My Miracle Dog and Other January Favourites

Here are the things that have filled me with joy this month, including two very fluffy things and a pair of shoes I have no idea how to wear.

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.