I have to say that since I published that post, about how my holiday to Port Isaac ticked all the boxes, I’ve had a slight change of heart about the whole thing. In that post (you can read it here if you need to get up to speed) I talked about why I thought this particular mini break worked so well and that, basically, it was because: a) we didn’t have to fly anywhere, b) we had visited the area many times before and so it was all completely familiar and c) we had gone into it with relatively low expectations.

WHAT AN EARTH HAS HAPPENED TO ME?

WHERE HAS MY SENSE OF ADVENTURE GONE?

IS THIS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN TRYING TO JUGGLE LIFE, KIDS AND MULTIPLE INCOME STREAMS FOR OVER A DECADE JUST COMPLETELY DRAINS YOU OF ALL LIFE FORCE AND ENTHUSIASM?

I don’t know why I’m shouting in caps. I suppose to underline how surprised I am in myself. Usually so keen to explore new places and to work out the best itinerary and research the ferry times and try to find flights on Easyjet that actually depart during the hours that normal humans are awake in. (04.25 from LGW, anyone? With a 2am check-in time? No? No takers?)

I feel as though my post about Port Isaac was one step away from buying a travel kettle and a couple of fold up chairs and spending the summer sat beneath a caravan awning. Not so much because of the mini break itself, which was really quite glorious, (watching Doc Martin for eight hours straight, eating lobster, watching the stormy sea out of the cottage windows), but because of the general air of beaten-down defeat that my post gives off.

I’ve realised since then, because I’ve spend approximately fifteen work days researching summer holidays abroad instead of meeting deadlines, that although it’s bliss to not have to travel anywhere by plane, or pay forty euros for a sun lounger on a packed beach where the family next to you are playing The Venga Bus Is Coming on repeat through their waterproof bluetooth beach speaker, it is still vaguely necessary - for me, at least - to stretch my legs a bit, geographically and experience something different once a year.

Say things like Kalimera! at the top of my voice and look very pleased with myself. Worry that I’ve used the Grazie instead of Gracias because I can never remember which one is Italian and which one is Spanish. (Ask me to curse in Spanish and I can give you four options, minimum (thank you Narcos!) but hand me the bill and I will not know how to show my gratitude appropriately.)

No lingual issues such as this in Port Isaac, no issues with sun loungers, either, you’d look an absolute tool if you rocked up at the harbour freshly Piz Buin-ed and carrying a deckchair. Though saying that, I’ve never actually been when the sun has been blazing - perhaps it turns into a Club Med style lounger-fest, amongst the coils of rope and bits of net and the flotsam and jetsam that’s washed in by the sea.

Have you been to Port Isaac? It’s very lovely. We’ve touched on this before, but to give you a sweeping overview, the sort of thing a seagull might get were it passing over the top but not stopping in for a chat, it’s a small, remote fishing village on a hugely picturesque section of the Cornish coast, a part that has dramatic cliffs and tiny bays and in general the sort of scenery that makes you want to down tools, buy a stone cottage and start a new life writing children’s books about ancient pirate treasure.

In Port Isaac there’s a harbour, surrounded by stone houses and cottages along impossibly narrow lanes and alleyways, and you can imagine that in the olden days it was very insular and cut off. I feel as though we very much romanticise rural and coastal living in the UK - I certainly have an idealised view of it, probably thanks to the insane cottagecore conditioning we had as kids in the eighties. Victoria Plum. Bramley Cottage. Sylvanian Families. Postman Pat, driving his little red van over those impossibly perfect humpback bridges. It’s no wonder I’ve always yearned for the country life, despite being scared of the dark and not that keen on livestock, big dogs or having to put my car into reverse. (I spend my life reversing along tiny lanes trying to get to a suitable passing point. Tractors will not reverse even if they are right next to a passing point. Lorries absolutely won’t reverse ever, which does make sense. Vans might reverse, if you’re lucky, but not often. So if you’re in a single track lane and there’s any one of these vehicles facing you, you’re shafted. Get used to having eyes in the back of your head and dealing with stress level spikes that are on a par with, I don’t know, skydiving strapped to an instructor who has just told you he often forgets to check the parachute lines, to keep things interesting.)

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Anyway I have a great love for Port Isaac and feel as though I know it inside out. This is because it’s the setting for one of my favourite TV series, Doc Martin, about a morose London surgeon with a blood phobia who has a traumatic career episode and flees from his job to start again somewhere smaller and easier.

We haven’t discussed this, I don’t think, Doc Martin is one of the reasons Rich and I ended up leaving London. I had never actually planned to live in London in the first place, but I moved there when I was a model (2001), and then I met Rich (2003) and he was a die-hard Londoner, and then the concept of being anywhere except London seemed alien and incomprehensible.

We both had work that was based in London and all of our friends were in London, the idea of being anywhere else was never mooted.

Until we started watching Doc Martin. If you haven’t given it a go then you must: it is proper comfort TV, except also absolutely brilliant, with funny acting and amazing comic timing but also some heart-wrenching bits.

And - be still my heart - the frequent panoramic camera shots of Port Isaac, sweeping across the bay and down into the harbour, and taking in all of the wonky little smuggler’s cottages and the tiny lanes… I had always wanted to live in the proper countryside when I was growing up - the whole “rose cottage” fantasy - but something about the easy way of life in the fictional version of Port Isaac made me want to immediately up sticks and get out of the city.

It didn’t help that we used to watch Doc Martin on my work computer, which was in the spare bedroom at the back of our place in Leytonstone, and just over the garden wall there used to be drug deals going on and people stopping their vans to have a wee against the fence and all sorts of other stuff. None of that did much for the “let’s stay in London” side of the argument, I’ll admit; but it was the easy, slow way of life in this fictional Cornish village that totally bewitched me.

I can’t believe it took almost twenty years for us to go and stay there! We visited, a lot, but I have to declare that sleeping there, watching the sun go down and Doc Martin’s house fade into the gloom across the other side of the bay, listening to the seagulls wheeling and screeching, we were living the absolute dream.

I found the cottage we stayed in at Boutique Retreats. They have a very curated selection of holiday cottages on their website, all with beautiful photography, and everything that came up for our selected dates, in North Cornwall, looked really lovely. But when I scrolled to a cottage called Mount Pleasant and realised that it was right there on the cliffs in Port Isaac, overlooking Doc Martin’s actual house, there wasn’t really a lot to mull over. Location perfection.

As a little crash pad it was perfect: dining room and small kitchen on the ground floor, sitting room on the first (to take in the exceptional views) and bedroom on the top.

We spent hours in the sitting room, watching episodes of Doc Martin back-to-back, a splendid rainy Saturday, but we also used the cottage as a base to go off here and there to get food, to wander around the village, to pop to the pub for a pint.

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Before I go off on a little tangent for paid subscribers, detailing everything I ate in Port Isaac and whether or not I regretted it, I want to give you my top three things that must be done if you’re visiting. I mean, MUST. I know I said I’d give you a full itinerary of the trip, but I’ve just realised that I’ve pretty much covered it with the Doc Martin Viewing Marathon, forays out of the cottage for food and these, my three top things:

1. Lobster at Fresh from the Sea.

This is a tiny cafe selling fresh seafood that has been caught that day, and hauled in just a couple of hundred metres away down at the harbour. You could not get fresher. The menu is short, but the lobster here needs no special adornment. Either have a half lobster with some salad and mayo and slices of buttered bread, or have it ready-made into a sandwich - same with the crab. Good God, I dream of this meal at least once a week in between visits. And I only really manage one visit a year. Which means 51 daydreams to work myself into a frenzy about it.

Check opening times here.

2. Port Isaac to Port Quin Circular Walk

To see Port Isaac properly, you must venture up to the top of the cliff behind Doc Martin’s house. This is good, because you can walk past Doc Martin’s house on the way, and shake your head at all of the people who rudely stand at the front door and pretend to knock on it, for photos, even though the people inside are blatantly trying to enjoy their holiday behind those venetian blinds. I suppose they must know what they are in for when they book…

Anyway. Hike up to the top and then continuez a droit to Port Quin for a good old leg stretch. Mind the cows on the clifftop fields. I have bad memories of those cows chasing us when Dexter the dog was a puppy. Would they be the same cows? Surely not. Evil cows. Don’t run over the edge of the cliffs to avoid them, as I almost did: death by cliff fall seemed much nicer than death by cow goring, at the time, but I’m pretty sure my ability to make sensible decisions was compromised due to stress.

3 Ice Cream at The Ice Cream Parlour

I like this spot because you can watch everyone walking down into the village and there’s a bench at the front of the parlour that is a) a sun trap and b) has the perfect people-watching angle. There’s just something very holiday maker-ish about it. Is the ice cream special ice cream you can’t get elsewhere in Cornwall? No. But a good array of flavours and it is creamy and superb - it’s difficult to be disappointed in it. I’m just saying that it’s the location and the bench you want to be reaching for. Get that bench. Get it.

So, that’s where we stayed and what we did, which seems very thin on the ground, now. But I’m not trying to say that Port Isaac gives you a full three-day non-stop action-packed time of it, if you’re sticking to the confines of the place, but it’s the wandering and dondering that is the beauty of it. And eating. Which I am now going to move on to.

All the things I ate in Port Isaac and whether I regretted them:

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She’s right. And I’ve generally been behind with my reading this year, mainly because Rich and I have been working our way through Narcos and Narcos Mexico on Netflix; first the story of Pablo Escobar, which is just superb (who knew there were so many inventive ways to die very painfully at the hands of a drug overlord!) and then the story of the Mexican drug cartels and all of their violent betrayals and dubious senses of loyalty. Honestly, I could write a thesis on Columbian cocaine and its Mexican distribution channels at this point. And I’ve learned a bit of Spanish, even if it’s mainly profanities and insults.

So yes, I’m only on book number twelve and we’re half way through the year. It’s a poor performance really, considering that usually I might rack up (lol) forty or fifty books in a normal year. An hour or two before bed, every night, and then whenever I manage to grab a moment’s peace. I suppose it doesn’t help that we’re currently doing up another cottage* (The Dorset Nest) so that it’s ready to be let out for holidays and so every spare second I have I’m scrolling through pages of lampshades, trying to find antique tables on eBay, squinting at fabric swatches and trying to imagine what they’d look like if they were two hundred times bigger, lined with thermal interlining and hanging from a curtain rail.

Anyway, I’ve ordered a load of books and here are five I’ll be devouring this summer - as well as three from last summer that I think everyone should read. I gave each of these 2025 reads a solid 10/10 and still think about them frequently. If you’re after something summer-defining and memorable to add to your list, that is where I would start.

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Don’t get me wrong: I hate being late and I’m definitely not one of these people who is all for “spontaneity” and “sailing close to the wind”. When I travel, I book in advance and print off my tickets in case my phone battery dies and I like to know exactly what I’m doing and where I’m going and precisely how many stops to count on the metro before I need to get off. And when I’m working, I need to have an approximate idea of deadlines and the overall shape of my week so that I can make sure I fit everything in, and I have both a paper diary and my phone calendar to remind me of all of the life things that need to be done.

But planning too much? Getting ahead of myself and doing my work early? No. It vexes me. Mainly because a) nothing ever goes to plan and then I feel as though I’ve failed and b) if you do things early, other tasks just flood into the space you’ve left, like dry sand running into a sandcastle moat. If instead I leave things loose and vague, if my list is flexible and informal, then anything I do manage to cross off it feels like an epic achievement, and I would rather just tackle things at a steady and undramatic pace than be fighting with myself to free up time that will only be taken up with the next lot of work.

How jolly of me!

Anyway, I’ve confirmed my own belief this month, that getting things done early is a terrible approach to life, because I was too organised and I did make some content earlier than usual and I’ve completely shot myself in the foot! I have now been posting my Monthly Favourites online for around fifteen years and usually I spend the entire month making my shortlist of favourites and then I ruminate over them for a bit, let them stew, and then, at the very last minute, just as Cinderella is about to turn into a pumpkin - I film, edit and upload.

I like this sense of tension and the feeling that I am running out of time - it motivates me. I’d say that at least half of my favourites videos have been filmed under extreme pressure, the main pressure being that I feel like a total berk if I put out the video in the wrong month. January Favourites, say, when it’s February 1st. There’s being fashionably late to the party and then there’s turning up the next morning: nobody wants a guest the day after!

So this month I filmed two whole weeks too early and it shows. Not only had I not accumulated my usual quantity of favourite things on the shortlist to pick from, meaning that my opening favourite thing is “my new pedicure” and a close-up video shot of my feet, complete with sock marks, I also missed out on some amazingly good finds that all happened in the past week. Too late for the video!

Luckily for you, I am my same old skin-of-the-teeth self when it comes to writing the blog post, so not only do you have the official favourites (including the feet) you have a bonus item. I’d give you more but I don’t want to leave myself short for next month.

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There wasn’t even supposed to be an intro to this post. I really need to learn the art of getting to the point faster. But then the journey is as important as the destination and all of that. Favourites:

Ad info: no paid or sponsored content. The Dorset Nook is a holiday cottage I own as a business. Links may be affiliate links, unless stated otherwise, beauty products are sent as press samples with no obligation to post.

My Pedicure

For God’s sake. It’s an embarrassment, this is. The fact I’ve included it as a favourite, not the pedicure itself. The pedicure itself is very good, despite costing almost twice as much as I’d normally pay (Cowshed mark-up, I treated myself when I was at Soho Farmhouse. Something had to lift my mood after the first night.)

What I will say is that I can’t stop looking at my feet, because they are at least twenty times prettier than they were a couple of weeks ago, and I do think that it was money well spent, especially as my pedicures tend to last me at least three or four months before the polish gets too far up my nails! Bargain.

The Other Bennett Sister

One of my favourite things on the telly in a long while, The Other Bennett Sister imagines the story of Mary Bennett (middle sister in Pride & Prejudice) and how she simply doesn’t meet the usual societal expectations of the time. Mary is highly intelligent and observant and has better social skills than any of her sisters but she is not conventionally pretty, she’s not interested in hair ribbons or marrying soldiers and so in her small town setting she’s something of an oddity. Taken out of the small town, however, transplanted into the city, and she is set free - valued, revered, loved.

It’s a brilliant, clever, inventive take and I devoured every minute of it, from the darkest and cruellest depths (emotionally abusive Mrs Bennett, played impeccably by Ruth Jones) to the most gorgeous highs. (There are moments, especially when Mary is being championed by her suitors and her aunt and uncle that you find yourself cheering out loud.) Just watch it. It’s on BBC iPlayer here.

No98 Hydra Bond Shampoo and Conditioner

This surprised me: I don’t often veer away from my Philip Kingsley Itchy Flaky Scalp range, because it’s great on my fine hair and sensitive-ish scalp, but I was swayed towards the No98 range after a few people recommended it and am seriously impressed. The fragrance is strong with this, and it’s sort of a “sexy church” smell, incense-y and heady (though my hair stylist Cassie says it smells botanical, which is probably a less sacrilegious description) so you have to like wearing your scent in your hair, but boy does it make fine hair ultra-soft. I don’t think I’ve used anything so instantly softening on my bleached, fine hair in a long time.

It actually doesn’t feel up to much during the washing process - my hair feels quite dry and tangled after shampooing and the conditioner doesn’t seem to leave that satisfyingly silky residue when you rinse it out, but every time I’ve let my hair air dry after using No98 it has felt incredible. Just beautifully conditioned, but a weightless kind of conditioning, and a clean feel that lasts for days.

I’m not often impressed by haircare because my hair’s needs are so specific - it’s damaged, it’s blonde, it’s fine, it gets greasy on the scalp but then is dry at the ends - but this range is a keeper. You can find it online here.

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Sulis Fine Art

I’m always on the look-out for good, original art. I lucked out in this respect because I was born into a family of artists and so I have some excellent stuff that has come my way, but I have collected from art fairs, galleries, art dealers, antiques markets and flea markets and even directly from the artists themselves.

I enjoy it, hugely. The hunt. But I have to say that it is time-consuming and a long-term endeavour and I am currently on something of a deadline with my new holiday cottage (The Dorset Nest, Instagram here) to get it open for bookings later this summer and I do not have the luxury of spending four years searching out the best paintings!

Step forward Sulis Fine Art, my finest recent discovery. They have over 10,000 original paintings at any one time, all categorised and priced so that you can very quickly and very easily find exactly the sort of thing you’re looking for. Agreed: finding art is emotional, not something you can just sift out by category and price, but it absolutely a game-changer to be able to present yourself with a few hundred paintings that are all in your price range, or that are the size you need for a certain space.

What’s amazing is that I had a few things in mind - subjects - for the paintings I wanted and I managed to find exactly what I had imagined. The beauty of having ten thousand pieces of art to choose from, I suppose!

You can find Sulis Fine Art online here.

Soap Poetry

I leave some lovely welcome gifts for guests at my holiday cottage, The Dorset Nook, and I will do the same for guests at my new cottage, The Dorset Nest, too. People are always delighted. I like to think that what I leave is a little representation of things that I personally love and think are the absolute bees knees.

One of the things is a little hessian bag filled with beauty bits; there’s body stuff by Bramley (independent brand and local to me), including body lotion and bubble bath and a cute little pillow spray for the deepest of sleeps, and then there’s a really rather exquisite soap from small-batch, luxury-quality soap-makers Soap Poetry.

I found Soap Poetry when I was compiling my Books n Chocs post for 2025 and instantly loved the idea behind the soap wrappings, which were made to look like the covers of classic novels. This sort of stuff is right up my street! But then I got samples of the soaps and smelled them and used them and blimey. Just out of this world. You could use them instead of candles or reed diffusers they’re so gorgeously scented - just leave them in the corner of the room!

Impossible to do that though, because you smell them and just want to use them. Buy them for yourself or buy them as a gift (with a plain-covered, fancy notebook, would be perfect!), they are online here. I cannot pick a favourite scent, they are all gorgeous, but OK then, The Secret Garden. Oh wait. Room With A View.

No!

Pride & Prejudice. Yes, definitely that one. Find Soap Poetry online here.

Do you want your bonus favourite? Here:

Dusk Striped Cushions

Honestly, never have I been so amazed with a bargain buy: six quid each for these striped cushion covers and they are 100% cotton, with a lovely frill, and look massively more expensive. I am picky with my cushions, as we may have discussed before, and tend to only get them from three places: Soho Home (although I have been priced out of those, ridiculous price tags, someone is obviously on laughing gas in their head office), OKA (I grab them when the sales are on, which is now) and Graham & Green.

I rarely veer away. But I loved the colours of the stripes on these and at six quid a pop I didn’t think I could go far wrong. Not for 100% cotton! I stuffed them with slightly oversized feather inners from Graham & Green and they look stupendous. Really, really chuffed. They’re not my usual muted colour palette but I do like the odd splash of brightness (don’t think I’ve ever shared my bathroom on here, we need to do a house tour!) and I also think that they (or the extra ones I’ve ordered) will look marvellous in the new Dorset Nest.

You can get the striped cushion covers here - there are also larger square ones for £8 each! Beautiful as outdoor cushions in the summer, if you remember to bring them in and not get them wet. (So, indoor cushions but used outdoors then.)

Here’s this month’s video with a Dexter the Dog health check-in, video of my toenails and - OH! - I’ve just realised, a trip into my bathroom! That worked out well! And if you enjoyed this post, don’t you think you might massively enjoy my Sunday Times bestselling book, How Not to be a Supermodel? It’ll make you laugh a lot, cry a bit and never, ever want to be a model. You can listen on Spotify or Audible or buy the paperback version here.

I’ve tried to write this post about luxury hotels four times now, but I keep getting the feeling that it’s a bit pedantic. Nit-picky. A whole seven minutes (ish) of your precious time that will be taken up with my luxury hotel gripes. Life’s too short! Let it go! It’s all first world problems of the highest order anyway!

But then, I thought, no. If nobody ever calls out these things, the overpriced restaurants serving reheated frozen food, the fancy resorts charging a fortune for sub-par experiences, then will anything ever change? And what about the people who will spend their hard-earned cash and come away disappointed? Do we owe it to the people after us to firmly, yet politely, voice our concerns when it comes to value and quality?

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After all, it’s not just the yacht-owning banknote-flinging minority who are booking these hotels and restaurants and resorts, I’d hazard a guess that a huge percentage of the guests are people who are treating themselves to what might be the holiday of a lifetime, or the one-off ultra-special anniversary meal. There’s a lot of expectation and emotional energy involved when you’re spending way out of your comfort zone - I now know this from much, much experience!

Picture it: you’ve saved up for a romantic weekend away at a hotel that looks as though it represents the absolute pinnacle of indulgent luxury; you’ve splashed out on the room size above the one that looks like a broom cupboard, you’ve come to terms with the fact that the price you’re paying doesn’t even include breakfast. You’ve justified the whole thing by reasoning that you only live once, you’ve had a tough year, the tyres on the car will surely last another few hundred miles if you drive very, very carefully.

And it’s going to be amazing! Nobody would pay those kinds of prices for a hotel room if it wasn’t simply the best place that had ever existed! Would they? I mean, you get what you pay for, right?

Not always.

Here are some of the luxury hotels I’ve stayed in over the past few years and the things that have let the whole experience down. They might seem rather petty, on paper, but each time the annoyance and then the feeling of disappointment really spoiled the ambience:

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I am trying to book the annual family holiday “somewhere warm” but after the very expensive semi-disaster that was Ikos Olivia last summer, I feel as though I’ve lost my confidence. That was supposed to be the sort of holiday I’d rave about for years to come - a benchmark of holiday perfection. The fact that it fell short, despite its glowing online reviews and real life recommendations, has made me dithery. Especially because there’s no way I would spend that kind of money again: not to be squeezed onto sun loungers with barely a whisker’s breadth between them and to have to queue up to get into a buffet for mediocre lunch. Not when you can pay a fraction of the price for a little villa somewhere and enjoy freshly-cooked food at a little taverna nearby.

(Above: queueing up to get into the buffet at ultra-all-inclusive luxury resort Ikos Olivia.)

This is the eternal holidays-with-kids conundrum, though, isn’t it? I’ve spent a lot of time ruminating over this and going round and round in circles with my pros and cons lists. Reasons hotel resorts are great: the kids are always occupied and there’s ice cream on tap and you don’t have to cook or clean up and there’s a beach right there and you can just leave the towels on the loungers and not have them all hanging over the balcony to dry and someone comes to empty the poo-roll bin next to the toilet and you can have a little cocktail after dinner and feel as though you’ve stepped out of your normal life for a week.

But OH MY GOD! Reasons they are bad: you also have to be in close proximity to hundreds of people you don’t know, a metre away from someone at breakfast who is Facetiming with their Nan through the speakerphone of their iPhone, six feet away from a couple on the beach who are complaining about their nuggets and chips being cold. And even if people are just normal, non-obnoxious holiday-goers, it’s still loads of people and surely being funnelled into the same ten acres of Truman Show village is the exact opposite of what you want to reset your mind and relax your body?

Maybe it’s just me.

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A villa, one situated as remotely as possible, would seem like the answer wouldn’t it? Except no! Also not the escape from reality one so desperately desires, because what about going to Greek Lidl to buy three dozen 2L bottles of water and milk that will curdle before you get it back to the house screams relaxation to you? Name me what it is about a car hire queue that whispers mind and body purified. Does “checking a small-size hatchback (manual gearbox) for existing damage and then negotiating a cliff-edge whilst trying to find a road sign that looks a bit like a dolphin” say emotional reset?

And then what? What about when you lie down by the pool and the kids are bored within an hour, so you have to get into the car to go somewhere, but the interior of the car is burns-level hot and the pleather takes the skin from the backs of your thighs, would you call that a break?

I can now see the appeal in all sorts of holidays - package, luxury, self-catering, even camping - but I can also identify the things I know I’ll hate, just by imagining myself there. And all this is why it has taken me since the end of November to create a very short list of holiday options but an incredibly long accompanying list of all the potential things that could be wrong with them. Send help. (If you’re desperate to see the options list, I might consider sharing. I’m just worried I’ll decide on the villa option and then one of you will have swooped in and booked it.)

On the flip side of all this, I recently went on a three night break to Cornwall with Rich and the dog and it was an absolute roaring success! No notes whatsoever! Give us a week in a luxury resort in Halkidiki and we will count the ways in which it falls short of expectations. Three nights in Port Isaac with freezing temperatures, a too-small bed and a bathroom that was a ten minute walk from the bedroom? Couldn’t have gone better. I don’t think there was a single moment of stress; it was just a totally chilled-out few nights with no solid plans, no high expectations but a real sense of having stepped out of the norm.

I should reiterate, for full transparency, that we were sans kids. I do think holiday success rates tend to shoot up exponentially when you take kids out of the equation, because it completely removes the “same shit, different scenery” element.

I’m not saying I don’t love family holidays - they’re getting easier every year, and with children who are now aged 9 and 10 I feel we might have even hit the sweet spot - I’m just pointing out that an adults-only holiday is always going to be instantly more relaxing. (I’m understating it here to be polite: trips and holidays without kids are hundreds of times more relaxing.)

Anyway, I have analysed our Cornwall trip and worked out why I think it was such a success and I am writing the reasons down here, in this commemorative post, as a handy reference guide. I can look at it when I next book a holiday, which will be soon, and completely ignore all of my own advice. Here we go.

Reasons our mini break to Port Isaac was so good:

Familiarity

I had, until now, always been slightly bemused by people who went to the same holiday locations again and again. There’s a whole world to explore! Why an earth would you visit the same place numerous times? There are quite a few places I really like going back to again and again. New York would be one, though it’s been a while. The Greek islands. Paris. Cornwall. I’ve been to the Lake District dozens and dozens of times, ditto the Isle of Wight (both of them thanks to various relatives living there) but somehow I always feel that the annual “proper” holiday should be to somewhere new and unexplored.

And I do love an adventure, I really do - it’s the spice of life! - but is it not also the case that it’s a bit of a risk, when it comes to holidays? A bit of a gamble? Because pictures lie and online reviews can never be trusted and you never entirely know what’s going to be waiting for you when you arrive? The “exclusive” hotel, jammed in amongst seventeen others that look almost identical. That turquoise sea view they promised that’s only a sea view from one particular spot, if you stand on the toilet seat and crane your neck out of the tiny window. The Air BnB with 4.7* out of 5 that turns out to be next to a sewerage works and a bar that plays Europop until 1am.

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I have to wonder whether there’s a certain comfort in knowing what to expect when you get to your holiday destination. Because we went to Port Isaac, a place we have visited loads of times before, and we had a really great time. Was there something very soothing about knowing what to expect? (Port Isaac and my sheer love of it needs its own post. I realise I’m stacking up extra posts like a house of cards, here, making an absolute rod for my own back, so you might be getting holiday content for the foreseeable!)

When I booked the holiday cottage I knew precisely where it was, I knew what the view would be like and where we would go to the pub and where we’d eat dinner. My mind was clear from all of the usual holiday admin that arises - itineraries, where to park, how to find the accommodation, locating a shop that’s open late in case we need supplies… I had none of the mental mayhem that usually dominates my first night away.

No Flight

Listen, I’m not saying I want to spend every single holiday in the UK for the rest of my life but I do find travelling abroad stupidly stressful. I think Rich does too. This is very odd, considering we are both seasoned travellers who have spent large proportions of our adult lives globe-trotting for our respective jobs, but it’s true. I don’t mind it so much for work stuff, but when it comes to relaxing holidays I can’t say that being herded through an airport with tens of thousands of other people to then sit in a little tin can in the sky makes me feel particularly zen.

The travel part of the holiday ends up pretty much cancelling out any of the relaxation I might gain from the lounging about part, and that’s if everything goes smoothly with car hire and flights being on time and luggage turning up and directions to accommodation being accurate.

Also we both really dislike flying. Rich moderately, me to the point where I have to deep breathe my way through take-off and landing. I wouldn’t say it’s a proper fear of flying, because I will and do fly, but it creates a lot of internal stress that I could do without, if I’m being entirely honest with myself. I do love the guaranteed sunshine and experiencing different parts of the world but equally I travelled a lot in my twenties and so I have a good idea of what I’m missing. I don’t yearn for far-flung places, though I did used to love an American road-trip…

I have noticed that I am far more relaxed and happy when we’re on a UK holiday, whereas many people can only feel truly happy on holiday if they’re abroad. Different strokes. (But, watch me book flights to Greece next week because the “annual holiday abroad” tradition is so deeply ingrained within me.)

Holiday Cottage

My fondness for holiday cottages is well-documented. I’m so into the top-quality self-catering option that I have my own holiday cottage business (The Dorset Nook, and another one coming soon!) and have booked more of them to stay in than I can even remember. I like them because in general you get masses more space than you’d get in a hotel room, you get more privacy, more flexibility to do what you fancy - eat out, eat in, eat crumpets and jam in front of the fire - and you usually pay way less, for all this, than you would a hotel room.

In the past I have been more inclined to book hotels when it has just been the two of us travelling - it has felt more luxurious, more of a treat - but we have had so many mediocre hotel experiences over the past few years that we have almost entirely knocked them on the head. Even my former “top hotel favourites” have disappointed, recently, with terrible sound-proofing issues and other annoyances that have been unforgivable for the price.

So this time I wanted a treat-y feel but without the usual hotel issues and I found a lovely little cottage, right up on the cliff in Port Isaac. It was near enough perfect. Not quite like being in a hotel, luxuriousness-wise, but with amazing views from the windows and its own little garden overlooking the harbour and a total price that was loads, loads less than booking a teeny room at one of the trendy hotels in Cornwall. Did we go for bougee cocktails before sitting down to the sort of dinner that comes with starched linen napkins and smears of foam on the plate? No we did not. We had a pint in the pub and fresh-from-the-sea lobster and it was the most perfect combination we could have asked for.

I questioned whether I was so satisfied with this because we’re getting older but then I realised something else that made the holiday so good:

We Had Low Expectations

By low expectations I don’t mean that I had set the bar low. I didn’t book a holiday fully expecting the location to be rubbish or the cottage to be disappointing. I mean that this wasn’t one of those high-stakes holidays that has the weight of everyone’s happiness resting upon its shoulders. I didn’t over-plan anything or gee the whole thing up in my head in the way that I normally do, especially when I book a fancy hotel stay. I didn’t allow my imagination to run wild, picturing myself eating brioche French Toast on a canopied terrace looking out over the spa’s “healing sound garden”. I didn’t spend hours looking at restaurant reviews on Tripadvisor. I didn’t really care what we did and that was the beauty of it. I realised that a lot of the things I think we need to tick off, for it to be a successful time away, I don’t really like doing anyway.

Finding a different restaurant every evening. Jam-packing the week with special “adventures” to find hidden coves and white-sand beaches that can only be accessed by canoe, at dawn. Ticking off the “must-sees” from the guide book. Fun if the inspiration to do something different suddenly strikes, but I don’t think I need to pre-plan an entire itinerary packed with these things anymore. I quite like the idea of not having to plan anything at all. (Which, to go full circle, was one of the only resounding successes of the Ikos trip: the fact that everything was done for you and no decisions needed to be made. I could truly relax, when I wasn’t feeling ripped off.)

My God, am I coming across as the most boring person in the world? Feel free to unfollow! I’ve done my little list, anyway, for booking the perfect holiday:

1. Don’t fly anywhere

2. Go somewhere familiar

3. Self-cater

4. Don’t overspend and therefore have ridiculously high expectations

Now all that’s left to do is not take any of my own post into account and book a swanky hotel somewhere an eight hour flight away that’s hideously out of my financial comfort zone.

Do you want me tell you about why I love Port Isaac so very, very much? Would you like a run-down of my Cornwall mini-break with Rich? If so, give this post a “like” (press the heart button) and I’ll do a little diary covering where we stayed, where we ate and the thing we did for eight straight hours on the second day. (It’s not that, are you mad!)

If you’re a paid subscriber, look out for a bonus post called “Let-Downs in the Luxury Sector”. This is fast becoming my Mastermind specialist subject - swanky hotels that disappoint, posh brands that fail to deliver - because it riles me no end that we save up for these things so that we can treat ourselves, be wowed by an experience, have our socks knocked off, yet the reality often falls so much shorter than expectation. Expect that at the weekend - one to read as the weather starts to gear itself up for the mini heatwave, if you’re reading in the UK! Woohoo, 29 degrees, who needs to go abroad anyway?

This is my skin at 45. Every year I share my skincare routine and update the online world with any changes I’ve made and results that I’ve seen. This is a slow, relaxed process - I take a lot of time to make these skincare changes and assess whether they’ve had any effect. My face is like some sort of weird, private experiment that I continually observe and critique, which is possibly a terrible idea in terms of my mental health but really excellent for anybody wanting to know what really works!

I’ve been writing and making content about skincare for over sixteen years now and before that I was an international fashion model; I suppose that I have been in mild pursuit of “the best possible skin” for most of my adult life. I say mild because although I have a profound interest in beauty, I’m not preoccupied by it. I have clear limits to what I will do to my face, because although I do care about my looks and I want to feel attractive, I care about my life and my brain and my happiness more and I refuse to entertain this idea that there are things about my physical appearance, especially as I age, that should be “fixed” with procedures involving needles and knives that will poke and pinch and prod me and generally make me feel very upset.

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What I’m saying, without opening up a right can of worms, is that I am relatively low-key: if you’re after the latest advice on facelifts or trending miracle products then this isn’t the place. I haven’t had any injectables or interventions and don’t intend to - unless my eyelids continue to fold over at their current rate and end up hanging directly over my eyeballs, like curtains, thus impeding my vision. Or my neck wattle gets so loose that it becomes a health and safety hazard, for eg if I’m operating heavy machinery or, I don’t know, skydiving, and I can’t have any dangling items.

Then I shall consider it. Or perhaps I won’t. Eye curtains could have their own set of special benefits.

So, at 45, here are the things I do to my skin that work for me. Things I have tested over years - not weeks or days! - using products that I have selected as my favourites from the thousands and thousands of products that have crossed my desk. The basic routine is this and has barely changed for years:

Morning

Quick cleanse - Antioxidant serum - Moisturiser/SPF

Night

Big cleanse - Retinoid - Moisturiser

or

Big cleanse - Peptide serum - Moisturiser

but there are some little additions and bonus steps scattered here and there, like exfoliating masks and - big one - my Current Body LED mask, so I’m going to break it all down for you and go through it step by step.

AD info: this post contains a paid partnership with CurrentBody, who I am proud to have worked with for years - you will see why if you carry on reading! Outbound links are affiliate links and beauty samples are included that have been sent to me with no obligation to feature.

CLEANSING

I cleanse twice a day. My morning cleanse is nearly always a cheat’s one: a quick swipe over with Bioderma Micellar on a cotton wool pad, or some exfoliating acid if I want to kill two birds with one stone, ssshhh. But in the evening I do my mega-cleanse, with a cleansing balm massaged in to break down all of the dirt and SPF and makeup, then warm water to loosen it all and a warm flannel to get it all off.

If you have never cleansed in this way before, by massaging in an oil or a balm (or a robust cream cleanser) and then wash-cloth-ing it off, you are in for a treat. It’s a proper deep clean, with an added bit of light exfoliation from the physical action of the cloth or flannel, and you can break down eye makeup and mascara (non-waterproof) along with everything else and then press the flannel over the eye area to remove.

It’s joyful. I find it very relaxing, especially the massaging-in bit. If you currently do a quick facial wash that lathers up and leaves your skin feeling tight, or you just use cleansing wipes, I can almost guarantee you that you’re not getting all of your face off, especially if you are using products that are designed to stay glued on, like sunscreen and longwear foundation and setting sprays.

Cheap and amazing place to start with a cleansing balm?

Weleda Skin Food Cleansing Balm (here)

Inkey List Oat Cleansing Balm (here)

ANTIOXIDANT

After the dirty-stop-out cleanse in the morning, it’s on with an antioxidant or vitamin c serum. I use this, religiously, because it’s a layer of protection against all of the things that your skin comes into contact with during the day that have the evil intent of shrivelling your face up prematurely into something that looks like one of those grapes that has rolled out of the plastic tub of grapes and gets stuck at the back of the fridge and looks like a deflated balloon.

Vitamin C is also great for brightening and, used consistently, can give your skin a more even tone. I have nothing bad to say about this step - I would not bother to put anything onto my face that wasn’t going to do anything - but what I will say is that if any step is going to make my skin rear up in disgust and then start to itch, it’s the Vitamin C step. I have to be careful. Here are my most-used antioxidant/vit c serums:

Medik8 C Tetra Advanced (here)

Skin Rocks The Antioxidant (here)

Cerave Vitamin C - very purse-friendly option by comparison (here)

MOISTURISER/SUNSCREEN

Or moisturiser and sunscreen, or just sunscreen. The sunscreen is the vital part, here. And most SPFs are now formulated so well that they are hugely hydrating, whether it’s a light gel texture or a richer, more nourishing cream. I’m not going to lengthily bang the drum about sunscreen, you know the drill: if you’re using all the other stuff and layering on mists and lying there under sauna blankets with golden collagen eye patches on BUT YOU’RE NOT WEARING AN SPF IN THE DAYTIME?

You may as well not bother with any of it, if you ask me. It’s like running up the down escalator. Sun exposure is the singular biggest thing that will prematurely age the skin, no amount of correction will ever be as good as the prevention, in this case, and there are sunscreens for all budgets and all skin types and all preferences. I use these loads:

Naked Sundays Cabana Clear Gel - absolutely weightless on the skin, no issues with eye stinging (here)

Alpha-H Daily Essential Moisturiser SPF50 (here)

Tatcha The Milky SPF is new and expensive but my God, gorgeous. Instant love for this. It’s here.

I have upped my sunscreen use recently, even from last year, and now I use the leftover excess on the backs of my hands, too. I am full-on sunscreen a-go-go. As I said, I think it’s probably the most important thing you can apply and it’s never too late to start!

OK, we’re onto the evening routine. You’ve done your day, loaded up with sunscreen and 36hr wear foundation with setting powder and setting spray over the top and now you need to get a chisel out to get it all off. OR you can use a cleansing balm and flannel, as suggested above! And then it’s:

CURRENTBODY SKIN LED MASK TIME

Apart from L’Oreal Telescopic Mascara (have repurchased dozens of times), I do not think I have used another product so consistently and for such a long period of time, as the CurrentBody Skin Red Light Therapy LED Mask. I started trialling this mask when it was still in its original form, the Series 1, but have now been using the CurrentBody Series 2 for two years, religiously, at least three times a week, and I can’t see myself stopping.

The results? They weren’t instant, by any stretch of the imagination - I actually think the first time I trialled this mask was for a 30 day challenge, and I had to feed back that I hadn’t seen much change! - but after a few months of very consistent use, I saw a very noticeable difference to just how even and smooth my skin looked. I didn’t have any obvious pigmentation issues, or areas of concern in terms of crepey skin and so on, which was possibly why it was so hard to observe any change over 30 days, but a couple of months in I caught my reflection and thought I had some sort of blurring makeup on, when in fact I was makeup free. My skin looked more even, more smooth and where my fine lines had been increasing everything seemed just a bit ironed-out and fresher.

Whoo! I mean I haven’t looked back. If I was a dedicated guinea pig I’d do half of my face with and half without for a couple of years but I have my limits! The thing is with LED masks, you have to have the right conditions for the red light to be effective. You have to have consistent coverage (lots of the trendy masks are rigid and don’t shape to the face, so the LEDs can’t possibly all be at the right distance from the skin), you have to have precise wavelengths (even the smallest deviations in wavelength can affect results) and you have to have the right dose. More is not necessarily better!

In the years I’ve been working with CurrentBody I’ve been really impressed with their transparency when it comes to results and their dedication to making sure that each and every mask is delivering on results. They use a process called Veritace® to test every single LED in every mask and make sure that it matches clinical standards; nobody else does this. They guarantee the level of results they claim to give, which is HUGE.

Consistency and patience are key with the CurrentBody LED mask: there’s one set programme of 10 minutes, so you don’t need to worry about session lengths, just make sure you put the mask on 3-5 times a week. I do it last thing so that I can mindlessly scroll cushion covers on OKA and Graham & Green just before I go to sleep, but you can use it on clean skin any time of the day. Listen to a podcast. Snooze. I honestly find it one of the most relaxing habits I’ve ever adopted!

And for skin that looks blurred when it’s not being blurred? Fresher, brighter, smoother? Erm, it is not a hardship to lie there pretending I’m on a hot alien planet. (Niche, don’t judge.) Here’s my makeup-free skin, taken next to a window in an attempt to hopefully show you the evenness of tone and the general brightness I’m talking about, and next to it a photo that was taken just before I started using the LED mask:

The one on the right is almost three years old (I’ve chosen it because I was makeup-free - I was having my colours done!) but I think that the skin around my eyes and the general texture and tone of my skin is much better now than it was then!

If you’ve been dithering about trying the CurrentBody Series 2 Mask (I personally think the Series 2 is a very, very worthy upgrade - it has a snugger fit, has better coverage, has been tweaked since the first version) then I have a Current Body discount code running:

CBRUTHC

that gives you 10% off. You can find the Current Body LED Mask Series 2 online here, £399.99 down to £360.

Yes, it’s a serious investment, but I have started to break it down to cost per month and two years in I’m at around fifteen quid. A pound per LED session. The price-per-wear can only keep on reducing, unless my dog gets hold of the mask again and this time successfully chews through the wire.

RETINOIDS

So. CurrentBody mask onto cleansed skin and then it beeps to say it’s finished, and then what? Well, if it’s a retinoids night then I’ll use a retinoid, if it’s a night off (I alternate, just because I like to pack in a load of peptides and hydration in between) then I’ll use a peptide serum.

There’s a LOT of chat about retinoids. I’ve tried some of the strongest out there (I often use a bespoke Renew & Me cream, which has prescription-only tretinoin in it) and I do think that there’s nothing quite like them for skin-smoothing and spot-stopping and wrinkle-decreasing and just about anything else you can think of.

Some dry my skin out terribly, long-term, and so I now follow any retinoid with a massive dollop of moisturiser, because it does seem counterintuitive to use a retinoid to help plump the skin from within but then look like a dried husk come morning.

I wouldn’t use a retinoid until mid-to-late-thirties, personally, but that’s because I think GOD LIVE YOUR LIFE WHILE YOU CAN AND ENJOY YOURSELF GET A DOLPHIN TATTOO AND DO SOMETHING INADVISABLE WITH A SPANISH WAITER, hardcore skincare actives can surely wait until you’re too old to go on an 18-30 holiday? Each to their own. But also, these things are POTENT and I think that people are using really strong stuff at younger and younger ages and there’s no need. They have smooth skin.

If you are mid/late thirties and above, highly recommend retinoids. They are the dons of the skin serums and creams world - pretty much nothing they won’t try and tackle. If you’re worried about where to start, I like the Medik8 Crystal Retinal range, it has loads of strengths starting with “1”, which is formulated for even the most sensitive skin. You can find them here.

Skin Rocks Retinoids are also staged and excellent with three levels (here) and I do really like the various retinoids from Beauty Pie. Youthbomb Extreme (here) is their most potent (I still find it easily tolerated) but the far cheaper Super Retinol range (here) is properly excellent.

Ooh! I’ve just remembered one of the things that I’m not sure I was doing, when I wrote last year’s skincare routine: rollering retinol onto my neck wattle! Was I doing that? It’s this brilliant stick from RoC - the Derm Correxion Retinol Firming Stick, here - and it’s not actually a roller at all, but it’s shaped like one and so it does feel as though I’m rollering not swiping.

Anyway: I was making a conscious effort to include my neck and chest into my skincare routine (v important, I can tell you, now that I have a face that looks a bit like it has been kept in an airtight container whereas my chest that looks as though it’s made from beef jerky) and I realised that I was always missing out the bit under my chin and at the top of my neck. The RoC roller is the PERFECT shape to fit into this area - it’s very satisfying to apply.

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PEPTIDES

On the other, alternate night, I use a peptide serum. Peptide serums also claim to do nearly everything that retinoids do, which is confusing, but they are different and are great for skin strengthening and boosting collagen production. I like to think of them as medics, for some reason. On my retinoid night I have a load of heavyweights come in and batter the crap out of my skin, for its own good, and then the next night the medics tiptoe in and give it a sports massage.

This is singularly the worst analogy I have ever come up with so I’ll move swiftly on.

I like:

No7 Future Renew Damage Reversal Serum (here)

Medik8 Liquid Peptides Advanced (here)

MOISTURISER

I let the serums do the box-ticking and tend to keep my moisturisers quite simple and light. Though actually, a lot of the ones I use on rotation are also packed with extra goodies. I suppose what I mean is that I don’t think too hard about them - their main purpose is hydration and a lovely squelchy waterbed feeling of plumptiousness when I awake.

Some regularly used:

Beauty Pie Power Elixir Moisturiser (here) (very similar in feel to the Tatcha Dewy Cream)

Weleda Skin Food Light (here)

Aveeno Calm & Restore Night Cream (here)

It’s too expensive to be any kind of sensible, but I love the face mask and this feels like a leave-on version: Dermalogica Multivitamin Power Recovery Cream. If you ever see it on a good offer, it is lovely.

EXFOLIANT

Totally forgot about exfoliants, and now if I add them in at the right place it’ll mess up my streamlined routine overview! I use two types of exfoliant, quick swipe over after the morning “cleanse”: a general, gentle one for most days of the month with a mixture of acids to brighten and smooth, and a BHA one for PMT week to keep my pores cleaned-out and spots at bay. Here are some I have on rotation:

Yepoda Porefect Pad (actually good for PMT week too!) here

Skin Rocks Gentle Acid (here)

Paula’s Choice BHA Exfoliating Liquid for PMT week (here)

This is by no means an exhaustive list of my most-used or favourite skincare products. It’s just a taster, with some options in different price brackets. I hope that you find it useful - you can see that it’s really very few steps, and each step serves a definite purpose. I’ve missed out eye cream because I’m going to talk about those separately, soon - I swing between thinking they’re a great concept and also thinking I may as well just use my face products all over - and I’ve also missed out face masks that I do in the bath because although I get great pleasure from this part of the routine I’m not actually sure it’s strictly necessary. I’ll ruminate and then do a post on that too!

If you’d like to read last year’s skincare post then that is here and the one from the year before, My Skincare Routine at 43, is here.

I’m loath to use the word “project” because it makes me sound as though I’m pretending to be an interior designer, which I absolutely am not in any way, shape or form, but I’m not sure how else to differentiate between episodes in my seemingly continuous stream of house renovations and room refits. In the past ten years I’ve done three whole-house renos, two mega-extensions and turned a garden shed into an all-singing, all-dancing ranch-style work cabin.

What else should I call these undertakings? Should I be cute and label them adventures? Or, worse, journeys? “Projects” lends the whole thing an air of professionalism, I think - makes my relentless succession of property transformations sound more legitimate. Organised. Which it is, this time, thank you very much: it is very organised. Because I’m not doing this interior for myself: it’s for my client, who has a small holiday cottage business focusing on very high-end, beautiful places to stay in Dorset…

YES THE CLIENT IS ME!

Well done if you put two and two together. Some of you are so astute. No flies on you. It’s me, the holiday cottage business owner. I already let out The Dorset Nook, which is a gorgeous cottage on the Jurassic Coast, and in a couple of months I will be adding The Dorset Nest to the mix. A beautiful fairytale thatched cottage in a tiny village in the depths of rural West Dorset. I just need the interiors woman (me) to get her act together with an interiors and furnishing scheme that comes in on budget, which has been set by the owner (also me), so that the builder, decorator and project manager (Rich, conveniently married to me) can get started.

PERUSE THE DORSET NOOK

The problem is that I find the whole process far too enjoyable. Searching for property, weighing up the suitability of it, working out how I’d turn it into something delightful, it’s virtually irresistible to me. I would rather look at houses and plan out their interiors more than almost anything else in the world. I’ve been preoccupied by the whole thing since I was small: obsessed with dolls houses and their furnishings and wallpapers and tiny accessories and then, as I got older, generally just fascinated by interesting houses and their owners and all of the decisions the owners make, consciously or without really knowing it, to make their homes unique.

I wanted to own a bed and breakfast when I was growing up - not because I particularly relished the idea of having to get up at 5am to make Mr and Mrs Ravenscroft a boiled egg each before their early departure, but because it would mean lots more rooms to decorate and find furniture for.

Dwellings, in general, just make my heart flutter. Anything from Mrs Tiggy-Winkle’s burrow to huge stately homes, the witch’s cottage in Hansel and Gretel to a fisherman’s loft in a barnacled harbour: show me them all! I want to know what the kitchen table is like and what patterns they have on the curtains and how many blankets are layered beneath the little patchwork quilt.

(There’s a strong lean, I have to say, towards cottage-y things and old houses when I’m doing all of this swooning and heart-fluttering. The fact I live in a quite masculine-looking mid century house does not escape my notice or curiosity and we shall return to this subject shortly.)

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So yes, you can imagine that doing up an entire little thatched-roof cottage, for my actual job, is heaven on earth. But still, there’s this familiar sense of anxiety about it all. What if I choose the wrong things? What if I paint it all bright green because I think it’s edgy and then have to tell Rich to paint over it again because I hate it and it takes four coats of Obliterate before the green stops showing through? (True story.)

Shall I tell you where I start, when I’m thinking about colour schemes and how to decorate? When I’m working out how I’m going to furnish a room? Rhetorical question, actually, because I’m going to plough ahead whether you like it or not, but if you really don’t fancy hearing about my big sack of samples (lol) then navigate away from this page and read one of the many articles about the Met Gala that are floating around.

The following steps are the ones I take when I’m thinking about how to do a new room - or entire place - and panic that I have no idea where to start. Are these tips? Possibly. But it’s more of a thought process - a little guide to finding out what you like and then some pointers on what to do with that precious information.

1. FIND OUT WHAT SORT OF INTERIORS YOU ACTUALLY LIKE

This might sound obvious. Maybe you’ll say, I really like rustic farmhouse chic. Whatever that is. Or I love a Miami South Beach vibe. (Again, no idea. But keep going.) The problem with this, saying you love a certain style, is that it doesn’t help much if you don’t have a wood-beamed farmhouse kitchen to do up, or a white-rendered art deco house surrounded by palms.

What I think you have to do, personally, before you do anything else, is work out what exactly makes your heart beat faster when it comes to houses and interiors. You could even start with these styles you’ve just mentioned. What is it you like about the farmhouse look? Is it the cosiness? Is there an elegance to it? Is it the use of natural materials like oak for the beams and stone for the flagstones?

I think the best way to find all of this out, to work out what sort of home you want to create, is to collect together lots of pictures that you love and find out what links them. Do not use Pinterest for this, or Instagram, it’s too easy to go down a rabbit hole and also half the photos now seem to be AI which means that those interiors don’t even exist. Madness to use it as a starting point. What’s better is to get two or three interiors magazines instead, in real life. They could be old ones, it doesn’t matter, because we’re not following trends, here, we’re working out what calls to us.

Ka-kaaaa!

Sit there with the magazines and some scissors and cut out all of the images that you’re drawn to - it could be anything from a teapot to a mattress advert - and then take a good look at the collection at the end and be honest about what reels you in.

Is there loads of bold colour? Or are you drawn to clean, minimalist spaces? Realise that you can love both and also you can have loads of different interiors styles in the photos that you’ve selected. I live in a mid century house that could have been designed by AI using the prompt “James Bond ski lodge owned by an evil oil baron” but I also go silly over teeny cottages with log-burners and can’t get enough of silk pleated lampshades and oak-framed carver chairs. I have a cabin at the top of my garden that serves as my work studio and that looks like something out of Yellowstone, crossed with Soho Farmhouse.

The things that tie them all together? These spaces? I’d say the first thing is natural materials. Wood and stone. And then loads of layering of materials - wood next to stone, wool over wood, pattern over pattern. A muted colour palette of earthy tones. Cosy but calming on the mind. And everything looks lived in, but also sort of refined and well-considered. I think?

So. Cut out the images that make you feel good. Work out what it is about them, down to the most basic, basic element, that you love. Write those things down on a little checklist. Make that your mission statement for when you’re doing your house or room. Or even choosing a new sofa, changing a paint colour, thinking of how to frame a picture - if you’re dithering, go back to your checklist and your little pile of images. Does what you’re choosing make you feel the same way?

2. NARROW YOUR MATERIALS AND COLOURS DOWN TO A VAGUE PALETTE

You don’t have to do this. Or anything I’m suggesting on this page for that matter. This is just what I do and it’s very helpful to have it to refer to when I need to stop dithering about. If you’re prone to procrastination then sometimes too much choice is the enemy! I like to have a basic palette of ten or so paint and wallpaper colours and a few textures and materials that always make me feel at home and good about life. Velvets in dark, rich olives and deep figs. Weaves in multi-tones of warm brown and purplish beiges and taupes and hints of green. Faded, antiqued rugs, heavily patterned.

It has taken over ten years to really narrow things down to the shades I know I love, but now that I have, every successive project is a million times easier. (For paid subscribers, there’s a breakdown of my colour palette and the fabrics and textures I use again and again later on in this post. If you like the layered, lived-in look that I tend to go for then they’re nice resources to bookmark. You can use a free trial to unlock it, too.)

They’re usually warm neutrals, often with a red base. When I veer away from these, it’s always a mistake, which is why I really don’t like our bedroom wallpaper. It makes me feel edgy. It’s a palm leaf print but greyish-green and it’s out of sync with the entire rest of the house. And the ceiling is light! The contrast is too much, it irks me every time I look up, which is a lot, because it’s a bedroom and I spend much time horizontal.

Anyway! I think it’s quite fun putting a palette together. You can get big colour sample sets with large swatches from Farrow & Ball, they give you a better idea than those tiny squares, if you’re being all professional about things, and you can take the large swatches out and place them all side by side and so on. Great stuff. Hours of fun if you, like me, are unhinged about this sort of thing.

And this is where Pinterest does become helpful, because you can search pictures by paint colour and then hundreds of rooms come up and it gives you a good idea of what you might want to add to your shortlist. But keep referring back to your little original “love it” images - which tones drew you in then? Why? How do certain colours make you feel?

3. PLAY ABOUT JOYFULLY WITH SAMPLES AND SWATCHES

The most useful thing I ever do, when I’m thinking about how to decorate or furnish a new room (or cottage, seeing as though that’s what I’m doing at the moment), is haul out my gigantic bag of fabric and wallpaper samples. I also have bits of wood flooring in there, parts of floor tiles and even short sections of aluminium window frame. I’ve collected all of these over many years, but I love to clank them all out onto the floor and see how various textures and finishes sit together. It fulfils some kind of artistic need in me, without me having to draw or paint, which I’m rubbish at, so I find the whole thing very therapeutic.

The wallpaper and fabric samples are easy to collect. Most online furniture places will send you fabric swatches for free, John Lewis will do it with curtain fabrics, upholstery fabrics and wallpaper samples, Next will send curtain and upholstery squares. So will Dunelm. All convenient places, off the top of my head, it takes minutes to order them and it’s absolutely invaluable to see the real life materials in front of you and hold them in your hands.

Oh! And collect the samples in the colours and fabrics you are drawn to, NOT the ones you think will “fit your aesthetic”. Do away with this idea of an aesthetic, anyway: personally I want to live in a home that feels like me, not in a theme-park! OK fine, if you do your bedroom and it’s totally, like, Parisian Girl chic, then whatever. It has happened naturally. Don’t set out with Parisian Girl chic as your specific aim: remember the sorts of things you were drawn to in your pictures! Use the force, Luke! Don’t be swayed! Always go back to your little mission statement! Things I am drawn to.

4. BUY THINGS YOU LIKE

Once you’ve sorted out what colours you love, and whether you get turned on by flocked floral wallpaper and contrast neon woodwork or walls painted stark white, you can begin to look at things to order. But - and this seems like a really obvious one - only buy things you actually like. Don’t buy something you think is alright because it’s in the sale, or because it’s grey and so is your rug and so it’ll kind of match. Don’t buy just because “it’ll do”. There are so, so many options now of absolutely everything, in every single price range, from lamps to armchairs, from garden swing seats to toasters; there will almost always be an option that stands out to you and makes you think yeah, that’s the one I love!

(OK maybe not toasters. But actually yes, even toasters, because maybe you’re thinking you’ll get the pink SMEG one that you’ve seen loads of people feature on Instagram but when you go back to your mission statement, it says clean, graphic, calm, ordered, monochrome, and if those are the things that make you go ooohh then I would highly recommend the Dualit Architect 4 slice toaster. You’re welcome.)

There were only supposed to be three steps to this “where the hell to start with doing a house” thing, I’m not sure how we ended up with four. I think it’s because I started to dip into the “buying things” quagmire, when I was only going to talk about paint colours and fabrics. If you like this sort of thing, I can share the mood boards for the new cottage - The Dorset Nest - and tell you what I’ve ordered so far. Let me know in the comments, or click the heart button. You can follow The Dorset Nest on Instagram here to be the first to know when bookings go live and I also have a dedicated interiors page, @casacrilly if house stuff floats your boat!

Now for my vague, not-too-strict colour palette and most-used fabrics panel:

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So do click play on the video screen once you’ve finished reading: some newer subscribers may not know this, but the Youtube video is actually the main event. I have been filming my favourites for well over a decade and I enjoy it because it’s a nice chance for me to waffle in a more relaxed way about things such as cat sick, aching wrist joints and hair thinning.

And if that little teaser doesn’t hook you in then, quite honestly, I don’t know what will. Let’s get cracking on the favourites.

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BareMinerals Complexion Rescue Luminous Skin Tint Foundation Stick

This is not the foundation to buy if you want proper coverage, where your skin is no longer really your skin but a layer of clever pigment and blurring stuff and whatever other lovely trick the cosmetics company has up its sleeve. This is the foundation to buy, however, if you don’t actually like foundation, prefer lighter coverage bases like tinted moisturiser and are seduced by anything that is ridiculously quick and easy to use.

Because this, my friends, this stick of dewiness, could not be any quicker or easier to use. You just take off the lid, scribble it over your face like a demented toddler and then quickly blend in with a brush or sponge. You can use fingertips, yes, but for me that renders the stick format of the product totally pointless because the very beauty of the stick is that you don’t have to get your hands dirty. Just bish bash it on and blend.

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And it’s sheer, this Luminous Skin Tint Stick. But it gives a healthy glow and just enough colour to knock back redness and dark circles a little and create a more even skintone. Those who prefer the undone, no-fuss look, who want that barefaced kind of chic, who dislike looking “made up”, who want to apply the sheeniest layer of something in the quickest possible time: they will love this.

It’s smooth and creamy to apply, excellent for drier skin, slips a little on oilier patches by the end of the day, but works magnificently well if you just spritz a bit of setting spray over those areas if you need more longevity. For people who simply want a touch of colour and polish to see them through from 9-5: marvellous.

It’s £28.50 here: shade-picking felt complicated, but I trusted Findation to choose me the right one and it came up with 06 Ginger. Added some warmth and initially I was scared it would be too orangey on me but it blended out to perfection!

Oilatum Bath Emollient

I ran out of this last week and I think the fact that I immediately ordered another bottle, without hesitation, speaks volumes. Oilatum Emollient is a bath additive that helps to keep very dry, sensitive skin hydrated whilst you soak. I started using it when I had that weird shin eczema flare-up from hell after spending three solid days in the Center Parcs pool. I knew that baths weren’t ideal in that scenario, but I find it hard to live without them - they are a central part of my unwinding evening routine and also necessary for me to function, professionally, because I have all of my best ideas in the bath. (True fact. Also when driving. Or on the rare occasion I have a facial or treatment. Basically I have my best ideas when I can’t write them down.)

Anyway, I chucked a bit of this into my bath each time and I’m sure it helped to keep my shin skin soft and supple, rather than unbearable itchy.

I also like the Aveeno Oat Bath sachets for skin-soothing and softening, and they are made of oats rather than, er, paraffin, which definitely sounds a lot more wholesome doesn’t it, but I find they make the bath a bit messy. The Oilatum is quick and convenient.

Oilatum Emollient for Bath is here online.

Vita Liberata The Glaze Peptide Tanning Serum

I can’t remember the last time I used proper fake tan, the one where you can potentially dye yourself a totally different colour, complete with mottled tie-die effect behind the knees and between the boobs and anywhere else you didn’t allow to dry properly for at least nine hundred hours before dressing.

This Glaze, from Vita Liberata, is not one of those fake tans. This is a peptide serum, first and foremost, delivering potent skincare ingredients and helping to smooth the skin and give a proper glow. The natural tan aspect is the bonus element. It’s subtle, but it’s absolutely there - and in the same way as the Bare Minerals foundation stick, above, it’s for people who appreciate low-key beauty that enhances and subtly “takes the edge off”.

That’s actually how I’d describe the level of tan: it takes the edge off. Gives a hint of sunkissed warmth. Two applications and you start to feel as though you’re really relaxing into your non-existent beach holiday in the Maldives - the glow is deeper, the colour is more obvious. But still entirely foolproof.

(I mean, obviously follow the usual self tan rules, like washing your hands afterwards and avoiding very dry bits if you have knees like velcro etc.)

Is there a smell to this? Faint. It is in no way overtly biscuity. It’s about the same level as the Gatineau Gradual Tan, which - if you asked me to compare - I’d say is slightly more potent, in that the effects are perhaps more visible after one application, but a different type of body product. It’s a creamy body lotion with a bit of tan, whereas the Glaze is all about the peptides with a bonus sunkissed glow.

You can find the Vita Liberata Glaze here, the Gatineau Gradual Tan is here.

Oh my God I almost forgot: the packaging! I love it. So tactile, so stylish. So unique. 10/10 for the bottle design, it’s one of the loveliest things I’ve seen in ages.

Beauty Pie Leave-In Conditioner

This is fast becoming my most-used leave-in conditioning product. Over the years I’ve had very long attachments to Aveda’s leave-ins (smell glorious), Kerastase pre-styling conditioners and, most lately, the Moroccanoil leave-in conditioner. But I have to say that the Beauty Pie spray is the most foolproof for me, with my fine hair that has the tendency to go limp and flat at the roots: I can spritz it in pretty much all over and I get soft, silky hair that never feels weighed down or greasy.

The Moroccanoil spray is more potent, and leaves a glossier sheen, but I do find it very easy to go OTT with it and end up with a little more, er, silkiness, than I had bargained for. Both are beautiful products.

My dry, bleached hair needs the extra stage of conditioning - even though 95% of the time I let it air dry naturally, without a little spritz of something nourishing it just dries into a bunch of semi-brittle frizz at the ends. With the conditioner applied when it’s half dry, it’s more manageable and has shine. So there.

You can find the Beauty Pie leave-in here and the Moroccanoil one here.

OKA Cushions

Oh! And just like that, we’ve gone from conditioners to cushions. Really you need to watch the video below to get the full sense of how much I love OKA cushions but to precis:

1. They are of a very respectably large size, 51cm, so they look luxurious and imposing and non-apologetic. If you layer them with other non-OKA cushions, they seem to lift the overall feel of quality and excellence, they’re team players like that.

2. The prints and fabrics are lush.

3. They usually have fancy trims on them, whether it’s fringing or piping around the edge, and I think that these little details make all the difference.

I don’t feel I need more reasons, I have said my piece. When I originally raved about OKA cushions it was because there was a sale on and the sale usually brings them down to a price that is not horrendously more than the fancier ones at John Lewis. Well worth the extra investment at any rate. Then everyone asked about them again but the sale had finished, so I felt bad. Now I’m writing about them again and they have 30% off this weekend on selected styles!

You can find the whole range here.

Right, get stuck into the video and learn more about my wrist pain, knee pain and thinning hair.

Now for two things that were definitely not in the running for my monthly favourites round-up. An observation and a semi-rant, especially for paid subscribers, because I know how you love it when I moan:

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I don’t even know how I ended up in a go kart; the day started very normally and I had no intention of spending my evening surrounded by kids who were hyped up on blue slushies, breathing in air that was approximately 87% carbon monoxide and squeezing myself into a contraption that looked like something I made from Meccano, Christmas ‘87.

But my nine year-old wanted to go, he was allowed a “treat” of his choosing for reasons I won’t bore you with and that is what he chose. He’s quite into the Go Karting idea, in the way that nine year-olds are into anything, ie for around three hours until the next enthusiasm comes along. I am not into the Go Karting idea, because it has to be one of the most expensive hobbies a child could come up with, after, I don’t know, horse-riding. Skiing? None of these things are within my remit, I have no idea, I’m just guessing. They all sound expensive and look expensive. We had Youth Club and Brownies in my day and both of those cost 75p per session.

(My Mum will be going crackers if she reads this. YOU ALL HAD MUSIC LESSONS AND THEY COST ME A FORTUNE! Which is true. But at least with music lessons there’s some sort of cap to the equipment needed. You just buy one flute, for example. You don’t then have to buy shoes and saddle for the flute, or tyres and petrol for the flute, or pay for the flute to go somewhere that has snow and a ski lift. I’ve lost my way with that analogy, haven’t I?)

Anyway, yes. I have no plans to allow Go Karting to become a hobby unless the nine year-old suddenly displays some kind of superhuman prowess for taking chicanes at top speed, but the odd go, now and then, totally on board with. And yesterday was a “now and then” so I went online to try and book a session. Popular, this karting thing! The only session left for kids was in something called “family hour” and, the booking site stated, an adult had to “race” too.

Picturing happy mums and dads pootling about the track, waving to their little offspring and generally having a wholesome time, I booked two adult tickets (no way Rich was getting out of it) and one for the nine year-old and off we went. Checked in. Bought balaclavas. Gloves. Got handed racesuits, which were actually quite cool-looking. Changed into the racesuits, which frankly looked ridiculous on us adults but cute on the nine year-old. Went and stood with the other families down in the pit and - OH!

What other families? No other families, that’s who. Just eight other kids ranging from approx. nine years old to maybe twelve or thirteen, and then me and Rich looking like the village idiots, standing there gigantically with our stupid balaclavas on, about three feet taller than the next tallest human. You know the adults who go on the tiny children’s rides, at Disney, without children? That’s who we looked like. I felt as though I’d gone to a party in fancy dress when everyone else was in normal attire. Never have I felt so conspicuous.

The balaclavas didn’t help. I was hoping there’d be a bit of Days of Thunder frisson, perhaps Rich would look a bit titillating and I’d later want him to, you know, fine tune my engine. But no. He had a black balaclava covering his head and lower half of his face and looked like a medieval baron awaiting his chainmail before battle. I had a bright blue balaclava on that exposed my entire face and looked exactly like Dangerous Brian.

The indignity didn’t stop there. Have you ever tried to climb into a Go Kart? Recently? The angle at which you are required to descend into the seat is barely achievable unless you’re at an age where your skeleton is yet to fully fuse together. You must lower yourself to ground level, with your feet and legs extended all the way in front of you, basically cantilevering yourself to defy gravity, all via the knee joints. I almost snapped. Try doing that with nine boys lined up in their karts behind you. Wearing a crash helmet that’s making you feel incredibly panicked. (I’m a bit claustrophobic. Hadn’t ever thought putting on a crash helmet would trigger it but there you go!)

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Now before we go on know this: I am no stranger to the concept of the racetrack. I was car obsessed as a late teen and into my early twenties and the entire road system of Redditch, Worcestershire, was my racetrack. How I’m still alive I have no idea. It wasn’t clever, and it makes me physically cringe now when I think about it, but you feel invincible at that age and I did learn how to recover from high speed spins, slides and potentially fatal skids at a relatively tender age. Sorry Mum. Fast forward a few decades and I’ve also done a little bit of low-key racing about the place at Silverstone, with Porsche: I get the general gist of what you’re supposed to do. Go as fast as possible but take the best, most efficient lines and do not spin or hit the barriers or other cars.

“This is NOT bumper cars.” Said the safety man in our safety briefing, which we all had to sit through for twelve minutes but then promptly forgot half of.

So the only part I wasn’t worried about was the driving part, not in the slightest. I love driving. Go Kart track? Not. A. Problem.

Well. I can tell you that a go kart is nothing like a car. No heated seat, which is one of the great joys in life in my opinion, but also, steering so heavy that it was like trying to drive one of those eighteen wheeler American trucks from the 1950s. I’ve driven a World War 2 tractor (don’t ask) and that had lighter steering than my go kart! I immediately felt my wrists start to seize, the muscles going into spasm. Every corner felt like a monumental effort, like I was the captain of a ship trying to navigate away from an iceberg during a world-ending storm.

But it was all good fun once we got started. Rich warned me not to be competitive, which I didn’t quite understand because I am the least competitive person ever, and hello we were racing with children so it wasn’t as though I was going to be blocking them from overtaking me, whilst at the same time aggressively overtaking those in front, all whilst screaming “TAKE THAT, YOU LITTLE MOTHERFUCKERS!”

Was it.

So apart from the lasting damage to my skeletal-muscular system I have no real complaints, other than it was very noisy (which I hate), fume-y (gave me a headache) and people kept crashing into the barriers which meant we all had to be on a go-slow every thirty seconds. Have you ever driven a go kart at walking pace? It feels like the most pointless exercise ever invented. I’d have rather just been able to put my brakes on and have a little rest. Stretch out the wrists. Do a bit of meditative body-scanning to see whether all of the parts of my spine were still connected.

I know what you’re asking yourself: where did she rank on the leaderboard? And I shall tell you, if you insist. Third! Absolutely bloody delighted, even though the majority of the competition hadn’t had twenty-eight years of driving experience and were half my height. You have to take the wins where you can in this life, even when it’s a bronze. Had people not kept crashing all over the shop - amateurs - I’m pretty sure I’d have been up there on the podium, shaking champagne all over myself whilst all of the normal parents watched on, thinking what is that mad bint DOING?

I do wonder what the other parents thought of us, me and Rich, whizzing about on our human-sized karts while all the miniature people did their thing. It was all a bit Gulliver’s Travels. And I couldn’t understand why these parents weren’t having to race too, when I was sure that the booking form had explicitly said family hour and that adults had to race alongside their children. I was going to take it up at reception on my way out but I was too busy inwardly gloating. I had come third, not rammed any children out of the way - not even my own child! - and had even mostly kept my cool when one of them had overtaken me when the yellow light was flashing, when it was STRICTLY NO OVERTAKING YOU LITTLE SHIT!

Would I recommend it as an adults-fun activity? Not really. I woke up with hands that felt as though they’d spent the past eight months digging me out of Alcatraz and a backbone that apparently had fused itself into one unbendable unit overnight. My neck! My back! But third. Out of eleven. The thrill. Maybe it was all worth it…

*this is a joke, I do actually do quite a lot of heavy lifting. But the side to side steering movement is another thing altogether, I think.

We’ve been tearing our way through what I thought was a new TV series on HBO but is, in fact, over ten years old. Why does this keep happening to me? Why did I miss so many good things between 2014 and 2016? Was it because I was solidly either pregnant or breastfeeding? Was my eye not on the television ball? Why did I endure the stomach-churning violence of Game of Thrones whilst massaging oil into my perineum* when I could have been enjoying Narcos? Who on earth made that call?

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(Narcos, the story of Pablo Escobar and cocaine trafficking in Columbia, is actually on a par with Game of Thrones, violence-wise, but is in a totally different league in terms of script, storyline, acting quality and just everything, really. It’s absolutely outstanding. Apologies if you’re a Game of Thrones super-fan; I think it’s good fun, for the most part, but I sort of bundle it into the same category as, I don’t know, going to Legoland. A chaotic sense of high whilst you’re in the midst of it all, but you’re left exhausted and not really wanting to return any time soon. “The flaying and castration of Theon Greyjoy” kind of took it out of me, if I’m honest, and then didn’t someone get slowly fed to a dog? Or have I imagined that? And don’t get me started on the CGI dragons. As soon as dragons entered the picture they completely lost me. Can’t stand most dragons. It’s a niche thing to hate, probably, but I think the only ones I like are Puff and also Falkor from Neverending Story.)

So anyway, I missed out on Narcos and also, somehow, this little treasure managed to escape my eagle-eyed attentions:

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I’m writing this in the hair salon, both a) satisfying my need to multitask and b) effectively distracting me from the mortifying thing that just happened in the supermarket. I only nipped in to Waitrose to grab myself a noodle salad so that I could eat it as my roots were being coloured: it was, on paper, a straightforward mission. I knew exactly what I wanted to eat and precisely where that item was on the fridge shelf. The only problem was that there was a man (seventies, very smartly dressed) dithering about right in front of the stack of salads.

I didn’t want to ask him to move aside because he looked to be in one of those fugue states that people go into when faced with decisions over supermarket meal deals, when they have been there so long they cease to even see the options set out before them. He was holding a small box of mixed sushi, staring directly ahead into the top of the fridge where the energy drinks and protein shakes lay.

Something about his gaze made me reluctant to startle him and so I tried to reach the noodle salad from one side of him and then the other, darting from side to side like an amateur pickpocket. No good. My hands would have been too close to the danger zone of his crotch area, which especially wouldn't do considering his distinguished gentleman status. He was wearing an actual hat. He only lacked a pipe, otherwise he could have stepped straight out of a Sherlock Holmes novel.

So yes, brushing cloth with my hand en route to a noodle salad would have been catastrophic: I opted for the less embarrassing alternative, which was to say - really loudly -

“I hope you don’t mind, I’m just going to do a reach-around”

- at the same time as putting my arm in front of him (wide berth) to signal my intentions. Why does my brain not have any kind of safety check before I blurt these things out? Surely there should be a small delay, like on the telly when they do live shows. Really what I need is a by-my-side-at-all-times editor, to sense check what comes out of my mouth and, ideally, veto all of the bad decisions I’m about to make.

Anyway here are this month’s favourites. A nice mixed bag. As always they are also on video here - it’s quite nice, I think, in this day and age of six second reels, to hear someone speak for a while and go about their business. Fortunately not all business, because you would have to suffer the painful second-hand embarrassment of watching me in Waitrose, offering a reach-around to a stranger on the sushi aisle…

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Makeup Bag Staple

Here’s something I think should be a non-negotiable makeup bag staple but that has been missing from my own stash for quite a while: a truly matte, low-key bronzing powder that’s only a shade or two darker than your natural skintone.

Sometimes you don’t want to look as though you’ve “spent a weekend in Biarritz” or “a week in the Bahamas” or whatever other comparison gets thrown out there. Sometimes you just want to add a little bit of warmth to your complexion so that you don’t look like a Renaissance Prince who’s dying of consumption.

And you want to be able to bosh it on with a very large, fluffy brush without having to worry too much about how it’s all turning out.

These low-key matte bronzers aren’t all that hard to find - see MAC, Guerlain, Bobbi Brown, just off the top of my head - I just don’t think that they’re the sort of glamorous, PR-able makeup items that get much airtime. They’re the workhorse of the cosmetics bag. The discreet, understated Volvo of the complexion-enhancing world. A velvety finish that’s barely there - this isn’t the sort of OMG, like, that’s, like, so amazing! transformation that would set the social media world alight.

My previous matte bronzer, used until all of the middle part of the compact was completely exposed, all silver and shiny (very satisfying), was the L’Oreal Back to Bronze. Which I think is now called Bronze to Paradise, which is a strange string of words.

My new one is the Clarins Ever Bronze compact, which has two shades in one. It may as well have just one shade, really, all in the same colour that’s about midway in between, because all I do is puff my big fluffy brush over both sides and swirl them together and apply. The key is that the shades are only just darker than my skintone, really. The powders look more peachy than beachy, but this what works so well - that aforementioned foolproof “boshing on” with a big brush relies on the bronzer not being too dramatically deep in tone when compared to your natural hue.

The Clarins range is very limited (three shades, and I’m a medium!) and so it’s not this particular product that’s a monthly favourite so much as the type of product. In a moment of sheer timeliness, Rare Beauty have just brought out a line of matte bronzing powders; their contour stick and liquid contour are some of my most-used cheek products, so I have high hopes for the powders. They are here and come in seven shades. I will report back once I’ve tried!

Big Boshing Brush

Talking of huge makeup brushes with which to bosh things on: this gigantor from No7 has become my indispensable finishing tool for when I want a seamless, professional look to my makeup. I whisk it over my face once my foundation and bronzer have been applied, to fine-tune the finish: not only does this melt away any blending lines where I’ve been a bit haphazard, it sort of “lifts” off a very fine layer of excess makeup so that it all looks really bedded in and more natural.

I have a similar boshing brush for my eyes - one from Caroline Barnes’ collaboration with brilliant brush-makers Otis Battersbee. You can’t buy it now, and it is my mission in the next couple of weeks to find a similar one so that I can make a video about it. But it’s so big that it’s almost the size of a small precision contour or powder brush - far too big to actually apply any eyeshadow with. Why it’s great is that once I’ve finished all of my eyeshadow, I close my eyelids and bash about on top of them with the Caroline Barnes mega-brush and again, all lines are buffed and blended into the skin and any excess makeup is air-lifted away.

This appears to be my new approach: apply things and then take half of them off.

Actually I think I’ve been doing this for years, but it has only recently occurred to me that it’s a thing in my routine. A step. Must do a video on this so that you can all see what I mean, try not to lose any sleep whilst you wait for it.

The No7 Big Boshing Brush (not official name) is here.

Weight lifting

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention: I’ve started weight lifting! I use the word “weight” in its loosest sense, because we’re talking bags of sugar here, not two Mini Coopers on a pole and a prolapse-inducing deadlift. I’m not harnessed to an artic lorry, seeing how far I can pull it up my driveway.

I used to do Body Conditioning and “Body Pump” classes in my twenties and loved them: once I stopped the gym, any sort of weight-lifting went out of the window. My muscles generally dissolved back into my bloodstream (or something) and I became a female version of Mr Burns from The Simpsons.

I’ve always stayed quite fit, or fit-ish, because I’m moderately active anyway and can’t sit still for long and, over the past five years, I’ve done spin classes on my Peloton bike every other day. (Need to write more about my love of Peloton, it’s possibly one of the best investments I’ve ever made, in my entire life.) But never has it been stressed to us - so much - that we should be doing weight-bearing exercise. And do you know what? It feels good! It feels satisfying to witness all of your own muscles working together like a machine, and to feel your balance improving and your strength amassing. This all deserves its own post - which is coming, it has a great title! - but suffice to say for now that I am muddling on through with my Peloton weight classes and my pairs of 3kg, 5kg and 8kg weights that I bought on Amazon.

(I have to pay for the Peloton app anyway, so it’s a no-brainer to use the strength classes on there. You can, however, find all sorts of classes on Youtube, for free. I also like that the Peloton app keeps a record of my progress and recommends suitable classes and all sorts of other things. I think it’s much cheaper if you don’t need to do bike classes on it…)

Trapeze-ish Dress

Summer is creeping nearer, oh so steadily. Usually I’d be delighted but once again I have failed to be prepared and have not yet bought the plants I need for my garden slopes and so all I feel this year is a faint sense of disappointment in myself. These two massive slopes have been under weed membrane for three years now and every spring I say that I’ll plant them in the autumn and every autumn I say I’ll wait until the spring.

The truth is,

a) I have no idea what I’m doing and there are too many plants and too many options and it’s far too steep a learning curve

b) a lot of stuff I plant dies, for various reasons unknown to me

c) I just can’t be arsed. It’s so much work! It’s like planting two small gardens, but almost vertically. I’m going to have to wear crampons and anchor myself to the top of the slope with an abseiling rope.

Rich thinks I should just turf both slopes and be done with it. Is he insane? It would look like Teletubby hill! I think we should put a slide down one side and a climbing wall up the other and then I can ease my sense of failure by saying I sacrificed my beautiful wildflower/grass plantations for the enjoyment of my children. They’re only little once!

Where was I? Summer. This dress, I feel, will be invaluable. I’m not saying it’s the shape for everyone! But I do like to have one very lightweight, loose-fitting, trapeze-shaped dress for incredibly hot and sticky days where all clothing annoys me but I still need to look sharp and pulled together-ish. This one is from brilliant Wyse London.

I have a great one from Whistles that’s more structured than the Wyse, and they come out with different versions of it year after year, but I’m trying not to wear so much black. Pale blue stripes it is, then…

Trainer Alternatives

I honestly thought these Mary Janes would divide opinion on Instagram and that I’d be defending my decision to the hilt, but amazingly, the love for them was almost unanimous. OK so the leopard print that looks sort of “painted” onto the suede is a wildcard, but the general shape of these ultra-comfy (will return to the comfiness) flats is elegant and they are so incredibly useful as a viable alternative to trainers.

When I say I can run in these flats, I don’t mean hobble along, I mean break into a sprint. For flat shoes, they have very clever shaping in the soles that makes your feet feel fully supported, yet the comfort level is borderline “slippers”. The strap could be slightly narrower, I feel, which would make these pumps quite the dupe for some £650 leopard flats on Net-a-Porter that have been following me around the internet.

BUY HERE

But would the narrower strap be conducive to unparalleled comfort, that’s the question? The Delicato Mary Janes are genuinely so comfy and capable that I wouldn’t hesitate to wear them in almost any intense city-walking situation. The time last year that I walked off a severe hangover in London by covering eleven miles in a pair of ballet flats would have been a cinch in the Fitflop Mary Janes!

Oh yeah, they’re from Fitflop. A lot of you might have already assumed that, if you’ve ever owned shoes by Fitflop! I wear their trainers all the time, which is mainly why I’ve been looking for alternatives, but it does mean that if I try to wear normal shoes it feels as though someone is battering my arches with a rolling pin.

The Delicato are here online - I used a 15% off code that was on the homepage, WELCOME, but I’m sure there are a few floating about if you look. (I always look for a code. It’s mandatory at this point!)

I’d be in my absolute element. Anyway, until then:

Ou est la bibliotheque sil vous plait?

Absolutely bloody marvellous. I had a good conversation with the driver of the blacked-out Sprinter we were being shuttled around in, like VIPs, his side of the chat going pretty deep into things like (I think) the tragedy of the Notre Dame fire, new Parisian parking restrictions and something to do with vineyards and global warming. My side of the chat focusing almost solely on directions and items of furniture.

Allez tout droit! Il y a cinq chambres dans la maison, trois avec un lit!

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I know which one I’d rather read. There’s nothing more fascinating than listening to other people talk about their ailments. OK, perhaps being forced to hear a detailed account of their dreams always rates highly on the scintillating entertainment scale,* but illnesses and minor health woes? Who doesn’t like sitting through a blow-by-blow account of an emergency ear wax removal procedure?

*note thinly-veiled sarcasm.

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We shall start with the swollen ankles. I haven’t had these since late stage pregnancy with my first baby, who was born at 42 weeks weighing nine pounds eleven ounces. By the time my waters broke my feet were the same width as my calves with no discernible ankle in between. One long sausage, skin stretched tight.

I was in no rush to get the baby out. People kept stressing me saying it was dangerous and risky the further overdue I went but I reasoned that the baby would eventually emerge, it couldn’t stay in there forever, and anyway I had work to finish off and I was very happy doing that. Ta ever so. In retrospect maybe I wasn’t mentally prepared for the change. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that we were renovating a house throughout the pregnancy, and I mean FULLY RENOVATE NO WALLS OR FLOORS LEFT, not “renovate” like people bandy the word around on Instagram where they’ve changed the colour of the fire surround and added a velux in the loft. Renovate as in, there was no way anyone could live there. No windows. No pipes. No electricity, often.

We hadn’t planned to have a baby at the same time as renovating, it’s the curse of Grand Designs. It’s just something that happens. Kevin McCloud, that utter rake, he stops in to discuss Passivhaus strategies and then ends up ravishing the lady around the back of the static caravan.

We weren’t on Grand Designs, alas, but I still managed to get pregnant and all of the building work was already scheduled in and couldn’t be postponed, and so off we went for seven months to live in a series of very small holiday lets, sans the cat because holiday lets don’t take kindly to cats.

Where am I going with this?! Ankles!

Haven’t had turgid ankles since 2015. Why this week? I’ll tell you: ham. You have to try and stay with me on this one, because it sounds mad and unlikely, but I’m positive that I’m the first human to have almost fatally overdosed on prosciutto.

Ecoutez. On Monday last week I met my friend for “dinner” but actually dinner ended up being a bottle of champagne each and an enormous charcuterie platter from which I think I ate approximately 400g of Parma ham. And a fair bit of cheese. A small bowl of olives. Bread with very, very salted butter.

On Tuesday I went to Paris, ate a pat of salted butter on the Eurostar (with bread! I’m not insane!) and then I ate a plateful of ham at the Hotel Costes. Hotel Costes isn’t especially famous for its ham, neither, I expect, would it want to be associated with ham particularly, because it’s an achingly cool, dark, highly sexually-charged sort of place where, if anything, you’d go to have Oysters. I also had two margaritas and licked all of the spicy salt from the outside of the glass. I’m sure the hotel staff were thrilled to have me there.

On Wednesday, still in Paris, I had ham for breakfast (both straight and within an omelette) and then had a bit more Parma ham (and Serrano, and dry-cured French) from a charcuterie platter in a bistro for lunch. In all, over the course of about forty-eight hours, I think I probably ate around the equivalent of (not exaggerating) twenty supermarket packs of Parma ham. The Tudors had nothing on me and my overconsumption of meat. The irony that I was in Paris to see the Stella McCartney show was not lost on me.

I’d like to insert a disclaimer here: I do not usually eat this much meat. I don’t really know what happened to me, it was as though all of the ham stars aligned and it just kept appearing and making its way into my mouth. I woke up on Thursday, back at home and in my own bed, and I honestly felt as though I’d been on a Vegas bender. I was so thirsty! My skin smelled odd! And then, when I swivelled my legs out of bed to put my slippers on, I noticed that my ankles had totally disappeared.

There was a bulge of flesh where the ankles had once been, and they were scored with a red welt all the way around where the swollen skin had obviously pressed against the top of my trainers. Beneath that, I had feet that could only be described as rectangular. I’m going to just throw this out there: I’ve always had a fine turn of the ankle and foot. Shapely. Narrow. I’d like to say I’ve taken it for granted in the past but that would be a lie; I have admired my own ankles and feet frequently with the idiotic glee normally only displayed by the sort of adult who “loves unicorns”. There is no other part of my body I particularly admire or see as being a cut above anyone else’s; nothing standout or miraculous. It all does the job, but no longer would I stand in front of a full length mirror and feel particularly amorous towards the reflection. My ankles though. Marvellous. Wrists also. Very petite and delicate.

But my ankles were nowhere to be seen on Thursday. By the night time I was worried. Where had they gone? Would they come back? I googled. Found out that it could mean a myriad of serious things but also that disappearing ankles could be caused by consuming too much salt.

Well that didn’t seem like something I had a problem with… until I remembered the HAM!!!! I had eaten so much ham that I had made my own ankles vanish! I must have consumed ridiculous quantities of salt, once you added in the margarita-licking and the butter pats and the (ahem) various cheeses.

Who would have thought you could overdose on ham? No wonder I had an elevated heart rate for three days straight! (Info courtesy of my Oura ring, gatekeeper of my vital statistics.) This just goes to prove the point that everything should be done in moderation. Even water can be dangerous if you have too much of it - ham? Proceed with caution.

My second ailment (yes, there’s more of this post) is something that might or might not be linked to the ham consumption. I have to be honest, when I pitched the “overdosing on ham” possibility to the A&E nurse, he wasn’t massively convinced by it. But he was also quite stressed and busy and I’m not sure he gave it the consideration it truly deserved.

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Why was I in A&E? Suspected ankle fracture, foot fracture, torn ligament, tendonitis and about another six or seven scenarios that were presented to me by the Ai search section on Google. Which we all know is highly accurate. All I knew for sure was that I couldn’t bear weight on my right foot and if I did, and it was at the wrong angle, the pain was excruciating. Enough that I endured a three hour wait in A&E on a Sunday late morning/early afternoon, the prime part of the day. I was worried that I had somehow sheared a splinter of bone from my ankle and that it was sawing through a nerve every time I put my foot down, for that is exactly what it felt like.

Of course all the pain entirely disappeared the moment I sat in the chair in the examination room and removed my rubber Birkenstock. That nurse took my foot in hand and wiggled it in every direction possible and was there even the slightest hint of a pain? No there was not. Even when he stretched my toes downwards so that I was en pointe I couldn’t feel anything - it was as though my whole leg had turned to wood.

We finally coaxed a bit of pain out by tipping the foot sideways and then putting pressure on it, but honestly it was an intense kind of goose chase. Nothing makes you feel more fraudulent and stupid than finally getting to the front of the A&E queue to find that your symptoms have waned or disappeared. And to think I had hobbled in sweating because the shooting pain had been that intense, mere hours before. I’m pretty sure the nurse thought I had issues. I don’t think it helped my case that I started wanging on about prosciutto.

Apparently it’s just a little tendon thing and I need to rest the foot. But what I want to know is could it all have been caused by ham?! If so, there should be some sort of warning on it. Don’t eat more than half a kilo of this over 48hours, or similar. Did you read about the man who almost died from eating three kilos of Haribo? How I mocked him, privately, when I read that article. What a berk, I thought!

Is any food safe to overdose on? Carrots? I’d expect cucumber would be safe as it’s mainly water, but you never know. I can tell you that chickpeas are NOT a food you should eat in vast quantities before a long journey with sporadic toilet access. Restaurants should be banned from serving falafel with a side of hummus dip, that’s all I can say.

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Cerave Blemish Barrier Patches

These discreet transparent face stickers are infused with spot-reducing ingredients: stick them onto your blemish before bed and the next morning it’ll be vastly deflated and less red. They really do work. There are lots of different versions of these patches, from different brands; I have to say that I’ve never used a spot patch that hasn’t worked. It’s an all-round excellent invention, because it keeps the ingredients close to the spot but also seals it off from the outside world and stops you from touching it or picking at it. How I wish these had been in existence a few decades earlier…

(Find them here online.)

3D Scene Sticker Books

The sticker books that single-handedly saved my half term holiday. Have you seen this “scene stickers” viral trend? You create very cute little cartoon scenes using pre-made backgrounds and the corresponding sticker sheets. They’re reasonably tricky as you have to layer up the stickers in the right order to create a 3D effect, but for keeping kids quiet (and tapping into their fine motor skills) they are absolutely next level brilliant.

I didn’t see my kids for about two days, they were just hunched over their sticker sheets with pairs of tweezers. Which actually doesn’t sound the healthy when I write it down, HA!, but it rained for almost entire week so they couldn’t run rampage around the garden or bounce on the trampoline.

I bought the mega-pack (see below) that has forty scenes and sticker sheets organised into two separate books, perfect for splitting between two kids. These would be brilliant if you were going on a flight (you can arrange the stickers without the need for tweezers, if you have small and nimble fingers) or if you desperately need a form of distraction so that you can get a bit of work done.

(find them here online.)

The Anchor at Seatown

I had some important things to do down at The Dorset Nook over half term and had blocked out a few days in between guests so that I could get them done.

I took my nine year-old with me and sold it to him as a seaside walking holiday and also (very serious job) told him that I needed someone to officially test all of the different Dorset ice cream brands to work out which was the best. (I think Purbeck’s, he thinks Baboo.)

Whilst down there we did my favourite bracing walk: straight from the cottage gate, down to Eype beach and then westwards up and over Thornecombe Beacon with its stupendous sea views, and down the other side to Seatown.

Seatown not only has a very picturesque beach (all of the Jurassic Coast is blessed with these wild-looking cliff-edged beaches), it has what I think is one of the best pubs in Dorset, possibly even England. It’s just the whole package, because it’s right on the sea and when you look through the windows you feel as though you could be hundreds of years in the past, and it also has creaky little rooms with wooden ships on the walls and other pirate-y artefacts, but then it has the food. Oh, the food! I’ve been there quite a few times now and it never misses.

Most recently, the crab brioche roll. If you follow me on Youtube and Instagram you’ll be so tired of hearing about this crab roll but honestly, I have actually had a little dream about it. It was that good.

So you come for the ye olde smuggler vibes and stay for the food. In the summer, a half pint of prawns and a bowl of chips with a chilled glass of rosé and you couldn’t convince me there was a better holiday feeling.

You can book the Anchor at Seatown here. I am not in any way affiliated with them but I am affiliated with The Dorset Nook (running it is my other job!) and if you want the perfect place to stay when you’re not eating the perfect seafood then take a look at availability here.

Narcos

I can’t believe it’s taken me and Rich over ten years to watch Narcos. It’s proper 10/10 award-winning television. (Rich gives it 9/10, if we’re going to be pedantic. I give it 9.5/10 and place it next to Rivals as the most enjoyable thing I’ve seen in ages. If enjoyable is the correct term for watching people have their heads cut off and put in fridges, etc etc. I mean, please don’t now watch Narcos thinking it’s similar to Rivals, you couldn’t get more different storylines!) Narcos is based on the story of Pablo Escobar, the most notorious drug lord to have ever lived and it is absolutely captivating. And so brilliantly filmed! And the casting, the script, the art direction… Ugh. We were totally immersed in it. I started dreaming in Spanish, I was so immersed, and I didn’t even know any Spanish prior to following the decades-long rule of a blood-thirsty Columbian narco-terrorist. Although I now could rattle off two or three incredibly offensive phrases thanks to old Pablo.

Look, I won’t sugarcoat it: Narcos is violent. Sometimes I had to look away. But this, technicolor violence aside, is the sort of considered, impeccably-produced television I really miss. So much TV now is written for people who only have half of their attention on the screen. They scroll on their phones at the same time and all of the storylines and scripts seem to cater for them, repeating even the most obvious plot points time and time again.

I wish the writers wouldn’t write for these scrollers because it’s absolutely ruining it for the people who want to engross themselves in something and who don’t have to have a phone glued into their hands every moment of the day. Are we really going to just keep brain-rotting everything down into little digestible spoonfuls to cater for shorter and shorter attention spans? Answers on a postcard.

Medik 8 C-Tetra Advanced

A serious skincare recommendation and one I’ve been meaning to post into my favourites for a while. I’m going to do an updated skincare routine very soon, because I have a few new tricks up my sleeve for maximising glow and keeping skin on an even keel, but this super-serum currently has 20% off (at time of writing) and so it’s a good time to snap it up if you’re looking to make a skincare investment that’ll pay off.

I use a vitamin c or antioxidant serum every morning after cleansing and before moisturising and SPF. (Most often my moisturiser and SPF are one product, but we will talk about that in the skincare post. You can also look at my most recent skincare routine here, which explains in a bit of detail the products I use and the order I use them in.)

The main objective when it comes to the vitamin c is brightness and evenness of skintone but it’s also raved about for its antioxidant effect. Helping to protect the skin against all of the elements in the environment that batter at the skin over time - UV, pollution, cigarette smoke (though that’s not so much of an issue these days, is it?)

Finding a mega-powerful version of vitamin c without risking irritation is not the easiest job, but Medik8 C-Tetra Advanced manages to be hugely potent whilst being easily tolerated. It’s great. Very high-end, very science-and-results-led (Medik8 are serious when it comes to getting the most active ingredients into their formulations) but with a price tag that I always think is slightly more palatable than some of their competitors.

At the time of posting C-Tetra is £56. This is a serum that really delivers when it comes to increased glow and brightness but that also helps to support the skin barrier, rather than disrupt and irritate it, and on top of all that gives excellent antioxidant protection. I’m a fan, if you haven’t already worked that out..

You can find it online here.

Right. Here’s the favourites video, for those of you who are thinking, ‘wow, I’ve read all of Ruth’s favourites but wouldn’t it be amazing to now see and hear her talk about the exact same things all over again.’

I’ve told you my favourites, here are some things I’ve absolutely hated. I mean hated. Because it’s good to have some balance in life, isn’t it?

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Three new makeup discoveries you might just want to take a little look at, because they have immediately landed themselves prime place in my daily makeup bag. They’re all easy to use yet give instantly brilliant results. Products you can splodge on, or scribble on, or swipe on, and that require little in the way of skill or time or unnecessary faff. No extra tools or brushes needed.

And because I’m a living legend, I have filmed myself putting all of these products onto my own face so that you can see the difference they make. If you scroll down to the bottom of the page you’ll find the video, complete with voiceover.

THE GROWN-UP BLUSHER STICK

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The first foolproof product is the Pixi On-The-Go blusher stick and it is - I’m going to say it - sublime. It has just enough pigment to give you a good dose of healthy colour, to knock the undereye shadows back (did you know about that trick?*) and to add a bit of spark to a tired, dull complexion. The pigment is suspended in a balm that’s every bit as moisturising as a proper lip balm and gives a gloss and a sheen to the skin, so that ultimately what you’re getting is a bit of perky colour and the luminescence of one of those grown-up highlighters that don’t have sparkle.

It’s a killer combo.

And the best thing about this blush stick is that it has the most genius shape: it’s really wide and when you swipe it on (I like the top of the stick to be just on the cheekbone) it deposits just the right amount of colour in just the right position! I barely need to blend this in. There are no hard edges. It’s sheer in its effect but you still notice the colour, it’s deeply hydrating but not greasy, it could possibly be the best blusher stick for grown-ups I’ve ever used.

SHOP PIXI BLUSH

It doesn’t look like makeup for grown-ups, it looks like it might have fallen from a Duplo box, but who cares. When something works this well, it could arrive in a case woven from spider legs and I’d still give it pride of place on the dressing table.

This Pixi On-The-Go blush stick comes in six shades and another that adapts to your own skin tone: I’ve been using Mauve, which is a pretty pink and Chantilly, my favourite, a soft peach that’s not too orange. Very enlivening on sallow skin. I think I may buy Fleur too because I do love a very pale-yet-bright pink going into spring!

You can find it here online - £18.

(* I was taught, decades ago, that if you have a sheer wash of blusher positioned quite high, almost onto the undereyes, it really knocks back shadows and makes you look more awake. If you get it wrong then it’s all sorts of madness and you look as though you need urgent medical attention, but if you whisper just a bit of pink there, slightly higher than usual, it really wakes everything up.)

THE PERFECT BROW FEATHERER

Do you want those brows that are sort of feathery and go in an upwards direction, making your whole eye area look more open and sparky? I’m not talking about those eyebrows that are drawn on with dark stripey brushstrokes, the ones that make people look as though they have a barcode above each eye. More natural than that: normal eyebrows, just defying gravity a bit. So that you get more space between lashes and brows and look less like you haven’t slept since 145 BC.

There are loads of brow gels on the market - many of them are glue, really, and set hard and spiky so that your brow hairs won’t move for the entirety of the day and possibly the next day after that. I have loads that I like, including Boy Brow from Glossier, which has a tint to it and a waxy texture that sticks to your natural brow hairs to bulk them out a bit, and Brow Freeze from Anastasia Beverly Hills, which is a gel in a pot that you apply with a brush and comb through with a spoolie.

The reason that the new Brow Aid Browtox has made it into my favourites is that all of the application tools necessary to create lifted, set-in-place brows are incorporated into the product itself. It’s a gel in a tube and the applicator has a soft sponge side to apply product and a comb side to comb and set the brow hairs in place. (Official instructions say to do it the other way around but I find either way works and I often go in with both sides of the applicator multiple times before I have everything the way I like it.)

This Browtox gel sets firm but doesn’t feel too crunchy and also doesn’t pull the skin underneath too tight. It contains ingredients to help with hair growth, though I hadn’t noticed that until I started writing this up. This is a really, really easy way to give the eyes a bit of a lift without too much hassle, just comb the hairs upwards and outwards into a position that doesn’t make you look too much like you’ve just electrocuted yourself.

It’s here online - £19.50.

THE COOL-TONED CREAM SHADOW

I’m always on the hunt for eye products that can essentially be applied in the dark, with no mirror, whilst in the backseat of a getaway car that’s the target of a high-speed police manhunt involving helicopter searchlights and exploding oil tankers and 180 degree turns in the middle lane of the M5.

I have no intention of every being involved in this sort of car chase, but I like to imagine that if a makeup product could be applied in such a scenario then it’ll be an absolute cinch to use when you’re sitting still in full daylight in front of a magnifying mirror.

And this one is. Trinny London’s Eye-2-Eye Cream shadow. Just smoosh a finger onto the surface of the pot and dab onto the eye lid: this shadow is very forgiving, doesn’t drag the skin when you blend it but manages to stick fast all day long.

SHOP TRINNY

But the foolproofness of this one comes not from the cream shadow itself but the shade. It’s has a heathery, purplish warmth to it but essentially the overall tone is cool, greyish. If pink and orange-based tones tend to make you look ill then this is well worth a try. It’s not overly dramatic, despite the specks of metallic in the photograph: I’d say this is firmly in the “daytime eye” category.

It’s £20 online here.

Video evidence that all of these are a cinch to use:

I am fanatical about being comfortable at home. I think I’ve probably taken it a bit too far, actually, because quite often now I feel panicked if I am forced to put proper clothes on. I don’t like anything that constricts, especially around the gusset area, and I don’t like elasticated bands that press into my rib cage or - ARGH - into the flesh of my stomach. Seams cannot be ill-placed, I must not be able to sense them. Bracelet sleeves and capri pants are out and I cannot have a middle seam on trousers that garrottes my nethers.

You’re all going to be diagnosing me at this point but don’t. It is completely normal for a person to want to feel comfortable, we’ve just forgotten this because we’ve had years of being brain washed into pointy shoes that have knackered our feet, and jeans we can’t breathe in, and knickers made of LACE. LACE! Can you think of any other material less suited to being pressed against your most delicate of areas? You may as well wear sandpaper pants.

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I have trouble dressing on the best of days, it stresses me out and it always has done - I’d be a prime candidate for one of those shows where they throw out your entire wardrobe and pick you three outfits to wear for the rest of your life. But add to this all of the fabrics that make me feel physically sick and we have a real problem on our hands. Fuzzy materials that create fluff that sticks to my face. Itchy types of wool. Too-stiff denim.

Too-stiff denim! Why, I ask you? Why would I want to encase my legs in something that won’t allow me to bend at the knee? Do I need the durability of a fabric that has been designed to endure five-score brutal winters in Montana? No I do not.

Tights! I’ve almost done away with them entirely at this point. And the bras I’d been saving for “when I felt sexy again”: they have all gone into the clothes recycling point outside the kids’ school. (They’re going to get a shock, let me tell you! Good bit of vintage Agent Provocateur went into that metal bin!)

Anyway, I’ve found a new bra to add to my “comfy yet supportive” collection. To recap on the current members of the team, we have:

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1. the Skims Naked Scoop bralette.

Ultra-light, to the point where you genuinely forget you have anything on. Washes well. Adjustable band but no adjustable straps, and I have to say that they do stretch after a couple of years of constant wear and wash. Nevertheless, a strong option if you’re after ultimate comfort with a lovely, smooth shape. Slight monoboob issue but not anything as bad as you’d get with a crop top. You can find it here online - I wear size S-DD which was the recommended size for a 32DD.

2. the Honeylove range, specifically the Silhouette and Crossover bras.

Cor. These give immense support, even for larger cup sizes and manage to give some separation to the boobs and lots of lift to bring them up and away from the rib cage. My Honeylove bras have worn and washed very well - my only (slight) issue is that they can get very hot to wear. I’m pretty sure my 20% discount still works for Honeylove, you just need to click this link and it’ll apply at checkout. (Ignore other offers that pop up.) I made a whole video about Honeylove bras last year - I’ve popped it at the bottom of the post, in case it’s of interest.

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And now, drumroll, we have the third member of the girls-band:

3. the Boody Seamless T-Shirt Bra.

This seamless bra kept popping up on my Instagram feed - I must have had twenty ads served to me before I finally succumbed. But the model’s boobs looked so excellent! I couldn’t believe that a little slip of a bra would create such a lovely shape, yet be so comfy-looking.

Well, believe. I am all kinds of impressed with this one. I was surprised to find it had padded cups, which initially I hated, but it’s the cups that give the lift and the shape without sacrificing comfort. You have to just get your head around it, if you can - I had imagined it was just a single-skin sort of weightless bralette job and in reality it was more hefty, but it is soft and really very, very comfy. I went back in for another round and bought it in a second colour, too.

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There’s no adjustable band on this but it does have adjustable straps. If I were to be annoyingly picky then I’d say that the band and straps could be a little wider, for those of us with bigger norks, but then I think that the version that they do for fuller busts is tweaked with that in mind. My recommended size was a Small, which was quite tight at first but now perfect. I wonder whether I should have opted for the full bust one, though…

I might order another and see. I am so impressed with this that I do not resent doing a repeat purchase! I used the code they sent me when I signed up to the newsletter - 15% off, you can find details on this page. The bra itself (loads of lovely colours) is here, it costs £24.95.

Any recommendations to add to my list of bra trials? I have a few on the go at the moment; many never get a mention because they’re crap. I would love to put the M&S Flexiform crop top back on my winners’ list, for example, but every single one I’ve had now has come out of the washing machine mangled, after fully following the care instructions. So. Grrr. Will report back.

Here’s the Honeylove video - it was an ad-paid collaboration that I did with them, because I had reviewed their bras before this and loved them and they approached me to show all of the styles on video. So bear that in mind, but it’s helpful to see them on, I think:

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The worst thing was that all the pews in the church were already filled and it was standing room only. Not much in the way of standing room either, unless I wanted to block someone else’s view, which is a big no-no at a school assembly. Spectating parents establish their clear line of vision and you must not cross it - there are rules at these things, especially when it comes to significant festivals and dramatic productions. And woe betide anyone who gets in the sightline of the Reception Parents, who are enjoying the various renditions for the very first time.

Anyway, I danced apologetically from one aisle to the next, searching for a spare corner to tuck myself into, bobbing around with an inane grin on my face looking like the medieval jester who’d never been right since the King’s horse kicked him in the head. It became embarrassing - what do you do when there’s no room at the inn? Leave? Lie down on the flagstone floor?

In the end I made one of my characteristically ruinous life decisions and squatted down on my haunches at the end of a side aisle (or nave-aisle, if you remember random facts from your religious studies classes), with the majority of the parents to my rear and all 100 of the school’s pupils in front. I may as well have positioned a spotlight over my head, or climbed atop a podium. It was a bold move and I hadn’t given it due consideration before ploughing on in and committing myself. The thinking was that I would show maximum interest in my son’s contribution to the assembly - a line of a poem, read out loud - to atone for being late and missing the leper sequence. (Which was actually because I had been doing a very good deed, see how the innocent are punished!) I had reasoned that if I edged boldly to the front, past the parent/student frontier line, I would look extra-maternal and extra-invested in both my children’s lives and they would see first-hand how interested I was in their performances.

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Well. When was the last time you squatted? The type of squat you do when you’re a kid with elastic limbs and bouncy joints? We’re talking all of the bodyweight, taken solely in the knee joints, with glutes touching balls of feet. Virtually contortion. The excruciating pain set in at approximately the half minute mark, where I felt as though my knees might just crumble in on themselves; at two minutes I was convinced that my burning joints were about to spontaneously combust. It was a high, wincing pain, impossible to ignore - the thigh burn and lower back ache and foot cramps were minor by comparison. At four minutes I began to actively sweat from the intense physical torment I was enduring, at five I began to see strange dancing lights in front of my eyes.

And I couldn’t get up because my nine year-old was watching me like a hawk, making sure I was ready and in place to hear his line of poetry. I couldn’t break eye contact, let alone move position. And then, after he’d done his speaking part, I couldn’t move position because I was completely stuck. Muscles trapped in violent spasm. Joints seized. Toes completely devoid of sensation.

I don’t know whether you’ve ever listened to thirty smallish children reciting a poem of their own creation, passing the screeching microphone from one clammy hand to the next, all saying their words in the same strange voice that is at once monotone but erratic: it can trigger quite an intense feeling of claustrophobia, that you have been cornered and are never to be released. I can tell you that it is massively more intense when you have sunk yourself into an inadvisable squat position and cannot move until the recital is over.

All this to say: I am going to make an effort with my muscle-toning-and-building exercises this year. Although I spin on my Peloton bike every other day (almost without fail, seven miles at high intensity) I don’t feel that I have much in the way of overall muscle tone. It’s patchy. My knees give way if I go upstairs a certain way, my wrists can barely support my own weight if I try to get up from the floor. Sometimes I feel like a bit of a sack of spare parts, everything jangling about inside.

I have an advance copy of a brilliant book on my bedside table - Elizabeth Davies’ Training for your Old Lady Body, which is a much-needed take on exercise that ignores all of the viral social media bollocks and concentrates on helping you to build a strong body that’ll serve you well as you age. So important. I feel as though it’s the book we will all thank ourselves for reading in twenty years’ time. You can pre-order it here. Elizabeth also has online weight-lifting courses that I’ve been promising to start for almost a year: tomorrow is the day. I shall let you know how I get on - there’s nothing like committing an intention to paper in front of lots of people!

Photo by VD Photography on Unsplash

Every month I make a video of these favourite things: it’s usually around ten to fifteen minutes long, and if you ever think to yourself, God you know what? I like to READ what Ruth has to say, but I sure would sometimes like to also SEE her. Consider your prayers answered:

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On with the faves.

My Miracle Dog

My overall favourite, Dexter the Miracle Dog. My cockapoo is twelve and a half and should have conked out last summer from his very late stage heart disease but here he still is, coughing away and smelling like a bucket of rotted langoustine shells. Every time we think he’s plummeting downhill on the sledge of death and despair he makes a miraculous recovery. The overall trend is one of decline, obviously, but I wasn’t expecting all of these peaks and troughs. He’s in great spirits - eats well, gets excited, still loves sprinting up and down hills - but there’s a lot of sleeping going on. He mostly does this under my feet, creeps in quietly without me realising, which is both cute and highly dangerous. I’ve nearly broken my neck tripping over him at least four times since Christmas. Maybe he’s trying to outlive me, that would be a plot twist!

Sculpted by Aimee Cream Cushion Foundation

This foundation is superb. I test new beauty products every single day and rarely is my first reaction to them the one I had with this, which was “God I hope they never discontinue it”.

I would be absolutely shafted if L’Oreal ever discontinued their Telescopic Mascara, and deeply inconvenienced if Vieve’s Eye Wand in Mahogany ever disappeared from the shelves. But usually there are a few different versions of every type of product and I can switch between them effortlessly and without upset: it takes a lot for me to feel slightly panicked at the idea of something being permanently removed from my makeup bag.

If you’ve never used a cushion foundation before then know this: along with stick foundation, it’s my favourite format for a face base. You just push the bristles of your foundation brush into the product-filled “cushion” and just enough foundation is dispensed to coat them, then you can stipple and buff the product into your skin without ever having to squirt makeup onto the back of your hand. It’s so neat! So convenient! If you’re the sort of person who likes to rush through their makeup routine and do the bare minimum for maximum results then this is the sort of product you’ll love: the compact has a big mirror so that you can sort your base on the move, it all feels very un-messy and undramatic.

The foundation itself? A beautiful glowy finish, medium-ish coverage that’s nicely buildable (or easy to sheer out), good staying power, though definitely not longwear. (I see a bit of slippage in oilier areas after about ten or so hours of wear.)

But oh. The glow. The freshness. The hydrating feel. The slight glossing effect of the finish. It’s excellent, all helped by the fact that my shade - 2.75 - is the exact sort of shade that makes my whole face sing with life. You know when your face base is just a touch darker and warmer than your skin, maybe less than half a shade, and it makes you look permanently as though you’ve been to one of those health farms in the alps that people go to and they give up sugar and coffee and alcohol and they do cold plunges etc? That’s how this makes me look. See video above for reference.

It’s £28 online here- with rather a good shade finder if you’re struggling to know which to choose. I also think findation.com is an excellent source for working out your shade in different brands, I’ve used it for years. The website design is stuck in 2009 but it’s a great resource and I always find it to be pretty accurate.

Small Bomb at Dimperley

You’re all party to this information already, that Small Bomb at Dimperley by Lisse Evans was on of my top reads - if not the top read - of 2025. If you want to read why, I wrote about it in my All The Books I Read in 2025 post, but in short: it’s witty, heartbreaking, strangely comforting and a bit of a jolly old romp in the way that only books about the demise of English country houses and their quirky minor aristocratic inhabitants can be.

It’s here online. I’ve just bought two other Lisse Evans books because I loved Small Bomb so much.

Loafers

OK this is my first foray into loafers - previously I had put them in the same category as blazers, waistcoats and fedoras, ie, things that are far too grown up and serious-looking for someone like me to wear. (Someone like me being someone who wears trainers with everything, tracksuit bottoms wherever possible and everything and anything soft and unstructured that won’t upset me with seams or bulkiness or hems that touch my skin at the wrong level. Basically I’m a four year-old.)

Anyway, it was New Year and I wasn’t properly back at work yet which spells all sorts of trouble for me financially because I fill my time with browsing and buying, and Penelope Chilvers had a huge sale on (they still have loads of good stuff, though all of the Cowboy boots sold out quickly which made me want to cry, I’ve had my eye on those for over a year) and up popped some loafers. You’d think that as a loafer virgin I’d go for classic black, or brown, but no: snakeskin effect leather loafers that look like something a pimp might have sauntered about in, in downtown LA circa 1972.

And yes I love them. They are soft, strangely pliable, feel like slippers on the inside but look smart (as smart as a 1972 LA pimp can look) on the outside. I just have no clue what to wear with them. So far I’ve come up with “jeans and a shirt”, but my jeans are too relaxed in the leg and I feel too much like an off-duty hedge-funder at a colleague’s bank holiday weekend garden party. Especially without socks. With socks, which is the apparent style du jour, I feel like I should be smoking a pipe and/or playing golf.

Any ideas welcomed.

Shop the Penelope Chilvers Sale

Furry Hat

I love this Greta hat from Queens of Archive. The hat feels more like a pet at this point, because it’s always either on my head or my lap or on the chair beside me. Not that I tend to carry my pets around on my head, but you get the gist. And such a talking point! When I wear this hat, everyone stops to ask if they can touch it!

I mean not everyone. That would be an insane state of affairs. But it has happened a lot. OK, a few times. Once. And if they don’t ask to touch it then they see it and smile. Maybe they think there’s something not quite right about me, who knows.

“There goes the eccentric lady again, Brian!”

Oh God something terrible happened to me, in my own village, whilst I was wearing this hat. So mortifying that I’ve started diving headfirst into hedgerows if I see a Landrover Discovery approaching. If you are an upgraded subscriber then you can read about it below, along with a recipe for one of the best winter salads I’ve ever tasted.

I’ve just realised there is nothing about this salad that says “winter”, I’m just eating it in winter. Anyway, it’s bloody delicious and I hope you can’t overdose on fennel because if so I am in danger of it.

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We’re very keen self-caterers anyway, Rich and I, I’m not sure why we get lured down the luxury hotel route so often. I think I always imagine that we’ll get dressed up for dinner and have amazing, intimate chat over extraordinary food and copious fine wines and then we’ll have cocktails in the bar afterwards and it’ll be all sexy and glamorous and we can just trip back to our room for a night of uninterrupted passion followed by a full cooked breakfast and possibly a hangover massage.

In reality what happens is that we can’t relax in the room because all we can hear is doors slamming and cleaners hoovering outside in the corridor and people scraping chairs on the floor above and then one of us needs to go to the toilet and that’s always a romantic talking point isn’t it, when you literally cannot escape the fact that your partner is on the toilet because they are sitting on it approximately four feet away from your head. And there’s nowhere to escape to and so you just sit there watching a re-run of Doc Martin on the telly, loudly, so that there’s at least some background noise and then you wait for them to flush, open the door and unleash hell into the bedroom.

It’s all so sexy and luxurious I simply cannot bear it. Especially when it’s, I don’t know, five hundred pounds a night or whatever for the privilege of being cooped inside this one relatively small space with the person you spend all of your time with anyway.

Look, hotels have their place, but I have to say that a luxury holiday let in an exquisite location wins for me nearly every time. More private, more spacious and usually loads cheaper per night. And you can still eat out for every meal if you want to, but if you don’t want to then you can just dig into the plethora of posh snacks you stocked up on in the local deli. Charcuterie. Cheeses. Straight from fridge to mouth. No middleman required.

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I have a thing for beautifully done-up holiday cottages and houses and would say I’m reasonably expert on the subject. Not just because I’ve booked and stayed in so many, but because I own and run one myself. (The Dorset Nook, sly little self-promo there. If you ever want to escape to a gorgeous seaside cottage for two down a hidden footpath, in an absolutely beautiful part of the world, this is the one. The sheer number of returning guests we get there speaks volumes, I think!)

Anyway, I’d say that if you manage to book yourself a top-notch holiday cottage that has beautiful linens, stylish interiors and a nice little welcome basket then you’re already miles ahead of the typical hotel experience…

So: to the self-catering birthday stay…a treehouse on a vineyard!

This was a treehouse at a place called Wild Escapes in Hampshire and it did have lovely linens, a stylish interior and a nice little welcome basket but that wasn’t even the most notable thing about it: perched on the edge of a vineyard, surrounded on three sides by woodland, it had a different and brilliant view from each one of the big windows and really made you feel as though you were completely alone in the countryside.

What a treat! Seclusion. Serenity. OK so when we arrived the next treehouse along had two children staying and that instantly made my hackles rise, for there is nothing a witch - sorry, an away-from-her-kids mother - hates to hear more than the sound of other people’s children, Gah! but I soon silenced them by removing my gloves and wig, luring them down from the trees and turning them into mice.

Bloody hell that took a dark turn!

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We remained uninterrupted for the rest of the stay and it really was properly lovely. A comfy kingsize bed surrounded by windows, an open-plan kitchen and dining space with a log-burner and a cosy sofa area that opened out onto a terrace with a BBQ and nice outdoor seating.

It was all perfectly done and I would heartily recommend it. You park a short walk away and there are trolleys to pile your luggage into and your food shop and the dog and whatever else you have to carry, and then you feel like right old jolly campers as you pull the trolley over the bumpy ground to your secret hideaway. Inside we had a lovely fresh loaf of bread and a whole pat of butter from a company called Ampersand (I’ve since reordered, I could have eaten it on its own, as a snack) and some eggs and a very nice bottle of sparkling wine from the very vineyard we were looking over!

I think one of the highlights had to be the huge outdoor bath, stuck out on its own on a little platform under a tin roof: one of the most relaxing bathing experiences I’ve ever had. I don’t know whether Wild Escapes paid off the local wildlife to perform for me but they all came up to say hello whilst I was sloshing away in the swimming pool of a tub. Squirrels. A deer. Loads of birds. And then a bloody fox! Just sauntered up and had a good stare. He couldn’t see anything, because I was inside the bath and it’s so tall I doubt there would be any angle you could peep flesh from. Through the roof, maybe? Hopefully there wasn’t anyone clinging on up there, peering through a small hole! Creepy idea.

Anyway, it was great. There wasn’t a telly! We both read books. Silence. Just the crackling fire. I ate two thirds of a whole lemon drizzle cake (it was my birthday, hello) and then we fell into a deep and ponderous sleep at about ten.

What I will say is that although you are in the middle of nowhere and that is the entire point of being remote, there is nothing that’s an easy walk away. Village, or pub or what have you. The Mayfly pub is quite famous and not too much of a walk, but would you want to do the walk at night? Not sure!

But we wanted isolation. So all good. I just thought it was worth pointing out, for those who get cabin fever and need signs of life. We drove to the pub on the second night, we also went to the lovely town of Stockbridge which has the most amazing deli and butchers and all sorts of good foodie stock-up places, and we ventured to Winchester too, to see the Christmas market, and none of it felt particularly far.

Do you know where I think this place would absolutely come into its own though? If four couples hired all four treehouses. What a great little holiday that would be! Nightly barbecues out under the stars, drink up all of the free fizz, and then back to your respective private abodes for a good soak and a sleep. Pricey-ish way to get together, rather than a big house and dividing the cost, but it does feel nice and special.

We booked our stay direct on the Wild Escapes website here: three nights cost £980 but there was a winter discount and the total ended up coming to £804. It felt quite punchy, price-wise, but at the same time it was also very unique and a really memorable stay. Nothing to fault apart from noisy heating, which kept Rich awake, but I did tell him he should have contacted the hosts because you can’t moan about something if you don’t make them aware of it!

Oh! You can also take kids, did I mention that? There’s a very small - teeny - bunk room, so I think more if you have very small kids. It would be very exciting for them, I’m sure, but at the same time I tend to think it’s more suited to adults wanting blissful seclusion. There’s an extra charge for kids and another if you want to bring a dog, but it’s very dog friendly - a whole cupboard with blankets and bowls and treats…

Score? Rich gave it a 9/10 even with the heating noise! This is unheard of. He loved it almost unconditionally.

I’m wavering between 8.5 and 9, only because I can’t decide which I like more: this one or the “Rewild” treehouses in Gloucestershire. I reviewed those here, treehouse pictured below.

I think the Rewild ones feel a little swankier and exciting, because they are properly perched high off the ground, but they differ in that the entire cooking and living areas are outside, so I’m not sure how well it would work in the winter. If it was freezing you would have to get fully suited and booted to go be able to eat anything or sit on actual chairs, and might it feel a bit cooped up being confined to the pod-style bedroom? It’s around the same price as Wild Escapes (maybe slightly cheaper) but you definitely have to embrace outdoor living more… In the summer months, though, it’s definitely an excellent place to stay. (I did two nights completely alone, writing my book, which was - er - slightly thrilling when night fell.)

Fancy a treehouse stay? I should write a round-up piece on all of my treehouse shenanigans: I’ve stayed in quite a few now. Maybe I should restyle myself as a treehouse reviewer.

Wild Escapes have four treehouses, we stayed in Damselfly, which would be my personal recommendation. It’s the furthest along the lane and so the most private.

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