I was at a dinner earlier in the week, attended by a group of other bloggers.

“I have to ask,” said one, “how did you get that woman to agree to let you use her picture as your Twitter avatar?”

“It’s me!” I said.

“Really?!” she looked disbelieving. “How?”

“Well, a lot of make-up and professional lighting obviously, but it is me, I promise!”

I get some version of this conversation pretty much every time I meet anyone in real life who knows me primarily from Twitter, because my Twitter avatar looks like this: View Post

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Belle’s new secondary school has a fancy online payments system. Rather than take dinner money, every child has a card that you can top up from home in chunks. They also use the system to take payments for school trips to save the kids carrying round and then losing crumpled up cheques.

It’s a good idea, but having all your payments in one place does have its disadvantages, namely that you can actually see what you are having to pay for, rather than just writing a cheque early in the morning when you are being hassled on the doorstep and then instantly forgetting about it.

I logged on this week and this is what I saw: View Post

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Boyfriend has been doing his best since the tap incident to send me links to things that will make me cross.

He sent me a link to an article in the Guardian this week that almost succeeded, but in the end just made me want to give the writer a big hug, adorn him with fairy lights, and gives his cheeks a squeeze. I fancy this would infuriate him much more.

The post was all about the ‘cutesification of everything‘ and claimed that anyone who dared to count the number of sleeps until Christmas* deserved basically to be strung up like a turkey and be forced to read the back of Innocent smoothie packs – “essentially an In the Night Garden script about fruit [that] will cause me to involuntarily clench my fist so hard that I’ll cover myself in apple pulp.”

innocent hats

Good grief.

What is wrong with this man?

Sure, the world of marketing can get a bit sappy sometimes, but has he not had a look around at the state of this planet? People are literally dying left, right and centre. The rainforests are being demolished, seas and rivers are poisoned, we have weapons trained on each other, our fingers hovering over the big red buttons. We are screwed.  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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There is something that has been bothering me. I noticed it first on a TV ad, and then again at the weekend in a flier that fell out of a magazine.

It’s bath fillers.

‘What the hell is a bath filler?’ I hear you cry, your forehead crinkling in confusion, and you may well ask. In my mind a bath filler is a young man draped in robes, with a crown made of leaves, who fills your bath for you with fresh goat’s milk while you lounge back, sipping champagne and eating peeled grapes, handed to you by a young maiden. It sounds so decadent, what else could it be?

It’s a tap.

An actual tap. View Post

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A couple of weeks ago, I went to Bath university to see England play Australia. They won. It was awesome.

It was the first proper live netball match I have watched that wasn’t being played by slightly wobbly mums, and it was incredibly inspiring – we all came away absolutely buzzing, and with big plans for our own netball team.

Less inspiring though was the team mascot. The event was packed out with women and girls, and yet at half time they got this: View Post

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There is one simple question that splits parents neatly into two groups. Two groups who each take equal offence at the other’s morally reprehensible approach to parenting. If you are looking for something that defines the difference between a yummy mummy and a slummy mummy, this is it.

(Ooooh, what could it be??)

No, it isn’t the breast vs bottle debate.

It has nothing to do with your feelings on state vs private education.

It’s not about washing your hands before meals, or how much television you let your children watch.

It is this:

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