Right Brain Working Hard....

I know, I'm sorry i've disappeared after just a few posts, but it's for a really, really good reason, promise. Because I am working on a brand new exciting blog which I just cannot stop thinking about and anyone with an ounce of aspiration in their body will absolutely love! Whether you dream of running your own business, becoming an author, getting on the housing ladder or just finding that thing to make your life light up, this blog is for you.  It's going to be bursting with bright ideas, pearls of wisdom, beautiful things, and interviews with kick-ass entrepreneurs and creatives who will make you  put a sprint on. After all, it's ok to just not quite be there yet, as long as you are enjoying the journey - and everyone knows journeys are so much more fun with someone else to share it.
So bear with me while I get my creative juices flowing and my right brain working on overdrive. It will be worth it in the end.
Watch this space...


Digital Art

BAGGING A BARGAIN: VICE OR VIRTUE?

I'm sure it hasn't escaped your notice that shopping happens to be one of my favourite things. It hasn’t escaped my notice that admitting that I love shopping makes me sound like an utter bimbo. But we’re not talking the kind of shopaholic storming of Primark in which you come home with a village-worth of peasant dresses, 50 pairs of trainer socks and 10 polyester vests that make you sweat like a pig. My kind of shopping, as I was reliably informed by a very nice trendcaster I interviewed the other day, is ‘vastige’ shopping, and apparently we’ll soon all be at it. At this point I have to announce that this is quite an historic moment for me. Because for the very first time in my entire life, I am ahead of the trend, riding the crest of the trending wave like an uber-cool someone or other. You see, I was hardwired to this vastige malarkey before my milk teeth had even come through. The first words I ever heard out of my grandmother’s mouth were: “Get there at nine? The good stuff’s gone by 8.15am!”

VASTIGE? IS IT CATCHING…?

It may sound like a cream for an unfortunate skin condition, but in fact it’s one of those annoying fusion words - in this instance, the knitting together of ‘value’ and ‘prestige’. Oohh, clever, clever (poke my eyes out now, please). So basically, we’re all fed up with getting what we pay for - we want MORE and we want it for LESS! “So what’s new about that,” I hear you scoff. Well apparently, because the shopper has the upper hand over these big, grabby super-duper shops these days, we’re more likely to get more for less than ever before! Yippee!

Now this is where I have to give an aside, because although I do shop with big massive shops often, I also love charity shops/ car boot sales/ tiny weeny antique shops and lovely little independent boutiques who certainly don’t need us to try to drive down their already bargainous prices any more. So if you do plan on becoming a vastigista (ooh what a horrible word), let’s stick to haggling with the big guys and start supporting the little guys a teeny bit more (I know from experience that you can pick up a much more skillfully made, stylish and more often than not, cheaper chest of drawers/ vase/ lamp/ table, in a well-chosen second hand store or antique shop than in Ikea).

WHY MY BARGAIN HUNTING IS NOT A VIRTUE

I have to make this clear – there is no halo on my head to polish. I am fully aware that this is a trend born of frugality, savvy shopping and thriftiness. Unfortunately I can’t claim such noble motivations. What I can only assume started out many generations before me as an ‘every penny’s a prisoner’ type attitude, has turned into a love of a bargain that is so strong, that if I see something fabulous and outrageously bargainous, I simply cannot leave it in the shop – even if I only have £6.32 in my bank account and it costs £9.99.

Cases in point:

1.   Thrifty people do not need Osprey clutch bags reduced from £125 to £29.99 when they already have a bag for every bag-requiring scenario.

2.   Penny watchers certainly wouldn’t buy an occasional table that’s barely big enough for a teacup just because it was a steal at twenty quid.

3.   Or spend £17 on a travel card in order to cart four Ikea chairs across London during rush hour, just because they were a fiver for the set and painted in Farrow & Ball.

Whichever way you look at it, this is not saving me money.

OH WELL, NOBODY’S PERFECT!

And as I have established I am really, really not. Bargains. They are my biggest vice, my legal high, but let’s face it, it could be worse. And may I reiterate, I’m finally on trend! Woohoo! So next time someone asks me where I got my boxy Chanel-esque Clements Ribeiro jacket from, I’ll no longer clear my throat and shiftily mumble something about a little shop down the road, I’ll be lassoing it around my head as I run up the high street naked (well probably not naked) shouting “TKMaxx - £29.99!”*

*This blog is not sponsored by TKMaxx and all opinions are entirely my own.

SOME OF MY FAVOURITE ‘VASTIGE’ WEBSITES TO BE GETTING ON WITH:

TK Maxx

Achica

Cocosa

The Outnet

Brand Alley

Secret Sales

If you enjoyed this post and think someone else might too, feel free to share. You’d be doing me a MASSIVE favour! Thank you.

Image: Stuart Miles, Free Digital Photos

A Marmite Epiphany

EARLIER THIS WEEK WAS ONE OF THOSE IRRATIONAL TIMES when for no apparent reason I was struck down by a lot of sighing, random sobbing at Christmas adverts, and obsessive property-porning for million pound houses. In short, I’d morphed in to a total nutcase. But while those close to me were seriously considering sectioning, I was simply going through one of those ‘I just don’t’ phases. It went something like: I just don’t have a mortgage, I just don’t have a car (well I have, but it belonged to my friend’s granddad in 1998), I just don’t have grapefruit spoons – I mean, who doesn’t have a grapefruit spoon? My solution was I’d feel better if I adopted a dog. Now don’t go telling me that a dog is not just for moments of temporary insanity - my dog mania goes waaaaaaay back. I’m the kind of person who’ll swerve my car into a lamppost to oblige a dog who’d rolled over for a tummy rub. Sadly, I’d never really been in the position to get one of my own. Then suddenly, two years ago I jacked in my job, became freelance, moved to a tiny semi-detached with a garden and an apple tree, and through the detection of an inordinate amount of dog hair in the gap between the floor and the skirting boards, discovered that the previous inhabitants not only had a Labrador, but a Jack Russell too. Crikey! For once, ‘one day’ was right spanking now! But then came the spanner in the works in the form of Mr Loves-to-move-the-goal-posts - apparently we had to ‘wait until we had a house of our own’. Presumably, that will be when we can get one of those reasonably priced warden-monitored bungalows for the 65+. Sadly, that’s more than 30 years off, and I WANT IT NOW!

Things were not looking good. I was as mad as a box of frogs, and something had to change immediately or I was going to... ooh Marmite! I love a bit of Marmite, and I’d left the jar on the side in the kitchen. There it was, calling to me: Marmite makes everything better. Marmite makes everything taste better. Marmite... hang on (cue ground-breaking epiphany). Contrary to a pretty solid marketing campaign, it’s just not true that you either ‘Love it or Hate it.’ In fact, there was a time when I detested it to gagging-point - I was a Marmite hater. But, quite fancying the idea of being the kind of person who did love Marmite, I therefore put myself in training. Now, as I new Marmite Lover, I could quite happily eat it Winnie-the-pooh style, hand in jar. By this point I’d polished off a couple of slices of toast and Marmite and quite fancied a jaunt down the road to TK Maxx. I couldn’t go all red-eyed, miserable and make-up-less because everyone knows that is exactly when you bump into old school friends, ex-boyfriends and your dentist, so I decided to give myself a good talking to. If you can learn to love Marmite, I said, you can learn to love the other crap stuff too.  I wasn’t entirely convinced, but off I trotted to TK for a quick browse and - Oh. My. Goodness. There they were! A pair of shiny stainless steel grapefruit spoons for the princely sum of £2.99! I hadn’t felt so light in my heart for at least 72 hours! I took it as a sign and because there’s virtually nothing you can’t buy in TKMaxx, I popped a dog collar in the basket too (just in case).
If you liked this post add my blog to your favourites, or EVEN BETTER pop a little mention up of it up on your twitter/ facebook/ google+. You would be doing me a HUGE favour and I would pay you back with many virtual hugs and good thoughts. Thankyou. x

Porridge Perfection

I’ve been away across the sea with the Northern Irish contingent of the family. It’s been a crazy-mad schedule of toddler-hugging, new-puppy squidging, tractor-driving, vats of tea-drinking and bottomless biscuit tin-fuls of buttery homemade shortbread eating – I know, tough times. The thing is, it ruins me. Once upon a crazy time, so many sheep and so few TK Maxx’s would have scared the bejesus out of me - now I have a peculiar urge to buy a wax jacket and live on a hill overlooking the Sperrins. Don’t get me wrong, Sunday nights and Tax return season aside, I’m pretty darn happy thank you very much. But on the plane home the prospect of wheeling my suitcase along the saliva-splattered pavement towards my rented house that’s so close to the station I can hear if the trains are delayed while I’m making my morning cuppa, made me feel like the polish on my shiny South London life had all rubbed off. 
BUT, then I opened the in-flight menu and things got infinitely better. Porridge…? Porridge, on an EasyJet flight?! And it’s that slightly posh Moma stuff they sell at Waterloo station. It must be good! Gimme, gimme.

Five minutes later a hot paper pot is plonked on to my tray table. 
Orange-faced Easyjet steward: Stir it round, put the lid back on and wait two minutes.

Wow!  A-mazing! Pain-free porridge – who’d have thought? You clever, clever, multi-talented Easyjet staff, you.

Five minutes later….

Me: Erm excuse me. But my porridge is a little, well, wet. And erm, pretty chewy. Do you think you could possibly…”

Orange Easyjet steward: It’s supposed to be like that.

Really? REALLY? Are you QUITE sure? Because it looks nothing like the picture in your big fat lying menu brochure. (I should have thought nothing less from a company that makes you pay for an extra bag then taps you for an extra forty quid because you didn’t know you had to pay for the weight as well). If such miracles as the two minute porridge pot really were possible, do you think I would spend a whole ten minutes STIRRING my porridge on the HOB into creamy perfection every morning when I really should be doing something important like putting the bins out or shaving my legs? Do you? Do you, Punk?!

I didn’t say any of this of course. I silently seethed in my seat, said 'thank you' very politely when they took the uneaten pot away, then I came home and made this instead.

Top Banana Porridge Brûlée

35g porridge oats

225ml semi-skimmed milk 

One small banana, sliced in to roundels

Golden caster sugar

Put the oats and milk into a saucepan and mix well. Bring to the boil over a medium heat, then reduce to a gentle simmer and cook, uncovered, for 5 minutes, stirring frequently. Pour into a heat-proof bowl or ramekin, scatter the banana slices over the top and sprinkle with golden caster sugar. Dampen the sugar slightly with a light squirt of water from a bottle spray. Now for the next bit you really could do with a blow torch. I don’t have one (who does?), so instead popped it under the grill until the bananas were all bubbling, brown and crisp.
All better now.

Fluking it

IT'S AMAZING HOW OFTEN I THINK I'VE GOT SOMETHING DOWN TO A FINE ART, only to discover at the most inopportune moment that said perfection was in fact, a fluke. Recently this was most hard learned in (but not limited to) Article 1: Holding my Drink; Article 2: Cooking Steak (in which my failure at Article 1 resulted in pan-frying my iPhone); and Article 3: nose-parking in John Lewis multi-storey (luckily I drive a complete Article, so feel more sorry for the steel girder).

The irony is that I'm increasingly becoming over-run with how-to and self-help books telling me how to do things perfectly. And after a particularly blunderous month, it's time to stop rearranging said books by height/ colour/ binding/ publication date/ author, and actually crack their spines. My Dad  always said there was an art to everything and found endless amusement in my artful predisposition for disaster. Well, cue the new improved me of efficiency and perfection, because with the help of what's on my book shelves I'm going to learn the right  (but probably more often the wrong) way to do everything. And if there are a few Articles along the way, well, I think perfection is for boring people anyway.