Where I extend my grabby hand

When I started blogging, I discovered that some bloggers got sent stuff from marketers. I read about this phenomenon with detached curiosity - it wasn't like anyone was ever going to send anything to me. I read Friday Playdate on blogging with integrity, and imagined how cool and uninterested I would act if I was ever approached, in much the same way I used to imagine at five years old how I would grow up to be a ballet dancer.

And then one morning, after I had been staring at my face in the mirror and holding it up at the sides in the manner of a facelift, I saw that Olay were looking for blog reviewers for their Wake Up Wonder anti-ageing moisturiser. And I sent an email to the PR company, which might as well have read ''Give me the stuff, man. I need it. I need it real bad."

(I'd never have made it as a ballet dancer, either, to be honest.)

So they sent me three tubes of stuff in an envelope, which I ripped open whilst glancing around for potential predators.

The idea is that it wakes up your skin and irons it out as you stagger into the morning. It does feel refreshing as it goes on, and it's very light - I didn't think the hazelnut-sized amount they recommended would go very far, but it was enough. It disappears nicely, with no heaviness or stickiness, and feels very fresh.

My main criticism so far is that it has no SPF. I was a pale and freckly sort as a child, who spent most of the 70s and 80s, when we didn't care about sunscreen too much, getting my rather large, sticky-out-into-the-sun nose burnt to a total crisp. So now I do care about it. I tend to use this daily face protector instead of a moisturiser usually because of this. So I'm finding putting on a moisturiser, and then the sunscreen, and then foundation a bit of a faff, to be honest. I'd thought that anti-ageing products just had SPF as a matter of course.

A week later, I do think I look better. I haven't felt the need to do the makeshift-facelift thing at all today. But the thing about products like this is they remind me to do something. They remind me, just by their presence in the bathroom, that I did ought to take off my make-up before I go to bed and I did ought to exfoliate and I did ought to put my make-up on in the morning in the first place. So either way, that's a win.


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Small is beautiful

I love a miniature village. We went to Anglesey Model Village this summer; which was very cute but distant - you had to stay quite a frustrating distance from the buildings. I much prefer being able to go down the miniature street and get a good peer into the windows.

Also it means you can amuse yourself by taking pictures of your children as the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. I particularly love this picture of the Littlest Latte (she was very little then - this was four years ago) looking like a giant kicking down a garage.

(She's actually not kicking it down, she's looking at the reflection of her foot in the window.

But that takes all the fun out of it.)

(Here the Little Lattes were waiting for the bank to open in order to withdraw more funds for ice-cream. And vodka.)

It must have been on this very outing, in 2006, to the miniature village at Wimborne Minster in Dorset (this was a top miniature village, by the way, with real stuff in the shop windows, and the wedding of an actual flaky-looking redhead going on in the church) that we bought three make-your-own miniature village cards that were then put in the pile of rainy-day activities that I found while cleaning out the basement last month.

I couldn't have been happier. I had a church, a Victorian School, and a Stone Cottage, and I had the most fun ever making them. The children helped, which must mean that they were foolproof. Here they are (being attacked from above by a giant origami bird, sent to me by Lynn from Speechless many moons ago.)

They are gorgeous. A bit of googling revealed that you can still get these models, which just need scissors and glue, and loads more fantastic things at the delightful English Village Designs. You can rack up a full miniature village! And there are historical models too, of Viking ships and the like. How much more fun could we have for £2.05 than making a castle gate with a drawbridge (scroll down)? And then to discover that for another four quid we could get some actual jousting knights (again, scroll down) with their own tents to fight outside it!

Who said cutting and sticking was just for kids?



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So I lost you

It's odd, this blogging lark. Everyone loves a picture of a ruined picnic, but introduce an Incan lord who dismembers his dead enemies and you all run off, appalled. Only two commenters were brave enough to stay on my last post, and even then they just made nervous remarks about tents before creeping away.

I have to say, I'm disappointed in you. You've never met anyone who made you want to kill them and then turn their head into a drinking vessel? Or their teeth into a charm bracelet? Even those of you who actually make charm bracelets? In my opinion, everyone is carrying around an unhealthily low level of suppressed rage.

Or maybe it was the history. You were alarmed by the sheer intellectualism.

I suppose I'll just have to try and win you round with pictures of children on beaches.

Look at this little beachcomber. What's that she's carrying? Could it be the Nick Baker Pond and Rock Pool Kit? You thought I was kidding when I said I'd planned a holiday around an unused toy?

During a week on Anglesey we nearly killed ourselves with the fun. Bike rides. Pony rides. Boat rides. A stately home. A model village. Castles - more than once. One day we went to a whole day at Beaumaris Castle where people dressed up as knights and pretended it was the Middle Ages and - oh, sorry, there I go with the history! Don't worry, I won't bother you with that again.

But oddly, most of the pictures we came home with were pictures of beaches. Those moments, wandering among the sand and rocks on the beach one minute's walk from our campsite, were the shortest, cheapest, least educational and most memorable ones of the holiday. We need to learn something from this, don't we? Yes we do.



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I'm here in spirit, at least

This month I have mostly been:

1) Putting the sleeping bags into the car

2) Taking the sleeping bags out of the car

3) Inflating mattresses

4) Deflating mattresses

I have things to report, but no energy with which to report them. So here for your joy and delectation is the song of our summer, best sung loudly in a tent full of midges.

We love Pachacuti. So educational! And I've always had a soft spot for skinny men who are prone to violence. Look at Spike from Buffy.





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