I’m a very lucky girl when it comes to shopping. I live just off the Gloucester Road in Bristol, possibly one of the most popular and thriving shopping streets in the UK, packed full of independent retailers, foodies, craftspeople, butchers, bakers – it is awesome.

Not that I am biased of course.

Not everyone though lives with all of this on their doorstep, so what do you do when you believe in the ethos of independent retailing and want to support local producers, but don’t have them conveniently lined up just around the corner?

The answer is myhigh.st. View Post

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It often surprises people to hear that I have an online betting account.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not placing bets on greyhounds every day or anything, but I do like the occasional gamble. Sometimes it’s just for fun – like the Grand National – other times I place bets to balance out things I really do or don’t want to happen.

For example, when Andy Murray was beaten at Wimbledon in 2012 by Roger Federer, I won £30. Murray may not have won, but I had a cash bonus to console myself with. Hoorah! This year I lost money, but Murray won – in each case I think to myself ‘how much would I pay to see something happen/not happen?’

Needless to say when the Tories came into power at the last election I made a nice little bit of money. View Post

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I delivered some training last week to PR agencies and brands to help them engage more creatively with bloggers.* One of my exercises involved giving each group a product that might be thought of by some people as boring, and getting them to come up with some interesting campaign ideas – scouring pads, potatoes, that sort of thing.

One of the products I gave out was a packet of Post-its. The woman I gave them too smiled, her eyes actually lit up. “This isn’t boring!” she said. “I love stationery!”

I feel exactly the same. You are looking here at a woman who goes to Staples for fun. Pens and notebooks for me are a joy, and accessories like paper clips and Post-Its often more so. At this time of the year in fact, Post-Its are invaluable.

I love Christmas and all things festive, particularly the planning and shopping side of things. And the sherry and snacks of course. This basically sums up everything I love about the run up to Christmas: View Post

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Does your child have a favourite place or thing to do?

Belle does.

She has a particular corner of the sofa she likes to sit in, ideally with a blanket over her knees and a slice of chocolate chip brioche on a little plate. She likes to watch children’s programmes at the same time as playing on the iPad, designing her own candy floss or doing that thing where you warp your face to make it look like you are hugely fat.

It’s basically all kinds of wholesome.

She would happily sit like this for hours, if not days, on end if I let her, but then of course it would only be a matter of time before she wouldn’t need the fat app. View Post

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My recent rant about taps was so popular that I have been trying desperately ever since to think of something else that annoys me. When I nearly got run over last week on a zebra crossing by a driver who wasn’t paying attention I tried to get riled up about it, I really did, but instead my brain said ‘never mind, you weren’t hurt, and sometimes you don’t always spot people on zebra crossings either’.

Damn you brain being so understanding.

Every time I see a sock or towel on the floor I try to will myself to become infuriated, but it just isn’t working, I’m just too easy going.

*pause for cynical laughter from Boyfriend, mum, and anyone else who has ever lived with me*

This morning though, as I made Belle a marmite sandwich*, it hit me – packed lunches. Dangerous driving and thoughtless housekeeping just don’t come close to the loathsomeness of having to make a packed lunch. You’d think that after having one child or another at school for over 14 years that it wouldn’t bother me any more, that I would at least have resigned myself to doing it, if not exactly embraced it. You might even think I would have been organised enough to get into the habit of making them the night before, but no, I leave it until the last possible minute every time.

I’ve decided that the issue with packed lunches is twofold.  View Post

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You won’t have failed to notice that it’s that time of year again, when smoothie bottles around the country don their woolly hats to raise money for Age UK. This year, to mark the tenth anniversary of the campaign, Lily Cole’s knitwear company The North Circular is creating life-sized versions of some of the teeny tiny Innocent hats.

On sale at The North Circular, the people-size beanies start from £85, with all profits going to Age UK, but if you really can only stretch to the price of an Innocent smoothie then you can win one here! Hooray! View Post

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If I had to think quickly about one moment in my life that had changed its course for ever, it would be tempting to focus straight away on the whole ‘pregnant at 16’ thing.

Yeah, I know, having a baby at 17 in the middle of your A-levels is a pretty big deal, (insert subtle link to teenage birth story here), but what about the smaller events, the ones you don’t thing of as being important at the time? I found a photo recently that made me think about one seemingly small decision that ended up having a huge impact on my life.

Belle was just a few weeks old, (I was 24 this time around, still fairly young), and things weren’t going altogether as well as I had hoped. Bee had been a ‘good’ baby in the ‘sleep through the night, be held by anybody’ sense and of course at the time I had smugly put it down to my ‘relaxed parenting style’. Oh how everyone must have laughed when Belle came along. View Post

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That’s the collective noun for a group of foxes – a skulk. I looked it up and everything. You can also call it a leash of foxes apparently, but that sounds very un-fox like to me. How many foxes have you ever seen on a leash?

I believe you can also call them a troop of foxes, but then I just imagine them all in little outfits, walking on their back legs and playing drums. Adorable yes, realistic no. Today then I am giving away a skulk of foxes. That’s final.

This particular skulk is painted by a lovely lady called, ironically, Cat. Cat is passionate about about animals and colour and loves creating art that brings a smile to people’s faces.  All of Cat’s pictures are painted to order, so she can work to any desired size, colour scheme and budget. You can see more at her website here. View Post

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This week has been a magical one for me. Literally magical, as last Sunday we went to watch a magic show at The Tobacco Factory. Calling it a magic show makes it sounds like it was a cheesy kids’ entertainer pulling a rabbit out of a hat, but this was a much more sophisticated affair, hosted by Bristol’s favourite magician, the fabulous Peter Clifford.

Peter Clifford

In the popular show, called Peter’s Friends, Peter hosts an assortment of magical guests and obviously I made Boyfriend sit right in the front row in the hope that I would get called onto the stage to help with a trick. This is Boyfriend’s idea of hell, so he spent quite a lot of the evening looking like he was cringing and trying to hide behind a post, whilst I got very excited indeed when called upon by Peter to shuffle a pack of cards. View Post

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Have you always wanted to start a blog but just don’t have the time or enthusiasm to sit down at your computer every day? Maybe you’re a Twitter addict (*ahem*) but wish there was space to say more or that your incredibly witty and thought-provoking tweets wouldn’t keep disappearing into the cyber-ether after about 27 seconds.

If either of these sound like you, or you’re just the kind of person that likes to share, then the new Dayre app could be for you.

The principle is simple – every day you add photos, videos, text (and even stickers!) to your profile using your phone. It’s quick and easy and you can do it wherever you are. At the end of the day Dayre takes all of your bite-sized chunks of genius and hilarity and turns it into one post about your day. View Post

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I say very.

Belle disagrees.

She got her first mobile phone in September this year when she started secondary school. I’m not terribly keen on the idea but she was one of the last of her friends to get one and I can see the benefits when she has a long walk every day. It has proven to be really handy for when she wants to call and ask if she can go to a friend’s house after school but has become a bone of contention when it comes to spelling and grammar.

I say it matters, she says it doesn’t. I say no one will give her a job when she grows up if she can’t put her apostrophes in the right place, she groans and rolls her eyes. You can see how quickly this would get boring for both of us, yet I harp on about it a lot.

A lot of our text conversations go something like this: View Post

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Do you ever suffer from imposter syndrome? It’s that feeling that you sometimes get, maybe at work or in a social situation, were you are waiting for someone to realise.

Realise what exactly you’re not sure – that you don’t know what you’re talking about, that you are only pretending to know about current affairs, that you’re actually a nine year old girl trapped in an adult body… That’s generally the gist. (Possibly not that last one if you’re a man, but maybe.)

Mask

I’ve decided I really need to get over it. View Post

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