was so immersed, and I didn’t even know any Spanish prior to following the decades-long rule of a blood-thirsty Columbian narco-terrorist. Although I now could rattle off two or three incredibly offensive phrases thanks to old Pablo.

Look, I won’t sugarcoat it: Narcos is violent. Sometimes I had to look away. But this, technicolor violence aside, is the sort of considered, impeccably-produced television I really miss. So much TV now is written for people who only have half of their attention on the screen. They scroll on their phones at the same time and all of the storylines and scripts seem to cater for them, repeating even the most obvious plot points time and time again.

I wish the writers wouldn’t write for these scrollers because it’s absolutely ruining it for the people who want to engross themselves in something and who don’t have to have a phone glued into their hands every moment of the day. Are we really going to just keep brain-rotting everything down into little digestible spoonfuls to cater for shorter and shorter attention spans? Answers on a postcard.

Medik 8 C-Tetra Advanced

A serious skincare recommendation and one I’ve been meaning to post into my favourites for a while. I’m going to do an updated skincare routine very soon, because I have a few new tricks up my sleeve for maximising glow and keeping skin on an even keel, but this super-serum currently has 20% off (at time of writing) and so it’s a good time to snap it up if you’re looking to make a skincare investment that’ll pay off.

I use a vitamin c or antioxidant serum every morning after cleansing and before moisturising and SPF. (Most often my moisturiser and SPF are one product, but we will talk about that in the skincare post. You can also look at my most recent skincare routine here, which explains in a bit of detail the products I use and the order I use them in.)

The main objective when it comes to the vitamin c is brightness and evenness of skintone but it’s also raved about for its antioxidant effect. Helping to protect the skin against all of the elements in the environment that batter at the skin over time - UV, pollution, cigarette smoke (though that’s not so much of an issue these days, is it?)

Finding a mega-powerful version of vitamin c without risking irritation is not the easiest job, but Medik8 C-Tetra Advanced manages to be hugely potent whilst being easily tolerated. It’s great. Very high-end, very science-and-results-led (Medik8 are serious when it comes to getting the most active ingredients into their formulations) but with a price tag that I always think is slightly more palatable than some of their competitors.

At the time of posting C-Tetra is £56. This is a serum that really delivers when it comes to increased glow and brightness but that also helps to support the skin barrier, rather than disrupt and irritate it, and on top of all that gives excellent antioxidant protection. I’m a fan, if you haven’t already worked that out..

You can find it online here.

Right. Here’s the favourites video, for those of you who are thinking, ‘wow, I’ve read all of Ruth’s favourites but wouldn’t it be amazing to now see and hear her talk about the exact same things all over again.’

I’ve told you my favourites, here are some things I’ve absolutely hated. I mean hated. Because it’s good to have some balance in life, isn’t it?

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Three new makeup discoveries you might just want to take a little look at, because they have immediately landed themselves prime place in my daily makeup bag. They’re all easy to use yet give instantly brilliant results. Products you can splodge on, or scribble on, or swipe on, and that require little in the way of skill or time or unnecessary faff. No extra tools or brushes needed.

And because I’m a living legend, I have filmed myself putting all of these products onto my own face so that you can see the difference they make. If you scroll down to the bottom of the page you’ll find the video, complete with voiceover.

THE GROWN-UP BLUSHER STICK

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The first foolproof product is the Pixi On-The-Go blusher stick and it is - I’m going to say it - sublime. It has just enough pigment to give you a good dose of healthy colour, to knock the undereye shadows back (did you know about that trick?*) and to add a bit of spark to a tired, dull complexion. The pigment is suspended in a balm that’s every bit as moisturising as a proper lip balm and gives a gloss and a sheen to the skin, so that ultimately what you’re getting is a bit of perky colour and the luminescence of one of those grown-up highlighters that don’t have sparkle.

It’s a killer combo.

And the best thing about this blush stick is that it has the most genius shape: it’s really wide and when you swipe it on (I like the top of the stick to be just on the cheekbone) it deposits just the right amount of colour in just the right position! I barely need to blend this in. There are no hard edges. It’s sheer in its effect but you still notice the colour, it’s deeply hydrating but not greasy, it could possibly be the best blusher stick for grown-ups I’ve ever used.

SHOP PIXI BLUSH

It doesn’t look like makeup for grown-ups, it looks like it might have fallen from a Duplo box, but who cares. When something works this well, it could arrive in a case woven from spider legs and I’d still give it pride of place on the dressing table.

This Pixi On-The-Go blush stick comes in six shades and another that adapts to your own skin tone: I’ve been using Mauve, which is a pretty pink and Chantilly, my favourite, a soft peach that’s not too orange. Very enlivening on sallow skin. I think I may buy Fleur too because I do love a very pale-yet-bright pink going into spring!

You can find it here online - £18.

(* I was taught, decades ago, that if you have a sheer wash of blusher positioned quite high, almost onto the undereyes, it really knocks back shadows and makes you look more awake. If you get it wrong then it’s all sorts of madness and you look as though you need urgent medical attention, but if you whisper just a bit of pink there, slightly higher than usual, it really wakes everything up.)

THE PERFECT BROW FEATHERER

Do you want those brows that are sort of feathery and go in an upwards direction, making your whole eye area look more open and sparky? I’m not talking about those eyebrows that are drawn on with dark stripey brushstrokes, the ones that make people look as though they have a barcode above each eye. More natural than that: normal eyebrows, just defying gravity a bit. So that you get more space between lashes and brows and look less like you haven’t slept since 145 BC.

There are loads of brow gels on the market - many of them are glue, really, and set hard and spiky so that your brow hairs won’t move for the entirety of the day and possibly the next day after that. I have loads that I like, including Boy Brow from Glossier, which has a tint to it and a waxy texture that sticks to your natural brow hairs to bulk them out a bit, and Brow Freeze from Anastasia Beverly Hills, which is a gel in a pot that you apply with a brush and comb through with a spoolie.

The reason that the new Brow Aid Browtox has made it into my favourites is that all of the application tools necessary to create lifted, set-in-place brows are incorporated into the product itself. It’s a gel in a tube and the applicator has a soft sponge side to apply product and a comb side to comb and set the brow hairs in place. (Official instructions say to do it the other way around but I find either way works and I often go in with both sides of the applicator multiple times before I have everything the way I like it.)

This Browtox gel sets firm but doesn’t feel too crunchy and also doesn’t pull the skin underneath too tight. It contains ingredients to help with hair growth, though I hadn’t noticed that until I started writing this up. This is a really, really easy way to give the eyes a bit of a lift without too much hassle, just comb the hairs upwards and outwards into a position that doesn’t make you look too much like you’ve just electrocuted yourself.

It’s here online - £19.50.

THE COOL-TONED CREAM SHADOW

I’m always on the hunt for eye products that can essentially be applied in the dark, with no mirror, whilst in the backseat of a getaway car that’s the target of a high-speed police manhunt involving helicopter searchlights and exploding oil tankers and 180 degree turns in the middle lane of the M5.

I have no intention of every being involved in this sort of car chase, but I like to imagine that if a makeup product could be applied in such a scenario then it’ll be an absolute cinch to use when you’re sitting still in full daylight in front of a magnifying mirror.

And this one is. Trinny London’s Eye-2-Eye Cream shadow. Just smoosh a finger onto the surface of the pot and dab onto the eye lid: this shadow is very forgiving, doesn’t drag the skin when you blend it but manages to stick fast all day long.

SHOP TRINNY

But the foolproofness of this one comes not from the cream shadow itself but the shade. It’s has a heathery, purplish warmth to it but essentially the overall tone is cool, greyish. If pink and orange-based tones tend to make you look ill then this is well worth a try. It’s not overly dramatic, despite the specks of metallic in the photograph: I’d say this is firmly in the “daytime eye” category.

It’s £20 online here.

Video evidence that all of these are a cinch to use:

I am fanatical about being comfortable at home. I think I’ve probably taken it a bit too far, actually, because quite often now I feel panicked if I am forced to put proper clothes on. I don’t like anything that constricts, especially around the gusset area, and I don’t like elasticated bands that press into my rib cage or - ARGH - into the flesh of my stomach. Seams cannot be ill-placed, I must not be able to sense them. Bracelet sleeves and capri pants are out and I cannot have a middle seam on trousers that garrottes my nethers.

You’re all going to be diagnosing me at this point but don’t. It is completely normal for a person to want to feel comfortable, we’ve just forgotten this because we’ve had years of being brain washed into pointy shoes that have knackered our feet, and jeans we can’t breathe in, and knickers made of LACE. LACE! Can you think of any other material less suited to being pressed against your most delicate of areas? You may as well wear sandpaper pants.

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I have trouble dressing on the best of days, it stresses me out and it always has done - I’d be a prime candidate for one of those shows where they throw out your entire wardrobe and pick you three outfits to wear for the rest of your life. But add to this all of the fabrics that make me feel physically sick and we have a real problem on our hands. Fuzzy materials that create fluff that sticks to my face. Itchy types of wool. Too-stiff denim.

Too-stiff denim! Why, I ask you? Why would I want to encase my legs in something that won’t allow me to bend at the knee? Do I need the durability of a fabric that has been designed to endure five-score brutal winters in Montana? No I do not.

Tights! I’ve almost done away with them entirely at this point. And the bras I’d been saving for “when I felt sexy again”: they have all gone into the clothes recycling point outside the kids’ school. (They’re going to get a shock, let me tell you! Good bit of vintage Agent Provocateur went into that metal bin!)

Anyway, I’ve found a new bra to add to my “comfy yet supportive” collection. To recap on the current members of the team, we have:

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1. the Skims Naked Scoop bralette.

Ultra-light, to the point where you genuinely forget you have anything on. Washes well. Adjustable band but no adjustable straps, and I have to say that they do stretch after a couple of years of constant wear and wash. Nevertheless, a strong option if you’re after ultimate comfort with a lovely, smooth shape. Slight monoboob issue but not anything as bad as you’d get with a crop top. You can find it here online - I wear size S-DD which was the recommended size for a 32DD.

2. the Honeylove range, specifically the Silhouette and Crossover bras.

Cor. These give immense support, even for larger cup sizes and manage to give some separation to the boobs and lots of lift to bring them up and away from the rib cage. My Honeylove bras have worn and washed very well - my only (slight) issue is that they can get very hot to wear. I’m pretty sure my 20% discount still works for Honeylove, you just need to click this link and it’ll apply at checkout. (Ignore other offers that pop up.) I made a whole video about Honeylove bras last year - I’ve popped it at the bottom of the post, in case it’s of interest.

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And now, drumroll, we have the third member of the girls-band:

3. the Boody Seamless T-Shirt Bra.

This seamless bra kept popping up on my Instagram feed - I must have had twenty ads served to me before I finally succumbed. But the model’s boobs looked so excellent! I couldn’t believe that a little slip of a bra would create such a lovely shape, yet be so comfy-looking.

Well, believe. I am all kinds of impressed with this one. I was surprised to find it had padded cups, which initially I hated, but it’s the cups that give the lift and the shape without sacrificing comfort. You have to just get your head around it, if you can - I had imagined it was just a single-skin sort of weightless bralette job and in reality it was more hefty, but it is soft and really very, very comfy. I went back in for another round and bought it in a second colour, too.

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There’s no adjustable band on this but it does have adjustable straps. If I were to be annoyingly picky then I’d say that the band and straps could be a little wider, for those of us with bigger norks, but then I think that the version that they do for fuller busts is tweaked with that in mind. My recommended size was a Small, which was quite tight at first but now perfect. I wonder whether I should have opted for the full bust one, though…

I might order another and see. I am so impressed with this that I do not resent doing a repeat purchase! I used the code they sent me when I signed up to the newsletter - 15% off, you can find details on this page. The bra itself (loads of lovely colours) is here, it costs £24.95.

Any recommendations to add to my list of bra trials? I have a few on the go at the moment; many never get a mention because they’re crap. I would love to put the M&S Flexiform crop top back on my winners’ list, for example, but every single one I’ve had now has come out of the washing machine mangled, after fully following the care instructions. So. Grrr. Will report back.

Here’s the Honeylove video - it was an ad-paid collaboration that I did with them, because I had reviewed their bras before this and loved them and they approached me to show all of the styles on video. So bear that in mind, but it’s helpful to see them on, I think:

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The worst thing was that all the pews in the church were already filled and it was standing room only. Not much in the way of standing room either, unless I wanted to block someone else’s view, which is a big no-no at a school assembly. Spectating parents establish their clear line of vision and you must not cross it - there are rules at these things, especially when it comes to significant festivals and dramatic productions. And woe betide anyone who gets in the sightline of the Reception Parents, who are enjoying the various renditions for the very first time.

Anyway, I danced apologetically from one aisle to the next, searching for a spare corner to tuck myself into, bobbing around with an inane grin on my face looking like the medieval jester who’d never been right since the King’s horse kicked him in the head. It became embarrassing - what do you do when there’s no room at the inn? Leave? Lie down on the flagstone floor?

In the end I made one of my characteristically ruinous life decisions and squatted down on my haunches at the end of a side aisle (or nave-aisle, if you remember random facts from your religious studies classes), with the majority of the parents to my rear and all 100 of the school’s pupils in front. I may as well have positioned a spotlight over my head, or climbed atop a podium. It was a bold move and I hadn’t given it due consideration before ploughing on in and committing myself. The thinking was that I would show maximum interest in my son’s contribution to the assembly - a line of a poem, read out loud - to atone for being late and missing the leper sequence. (Which was actually because I had been doing a very good deed, see how the innocent are punished!) I had reasoned that if I edged boldly to the front, past the parent/student frontier line, I would look extra-maternal and extra-invested in both my children’s lives and they would see first-hand how interested I was in their performances.

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Well. When was the last time you squatted? The type of squat you do when you’re a kid with elastic limbs and bouncy joints? We’re talking all of the bodyweight, taken solely in the knee joints, with glutes touching balls of feet. Virtually contortion. The excruciating pain set in at approximately the half minute mark, where I felt as though my knees might just crumble in on themselves; at two minutes I was convinced that my burning joints were about to spontaneously combust. It was a high, wincing pain, impossible to ignore - the thigh burn and lower back ache and foot cramps were minor by comparison. At four minutes I began to actively sweat from the intense physical torment I was enduring, at five I began to see strange dancing lights in front of my eyes.

And I couldn’t get up because my nine year-old was watching me like a hawk, making sure I was ready and in place to hear his line of poetry. I couldn’t break eye contact, let alone move position. And then, after he’d done his speaking part, I couldn’t move position because I was completely stuck. Muscles trapped in violent spasm. Joints seized. Toes completely devoid of sensation.

I don’t know whether you’ve ever listened to thirty smallish children reciting a poem of their own creation, passing the screeching microphone from one clammy hand to the next, all saying their words in the same strange voice that is at once monotone but erratic: it can trigger quite an intense feeling of claustrophobia, that you have been cornered and are never to be released. I can tell you that it is massively more intense when you have sunk yourself into an inadvisable squat position and cannot move until the recital is over.

All this to say: I am going to make an effort with my muscle-toning-and-building exercises this year. Although I spin on my Peloton bike every other day (almost without fail, seven miles at high intensity) I don’t feel that I have much in the way of overall muscle tone. It’s patchy. My knees give way if I go upstairs a certain way, my wrists can barely support my own weight if I try to get up from the floor. Sometimes I feel like a bit of a sack of spare parts, everything jangling about inside.

I have an advance copy of a brilliant book on my bedside table - Elizabeth Davies’ Training for your Old Lady Body, which is a much-needed take on exercise that ignores all of the viral social media bollocks and concentrates on helping you to build a strong body that’ll serve you well as you age. So important. I feel as though it’s the book we will all thank ourselves for reading in twenty years’ time. You can pre-order it here. Elizabeth also has online weight-lifting courses that I’ve been promising to start for almost a year: tomorrow is the day. I shall let you know how I get on - there’s nothing like committing an intention to paper in front of lots of people!

Photo by VD Photography on Unsplash

Every month I make a video of these favourite things: it’s usually around ten to fifteen minutes long, and if you ever think to yourself, God you know what? I like to READ what Ruth has to say, but I sure would sometimes like to also SEE her. Consider your prayers answered:

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On with the faves.

My Miracle Dog

My overall favourite, Dexter the Miracle Dog. My cockapoo is twelve and a half and should have conked out last summer from his very late stage heart disease but here he still is, coughing away and smelling like a bucket of rotted langoustine shells. Every time we think he’s plummeting downhill on the sledge of death and despair he makes a miraculous recovery. The overall trend is one of decline, obviously, but I wasn’t expecting all of these peaks and troughs. He’s in great spirits - eats well, gets excited, still loves sprinting up and down hills - but there’s a lot of sleeping going on. He mostly does this under my feet, creeps in quietly without me realising, which is both cute and highly dangerous. I’ve nearly broken my neck tripping over him at least four times since Christmas. Maybe he’s trying to outlive me, that would be a plot twist!

Sculpted by Aimee Cream Cushion Foundation

This foundation is superb. I test new beauty products every single day and rarely is my first reaction to them the one I had with this, which was “God I hope they never discontinue it”.

I would be absolutely shafted if L’Oreal ever discontinued their Telescopic Mascara, and deeply inconvenienced if Vieve’s Eye Wand in Mahogany ever disappeared from the shelves. But usually there are a few different versions of every type of product and I can switch between them effortlessly and without upset: it takes a lot for me to feel slightly panicked at the idea of something being permanently removed from my makeup bag.

If you’ve never used a cushion foundation before then know this: along with stick foundation, it’s my favourite format for a face base. You just push the bristles of your foundation brush into the product-filled “cushion” and just enough foundation is dispensed to coat them, then you can stipple and buff the product into your skin without ever having to squirt makeup onto the back of your hand. It’s so neat! So convenient! If you’re the sort of person who likes to rush through their makeup routine and do the bare minimum for maximum results then this is the sort of product you’ll love: the compact has a big mirror so that you can sort your base on the move, it all feels very un-messy and undramatic.

The foundation itself? A beautiful glowy finish, medium-ish coverage that’s nicely buildable (or easy to sheer out), good staying power, though definitely not longwear. (I see a bit of slippage in oilier areas after about ten or so hours of wear.)

But oh. The glow. The freshness. The hydrating feel. The slight glossing effect of the finish. It’s excellent, all helped by the fact that my shade - 2.75 - is the exact sort of shade that makes my whole face sing with life. You know when your face base is just a touch darker and warmer than your skin, maybe less than half a shade, and it makes you look permanently as though you’ve been to one of those health farms in the alps that people go to and they give up sugar and coffee and alcohol and they do cold plunges etc? That’s how this makes me look. See video above for reference.

It’s £28 online here- with rather a good shade finder if you’re struggling to know which to choose. I also think findation.com is an excellent source for working out your shade in different brands, I’ve used it for years. The website design is stuck in 2009 but it’s a great resource and I always find it to be pretty accurate.

Small Bomb at Dimperley

You’re all party to this information already, that Small Bomb at Dimperley by Lisse Evans was on of my top reads - if not the top read - of 2025. If you want to read why, I wrote about it in my All The Books I Read in 2025 post, but in short: it’s witty, heartbreaking, strangely comforting and a bit of a jolly old romp in the way that only books about the demise of English country houses and their quirky minor aristocratic inhabitants can be.

It’s here online. I’ve just bought two other Lisse Evans books because I loved Small Bomb so much.

Loafers

OK this is my first foray into loafers - previously I had put them in the same category as blazers, waistcoats and fedoras, ie, things that are far too grown up and serious-looking for someone like me to wear. (Someone like me being someone who wears trainers with everything, tracksuit bottoms wherever possible and everything and anything soft and unstructured that won’t upset me with seams or bulkiness or hems that touch my skin at the wrong level. Basically I’m a four year-old.)

Anyway, it was New Year and I wasn’t properly back at work yet which spells all sorts of trouble for me financially because I fill my time with browsing and buying, and Penelope Chilvers had a huge sale on (they still have loads of good stuff, though all of the Cowboy boots sold out quickly which made me want to cry, I’ve had my eye on those for over a year) and up popped some loafers. You’d think that as a loafer virgin I’d go for classic black, or brown, but no: snakeskin effect leather loafers that look like something a pimp might have sauntered about in, in downtown LA circa 1972.

And yes I love them. They are soft, strangely pliable, feel like slippers on the inside but look smart (as smart as a 1972 LA pimp can look) on the outside. I just have no clue what to wear with them. So far I’ve come up with “jeans and a shirt”, but my jeans are too relaxed in the leg and I feel too much like an off-duty hedge-funder at a colleague’s bank holiday weekend garden party. Especially without socks. With socks, which is the apparent style du jour, I feel like I should be smoking a pipe and/or playing golf.

Any ideas welcomed.

Shop the Penelope Chilvers Sale

Furry Hat

I love this Greta hat from Queens of Archive. The hat feels more like a pet at this point, because it’s always either on my head or my lap or on the chair beside me. Not that I tend to carry my pets around on my head, but you get the gist. And such a talking point! When I wear this hat, everyone stops to ask if they can touch it!

I mean not everyone. That would be an insane state of affairs. But it has happened a lot. OK, a few times. Once. And if they don’t ask to touch it then they see it and smile. Maybe they think there’s something not quite right about me, who knows.

“There goes the eccentric lady again, Brian!”

Oh God something terrible happened to me, in my own village, whilst I was wearing this hat. So mortifying that I’ve started diving headfirst into hedgerows if I see a Landrover Discovery approaching. If you are an upgraded subscriber then you can read about it below, along with a recipe for one of the best winter salads I’ve ever tasted.

I’ve just realised there is nothing about this salad that says “winter”, I’m just eating it in winter. Anyway, it’s bloody delicious and I hope you can’t overdose on fennel because if so I am in danger of it.

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We’re very keen self-caterers anyway, Rich and I, I’m not sure why we get lured down the luxury hotel route so often. I think I always imagine that we’ll get dressed up for dinner and have amazing, intimate chat over extraordinary food and copious fine wines and then we’ll have cocktails in the bar afterwards and it’ll be all sexy and glamorous and we can just trip back to our room for a night of uninterrupted passion followed by a full cooked breakfast and possibly a hangover massage.

In reality what happens is that we can’t relax in the room because all we can hear is doors slamming and cleaners hoovering outside in the corridor and people scraping chairs on the floor above and then one of us needs to go to the toilet and that’s always a romantic talking point isn’t it, when you literally cannot escape the fact that your partner is on the toilet because they are sitting on it approximately four feet away from your head. And there’s nowhere to escape to and so you just sit there watching a re-run of Doc Martin on the telly, loudly, so that there’s at least some background noise and then you wait for them to flush, open the door and unleash hell into the bedroom.

It’s all so sexy and luxurious I simply cannot bear it. Especially when it’s, I don’t know, five hundred pounds a night or whatever for the privilege of being cooped inside this one relatively small space with the person you spend all of your time with anyway.

Look, hotels have their place, but I have to say that a luxury holiday let in an exquisite location wins for me nearly every time. More private, more spacious and usually loads cheaper per night. And you can still eat out for every meal if you want to, but if you don’t want to then you can just dig into the plethora of posh snacks you stocked up on in the local deli. Charcuterie. Cheeses. Straight from fridge to mouth. No middleman required.

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I have a thing for beautifully done-up holiday cottages and houses and would say I’m reasonably expert on the subject. Not just because I’ve booked and stayed in so many, but because I own and run one myself. (The Dorset Nook, sly little self-promo there. If you ever want to escape to a gorgeous seaside cottage for two down a hidden footpath, in an absolutely beautiful part of the world, this is the one. The sheer number of returning guests we get there speaks volumes, I think!)

Anyway, I’d say that if you manage to book yourself a top-notch holiday cottage that has beautiful linens, stylish interiors and a nice little welcome basket then you’re already miles ahead of the typical hotel experience…

So: to the self-catering birthday stay…a treehouse on a vineyard!

This was a treehouse at a place called Wild Escapes in Hampshire and it did have lovely linens, a stylish interior and a nice little welcome basket but that wasn’t even the most notable thing about it: perched on the edge of a vineyard, surrounded on three sides by woodland, it had a different and brilliant view from each one of the big windows and really made you feel as though you were completely alone in the countryside.

What a treat! Seclusion. Serenity. OK so when we arrived the next treehouse along had two children staying and that instantly made my hackles rise, for there is nothing a witch - sorry, an away-from-her-kids mother - hates to hear more than the sound of other people’s children, Gah! but I soon silenced them by removing my gloves and wig, luring them down from the trees and turning them into mice.

Bloody hell that took a dark turn!

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We remained uninterrupted for the rest of the stay and it really was properly lovely. A comfy kingsize bed surrounded by windows, an open-plan kitchen and dining space with a log-burner and a cosy sofa area that opened out onto a terrace with a BBQ and nice outdoor seating.

It was all perfectly done and I would heartily recommend it. You park a short walk away and there are trolleys to pile your luggage into and your food shop and the dog and whatever else you have to carry, and then you feel like right old jolly campers as you pull the trolley over the bumpy ground to your secret hideaway. Inside we had a lovely fresh loaf of bread and a whole pat of butter from a company called Ampersand (I’ve since reordered, I could have eaten it on its own, as a snack) and some eggs and a very nice bottle of sparkling wine from the very vineyard we were looking over!

I think one of the highlights had to be the huge outdoor bath, stuck out on its own on a little platform under a tin roof: one of the most relaxing bathing experiences I’ve ever had. I don’t know whether Wild Escapes paid off the local wildlife to perform for me but they all came up to say hello whilst I was sloshing away in the swimming pool of a tub. Squirrels. A deer. Loads of birds. And then a bloody fox! Just sauntered up and had a good stare. He couldn’t see anything, because I was inside the bath and it’s so tall I doubt there would be any angle you could peep flesh from. Through the roof, maybe? Hopefully there wasn’t anyone clinging on up there, peering through a small hole! Creepy idea.

Anyway, it was great. There wasn’t a telly! We both read books. Silence. Just the crackling fire. I ate two thirds of a whole lemon drizzle cake (it was my birthday, hello) and then we fell into a deep and ponderous sleep at about ten.

What I will say is that although you are in the middle of nowhere and that is the entire point of being remote, there is nothing that’s an easy walk away. Village, or pub or what have you. The Mayfly pub is quite famous and not too much of a walk, but would you want to do the walk at night? Not sure!

But we wanted isolation. So all good. I just thought it was worth pointing out, for those who get cabin fever and need signs of life. We drove to the pub on the second night, we also went to the lovely town of Stockbridge which has the most amazing deli and butchers and all sorts of good foodie stock-up places, and we ventured to Winchester too, to see the Christmas market, and none of it felt particularly far.

Do you know where I think this place would absolutely come into its own though? If four couples hired all four treehouses. What a great little holiday that would be! Nightly barbecues out under the stars, drink up all of the free fizz, and then back to your respective private abodes for a good soak and a sleep. Pricey-ish way to get together, rather than a big house and dividing the cost, but it does feel nice and special.

We booked our stay direct on the Wild Escapes website here: three nights cost £980 but there was a winter discount and the total ended up coming to £804. It felt quite punchy, price-wise, but at the same time it was also very unique and a really memorable stay. Nothing to fault apart from noisy heating, which kept Rich awake, but I did tell him he should have contacted the hosts because you can’t moan about something if you don’t make them aware of it!

Oh! You can also take kids, did I mention that? There’s a very small - teeny - bunk room, so I think more if you have very small kids. It would be very exciting for them, I’m sure, but at the same time I tend to think it’s more suited to adults wanting blissful seclusion. There’s an extra charge for kids and another if you want to bring a dog, but it’s very dog friendly - a whole cupboard with blankets and bowls and treats…

Score? Rich gave it a 9/10 even with the heating noise! This is unheard of. He loved it almost unconditionally.

I’m wavering between 8.5 and 9, only because I can’t decide which I like more: this one or the “Rewild” treehouses in Gloucestershire. I reviewed those here, treehouse pictured below.

I think the Rewild ones feel a little swankier and exciting, because they are properly perched high off the ground, but they differ in that the entire cooking and living areas are outside, so I’m not sure how well it would work in the winter. If it was freezing you would have to get fully suited and booted to go be able to eat anything or sit on actual chairs, and might it feel a bit cooped up being confined to the pod-style bedroom? It’s around the same price as Wild Escapes (maybe slightly cheaper) but you definitely have to embrace outdoor living more… In the summer months, though, it’s definitely an excellent place to stay. (I did two nights completely alone, writing my book, which was - er - slightly thrilling when night fell.)

Fancy a treehouse stay? I should write a round-up piece on all of my treehouse shenanigans: I’ve stayed in quite a few now. Maybe I should restyle myself as a treehouse reviewer.

Wild Escapes have four treehouses, we stayed in Damselfly, which would be my personal recommendation. It’s the furthest along the lane and so the most private.

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Except that I’m not explicitly going to tell you if they’re bad, or even if they’re meh: since becoming a published author myself (humble brag, here’s my book!) I can’t bring myself to be openly critical about other people’s writing because a) I know how much of your life you have to pour into birthing said book and b) I don’t want to invoke some sort of writers’ karma where if you say something true-but-salty about someone else’s book, even if it is eighty thousand words of self-obsessed drivel so dull it makes you want to slowly extrude your own brain via a nostril a la the ancient Egyptian mummification process known as Excerebration, you’ll suddenly invite negativity into your life and get loads of one star reviews saying things like

“package arrived DAMP and TORN AT CORNER!!!!!!! Would give it zero stars if possible!”

So yes. You’re going to have to try and read between the lines here - if I highly recommend you read something, I’ll try and make it obvious.

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Here we go: all the books I read in 2025. Chronological order. Scattered images. Cowardly, heavily edited thoughts.

Ad-info: contains affiliate links.

Our London Lives by Christine Dwyer Hickey.

The year started with a good one: Our London Lives. Set in 1979, this story follows two characters over many decades, watching (often frustratingly) as their lives collide and then veer away again, repeatedly. Milly is a teenage runaway, Pip is a young boxer, both are Irish outsiders in London who find a sort of refuge in one another.

It should be a straightforward love story but Pip drinks and Milly finds it hard to stand her ground with things, which sometimes makes you want to bash your head slowly against a wardrobe door. Anyway it’s beautiful, if sometimes a little slow, and I loved that it was set in Clerkenwell and Smithfields (my old neck of the woods) and that you saw how the area changed over time.

Here online, if you fancy it.

Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher.

“In Wishful Drinking, Carrie Fisher tells the true and intoxicating story of her life with inimitable wit.”

That’s the official one-liner on this short and snappy autobiographical book. It misses out the crucial fact that this is short. I was incensed at how short this was! Because parts of it were unbelievably funny. Sad, because it’s all about Carrie Fisher’s - erm - unconventional Hollywood childhood and her dire battles with addiction and her mental health, but she manages to tell her story with that flippant sort of humour that leaves your mouth hanging open.

And then, just as I was getting into it, feeling connected, poof! It ended! I had to look online to see whether maybe I had half the book missing! Alas no.

If you fancy a quick read, it’s online here

Benediction by Kent Haruf.

I did not want this Kent Haruf trilogy to come to a close. It started with Plainsong then continued, so beautifully slowly, with Eventide and then Benediction rounded the whole story off, except that it’s not so much a story as an exploration of very ordinary lives and events. Haruf is a genius at bringing home how life events can feel small, apparently insignificant and mundane when you read about them through a wide lens but when they are under a microscope, as they are in this trilogy, they are utterly catastrophic. World-changing.

This is slow, rural America, timeless in that it could be any decade in the last hundred years, pretty much, and it feels almost painfully beautiful to read about because it’s all so strangely relatable. Normal lives. I loved this trilogy so much that I felt bereft from the first chapter of Benediction, knowing that it was going to come to an end.

Online here

Kala by Colin Walsh.

“Human remains have been discovered in the woods. Two more girls have gone missing. As past and present begin to collide, can the estranged friends figure out what led to Kala's disappearance... and stop history repeating itself?”

I enjoyed this. It always feels weird to say you’ve enjoyed a story about murder, but the characters were brilliant and I liked how it flipped back and forth through time, which sometimes irritates me, so… well done. Did it terrify me? No. I don’t consider this to be a thrilling sort of thriller. But it’s not some airport slasher horror, for God’s sake, it’s a proper read with complex characters and excellent settings…

Here online

Red Head At The Side of the Road by Anne Tyler.

“A glimpse into the heart and mind of a man who sometimes finds those around him just out of reach – and a love story about the differences that make us all unique.”

Oh I enjoyed this one massively. It’s a slow, very meticulous look at one man’s life and relationships and very set way of doing things and interacting with people. At first his actions were frustrating, but then I began to understand him and as I began to slowly understand him and the way his mind works, it was honestly like an epiphany. Because this character could be at least two people I know in real life and who I have struggled to understand and empathise with.

I seem to very much enjoy these slow, microscopic character studies. Colm Toibin, Sally Rooney, Claire Keegan, just off the top of my head; whole books where only a few days or weeks pass by. Intricate peerings into the workings of the human mind. Maybe because you end up almost absorbing the character. Maybe it’s because you end up seeing so much of yourself, or someone you know? Anyway, strongly recommend.

Here online.

Night Crawling by Leila Mottley.

“An unforgettable novel about young people navigating the darkest corners of an adult world, told with a humanity that is at once agonising and utterly mesmerising.”

This is a hard read. It’s very intensely violent and also grim-without-any-sign-of-an-optimistic-ending, but the story has really stayed with me, so much that I don’t need to pop onto Amazon to re-read the blurb even though it’s a whole year later. (That really is a feat for me.)

The main character, Kiara, is picked up by the police and ends up doing a deal with them to sell her body in return for them not charging her for something she didn’t have any control over in the first place. It’s the sort of injustice that makes you incensed from the first chapter - you just know that Kiara’s life is going to spiral into chaos and misery.

There was a bit of unneeded padding as it went along, I thought, sometimes a bit repetitive, which took some of the edge off at times, but - as I said - the story has really stayed with me.

Online here.

List of Suspicious Things by Jennie Godfrey.

“Leaving Yorkshire and her best friend Sharon simply isn't an option, no matter the dangers lurking round their way; or the strangeness at home that started the day Miv's mum stopped talking.
Perhaps if she could solve the case of the disappearing women, they could stay after all?”

This is sort of a novel about the Yorkshire Ripper murders and how they affected local communities but it’s told from the viewpoint of a child. I struggled with this, because a) I find child narrators in books (and child actors!) incredibly annoying anyway but b) she only really half understood what was going on, yet we as adults reading it know what was going on, so I felt more informed than the narrator and it just left me not knowing where I stood with it all.

I think, judging by the 14,000 five star ratings that I am possibly the only person in the world who had this minor issue, but then most people like the kid in Sixth Sense who says “I see dead people” and honestly, I wished he had stayed locked in that cupboard for the duration of the movie.

Anyway, brilliantly written and the scene-setting was superb. As a child of the eighties, the main (child, gah!) characters were only just ahead of me and so it felt relatively familiar. Not the bit about the murders, but the general vibe. Thatcher the milk-snatcher, etc.

Here online.

When I Hit You by Meena Kandasamy.

“Caught in the hook of love, a young woman marries a dashing university professor. She moves to a rain-washed coastal town to be with him, but behind closed doors she discovers that her perfect husband is a perfect monster. As he sets about battering her into obedience and as her family pressures her to stay in the marriage, she swears to fight back - a resistance that will either kill her or set her free.”

Right. I thought that this was very powerful, this story of a very intelligent and independent woman who finds herself under the total control of a monstrous man. She cannot escape him, or his violence and I read much of it feeling very nauseous about how she was possibly going to escape him.

Here online.

What a Way to Go by Bella Mackie.

“Anthony is dead. His wife and four children each have a motive. And there’s a true crime-obsessed outsider ready to expose the killer…”

This was a great romp. The main character is a total berk and, because he has recently died, he speaks to us from the afterlife. His family (still alive) are almost all horrendous. You don’t really root for any of them, which makes this the sort of farcical murder mystery you can fully stand back from and enjoy without restraint. I read this on holiday over the plane journey and initial sun-lounger session. A great holiday read, I’d say.

Online here.

The Slowworm’s Song by Andrew Miller.

“An ex-soldier and recovering alcoholic living quietly in Somerset, Stephen Rose has just begun to form a bond with the daughter he barely knows when he receives a summons - to an inquiry into an incident during the Troubles in Northern Ireland.”

Slow worm? Slow story. Struggled to finish. Is what I wrote in my notes. I’m going to writers’ hell. This has not put me off buying The Land In Winter, which was shortlisted for the 2025 Booker, because for all its slowness it was gloriously written. Maybe it’s because I read this sandwiched between two murder mysteries?

Online here.

The Mysterious Affair At Styles by Agatha Christie.

“Captain Arthur Hastings is invited to the rolling country estate of Styles to recuperate from injuries sustained at the Front. It is the last place he expects to encounter murder. Fortunately he knows a former detective, a Belgian refugee, who has grown bored of retirement…”

From my notes: My first Agatha C, will it be my last? Enjoyed massively but God crank up the pace a bit and get on with it would you! Blasphemy!

I read this book because it was on the shelf in the holiday cottage in Dittisham where we stayed last Easter, and directly opposite the cottage was Agatha Christie’s holiday home. (Greenway, absolutely visit there, I thought it was great. Sunny day, had deckchairs out on the lawn. Her clothes in the dressing room. Recordings of her chatting with friends, etc. Loved it.)

It is blasphemous to say this I’m sure, but it just needed to be a bit more pacey for me. I’ll give another one a go because I know it was a first attempt. (Haha. Biggest selling author of all time after Shakespeare, I’m sure she doesn’t need my opinion!)

Here online.

Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers.

“1957, the suburbs of south east London. Jean Swinney is a journalist on a local paper, trapped in a life of duty and disappointment from which there is no likelihood of escape. When a young woman, Gretchen Tilbury, contacts the paper to claim that her daughter is the result of a virgin birth, it is down to Jean to discover whether she is a miracle or a fraud. As the investigation turns her quiet life inside out, Jean is suddenly given an unexpected chance at friendship, love and - possibly - happiness.”

Absolutely faultless. (Can you tell I’m running out of energy, I’m relying on the book blurb to do the talking here.) I rarely give a mental 10/10 but this just absolutely captured my heart, what a gorgeous love story and what a gut-wrenching twist! Very Atonement. You know I said I’d try and make it clear when I strongly recommended something? Consider this a big flashing neon sign.

Here online.

California Gold by Jodie Chapman.

“A portrait of a marriage, a family and the thin line between a dream and an obsession.”

I was honoured to get an advanced copy of Jodie Chapman’s new novel (it had a different title, even!) but also felt that it was a massive responsibility because I am incapable of being able to lie convincingly and I was worried that if I didn’t love it as much as her others (Oh Sister was one of my books of the year in 2023) then she’d know and it would all be mortifying!

Thankfully it’s absolutely brilliant. You think it’s going to be the story of true love and a dream life, that Hollywood cliché where two souls find one another and live this movie-worthy, enviable, cool kind of existence.

But everything turns out to be not as expected - it’s the most realistic shattering of dreams I’ve ever read. Deftly executed shatterings, sometimes so depressing you think to yourself, geez, give them all SOME kind of break!

But such is the brilliance of the book. I kept coming back to it throughout the day when I should have been working because the characters crept under my skin and I felt a compulsion to check up on them, to see whether anything had improved for them. Top tier.

Pre-order here.

Hunger Stone by Kat Dunn.

“Set against the violent wilderness of the Peak district, a compulsive sapphic reworking of original vampire novel CARMILLA, the book that inspired DRACULA: a captivating story of unstoppable hunger…”

This was entertaining with a good dark plot that gradually unveils itself and a nice dose of revenge. The vampire woman did my head in though. I’m not good with the whole seduction scenario when one of the players is a monster, ghost or otherwise supernatural being. It gets very vague and confused. It’s a bit like dream sequences, again: I just want to say DID IT HAPPEN THOUGH?

I think vampires in general just need to chill out with the whole “seducing humans” thing, either bite them and be done with it or leave them alone. I can’t believe that many people get a sexual thrill from the thought of being exsanguinated by a vitamin D deficient ghoul with meat breath.

Here online.

How to Kill your Family by Bella Mackie.

“Meet Grace Bernard.
Daughter, sister, serial killer…
Grace has lost everything.
And she will stop at nothing to get revenge.”

Ploughed into this because I enjoyed the other Bella Mackie one so much. Again, an aeroplane read, perfect for holidays because it actually has a sense of humour and a good plot.

Online here.

Waist Deep by Linea Maja Ernst.

“A luscious summer novel about friends, lovers, and friends' lovers.”

OK, iPhone notes:

Felt like basking in sunshine on a picnic rug, but naked and in front of people. Comforting but also uncomfortable. Made me feel clever and also down with the kids.

This is the sort of read that makes you feel as though you frequent cool dinner parties. The sort that people (probably) have in East-East London, where there’s a guitarist from an up-and-coming band who brings the dessert, a girl who’s big on Instagram for showing videos of vintage shoe repairs and at least three fashion stylists.

THIS IS NOT A DISS! I used to go to that sort of party! I am just at least ten years too old, now. Which is sort of how I felt about the book. A bit… too old. In one way it was eye-opening, in another way I kept feeling quite maternal towards the characters and wanting to say “oh bless. There’s more to life than shagging, dears! Take up a hobby!”

Online here.

The Housemaid by Freida McFadden.

"Welcome to the family," Nina Winchester says as I shake her elegant, manicured hand. I smile politely, gazing around the marble hallway. Working here is my last chance to start fresh. I can pretend to be whoever I like. But I'll soon learn that the Winchesters' secrets are far more dangerous than my own...”

Huge runaway bestseller in the realms of Fifty Shades of Grey, etc. iPhone note for this one said: - gah. Good twist though.

Here online.

A Thousand Threads by Neneh Cherry.

“The joyous and electric memoir from beloved music icon Neneh Cherry.”

Ha! My iPhone note for this was: Hectic life.

I was so fascinated by Neneh Cherry’s life, reading this - there was never a dull moment, she had lived an entire human’s life by the age of about six, in terms of significant events! - that when I had to return the book to the library (it was in high demand, apparently) I immediately downloaded the audiobook to finish the last five chapters. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend the audiobook, because Neneh Cherry reads it and her voice is borderline hypnotic and I kept falling asleep.

Online here.

Assembly by Natasha Brown.

“Come of age in the credit crunch. Be civil in a hostile environment. Step out into a world of Go Home vans. Go to Oxbridge, get an education, start a career. Do all the right things. Buy a flat. Buy art. Buy a sort of happiness. But above all, keep your head down. Keep quiet. And keep going.”

iPhone note: Oooh! Fresh. Short. Punchy. Great.

This is a short read, but you know when something grabs you because it’s just so different? The story left me feeling really pessimistic about modern life, but at the same time it was a female viewpoint we don’t often see in novels: disenchanted and disappointed in life, but in a very rational and level-headed way. Quick to read but spends a long time in your thoughts.

Here online.

Shy Creatures by Clare Chambers.

“Inspired by a true story, Shy Creatures is a life-affirming exploration of loneliness, love and the quiet forces that shape our lives, reminding us that freedom can come in unexpected forms.”

amazing!! Almost as good as Small Pleasures.

I mean what else can I say. Strong recommend again for Clare Chambers. I enjoyed this immensely.

Online here.

The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden

“An exhilarating tale of twisted desire, histories and homes, and the unexpected shape of revenge - for readers of Patricia Highsmith, Sarah Waters and Ian McEwan's Atonement.”

iPhone notes: Outstanding. What a turn in a story, totally blew me away.

Oh, this one really got to me. I thought I had the story all figured out - I thought I knew whose “side” I was on! What a dark, twisted tale - I am loathe to say too much, because the thrill is in the discovery, but after the thrill comes a deep, deep sense of sadness and a realisation that histories and stories never truly tell both sides. We are so easily led. Phenomenally demonstrated in The Safekeep.

One of my books of the whole year, for the twist alone.

Online here.

Room on the Sea by André Aciman.

“As the sultry summer week draws to a close, the end of their rendezvous comes into focus, and Paul and Catherine are forced to decide whether to act on their feelings or leave the fantasy of what could have been to the annals of the past.”

iPhone notes: Argh! Who talks like this?! Is it a US thing? Dialogue is intensely annoying. Lovely short story about love.

What is it at the moment with novels that have dialogue that would absolutely never be spoken in real life? Where for some reason characters speak to each other as though they’re reading from a psychotherapy book? I don’t get it. Is there a certain demographic in the US where this dialogue is normal? Do people actually say things like these lovers? Example:

Him, to lover: ‘We may be lonely, even ordinary, but we’ve been happier and more thrilled to meet than I’ve been in a very long time. It’s been years since I’ve felt as welcome to be who I am or felt as interesting as I have these past few days. I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be with someone who is eager to laugh with me, to know what I like, what I think, and with whom I’m dying to speak every day.”

Honestly, if Rich came out with this I’d think he’d had his coffee spiked with MDMA. I’d think I was being pranked.

Then she replies. Brace positions.

“We are each in our own way enjoying this new wind in our lives, but we also know it can’t infringe on our other life.”

I feel like I’m reading an entry from the journal of an early settler. Don’t get me wrong, the language is lovely! The story is lovely! It’s just this dialogue. I’m seeing it a lot. It’s starting to make me question whether I’m imagining it. Or perhaps I speak like a caveman and nobody has dared tell me.

Here online, if you fancy a short and sweet read.

Welcome to Glorious Tuga by Francesca Segal.

“Charlotte Walker has swapped her grey life in London for a year in a tropical paradise. Officially, she’s there for conservation but the reality is far more complicated. For somewhere on the island lies the answer to a truth she’s waited her whole life to learn. If she finds it, then perhaps she might finally find herself too.”

iPhone notes: Fun and comforting, like Doc Martin but on a faraway island.

Need I say more? I raced through this, really enjoyed it. A sunny, satisfying read - the Solero of 2025 books.

Here online.

Sleep by Honor Jones.

“A dazzling debut following a newly divorced young mother reckoning with a long-buried secret as she returns home one summer.”

- exquisite

I’m glad I kept notes on my iPhone as I went along, even if they did just consist of a single word. I thought that Sleep was a beautifully written examination of the motherhood cycle. The first part of this novel felt like treading on eggshells; a dysfunctional mother-daughter relationship where I kept on thinking something even worse was always about to happen. Not that the things that did happen were at all insignificant. It was just that it gave me absolutely no faith in the parents whatsoever, that the child could have been in free-fall and there was nothing in the way of a safety net. Very unsettling.

And then you get the aftermath; how the events of childhood weave their way throughout the rest of the character’s life and inform the person she becomes and the way in which she responds, in turn, to new events. Very clever. It makes you realise how terrifying it can be to have that huge responsibility, being a mother, knowing that you will inevitably make mistakes, realising that they are not always mistakes so much as life just turning its giant wheel, all to be repeated!

Blimey.

Online here.

Sandwich by Catherine Newman.

“For the past two decades, Rocky has looked forward to her family’s yearly escape.
The humble, quirky beach house they rent has been the site of sweet memories, sunny days, shared mishaps and memories. It is a place where her family comes together and Rocky wants to cling to every moment.

Now, sandwiched between her children who are adult enough to be fun but still young enough to need her, and her parents who are ageing but healthy, Rocky wants to preserve this precious moment of balance for ever.
But life is always full of surprises and this week will be no exception. With her body in open revolt and surprises invading her peaceful haven, the seesaw of Rocky’s life is tipping towards change…”

iPhone note: best book of 2025 so far! Have taken photos of pages I like, it’s that good.

I loved this book because:

a) it felt relevant to me. Although Rocky is way ahead in terms of life stage (her kids are grown up, mine are still in Primary school, she’s a bit older, etc) the emotions she has around her own identity and around motherhood all feel really raw and immediate.

b) it’s sometimes outrageously funny. Very honest. I guffawed more than a few times, in public, and looked mad.

Would read this one again and again - I gave away my first copy and have since repurchased twice!

Here online.

Milf by Paloma Faith.

“Paloma invites us into her own coming of age and relationship with her mum, to
explore how our bonds with our children evolve into adulthood. We see a
glimpse of the complexities and joys of Paloma's experience of juggling
romantic love, heartbreak and dating with the demands of motherhood.”

Here online.

Fire by John Boyne.

“A chilling, uncomfortable but utterly compelling psychological journey to the epicentre of the human condition, asking the age-old question: nurture – or nature?”

Stupendous, didn’t see any of that coming! Shocking.

iPhone note says it all, really - we have a huge neon flashing sign of a recommendation for this one. It’s one of four books in the “Elements” collection and by far the most compelling and gripping.

Online here.

The Seventh Son by Sebastian Faulks.

“Tech billionaire Lukas Parn has an ambitious plan. Behind the doors of the IVF clinic in his London institute, a daring switch is made. Young academic Talissa Adam believes she is simply carrying a child for a grateful family, but the baby inside her is different from any living human. The boy, Seth, grows up unaware, though his parents not that he’s different: he can’t make plans, is unaware of danger and seems to have at least one extra sense. But as Seth becomes a man, the truth about him is revealed and the world starts to hunt him down.”

This concept (swapping genetic material so that a baby is born with some Neanderthal DNA*) is both creepy and amazing. Kept me hooked, even though some of it was very science-y and made my mind chase squirrels.

(*“Neanderthal DNA” is probably completely incorrect, but let us continue.)

Some parts of the book seemed completely unnecessary, like a trip out to a derelict chateau in the wilds of France where there was a tethered man and an old lift shaft, never to be mentioned again, but I liked that it followed the story through many decades. Long but overall it kept me entertained on my sun lounger.

Here online.

Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively.

“Claudia Hampton - beautiful, famous, independent, dying. But she remains defiant to the last, telling her nurses that she will write a 'history of the world . . . and in the process, my own'. And it is her story from a childhood just after the First World War through the Second and beyond. But Claudia's life is entwined with others and she must allow those who knew her, loved her, the chance to speak, to put across their point of view.”

iPhone Note 1: amazing! Reminded me a bit of Still Life crossed with the English Patient.

iPhone Note 2: oh, this won the Booker Prize. No surprise. Top notch, absolutely loved the main character!

Here online.

Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Jenkins-Reid.

“Carrie Soto is the greatest player the world has ever seen. But six years after her last match, she watches a young British tennis player steal her world record - and Carrie knows she has to go back and reclaim her rightful place at the top. Even if the world doesn't believe in her. Even if it almost breaks her.”

Well I made an error here, because I read a book that’s all about tennis and I’m not massively fascinated by tennis. I can take it or leave it, tennis. If you love tennis then you might love this. If you’re not a huge tennis fan, you might find it readable but slightly lacking, due to most of it being about tennis. iPhone notes:

meh….but readable. Smallest font I have ever seen, needed microscope. Not into tennis so that probably set me back as it’s all about tennis.

Online here.

The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner.

“Romy Hall is starting two consecutive life sentences at Stanville Women’s Correctional Facility. Her crime? The killing of her stalker.”

OK, this started off brilliantly and I was fully invested. It’s about a woman doing life for killing her stalker (in the US) and the writing is fresh and modern and really engaging. But after a while, perhaps half-way through, I had honestly lost interest as to why she had killed her stalker because it felt a bit laboured. I was gagging for a huge twist, like the narrator suddenly turning out to be an unreliable narrator, because it felt very dark and sassy like that, but no.

Writing is incredible, made me want to immediately read another Kushner, which I did, see below.

Online here.

We all want Impossible Things by Catherine Newman.

“Deeply moving yet laugh-out-loud funny, We All Want Impossible Things is a jubilant celebration of life and friendship at its imperfect, radiant, and irreverent best.”

OK so here’s an interesting thing: I loved this book, almost as much as Sandwich, same author, and in fact had I read this first then I potentially could have loved it even more than Sandwich. But something strange: the characters in this almost felt like the same characters in Sandwich! The same dialogue, same sort of relationship issues and complexities, same parent-child dynamics… I couldn’t put it down, so this is by no means a criticism, but just thought it was notable.

Maybe that’s a great thing. To have such a strong voice and style that it continues through to different stories and characters.

Anyway, would read this again in a flash. And anything Newman decides to put out. It was heart-wrenching but also strangely uplifting.

Here online.

Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner.

Sadie Smith – a 34-year-old American undercover agent of ruthless tactics and bold opinions – is sent by her mysterious but powerful employers to a remote corner of France.
Her mission: to infiltrate a commune of radical activists influenced by the beliefs of an enigmatic elder, Bruno Lacombe. But just as she is certain she’s the seductress and puppet master of those she surveils, Sadie becomes caught in the crossfire between the past and the future…

Couldn’t get into this: a rare pass! Got three chapters in. Perhaps should have given it more of a chance but I was in Ibiza and needed something gripping.

Online here.

Water by John Boyne.

The first thing Vanessa Carvin does when she arrives on the island is change her name. To the locals, she is Willow Hale, a solitary outsider escaping Dublin to live a hermetic existence in a small cottage, not a notorious woman on the run from her past.

But scandals follow like hunting dogs. And she has some questions of her own to answer. If her ex-husband is really the monster everyone says he is, then how complicit was she in his crimes?

Escaping her old life might seem like a good idea but the choices she has made throughout her marriage have consequences. Here, on the island, Vanessa must reflect on what she did - and did not do. Only then can she discover whether she is worthy of finding peace at all.

It’s online here. Wasn’t my favourite! Raced through a load of John Boyne’s books after loving the first one:

Earth by John Boyne.

An inescapably gritty story about one young man whose direction in life takes a vastly different turn than what he expected.

I read this in one sitting. It had the same sort of - very engaging - dark twist as Fire, I think they are really clever, these elements books. I don’t think you need to read all of them for them to make sense, though they are all connected in small ways.

Online here.

You Are Here by David Nicholls.

I liked this book about two divorcees on a walking trip so much that I immediately started planning a coast-to-coast walking holiday! It’s a rom com in book form and the dialogue is really funny, I mean properly top-notch hilarious. I love walking (restyled as “hiking”, in recent years, apparently) and love reading about walking, which should be as interesting as watching paint dry but isn’t, because nothing is as satisfying as reading about someone walking in horrendous rain, with wet boots and blisters and a flask of soup, when you’re reading it from a warm bed!

Oh my God, the joy.

Anyway, it’s here online.

Carrion Crow by Heather Parry.

A powerful and spine-tingling gothic tale exploring mother-daughter relationships, sexuality, and class.

Crikey this is dark. Gothic horror at its finest, complete with woman-trapped-in-attic (classic!), Misery-level crazy mother, rotting food and disintegrating body parts. This gets GRIM. It is not for the faint-hearted.

Fantastically written, and I was left feeling very empty and depressed and horrified which I think was possibly the book’s mission statement. This will never be a Disney film, if that’s your usual benchmark.

It’s here online - get the hardback, the cover is ace.

Miss Buncle’s Book by DE Stevenson.

BLOODY LOVED THIS! Barbara Buncle has a shot at writing a novel to try and up her income (she’s unmarried, it’s the thirties) and writes a runaway success that is all about the people in her village. It causes all kinds of problems, but this is a lighthearted read that’s easy and joyful, I couldn’t put it down. Felt like fiction from a simpler time - you know when a book makes you feel physically warmed? Silly and altogether fabulous.

Find it at Persephone Books here.

Flesh by David Szalay.

My love of Flesh is well documented (lol!): I wanged on about this Booker Prize winner for weeks after finishing it. My last wanging on said this about it:

“It won the Booker Prize and for good reason; it’s sparsely written and the main character barely says anything but somehow the story is totally engaging and you can’t stop following his journey. It’s a really interesting style, I felt as though I was almost reading a film script, with my brain being forced to invent all of the setting and action.”

I have nothing more to add, other than I do love it when writing comes along that feels fresh and new and unusual.

It’s online here.

Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout.

Lucy befriends one of Crosby’s longest inhabitants, Olive Kitteridge, now living in a retirement community on the edge of town. They spend afternoons together in Olive’s apartment, telling each other stories. Stories about people they have known – “unrecorded lives,” Olive calls them – reanimating them, and, in the process, imbuing their lives with meaning.

I found this very striking; thinking of all of the stories of all of the lives that mostly go unrecorded, or are considered unremarkable. I suppose this follows on from what I was saying about the Kent Haruf trilogy, that most life events are only significant to that very small group of people they affect, and when you put that small slice of humanity under the microscope, their everyday lives seem colossal. Events are catastrophic. The characters’ deaths in these books signal the end of everything, we as the readers are distraught. Because, I suppose, it is the same for all of us. Our existences are tiny, almost unseeable, yet at the same time we are all that exists!

I think I need a holiday.

Online here.

The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne.

Cyril Avery is not a real Avery. At least, that's what his parents make sure to remind him. Adopted as a baby, he feels more and more disconnected with the family that treats him more as a curious pet, rather than a beloved son.

So, as a young adult, Cyril decides to embark on a quest to find his place in the world. Sometimes misguided and often in the wrong place at the wrong time, life has dealt him a difficult hand but Cyril is resolute that he can change things, and find the courage to be himself.

And in doing so, his story will come across that of Catherine Goggin, a young, pregnant woman finding herself alone and isolated at only sixteen. There is a place in the world for both of them, and Cyril is determined to find it.

I loved this but I’ve been writing for about three hours now and my arse has gone to sleep, so enjoy the blurb above which tells you everything you need to know.

It’s here online.

Love Forms by Claire Adam.

Trinidad, 1980: Dawn Bishop, aged 16, leaves her home and journeys across the sea to Venezuela. There, she gives birth to a baby girl, and leaves her with nuns to be given up for adoption.

Dawn tries to carry on with her life - a move to England, a marriage, a career, two sons, a divorce - but through it all, she still thinks of the child she had in Venezuela, and of what might have been.

Then, forty years later, a woman from an internet forum gets in touch. She says that she might be Dawn's long-lost daughter, stirring up a complicated mix of feelings: could this be the person to give form to all the love and care a mother has left to offer?

I had mixed feelings on this one. I loved all of the scene-setting in Trinidad and found the scenes from Dawn’s childhood and teen years to be really engaging - I couldn’t put the book down for those parts. But something didn’t seem to quite ring true about the search for her child, over so many years - I found the present day London scenes quite frustrating and found myself wanting to skip through to them to return to the past.

But then it redeemed itself at the end with some very good mother-daughter/circle of life scenes. A mixed bag, though I did read it over Christmas and was probably not firing on all cylinders, mentally. Has anyone else read this? Or any of the books I’ve listed? Do weigh in down in the comments section!

Love Forms is here.

Small Bomb at Dimperley by Lisse Evans.

It's 1945, and Corporal Valentine Vere-Thissett, aged 23, is on his way home.

But ‘home’ is Dimperley, built in the 1500s, vast and dilapidated, up to its eaves in debt and half-full of fly-blown taxidermy and dependent relatives, the latter clinging to a way of life that has gone forever.

And worst of all - following the death of his heroic older brother - Valentine is now Sir Valentine, and is responsible for the whole bloody place. To Valentine, it’s a millstone; to Zena Baxter, who has never really had a home before being evacuated there with her small daughter, it’s a place of wonder and sentiment, somewhere that she can’t bear to leave.

But Zena has been living with a secret, and the end of the war means she has to face a reckoning of her own…

Funny, sharp and touching, Small Bomb at Dimperley is both a love story and a bittersweet portrait of an era of profound loss, and renewal.

Full blurb for you because this might have overtaken Sandwich as my book of the year. I’m having a hard time deciding. The story is so tender, so funny, so touching, it just has a bit of everything and the fact that the plot revolves around a bat-shit crazy stately home that the family decide to open as a National Trust-style tourist attraction is the cherry on the top. I love stuff like that!

This felt like Downton Abbey meets Small Pleasures (above) meets Still Life (Sarah Winman) meets Miss Buncle’s Book, such heart-rending topics told with a light touch and the sort of easy, straightforward narrative voice you can’t stop hearing.

I mean, I’m just going to say it, which is a risk: read it, you won’t regret it. It’s here online.

Notes, thoughts and own recommendations in the comments please!

Obviously my eight year-old shook off his burning temperature and racking cough within two days; I, having the apparent constitution of a sickly Victorian aunt, forever having to be perambulated to the seashore with rugs piled on her lap, have had the same cough-cold for over a week.

Total bed rest! Bits of toilet roll everywhere! Pathetic little forays down to the kitchen in my dressing gown to get honey and lemon! Which is always a depressing sort of feeling, isn’t it? The dressing gown during the day. There’s something about wearing flammable fleece after 11am that makes you want to simply give up on things.

Anyway, on the first night of the cough-cold I got three and a half hours of sleep. (As evidenced by my Oura ring read-out.) Three and a half hours! My throat felt as though it was filled with gloopy sand. If I sat upright I couldn’t sleep, mainly because I’m not Dracula, if I lay down then all of the gloopy sand just slowly dripped down my throat, to be coughed out violently and then magically make its way back up to the top of my nose to start the whole process again.

HOW IS THIS HAPPENING? I thought to myself. HOW CAN THIS SIMPLE AND MINOR AILMENT DESTROY ME SO EASILY?

I was incredulous, actually: incredulous that at the age of 45 I was still allowing something like a common cold to stop me from sleeping. With all of my vast experience! I mean, how many times have we all had colds? Why do they always come as such a surprise? How are we not prepared? Why does it take until day three, when all energy resources are depleted and you feel as though you’re dying from the Bubonic Plague, to remember that there are FAILSAFE, WONDROUS DRUGS that can immediately cut your suffering level in half?

I have two such failsafe drugs and I am recording them here so that I can remind myself, the next time I get a cough-cold, to immediately procure them by any means necessary:

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(The treehouse was a particular source of envy with its little plastic ladder and swing; it served as both village school and home to the teacher owl, Aristotle Treefellow, who had a mortar board and teeny wire spectacles. You could also buy a triplet of baby owls who each wore a different coloured felt waistcoat, if you really wanted to go OTT on the owl front.)

I digress. This friend had something mysterious called eczema and sometimes had parts of her limbs wrapped in bandages, which I found mildly alarming at the time, I remember. Mainly because I went to catholic school and therefore knew a lot about lepers, and I had drawn some sort of loose connection between bandages and awful flesh-eating diseases and being cast out from society to live in the shadows of the city gate, etc etc.

This friend didn’t have leprosy (pretty sure I checked this out with an adult to be sure, I’ve always been risk-averse) and so I noted the bandages and forgot about them, in that way only children can do, and I also accepted the sporadic tantrums, albeit with a bit of an internal eye roll. Anyway, I didn’t know how serious and horrible her skin itchiness and soreness must have been for it to have required bandaging, but now that I have my own first proper serious flare-up of eczema (lower shins, thanks for asking), all I can think is

OH MY GOD HOW DID THE POOR GIRL EVEN SURVIVE?

I would have been a misery guts one hundred percent of the time, not just occasionally. Now that I have shins that feel as though they have been set on fire, that I am having to wrap in bits of cotton so that I don’t touch them, that I am having to slather in creams every hour and sometimes put cold compresses on, I think about the bandages around her elbows and wonder how she ever made it into school. It must have felt torturous. My patches are smallish and on a part of the body that does not need to crease, or stretch, or contract: I cannot imagine how it must feel to have it on more moveable parts that would feel constantly irritated.

Anyway, it’s all the fault of the Subtropical Swimming Paradise at Center Parcs. I mentioned this waterpark briefly in my last post, the one detailing all of the things I did over the Christmas break instead of scrolling Instagram, but it has had such a catastrophic impact on the start of my year that I need to bring it up again. Because I’m almost certain that the highly-chlorinated shallows of this glass-domed kids’ swimming complex have been the cause of three different ailments and counting: the serious shin eczema flare-up, a skin problem around my lady parts and (indirectly, probably as a result of my home treatments for the lady parts) a huge bubonic-esque boil that sits somewhere very awkward and unspeakable.

Obviously these things could have happened at any swimming pool, but the problem with the Center Parcs Subtropical Swimming Paradise is that the kids love it so much you end up spending half your days there, emerging so shrivelled and dry and crispy that you could be sealed into a little foil bag and sold as a bar snack.

There’s a full Center Parcs review coming, but to give you a spoiler, both kids (they are 8 and 10) voted this Subtropical Ailment Incubator as the singular best thing they’d ever been to. River Rapids that wound around the outside of the huge glass dome, the frothy water steaming dramatically in the frosty air, different water slides and chutes with varying levels of thrill and speed. A loud jungle drum/Tarzan-yell alarm that went off every half an hour to signal the turning on of the wave machine and that immediately pulled all of the crowds into the water as though they were hypnotised, or answering a call from a higher power.

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It was so good that I wasn’t ever allowed to get out and I knew - I knew it! - that I would get some form of inconvenient bodily malaise from staying in the water, despite regular trips to the heated “lagoon” to try and keep my kidneys warm. My money was on a bout of cystitis, but amazingly I escaped that particular joy (probably because I kept my kidneys warm), and neither did I get the thrush that I had so pessimistically forecasted after the very first half hour. No verrucas, none of the predicted athlete’s foot (I’m an absolute delight to spend leisure time with, honestly), just shins that feel as though they have been cheese-gratered and then sprinkled with battery acid, and some extra little dermatological issues of the gusset area.

But wow are the shins itchy. I’ve actually had these sore, itchy patches since my teens and have always managed them with casual applications of various unprescribed creams, and by trying not to have the temperature of my bath water above boiling point and, in extreme circumstances, simply scratching off all of the scaly problem skin vigorously with my nails. But this is different. This feels serious. I have welts. And I don’t think I’ve ever been woken from my slumber due to unbearable itchiness before. Maybe when I was pregnant, but really, pregnancy is just a whole period of weird stuff happening to you all the time anyway, like you’re being experimented on by an alien life-force, so that doesn’t count.

In normal life, I do not wake from my slumber for anything. (I don’t wake for no man!) And now I do, apparently, and for the past two nights I have been lying there with my knees in the air, the edge of a hot water bottle resting inside my buttock crease as a makeshift hot compress (don’t ask) and my shins draped in cool flannels, Googling pictures of Sylvanian owls at 3.27 in the morning.

What I will say about the Subtropical Paradise, because I can’t seem to get the place off my mind, is that the air temperature in there was far from Subtropical. It was positively chilly. Maybe that big glass dome hots up nicely in the summer months, but BOY is it nippy when you’re running back up to the top of the rapids. It’s the perfect recipe for gynaecological disaster, really: damp swimming costume next to your crotch, holding water that has the same pH as, I don’t know, venom, and then repeatedly going from warm environments to freezing ones with a load of tepid, fungal-growth temperatures in between. I’m amazed I’m still standing.

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I’m also amazed that I was persuaded onto a water ride called The Cyclone. I’m not a thrill-seeker at heart. I know that will shock you all to the core. Considering my hatred of enclosed spaces, fear of drowning horribly in a submarine and general wariness of running water, it seems incredible that Rich convinced me to join him on a rubber raft that would be shot down a dark tube at high force into a plunge pool where I would then have to disembark the raft in front of an audience in the most undignified manner. In all honesty I would have backed out of the ride altogether but I didn’t want to lose face in front of our fellow rafters, and so put on my sturdiest expression as we climbed aboard at the top of the dome.

‘Don’t worry,’ said my friend Simon, as we all arranged our legs in a criss-cross at the centre of the raft, ‘it’s not that bad. You go around and around in this giant room and then basically drop through the middle of it down a hole. Like going down a plughole.’

He couldn’t have come up with a more terrifying expression. Going down a plughole is in my list of top five irrational fears. I will even rescue a spider from said fate, despite not really liking to touch spiders that much, because I can’t bear the thought of its hellish journey. That dark, endless pipe. Imagine getting stuck! This is why I can’t watch those videos of extreme caving, or pot-holing. Why would anyone do that voluntarily?

Yet there I was, voluntarily boarding the Heart Attack raft and waiting for the big push. I did come close to having a coronary, I think, as the raft span around and edged closer to the plughole. My Oura ring detected a worrying spike in stress levels, at any rate. I couldn’t even scream, such was my fear. Rich ended up being the person who faced backwards for the entire thing, which is the worst position to be in. Ha, I thought. That’ll learn ya.

Though I’d rather have done the plughole backwards than deal with these shins…

‘Enjoy your family time!’ they say, and things like, ‘Before you know it, those days will be gone!’ Oh excuse me a second: are you telling me that one day I won’t have to negotiate bedtime with a child who has secretly eaten a quarter kilo of blue-coloured popping candy and is therefore now strutting around the place like Begbie from Trainspotting, sweating and gurning, squaring up to the door frame and inviting it out for a fight?

I jest, of course. (Not about the blue coloured sweets, though - those things are lethal.) Family time is golden. Which is why for two weeks I hide my laptop, do an “out of office” on my email and completely delete the Instagram app from my phone. The Instagram deletion is the big one; I reckon I must look at it about twenty times a day. It’s almost a reflex to press on that little colourful square whenever I look at my home screen. It sucks me in. Setting a timer for pasta? I’ll just have a little peep at the latest stories. Checking the weather? Oh look, there’s a little video of a cat swinging on a chandelier!

It’s dangerous. If I didn’t rely on Instagram for approximately 80% of my income then I’d set one of those restriction things up that only lets you have a certain amount of time to scroll. As it stands, it would be somewhat counterproductive. A bit like hiring an armed guard to stand outside your own office and aggressively deny you entry. Burning your own dentist practice down to the ground. Selling your car when you’re a minicab driver. That sort of thing.

Anyway, I know what you’re all thinking: hurry up and tell us! What did you do when you didn’t have Instagram to scroll? Did you spend hours at the pianoforte, learning new pieces? Did you make headway on your modern masterpiece of a novel? Take up yoga? Finally start on your build-from-scratch DIY dolls house?

Negative to all. Here is what I actually did.

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Here we go with the things:

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The Underwear Thing:

Gifting sexy lingerie usually turns out to be a total disaster. Scratchy lace thongs. Weird feather-trimmed things. Many lingerie-buyers seem to have this insatiable desire to buy underwear that is completely see-through, or to choose undergarments that are missing one of their essential sections, like - I don’t know - the gusset.

Here’s the thing: if we wanted a bra formed from transparent mesh that made us look like we had our boobs pressed up against a window then we would go and try one on ourselves, to make sure we had the right fit. Ditto anything with peep holes or “open” bits: these are the sorts of situations where accurate sizing becomes paramount. Nobody wants an open gusset in the wrong place, let me tell you. You could be inviting all sorts of things in through the back door!

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But do we go and try these things on for size? No we do not. Because generally we do not want them. Those in the throes of new passion might don a peekaboo bra and lace-up pants but a vast proportion of us just yearn for comfort and effective air circulation in the undercarriage region. If you can throw in some colour and fun at the same time then you’ve hit the mark.

Which is why these:

are my favourite, favourite underwear thing. Sets of the brightest, softest knickers known to man, neatly folded into a pleasing little recycled box. They are one of my daily little pockets of joy, these neon knickers, and I highly recommend them. Cute gift. Get 20% off with RUTH20 if you’re shopping online. See also these:

for uplifting colour bursts! Find them online here.

STRIPE & STARE

The Iconic Thing:

You’re sweating now, thinking Louis Vuitton handbag! Oh God! Chanel purse! Gucci belt? How much is this going to cost me?

Well I don’t know about you, my (imaginary) girlfriend is worth any amount of money! But calm down. It’s none of these things. Far more quietly stylish. I present you with an iconic gift that whispers pure luxury whilst being perfectly usable on a daily basis: the Liberty Robe.

Nothing makes you feel fancier, I can tell you. Unless you go for the silk robe rather than the cotton, but I like the way the cotton one is a bit more structured on the shoulders - you really do feel immediately very stylish and swish when you put it on. A proper little treasure, this one, and all of the prints are so beautiful that it’s hard to go wrong.

Find the robes here online. I’m a UK10-12 and wear a size S.

LIBERTY

The Thoughtful Thing:

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If I really thought about it in a completely non-materialistic way, then the main things I’d want for Christmas would probably be the same as what all humans are after: good health and happiness. Maybe two weeks on a desert island, completely alone, with just a stack of books and a hammock. But that would make for a boring post, wouldn’t it? Entire wholesome paragraphs untouched by the grasping fingers of rampant consumerism? Bah humbug!

On that note, let us delve into my treasure trove of (expensive) secret desires.

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Silk Nightdress

Crikey these nightdresses from If Only If are very romantic. You cannot help but to “float” in them. “Waft”. They make you feel like a character in Bridgerton, waiting to be ravished in the boudoir in a rebellious act of pre-marital naughtiness.

Beautifully made, the finest silk, this is the sort of nightwear that excites me, now that I feel like a bit of a twat sleeping in anything too overtly sexy. I mean who wants the seam of a Brazilian-cut cami knicker slicing into their chuff at 4am? Who feels like clearing up Weetabix bowls in an arse-skimming lace negligée?

I’m all for the costume-drama vibe of a romantic gown. Bring it on.

If Only If are here online.

Liberty Dressing Gown

I have one of these already, but do I yearn for more? DO I! Wearing Liberty print makes you feel so ridiculously photogenic and posh. And the vibrancy of the prints is the greatest distraction when your face is so wan and tired that it looks as though it’s been moulded from old lard.

Liberty currently have up to 30% off here

Malin & Goetz Super Candle

Recent discovery: these huge Malin & Goetz candles and I was instantly won over because a) they’re huge and b) the glass receptacle (it’s like a small fruit bowl!) is so impressively stylish. If you love streamlined, clean, modern (or mid century) interiors, or just any sort of interiors really, then you will love the non-twee aesthetic of these whacking great candles.

Also, I have just finished a smaller-sized “Dark Rum” candle from Malin & Goetz and must say that everything about it was exceptional. Noticeably so. The throw, the scent itself (leathery, spicy, sexy) and the way that the wax burned evenly the whole way down. No wastage. Good job - style and substance going on here.

Super Candle at Liberty

What’s next on the obsession list? Things to wear:

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Unless you have my famous Books n Chocs guide to hand!

Every year I bring the only gift guide you really need: it gives one single excellent idea but it is an idea that is chic, infinitely customisable, quick to wrap, a joy to receive and easy on the finances.

So feel free to sit back and relax in the knowledge that I have your trickiest gifts covered - the friend with impeccable taste, the artsy cousin, the book snob, the sister who hates bath stuff and the well-travelled neighbour who loves a new read - if ever you struggle to think of a present then this is your answer.

The idea is very simple: you pair a brilliant book with a gorgeous bar of chocolate. Wrap it in nice brown paper and tie it with string. (String is optional, it’s a faff.)

The execution is less simple, because for this to work you have to remember that the key words in the previous sentence are brilliant and gorgeous. This is not a slab of Dairy Milk sort of affair! We’re trying to make the whole little bundle look like something you’d pick out at Liberty, except it costs a fraction of the price!

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It’s not easy making books and chocolates look like an artisan offering but it’s manageable with a lot of time and effort. Hurrah for you that I’ve done all the work, then, and all you need do is stop scrolling on the picture you like the look of and order the goods.

And yes the chocolates are mostly quite posh. This is because the posh ones have good, fancy wrappers but also because we’re trying to make the entire parcel into something that’s delectable and special and the artisan chocolatiers take everything to a whole new chocolate level. If you need to keep costs down a bit more then Tony Chocolonely bar wrappers come in lots of colours and are very graphic and fun - they’re my number one option all round, really, when it comes to finding an affordable crowdpleaser. You need to pick the accompanying book wisely, though - it needs to have a cover that is suitably graphic and fun and bold. If it’s not then the second best option is Waitrose No1 chocolate, which has very plain, sophisticated packaging with just one accent colour. Lots of options, again, and it’s all quite understated and grown-up.

Now the chances are that this email will cut off and you’ll have to click to read the rest of it online: apologies, this cannot be helped. It’s because there are so many photos! If you don’t see what you’re looking for on this post, then do take a look at previous years because there are some absolute corkers when it comes to book-and-choc pairings:

Books & Chocs: The Ultimate Easy Christmas Gift 2024

Books & Chocs: The Ultimate Easy Christmas Gift 2023

Books & Chocs: The Ultimate Easy Christmas Gift 2022

Books & Chocs: The Ultimate Easy Christmas Gift 2021

Books & Chocs: The Ultimate Easy Christmas Gift 2020

Books & Chocs: The Ultimate Easy Christmas Gift 2019

This year I’ve also slipped in something a bit different: I couldn’t resist having a go at pairing some of the books with the beautiful handmade soaps from Soap Poetry. It ties in well because the soaps are book-themed and look like old Penguin Classics - it makes for a very sweet little parcel. All tied up with string and brown paper.

Right! Here are this year’s Books n Chocs!

I’m starting with the books I’ve read and loved, ending with the ones that are still on my reading pile because I overestimated how many I’d get through! There’s just a short summary beneath each book-and-choc pairing and then links to buy online/get more info should you need them - all should be available in your local independent book shops.

Persuasion

Persuasion, Jane Austin, paired with delicious Audrey’s Nougatine Milk Chocolate. The book is a classic, obviously, but the special cover makes it something to be treasured. You can get Austin’s novels in loads of beautiful clothbound editions, they make great presents.

Buy Persuasion

Buy Audrey’s Chocolate

The Safekeep

One of my favourite books of the year, The Safekeep by Yale van der Wouden has an almighty twist that makes you want to delete the first part of the novel from your mind and immediately read it all over again. Sad, intense, brilliant. Paired with the finest Rococo bar.

Buy The Safekeep

Buy Rococo Salted Caramel Bar

Tell Me Everything

I’ve just finished Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout and it’s a definite recommend from me. Optimistic, thought-provoking but generally non-traumatic, which makes it a good bet for most book-lovers wanting a cosy winter read. Paired with a Soap Poetry soap, because why not? They look great together and boy does the parcel smell good!

Buy Tell Me Everything

Buy Soap Poetry

Miss Buncle’s Book

Another “book of the year” (how many am I allowed?); Miss Buncle’s Book by DE Stevenson. This rip-roaring semi-farce is set in the 30s and follows an anonymous author who writes about her village, getting herself into all sorts of moral tangles. I thoroughly enjoyed it, absolutely SPIFFING! Published by Persephone Books in Bath, who bring forgotten fiction back to new audiences.

Buy Miss Buncle’s Book, DE Stevenson

Buy Rococo Salted Caramel Bar

Sleep

I thought that Sleep (Honor Jones) was truly excellent. It’s not the easiest read, there’s a lot about childhood events and how they can impact your entire life (yay) but I found it unputdownable and loved the narrative voice. This book and choc pairing is a good one if you’re trying to keep costs down - the paperback was £8 (at time of writing) and the chocolate was £3.50.

Buy Sleep

Buy Milk Chocolate with Feuilletine Sea Salt, Waitrose

Sandwich

I feel as though I’ve said a lot about Sandwich, written by Catherine Newman, but I’ll say it again: this book really resonated with me and it’s another (yet another!) book of the year. It’s about motherhood and it is ridiculously funny but also, in parts, incredibly sad. What isn’t sad is the way I managed to find a box of fudge with the exact colours of the book cover. Get me. I’m very proud of this pairing.

Buy Sandwich

Buy Lemon Meringue Fudge

Small Pleasures

Small Pleasures should actually be called Massive Pleasures because it’s a truly amazing book, but I don’t think that has the same ring to it and would also change the vibe. Massive Pleasures sounds borderline Anne Summers. But this is Clare Chambers, not Anne Summers!

It’s the most heart-wrenching story about slow, ordinary love, the sort that happens all the time but mostly goes unrecorded. This is special. Even more so now that I’ve paired it with a chocolate that has almost the exact colours AND AN ORANGE ON IT! I swear I went above and beyond with my pairings this year…

Buy Small Pleasures

Buy Ocelot Blood Orange Bar

Waist Deep

I read this to make myself feel cool and relevant and it worked. It’s about a group of friends who meet for a midsummer break at a lakehouse, and in that short amount of time we learn all about their different relationships and desires and it’s quite an intense little tangled web of sexy-life-frenzy. I read this on a sunlounger in two hits and felt ten years younger at the end.

Buy Waist Deep

Buy Tony’s Chocolonely

You Are Here

Oh, this is a bit of a surefire winner if you don’t know exactly what someone might like: You are Here by David Nicholls is the cosy feel-good read that suits Christmas gifting down to the ground. Think romcom storyline but with exceptional dialogue and humour. I couldn’t wait to pick it up again every evening.

Buy You are Here

Buy Ocelot Violet Milk

Flesh

I’ve talked about Flesh, by David Szalay, a lot recently. It won the Booker Prize and for good reason; it’s sparsely written and the main character barely says anything but somehow the story is totally engaging and you can’t stop following his journey. It’s a really interesting style, I felt as though I was almost reading a film script, with my brain being forced to invent all of the setting and action.

A thoughtful gift for avid readers, especially people who love to read widely and yearn for something a bit different. I’ve paired this with Up Up Chocolate - as yet untested, but it won’t take me long to get to it.

Buy Flesh

Buy Up Chocolate Sweet Orange Bar

Love Forms

We’re onto the books that are still on my book pile - I can’t wait to get started on all of these. The first is Love Forms by Claire Adam, longlisted for the Booker Prize this year. Great cover, snapped up from the shelves because I read this in the blurb: “Reads like a Claire Keegan short story expanded by Elizabeth Strout”. I mean.

Buy Love Forms

Buy Soap Poetry

Dream Count

OK, confession: I have started Dream Count but I had to abandon at circa page 150-ish because although the writing was devastatingly good (it’s Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, so of course it was), it was very dense and slow-moving and I kept feeling impatient. Perhaps because I could feel the book pile looming and I knew how many books I needed to get through!

This is one for the two week holiday where you can languish in the sentences undisturbed, I think. The reviews are outstanding, so I shall be returning to it asap for another attempt. If you want a Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie that you will absolutely tear through then buy Americanah immediately.

Buy Dream Count

Buy Chococo Heavenly Honeycombe

Seascraper

Seascraper by Benjamin Wood: another one from the Booker Prize list and I have heard magical things about it. That it is timeless and haunting and poetic - and I do love a book that uses the sea not just as a setting but as the force and drive to the whole story. I don’t actually like being in the sea at all, it freaks me out, but I’ll happily read about life next to it. Or on it.

I can’t believe I didn’t pair this book with a sea salt chocolate - missed a trick there, didn’t I? What a berk.

Buy Seascraper

Buy Chococo Heavenly Honeycombe

Well that’s it for another year.

It has taken me about thirty hours to prep, shoot and write this post (and make the Youtube video), so please do hit the heart button and share the post around on here and wherever you like to share things - the more people see it, the merrier!

The wrapping paper I chose this year, by the way, is the floral wrap from Kraft. You can find it online here. Isn’t it pretty?

November favourites and it’s my birthday month. I still get a little jolt of excitement when I see the word November, because I remember just how amazing it was as a child when my birthday finally came around. Such a long wait! I’m not big on birthdays; other than demanding at least two nights away somewhere nice, a home-baked cake from my Mum, time off work and special treatment from anyone who comes into contact with me in the week prior and after, I’d say I’m pretty low-maintenance.

Anyway it’s on the 28th, just in case there’s a chance you will come into contact with me and want to react with the appropriate enthusiasm levels. (Give it a good 8/10, if you can. Think “greeting someone who has just passed their driving test on the first go”.)

Here are this month’s favourites, including some incredibly cute beauty that would make fine stocking-filler-fodder, the cashmere that’s a cut above the rest and the lip balm I’ve been using for twenty-five years. (Not the same tube. Although I do have a MAC Strobe Cream from 1999, so.)

[Ad info: no paid or sponsored content. Contains affiliate links and the Hello Kitty product was sent as a press sample.]

Remember that there’s a video version of this post at the bottom of the page. Sometimes it’s quite nice, I find, to just have a Youtube video ambling on in the background as you do menial tasks. Part of me feels as though I’m doing myself a disservice by suggesting this, that I’m selling myself short - oh just stick me on as white noise, I don’t even care whether you’re listening properly or not! - but I’ve been doing this gig for sixteen years now. I’ll take whatever views are on offer, I’m not fussy!

Best Book

Best book of the month, for me, is the new Booker Prize winner: Flesh by David Szalay. I wrote more extensively about this in my recent post here, but I’ll say it again: the writing style is so fresh, modern and spunky that I cannot help but be in full admiration. I mean, it’s quite the risk to write an entire novel where the main character speaks all the way through but manages to say virtually nothing. To write a whole book following a man’s journey through life yet have him play almost no part in it.

Spectacular, in its own way. Very clever. If you love a page-turner and simply must have a plot then this might not be for you, but then again, I couldn’t put it down, so…

Find it here online.

Kit-sch Beauty

Even if these didn’t have strange, featureless Hello Kitty heads as lids they’d be a winner because the products inside the packaging are so very good, but the addition of the retro-green cats makes them ideal stocking filler fodder.

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Pixi’s Hydrating Milky Mist (here) adds an instant burst of dewy hydration if you feel as though your skin needs a quick fix, or if you want to refresh makeup slightly, but I am now a convert to all of these mists and can tell you the most lovely way to use them is after cleansing and before serum. Whew do they lock in that moisture! Extra plumptious! The mist is £16 and the makeup setting spray and exfoliating tonic (which is brilliant) have also been adorned with the Hello Kitty lids.

I love them.

Favourite Shoes

You lot know all about these LK Bennett shoes. I repeated the whole “love letter to the pointed courts” mainly for the benefit of the Youtube subscribers, but if you missed the post then you can read it now:

Brilliant Cashmere

I should have looked up my Chinti & Parker cashmere sweatpants before including them in the favourites, because I don’t think they make them anymore with the cuffed bottoms. (Sidenote: isn’t “sweatpants” the most terrible name for any sort of garment? Why does it even need “sweat” in it? Had the person naming these ever sweated into cashmere before? Nobody wants to sweat in cashmere! It’s almost impossible to wash it and so you have to make sure that you don’t eat, leave the house or get even remotely hot in it.)

They do a wool-cashmere mix but these are not the same! I have both. I have tested extensively. M&S do similar but I have also had these and can tell you that there’s quite the difference. Although the M&S are about half the price so it’s forgivable. At any rate, I’m going to recommend 100% cashmere joggers in general, despite them being the most ridiculously inconvenient and inappropriate thing you can own, because they make you feel as though you’re wearing clouds.

The M&S ones are here, the C&P wool-cashmere are here.

The Lip Balm I’ve Been Using for 25 Years

Sorry but can you quite believe that? Twenty five years! It was only the other day, when I realised that Elizabeth Arden 8 Hour Cream was the one thing that was getting rid of my sore, cracked lips, that I worked out that I had been using this product in one way or another for two and a half decades! First introduced to it as a model, in 2000, because in those days makeup artists used 8 Hour Cream for absolutely everything, including as a body gloss, a brow tamer, a lid sheen, a highlighter… The smell of it is just completely etched into my brain.

It has been around for an absolute age and for good reason: it really works well. I’ve been testing lip plumpers and lip treatments for a beauty awards and in terms of treatments, nothing much comes close. Especially for the price. I am a big fan of Lanolips and also of Glossier Balm.com, but those tubes are tiny by comparison - you get 50ml of the 8 Hour Cream! - and so I do need to give the Arden one some sort of virtual winners’ rosette.

Right: here’s your vid. Make sure you’re subscribed, because the next thing coming your way is the Books and Chocs roundup, 2025! If you’ve never experienced the thrill of this particular feature before then: brace positions.

You can get 8 Hour Cream for about £19 instead of £31 at time of writing - it’s here.