I’ve just realised that I can paint a fairly good picture of my life situation and current mental state just by telling you about the five most recent things that appear on my bank statement.
We’re not going to include the £94.60 I just spent AT SOFT PLAY (took four kids, they needed lunch and then slushies, the whole thing spiralled completely out of control - pretty sure “soft play” used to be the relatively affordable way to burn off kids’ excess energy, it’s now almost the same price to get in as going to a bloody theme park!) but we are going to include the stupid digital calendar I got influenced into buying and the cashmere jumper I can’t decide whether to keep.
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Skylight Calendar
I took this digital calendar out of the box, turned it on, and instantly it annoyed me. If you haven’t seen the Skylight, it’s basically a 15” screen that’s just a calendar. It has a calendar screen, a part for lists and reminders and then there’s some bumph about recipes and food shopping lists, but we shall come back to that.
It’s £299, but the point of it being so expensive is that it’s supposed to be the best calendar going. It pulls in all other types of lesser, mortal calendars - Google, Apple iCal, etc - and amalgamates them all on this one screen, with different categories for each member of the family.
In theory this is very clever - you can toggle between calendar types or switch between people so that they can see their personal schedule - but in reality, the screen is too small to show lots of activities at the same time. The week view shows all seven days at once, by default, but there would be no way of seeing “at a glance” what the hell was going on that week. Not like when you have a wall calendar made of paper and you can take a red pen and write “FFS DO NOT FORGET CAR TAX!!!!!!” across 23rd October.
The thing that instantly annoyed me is that if you tried to press one of the seven days on the default week view, for example if you wanted to see what was going on on Wednesday, pressing on the day did nothing! Surely the most basic bit of programming would make it so that if you pressed “Wednesday”, Wednesday would expand and reveal its various activities and commitments? I mean, iPhone calendar has been doing this for - I don’t know - twenty years, maybe? It’s just basic intuitive designing, surely?
You can change the view to a day view or a month view or what have you at the top of the screen, but it’s one step too many for me.
Rich says I’m being too quick to judge because I haven’t used it properly yet, and that I might still change my mind once I get used to it, but I can tell he’s secretly delighted because he voted for “kitchen chalkboard with chalk pens” and now that’s probably what’s going to happen.
I’ll give it a bit more of a test and then update you. So far, I just think it’s an ugly-ish white screen that is displaying what I see on my iPhone just in a worse and less user-friendly way. Maybe I should persevere just so I can do a proper, honest review of it.
Humph. I was really hoping that it would sort out my chaotic life. That it would be the answer to all of my organisational prayers. Turns out I’m still scribbling everything onto an A4 sheet that’s “month to view”. (Maybe one of these, but four times the size? That’s an idea…)
MexGrocer El Yucateco Jalapeno Salsa
This salsa is the stuff of absolute chilli-loving dreams. I used to buy it from a little shop in Bethnal Green, when I lived in London, but for the past decade or so I’ve bought it online.
Made from jalapenos, this isn’t the sort of spicy that makes you wish you hadn’t been born, but it adds a really fresh and lively kick of hotness to whatever you drizzle it over. Which for me is any or all of the following: Chicken Tinga, Chilli con Carne, Thomasina Miers’ Corn & Courgette tacos, Vegetarian Chilli, Rick Stein’s Red Rice. And more, but I’d have to reach over to the bookshelf, which is two metres away, and find my recipe books. (I feel a whole other blog post coming on!)
I always buy the bottles in pairs, because it’s slightly cheaper. I get them here.
Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility (Awesomely Austen - Illustrated and Retold)
My eleven year-old daughter is into Jane Austen. Maybe because we live near Bath and it’s like a Jane Austen-fest there for most of the year, and also like living in Jane Austen times, if you squint hard enough, but also maybe because I harped on and on about the different film adaptations of Pride & Prejudice and she just thought she’d read some to shut me up.
Anyway, there are these brilliant kids’ versions of lots of Jane Austen’s novels and she really enjoys them. They’re quite easy, for an eleven year-old, but she’s had a crack at the proper adult versions and though she understands them for the most part, she has to do a lot of stopping at words that are no longer in use, to ask what the hell they mean.
The Awesomely Austen ones stick to the story, but they simplify things and make them far more digestible as well as adding in some extra humour. I’d say that eleven is possibly getting towards the upper age for enjoying these, as they have illustrations (mine is reading Hunger Games in tandem, to give you an idea of other literary interests and/or approx reading level) and the books are quite fast to whizz through, but it’s a nice way of getting to grips with the novels.
Anyway, the reason I bought her this one was so that she could know the storyline before we went to see Sense & Sensibility together, but life has been CHAOTIC recently and we haven’t been able to go to the cinema. It’s tricky, as the dog can’t be left for too long in case he conks out, and my nine year-old just wants to go skateboarding, and Rich is variously hammering walls in Dorset and shooting down the M4 to London.
COS Chunky Jumper
I loved this jumper online and stared at it for at least three weeks before taking the plunge, but now that I have it (label still on! I’m no amateur!) in my possession, I’m not so sure.
(Scowling video to show you the jumper:)
The cut of it is exquisite, with the dropped shoulders and the seam across the back and the oversized sleeves and the chunky neckline, but I bought it to go with two skirts I already own (trying to salvage some bad purchases by making another purchase) and it doesn’t look particularly great with them.
Am I therefore in the position where I need to now find something great to go with the amazing jumper? Is this the story of my life? Yes it is.
It’s here. I bought a medium. (The price appears to be ridiculously expensive but I can tell you that it works out cheaper per gram of cashmere than an M&S crew. I know because I weighed both on my kitchen scales and then did the maths! What a shocker - the pricey one being actually better value for money overall. Two-and-a-bit times the heft, a more generous cut and style, and altogether more considered.)
I have twenty more days in which to decide. Perhaps I’ll try it with one of the….
Six Pairs of H&M Jeans
I never know what size I’m going to be in H&M jeans, which is absolutely infuriating, especially as when you add more than one size to your basket it pops up with a message saying, basically, do you really need to add more than one pair of the same jeans to your basket? You’re killing the planet and costing us loads in returns.
WELL IF YOU ACTUALLY MADE STUFF IN THE SIZE IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE, AND NOT HAVE ONE PAIR OF SIZE 12 JEANS THAT FITS LIKE A SIZE 16 AND ANOTHER PAIR OF SIZE 12 JEANS THAT IS BASICALLY AN 8!!!!!!!
The message is so judgey. It gets my back up so much that 8 times out of 10 I abandon my basket. Just leave it there! In the cyberspace aisle! For other people to trip over!
The thing is, H&M jeans are brilliant. They do such good shapes. M&S jeans all look awful on me. My Paige ones are now all too small and I refuse to pay that price ever again for jeans, so I just keep them in the cupboard waiting for the day when I can once again get them on. (Spoiler: that day will never be upon us. I am moving further from my goal, year on year. Only by very small amounts, barely tangible, but it’s definitely trending in the wrong direction.)
So I bought the same pair of jeans, basically, four times; two different washes, two different sizes (12 and 14). I need to take some photos and do a proper try-on but for now, in case you fancy a really good pair of casual straight legs that look like Levi’s men’s jeans used to look, they are here.
Right, I’m off to have another look at this calendar. Please press the heart button on your way out, leave your opinion on the jumper, tell me about your favourite spicy sauce and share your children’s book recommendations and then share this post with likeminded people who also have massively random shopping lists.
Please persevere with the calendar so I can show your review to Ben who, like you, is convinced it will be the answer to everything. I am the one who says “it’s just a massive iPad with less functionality” Also I would like a recipes newsletter please and thank you. All of those sound delicious.
Hello one in massive favour of the calendar here- first time to comment Which shows how strongly I feel about it. We use the large version- not sure if that helps- and find adding recipes, setting out meals and keeping track of where everyone is meant to be and being able to add events using the app is so useful. So I say persevere!