Archive for September, 2012

This Thursday, wear a tea cosy on your head for charity (I will too)

September 25, 2012

This Thursday I’m heading over to my new favourite shop, White Stuff in Muswell Hill, for afternoon tea and cake, and to put a tea cosy on my head and take a photo, which I’ll post here.

Hmm. Why on earth would I do that?

Good question!

Because by buying a tea cosy and taking a SILLY photo I’ll be helping The London Centre for Children with Cerebral Palsy. I know all too well the difficulties in raising a child who needs extra attention and care, so any small thing I can do to help makes this very worthwhile.

You can find out which children’s or young person’s charity your local shop supports here. If you can’t make it to a shop, you can always buy a Tea Cosy online.

You can see everyone wearing their tea cosies here and tweet your own photo using the hashtag #teacosy. Yay!

Categories: Kids, Shopping

Get your Instagrams printed (by nice people)

September 24, 2012

I’m a huge fan of Copygram. I know some people might freak out at the mention of the word copy – but it’s not about nicking people’s pictures at all – Copygram does a great job of being flickr for Instagram – and they really don’t let you steal photos at all.

You can do everything you like with Instagrams, view your friends’ photos on one great big web page, look at people’s friends – look, anything you want, you can do it. You really need to have a look – I was beside myself with excitement when I found it. Good interface design. Easy to use – actually, really, it’s the best way to view Instagrams. Full stop.

And now, they print your Instagrams, package them up in a cute little embossed wallet and send them out, from Sweden, no less.

I love Copygram.
And so should you.

Categories: Design, Photography

Thinking of cities

September 24, 2012

Last night I was supposed to be doing one thing and I was looking for apartment rentals in Paris. We always do this. Go somewhere for a few days. Then decide we want to live there. But really, we don’t really want to live there – we just had a nice time. Right?

Now the girls are older we can travel again. Somebody recently said all we seem to do is be on holiday all the time. Recently? Yes. Before that? Probably also, but not as much – we were just busy moving countries. So you see, this time, travel, not move places. Which is why it looks like we’re travelling more, because we’re not spending thousands of pounds moving lock, stock, cats, kids, furniture, stuff.

Instead we just pack a bag, remember the passports and a bit of money – just enough for some food, wine and coffee, and we’re away. The kids loved being away this weekend. Although the train trip was less exciting than flying and therefore more boring and therefore more crabby children. They did, however, have iPads in the room – one each. Plus mine and Kevin’s which I conveniently installed up with Yellow Submarine and Harry Potter.

Although, be warned, before travelling, check the iPad movies haven’t been deleted by nosey little fingers that like to press buttons and make things shake and press buttons again.

But we’ve been a bit stuck in our ways. We don’t even really speak much French, much to my huge shame – I so ought to be able to speak French. Perhaps it’s time to go somewhere where we really don’t speak the language and then not feel quite so silly that we really ought to speak, say, Italian, when we really haven’t actually been there that often. At all in fact.

So of course that means a whole new several hours of research into some fun and gorgeous places to stay. How about Milan? The apartments here look good. Milan has good fashion. My brother and I went there just after Grandma died – and it was our little holiday. We stayed in Milan, then Lucca, then the Cinque Terra. Where I sunbathed a lot. In Lucca I bought Camper shoes. In Milan I bought an Armani bikini – the elastic melted when it went through the dryer one sad day. It has the most amazing factory shops. My brother spent months researching it all. He had a complicated spreadsheet with each day planned out, the shops we’d visit, where we’d eat, even the right walk for him to go on (while I lazed about on the beach-side sunloungers).

Ah, Italy, perhaps indeed, you are worth another visit.

Categories: Adventure, Travel

The end of the crazy white flour fun

September 24, 2012

Now I’m over the kidney infection I’ve got no excuse – I even got back to handstands this morning – so I’ve hopped back on the fruit and vegetables wagon again. I want to lose another 5kg which will take, precisely, FIVE weeks. And I really am a lot better when I stay totally on it and I’m then not remotely interested in white bread, meat, pasta, or, CUSTARD DOUGHNUTS.

They are amazing.

Categories: Food

Those doughnuts (from St John Bakery)

September 24, 2012

Kevin told me about these. I can’t remember how he found out about them. These are the most fragile of creatures – you can only buy them straight from the bakery because these doughnuts have real custard in them. So real you can taste the egg. And the vanilla.

The first time we laid eyes on them we only had enough money for one and the four of us shared one standing in the middle of their Druid Street Bakery, bite by bite around in a circle.

In so many ways it was a thousand times better only having a few morsels to enjoy. A fleeting moment, but forever engrained in my memory – the first taste of a St John Bakery custard doughnut in our little family circle under the arches in Druid Street.

St John Bakery Arch 72, Druid Street, LONDON SE1 2DU

Categories: Food, Shops