I want you just to take a minute.

Close your eyes and picture this scene. (Except don’t close your eyes, because then you won’t be able to read.)

You’re lying face down in a warm and sweet-smelling room. The children are miles away (in safe hands, not just abandoned at a motorway service station), and you’ve spent the day relaxing, reading your favourite book, taking the odd dip in the hydrotherapy pool and being brought cups of tea. Later on you’ll be enjoying a wonderful meal, and right now you are being massaged by a man with the looks of David Beckham, the wit of Stephen Fry and the credit card limit of Bill Gates.

All this could be yours.*

"win a spa break"If you’re in desperate need of a time out, then you need to pop along right now and enter the Four Pillars Hotels competition to win a weekend spa break for two – a whole two days and two nights of pampering, including dinner, treatments and, in my opinion the best bit of staying in a hotel – breakfast. I don’t know what it is about the breakfast, but somehow it feels really special. I think it’s the toast racks and the tiny jars of jam.

Enter now for your chance to indulge in the delights of miniature jams. And the spa obviously. Don’t forget that.

*Apart from the quality of the masseur. I absolutely cannot promise that.

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Welcome to a week in tweets, my regular weekly round-up of the week in 140 characters or less. I say regular – regular apart from last week, when I forgot.

I’ve tweeted over the last few weeks as Belle, as Bee, and as Nancy Drew, girl detective, so I thought it was about time I stopped hiding behind other people and wrote about my own week for a change. This week I’m feeling bad about the amount of biscuits I’ve eaten and television I’ve watched, so I thought I’d do a bit of a confessional.

As always, it’s more of a retrospective than an absolute accurate-to-the-day factual record, so if you’d like to have a go yourself this week, and add your post to my linky, do feel free to exercise a bit of artistic licence.

Monday – Went to book group. Took wine and haribo as a gift. Couldn’t resist second slice of cake and glass of wine. #reallyshouldn’thavedonethat

Tuesday – Went to @theSteadyTable. Gave out free books to passers-by. Flirted with young boys in an effort to get them to read blog. #reallyshouldn’thavedonethat

Wednesday – My birthday! Got a lot of books and jam. Lay in bed reading when should have been working. #reallyshouldn’thavedonethat

Thursday – Got asked for ID to buy wine in Sainsbury’s. Pointed out I am now 34. Went home with lemonade. Wished I’d taken ID #reallyshouldhavedonethat

Friday – Tried to make my own jaffa cakes. Yelled at over-eager daughter for not spooning mixture accurately. #reallyshouldn’thavedonethat

Saturday – Went to local wholefood shop. Spent too much money on halva, dried figs and milk made of coconuts. #reallyshouldn’thavedonethat

Sunday – Took ungrateful children to indoor shopping centre in the rain. Tried to buy their co-operation in John Lewis creperie. #reallyshouldn’thavedonethat

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This week was my birthday. I’m writing this as a way of saying thank you to everyone for their lovely cards and messages, and to my mum for a lovely lunch, but also to show of some of my favourite birthday presents, to make you all green with envy.

Belle always makes birthdays special my putting together a ‘hamper’ of goodies. I use the term loosely, as what she actually does is wrap a selection of items that she doesn’t want any more from her bedroom. They say it’s the thought that counts, and this year she went one better, and thought to wrap up things from Bee’s bedroom instead. Unfortunately she didn’t tell Bee first, so I have had to sneak quite a lot of it back, but a birthday really wouldn’t be the same without it.

This year she also hand painted me Jimmy the Jamaican Giraffe, who I’m sure you’ll agree is terribly handsome:

Toy Giraffe

Jimmy stands tall and proud

Bee did extremely well this year, and looked very pleased with herself as she presented me with these earrings. “Look!” she cried. “A Owl!” (Emphasis on the ‘A’ in a Phone Shop styley. Watch it if you haven’t seen it.)

owl earrings

“A owl!” “A owl?” “A owl!”

And if that weren’t enough, definitely-can’t-be-described-as-new-anymore Boyfriend bought me books and jam. Books. And Jam.

Books and jam

All I need now is a spoon

It is genuinely without even a hint of sarcasm that I say what more could a girl* want? Picture me if you will, late in the evening, sitting in bed reading, spoon in hand, face smeared with rhubarb and vanilla.

So there you go, a selection of some of my New Best Things. My question for the day is this – what is the best birthday present you’ve ever been given? Was it a small rubber ball found on the floor by one of your children? Or jam perhaps? Let me know…

*OK, OK, woman in her mid-thirties**

**Sobs quietly into fig chutney

 

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