Holy shit! Pass the gin.

Roller coaster.  The most stressful and traumatic 48 hours since the sale of the guest house fell through (bastards).  I am shell shocked and need booze but it's done!

After much chopping and changing Tom has accepted a place at Edge Hill University to study English and he is delighted, absolutely thrilled.  His didn't get his first choice and went through clearing and by his own admission has somehow ended up doing a much better course than the one he had originally applied for.

Had it not been for Twitter Tom would not being going to Edge Hill.  Yesterday morning when I was looking at his results (C English, E Sociology, E History) and his UCAS Track with "unsuccessful" all over it and was in despair Leanne from OCD tweeted in response to say not to panic and had I considered Edge Hill, she used to work there and "The Boy" (her partner!) still does.  Tom and I will be eternally grateful for that suggestion and if I ever get the chance, which is looking increasingly likely, I am going to buy her the biggest bloody drink!

I am off for a lie down and then on Monday we are all going to Sorrento (we have house sitters so piss off robbers) and I can not wait.  Bit of a blogging hiatus but I'll be back at the start of September with blog posts no doubt charting the intense emotions in the run up to 23rd September!!

Fingers crossed everyone!

It's A Level results day tomorrow.   

Tomorrow we find out if Tom is going to University or not.  He thinks not.  I, the world's biggest optimist, think maybe.  His Dad, who is never wrong, thinks that he might be fine but on the other hand he might not.  Emily thinks he needs to hurry the hell up and move out so she we can sort out our basement flat so she gets a much bigger bedroom.  

Tom walked when he was 10 months old, a good couple of months before most babies would expect to be up and on their feet.  That was the last time Tom did anything more quickly than might have been expected.  He was five and still insisting that he couldn't ride a bike without stabilisers - it took Steve running alongside pretending he was holding on to get him up and running.  Tom hates to fail.  When he was at primary school he had a spelling test every Monday morning so we started every Friday evening with a straight off 20 words spelling test.  Those he got right we ticked.  The rest he wrote out three times, then we did the test again.  Write out 3 times, test and so on until by Monday morning he was able to spell all 20 perfectly.  He once got 19 out of 20 and was so upset, bless him!   You are probably thinking he aced his GCSE's with a plethora of A's and A*'s.  Sadly you'd be wrong, somewhere along the line Toms fear of failure was overtaken by his abject terror of doing any sodding work at all.

We ended up having a crisis meeting after we got his mock GCSE results.  Tom, Steve and I in the kitchen. Tom in bits because he was staring failure in the face and Steve and I petrified that he was going to throw away a golden opportunity.  I will never forget watching him walk up from school in the pouring rain clutching his GCSE results envelope.  I was sat in the car waiting and he didn't look up until he was nearly at the car and when he did he looked straight into my eyes and smiled the broadest smile, I burst into tears there and then!  They weren't great but they were enough to get him into the very good local college to study his A Levels.

And then came the wilderness years.  For two years I have heard myself say "are you sure you aren't supposed to be working?"  "show me what work you have done" "seriously, are you shitting me? Is that it?".  I have gently coaxed "Sweetheart, why don't you get your History text book and come and sit with me whilst I work"  I have cajoled "History text book now" and I have castigated "Work you bastard, work"  all to no effect.  And tomorrow the results of Tom's torpid approach to learning will come home to roost.  I am bricking it.

He has an offer of 260 points to study Criminology at Lincoln.  Its a lovely University, great accommodation, right in the centre of Lincoln and its about an hour and half down the A1.  I am desperately hoping that he'll get 200 points, they'll want the £30,000 fees and they'll take him.

Which is great.  Or it will be, until we get to September 17th and I have to drive my only son to Lincoln, unload his world from my car to his accommodation, kiss him and drive home.  Without him.  Oh god.  I can't do it.  Part of me almost wants him to fail so I wont have to.  So I will have to remind myself that having kids is about giving them wings so they can fly away, even if it breaks you heart a little into a million tiny pieces. 

I'll update this post tomorrow with the results - if I am not frantically trying to get him sorted through Clearing before we go on holiday on Monday!

To the people I know in real life who only read my blog

If you do nothing else today please click on this link and read the post.  

Anyone else that reads beauty blogs will already be familiar with Mrs Hirons, skin care guru, second to none.  

Everyone who isn't should click on the above link and then run to Boots and buy her recommendation.
Have a lovely weekend.

So long old "friend"?

Yesterday I was unpacking after our weekend away and as I put the box of tampax back into my knicker drawer I thought this box of tampax is well travelled, its been to Cereals in June, Yorkshire show in July and here it is now returning from Cambridge at the start of August.  And then I did a double take.  Because this 3 month old box of tampax is still closed.  A quick check on my phone confirmed my thoughts - the last time I had a period was back in May!  Now this may be a temporary blip, or of course I may be pregnant as Emily very hilariously pointed out - I did reply that were that to be the case in a complete role reversal of Catholic families through the years I would be passing this baby off as hers!! - or this may be the real deal and my reproductive years are now behind me.

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about that to be honest.  I remember the Wednesday evening when I was 14 and I went upstairs to wash my hair to discover that after 2 years of patiently waiting I had finally started my periods!! I remember blowing the dust off the pack of breeze block sized sanitary pads that girls used back then with great elation and finally feeling that I was a WOMAN!  I was deeply pissed off that no more than six months later my sister who was, and remains to this day, 18 months younger than me started her periods too, I didn't want to share this womanly right of passage with her dammit I wanted it to all be about me for once!  

My period was most at the forefront of my mind the 12 months I spent trying to get pregnant.  Using the power of my mind I managed to make it up to 3 weeks late some months, only for it to appear as I walked back from the chemist with yet another pregnancy test we could ill afford.   My sister and her husband, by then parents themselves, were staying one weekend in October 1991, my period was a week late and I was trying not to hope.  We had dinner and I suddenly felt very very sick, rushed upstairs and hurled for England.  I had never felt so ill.  My sister took this as a sure sign that I was with child and insisted that Steve went out first thing the following morning and purchased a pregnancy test, against his better judgement, convinced as he was that I was about to ruin a rare weekend with my sister.  How utterly and gloriously wrong he was!!!  When one night in April 1993 we had dinner and I was violently sick after an Easter weekend spent trying for number 2 we looked at one another with a knowing smile and Tom appeared in January 1994.  (Appeared - anyone who has squeezed a 9lb 2oz human out of their vagina will be enjoying a wry smile at that choice of word!)

Other than that my periods haven't really featured greatly in my life, they came, they went, they arrived unexpectedly when I was wearing white linen trousers, the usual really.  I hadn't really given any thought to how this next stage of my life would affect me, other than perhaps hoping that by the time it came both of my "babies" would have left home and Steve and I would have enough money and enough time to be enjoying life a little.  Ah well.

I am surprised at my lack of knowledge about all this though.  So my periods have stopped.  Am I now officially menopausal about to grow a beard, have terrific sweats and burst into tears at the slightest provocation?  If so, no biggy  the beard and the sweats have been around since last year at least.  Or is that it. Over. Gone. I'm barren, nothing to see here, please move along, menopause done and dusted.  Seriously how can I NOT know this stuff.  And where do I sign up for the HRT?  Do I need HRT?  Will it give me breast cancer?  I am here at, if not a major junction, at least a litter-strewn, pot hole filled layby in my life and I have no idea what lies ahead.  Luckily I like the unknown and prefer change to being stuck in a rut so lets I hope I can embrace "the" change and work with it.  And if not there's always the drugs, right? 

Unless of course I am pregnant and then I'm in deep shit.

I wish I could buy with my Boots points....

I am being a terrible blogger! In my defense the whole of July has been manic with either guest house work, ad sales work or photography work with a good measure of FUN! thrown in to boot so time has been at a premium.  And I have sort of lost my blogging mojo and as for twitter - I think I might be over it!

Anyhow.   The only time in the day I get a few minutes head space is often when I am doing my make up and this morning whilst I was doing it I began to think again about the £46 on my Boots advantage card that keeps calling me to spend it.  I haven't found anything in Boots that has created a "need" so great that I have lashed out with my card and I keep finding things, thinking they might hit the spot and then discounting them as not worth the points.  I had a moment whilst I did my eye shadow when I wished I had realised how fantastic Urban Decay was, back when it was in Boots.  Then I thought how fab it would be if Laura Mercier was in Boots - and right there I had it - those Boots points would have been long gone if I could have spent them on Laura Mercier in Boots.  Although if I'm honest I'd be saving my points right up until the 2012 Christmas collection came out and praying there would be something like the Luxe Colour portfolio of last year, have goggle imaged it a hundred times!! (When anyone gets wind of what LM is bringing out for 2012 xmas please, please tip me off!)

And I got to wondering, surely I can't be alone with this wish?!  I'm dying to know - what range would you love to see stocked in Boots so that you could save up your points and have a massive splurge?  

Bed Head Urban Antidotes

Remember my post about Drugstore Hair care (as we Brits like to call it having watched hours of Friends and House)?

I take it all back.

On Saturday after an hour of hugely stressful wedding photography I was paid in cash and decided I needed a treat.  Whilst Kerastase was a step too far I decided I could run to some Bed Head shampoo and conditioner.

S'cuse stock image, the camera is having a week off between weddings!

The Urban Antidotes come in 3 strengths; Re-energize (light green) for normal hair needing daily care, Recovery (blue) for processed, dry hair in need of tlc and Resurrection (Red) for weak, brittle hair in need of an intervention.

The hairdresser in the salon I purchased from had a quick squizz at my hair and suggested I went for No 2 Recovery.  I have used it three times and the difference it has made to my hair is incredible.  I had been using the L'Oreal PureStrength since I wrote about it on the 10th June and whilst my hair never looked fantastic it was OK and for a shampoo and condition from Boots the results weren't bad at all.  But for a combined price of £20.50 the Bed Head Shampoo and Conditioner have totally and utterly changed how my hair looks.  My hair is much less frizzy, with the L'Oreal it started off smooth'ish and frizzed up over the course of the day, with the Bed Head it stays glossy and unfrizzed for the entire day.  I am really loathe to wash my hair daily given that it takes me about 20 mins to blow dry and I found with the L'Oreal it was a real push to make my hair last 2 days, not the case with the Bed Head, in between washes it has stayed frizz free and only needs a slight sorting with a spritz of water and a blat about with the hair dryer to bring it back to bouncy loveliness!


As you'd expect from Bed Head the shampoo and conditioner both smell lovely, sort of citrus, grapefruity kind of smell? I found when I used Kerastase that I still needed a good sized blob to get it to lather, with the Bed Head I do an initial wash with a single pea sized blob and then a 2nd wash with the same amount again (I use a shit load of styling products!) and then a 10p sized blob of conditioner.  I think I might invest in the Resurrection conditioner to use once a week as a bit of an extra boost, I'd be concerned it would be too heavy for every other day.  When I rinse my conditioner I like my hair to feel silky and its not quite achieving that with the Recovery conditioner, although when it's dried it is very smooth and feels thicker and much more moisturised - the feeling of my dry hair is the thing that convinces me most that Urban Antidotes works, with the L'Oreal it felt rough, fluffy and thin.


So yep, for the two it costs £20.50 rather than £11.98 for the L'Oreal so its a bit more of a splurge but I have to say for me the results are totally worth it and I wont be going back to Boots for my shampoo and conditioner any time soon!  What are you using at the moment? Have you tried Urban Antidotes - what did you think? 

*Quick update* I did buy Ressurection conditioner and it is lovely, makes my hair incredibly smooth and silky, think it will come into its own on holiday when I will wash and let my hair dry naturally, hopefully will end up with waves not frizz.  I now use Rescue conditioner all over and a smidge of Ressurection just through the ends and that seems to work a treat.

I suppose that it was inevitable.

We have 8 guest rooms, are open 7 nights a week for around 46 weeks a year and have been operating for 10 years.  A lot of people have walked through our doors and until yesterday all of them had left in the same way.  Very sadly one guest yesterday didn't.  I wont go into details as this isn't the time nor the place, but it made me realise that whilst we take each day for granted and assume that Thursday follows Wednesday and July will become August for someone, somewhere today might be the full stop, not the comma.

A salutary reminder that living each moment to the full should be considered compulsory, not optional.