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Conversations I’ve overheard this week (and wish I hadn’t)

Being a freelance journalist means I can often be found hunched in the corner of various high street coffee shops tapping away at my trusty laptop. These are fascinating places, and the things you (over) hear are incredible. It’s not that I’m purposely listening out for other people’s conversations; they are often so loud one cannot help but overhear.This is what I’ve heard this week:1) A woman spent four hours – yes four hours – on the phone to a travel agency working out how she could get from Kuala Lumpa to Kolkata in the fastest possible time. If I hear the word Kuala Lumpa again this week I will scream. She must have said it at least 30 times, and in the time it took her to sort out her flights she could have been a third of the way there. […]

By |March 1st, 2013|Family life, Food, Work life|0 Comments

Mummy it’s not fair!

Here I am (left), feeling suitably sorry for myself after 24 hours in bed with a stomach bug. This is the first time a lurgy has rendered me bedbound since BB was born in August 2011, and there are two things I have learnt: 1) Mummies aren’t allowed to be ill. 2) Number 1 isn’t fair. […]

By |February 27th, 2013|Breast feeding, Family life|8 Comments

Forget scrunch or fold: do you bite or lick?

Never mind the scrunch or fold debate. It’s the whether to bite or lick a cream filled biscuit dilemma that interests me. At what point does one become a biter or a licker? And is it nature or nurture that leads to one’s preferred method? Or can one alternate between the two, depending on mood and type of cream filled biscuit in question? […]

By |February 25th, 2013|Family life, Food|0 Comments

Jimmy Choo just saved my life!

We’ve discovered a new game. It’s called These Choos are Made For Walking and from now on it will be exclusively played on deadline days. Like today. Frantically tapping away to meet a deadline for a feature, poor BB, resplendent with a tear-stained face thanks to an angry eye tooth, eventually gave up pulling at my legs and wandered off. Usually when I suddenly realise I don’t know where she is and things have gone very quiet something bad is happening. Very bad. Like the time I found her eating soil peppered with slug pellets, or sucking the nozzle on a bottle of windowlene. […]

By |February 20th, 2013|Family life, Fashion|1 Comment

Will giving up breast feeding psychologically damage my kitten?

You might not think cats, American country singer Kinky Friedman and breast feeding have much in common, but you’d be surprised. Kinky once said: “Cats are lovers of the status quo. They don’t like anything that might represent change. They hate marriages, divorces, moving days, painters, plumbers, TV repairmen and just about everything else.” And giving up breast feeding. We have two cats. Eddie, three, who spends most of BB’s waking hours out of sight, stealing out from his hiding place when she is napping and after she’s gone to bed to assert his presence, and Daisy Doo, 18 months. Poor little Daisy Doo. […]

By |February 18th, 2013|Breast feeding, Cats, Family life|5 Comments

Is Jane Austen a bad influence on my daughter?

I fear she might be. There has been much hype surrounding the 200th anniversary of the publication of Pride & Prejudice this year, with the media endlessly banging on about how proud we should be of Austen’s most celebrated work of fiction. But I’m not so sure. BB’s granny gave her a Little Miss Austen children’s version of the aforementioned tome for Christmas (pictured), purportedly a counting book from one to ten. But it’s the underlying message that alarms me. […]

By |February 13th, 2013|Books, Family life|2 Comments

It’s none of their business whether I scrunch or fold

I nearly choked on my sauvignon blanc. ‘Do you scrunch or fold?’ the latest Andrex TV ad asks. They’re referring of course to toilet paper. How revolting. I don’t want to think about whether someone scrunches or folds – it conjures up all sorts of images – and certainly not when I’m trying to wind down at the end of a long day. […]

By |February 6th, 2013|Family life|1 Comment