Friday, 1 April 2016

8 Baby Gifts Parents Won’t Hate You For Buying

It’s the thought that counts, but not all gifts are created equal... Here's a handy guide to choosing a present that parents will thank you for - and not just out of politeness


1. Sleeping Bag
All new parents are paranoia-stricken hot damn messes when it comes to putting their babies down for the night.

“What if a cloud of nitrogen silently sneaks its way into his room and disrupts the chemical composition of the air?”
“What if she gets too clammy and drowns in a puddle of her own sweat?”  
“What if a large bird of prey glides in through an open window, scoops him up and raises him as its own?”
- merely a few of the totally legit ponderings that occur to first (and second and third) time baby raisers. One thing that makes night time a little less stressful (especially in colder months) are teenytiny sleeping bags like this:


They help babies feel snuggly and cozy while eliminating the parental stress of worrying about the fatal hypothermia they’ll contract from kicking their covers off during the night.

2. Bouncer Chair
In marathon running there is a phenomenon referred to as ‘hitting the wall’ - a period of fatigue so intense it feels like your body has turned 100% defector and is manifesting its open hatred towards you by secretly swapping your limbs with those of a paraplegic elephant. This phenomenon is also common to parenthood at around the 36 hour mark. At this point your body will decide a definitive ‘nope nope nope’ to the endless bouncing, rocking, patting and parading required to keep a freshly born human appeased. Give them a bouncer chair. For the love of all that is good, give those poor parents a bouncer chair and 10 minutes relief. Whether it’s an all singing, all dancing, self propelling, airport-style massage chair number like this one:



Or a modest, mildly buzzy little manual rocker like this one:



The relief is intense. Gratitude guaranteed.

3. Boys/Girls Nightie
Ah the dreaded nighttime nappy change. Baby pajamas are 24 cutesy inches of popper hell - specifically designed to drive the already fraught parent properly over the edge. Correctly aligning poppers in the semi-dark is a bit like being on Crystal Maze, except instead of winning an adventure holiday you win 30 mins of silence and a brief nap. Should you fail to complete the task before your child is properly awake however, you will be penalised with the dreaded ‘scream-poop’ lock down in which you are caught in a neverending cycle of your child shrieking maniacally until exhausted and then immediately farting themselves awake again. This can be sidestepped with a popper-free sleepsuit nightie from Lucy & Sam. There are millions of adorable, totally useless outfits on the market, but this is one is a newborn essential. 



4. Ribbon Rings
‘Something colourful and shiny I can shake about like a demented baton twirler and safely stuff in my mouth? Sign me up!’ - said every baby ever. Ok this is a shameless plug as I know the person who makes these (c’est moi!). But that also means I can testify they are made of 100% organic maplewood and tummy safe beeswax and that small humans do properly love them (mine do anyway - even two years on). Stock is running low, but you can check ‘em out here https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/TheLittleRibbonShop.







5. JellyCat Soft Toys
“Oh a little teddy! How adorable!”. Hah, you’d think so, but after 24 hours with a baby that badboy will be more basted in bodily fluids than a Sunday roast. Rabbit, hippo, unicorn - it mattereth not. You stick a batch of soft toys in the washer/dryer and they’ll come out the other end looking like a drowned rat. JellyCat teddies are different. They withstand endless washings and still come out feeling soft, fluffy and looking shop fresh. And there are hundreds of gorgeous ones to choose from, thus satisfying my inner 5 year old http://www.jellycat.com/




6. Muslins  
You’d be forgiven for thinking this is a really lame ass present (“A packet of rags? Oh you naughty thing, you really are spoiling us!”), but they are seriously the most useful gift ever. Aside from the standard baby-related uses (bodily fluid mop, nappy mat, lampshade, sunshade, comforter, blanket, chew toy, boob shield, stink wafter) they can be used for a ton of other stuff - a shield when ironing delicate clothing, a sieve when making homemade paneer and a prop whilst performing the dance of the seven veils (partic' useful when you're angling for your partner to consent to yet another night of ordering dinner in). We once burned through 12 in a day, so you can never have too many. The slightly bigger ones are better in my opinion and you can't beat a nautical print -



7. Fabric Books  
TRUE FACT: children are referred to as ‘kids’ because the spirit animal of every human baby is a disgruntled hungry goat. If your baby doesn’t have an obsession with eating books/toiletpaper/anything tree based, secure yourself in your bathroom and contact the authorities. You are a victim of alien impregnation.
Babies love to get their hands on a book, but their literal appetite for the written word makes a copy of Shakespeare’s sonnets somewhat impractical. Fabric books are the bessst. Impervious to toothless wonders and you can shove them in the washing machine following their inevitable baptism by faecal matter. Bought this one for my kid awhile back and I'm devastated they’ve stopped making them before I could acquire Jules Verne’s entire back catalogue... (Heaven forbid my two year old should become a fan of Spot the Dog...) But yeah, plenty of alternatives to be found on t’internet.


8. Something just for the Parents
Tiny Gucci slingbacks are cute and everything, but at 4am on your fifth consecutive night of 2 hours sleep you would quite happily trade in your offspring’s (adorable but superfluous) 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th pair of £60 designer booties for a tube of Smarties and a sixpack of Red Bull. In short, forgo the microfashion in favour of a gift that makes parental life less brutal. Buy them cake. Buy them poop-blasting scented candles. Buy them takeaway vouchers and dry shampoo and anything with enough caffeine in it to wake the recently dead (Cooking from scratch? Lol. Daily showers? Lol. ‘Make sure you’re getting enough rest!” Looooooool). Happy parent = happy baby.

A chocolate fudge cake a day keeps the babyblues away.


And finally,


2 BABY GIFTS YOU SHOULD NEVER EVER EVER BUY.

1. Bath Crayons
When half of my relatives bought my children bath crayons for Christmas I thought ‘Brilliant! Mess that’s confined to the a room full of wipeable surfaces? What's not to love?'. Ha. I don't care how bright your baby is, "darling, it's fine to draw on this wall, but if you draw on a wall anywhere else in the house, mummy will have a meltdown" is not an instruction any child under 3 will assimilate (or will admit to assimilating anyway...).



2. Anything that makes an unholy amount of noise.
Buying a baby a noisy toy is like sending your IBS-suffering kid off on a school trip with a packed lunch of baked beans and chicken vindaloo. It’s just not the done thing. Babies are professional noise makers so, as they say, ‘leave it to the professionals’.

If your kid looks like this, then they won't be the only one screaming.



If you have any wisdom/recommendations of your own to add, leave you know what to do! 


vvv comment section, ahem vvv
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Tuesday, 29 March 2016

The Dirty V Word

This week I dropped the V-bomb and disclosed to my friends and family that for the foreseeable future I’m going to be… wait for it... partially vegan-vegetarian. Their response was suspicion, derision, hilarity  - all the things you’d expect when you make a life change intended to better yourself and the planet at large.



I’m not quite sure why people are so excruciatingly uncomfortable with the idea of someone cutting various foodstuffs out of their diet, but one thing is for sure - it’s not a move you make if you’re trying to boost your street cred. There’s this notion that V’s (vegans/vegetarians) are preachy, self righteous hippy types who just don’t get how the real world functions. Maybe they are. You know who else they said that about? Anti-slavery campaigners. People who choose to cut out unethically-produced animal products are told that ‘your lifestyle choices will never change the system’, that ‘it’s just how the world works’ and that ‘people’s livelihoods are dependent on it being this way’. This is not the first time these arguments have been used to justify a morally questionable practise. And you know what? Things did change, people found other ways to make a living and the world didn’t stop spinning.

Unlike a lot of V-inclined individuals I’m not actually opposed to the idea of eating meat in and of itself. To be honest, I think eating meat is just part of the circle of life. Massinyahi'meatinabanana and all that. What I cannot get onboard with, however, is this -



For those of you who don’t have the time/the stomach to sit through this, it’s 6:40 of animals being maimed, neutered, electro-shocked and crushed alive - fully conscious and anaesthetic-free. Being shackled in racks smaller than they are, being forced to live in conditions so cramped they trample each other to death and are left to rot unnoticed. Being painfully, perpetually impregnated and then immediately separated from their babies (who often are left to scream for their mothers for days before being slaughtered). This is not footage from some overseas scandal about big-chain fast food providers. These are the practises being used by the largest farming companies and supermarket suppliers in the UK. By household names like ‘Bernard Matthews’ and ‘The Happy Egg company’. How is this acceptable?

If people treated their pets like this they’d be facing a fine, a ban from keeping animals and potential prison time.


'A gestation crate, also known as a sow stall, is a metal enclosure used in intensive pig farming, in which a female breeding pig (sow) may be kept during pregnancy and for most of her adult life'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestation_crate



If you haven't switched off already, I'm willing to bet the last thing you want is a lengthy sermon on the ethics of what you choose to have for dinner. So I’m not going to expend page space trying to convince you of these (well established) facts:

FACT: Eating too much meat sucks for your health (excessive red and processed meat slices years off our lives)
FACT: Eating too much meat is wrecking your surroundings (deforestation and production of methane gas is wrecking our environment)
FACT: Eating too much meat exacerbates world hunger (due to misdirection of grains and other resources)

Any casual Google search can do that for you. What I would like to discuss (by which I mean 'annihilate entirely'), are the routine arguments used to persuade people out of taking the V plunge. And why they’re a load of crap (incidentally, much like the supermarket milk which is currently available to us. A fresh glass of antibiotics, hormones, pesticides and pus anyone? Yummm.)

1.‘But meat tastes so good!’. 


Yes, yes it does. ‘Fancy a dirty kebab for breakfast? Hells yeah. ‘2am bacon cheese burger’? Hit me up. But - and maybe this is a product of growing up in a faith that promotes abstinence from sex, drugs and alcohol - to me, ‘I really enjoy it’ is just not an argument for pushing on with something you consider immoral. Also, you can still eat meat without perpetuating the highscale-horrific practises which are just an undivorceable reality of cheap meat. Yus, even if you’re skint. If you can’t afford to buy ethically produced meat at your current rate of consumption, just eat less of the stuff. It’s good for you.

2. ‘But you cutting that stuff out of your diet won’t even make any difference to the system you’re trying to change!’.

Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. Food is a consumer industry. It’s driven by supply and demand. If people stop buying dirt cheap, mass produced meat then people will stop supplying it. If people start demanding ethically produced meat instead, then that’s what they’ll provide. And there are enough people making resolutions about 'responsible eating' for the industry to have already begun making changes. Every restaurant I’ve visited in the past 10 years has offered a vegetarian option. More than ever, menus state the sources of their meat. In London alone there are hundreds of restaurants marketing exclusively vegan/vegetarian food - and many more that serve only organically reared meat. No one who decides to go vegan/vegetarian/organic needs to be a lone wolf.


This question remains though - even if your actions count for nothing on a grand scale, is that a reason to continue participating in something you consider immoral? Like ‘you know what, I’m never going to be able to halt the people trafficking industry, so I think I’ll just go to town on an underage call girl. It’s not like me choosing to have consensual sex with a fellow adult instead is going to change anything anyway’. Is the principle not essentially the same? How do any large-scale reformations to immoral social/political/cultural/industrial practices come about? It’s through individuals resolving ‘I will have no part in this’.

3. ‘But people make a living out of producing meat this way! You’re putting their livelihood in jeopardy!’. 

Actually, changing the way we rear meat would INCREASE agricultural jobs. Organic farming requires MORE labourers than factory farming. Yes, there will be smaller profits for those at the very top, but there will be far greater employment opportunities for others.




So yeah. Some inconvenient truths I have had to come to terms with this week. In short, I have made the following resolutions:

1. Non-organic meat is off the menu.
2. Meat is on the menu once a week at most.
3. Free range eggs or bust.

And, most brutally,

4. No more dairy. That’s right. I feel strong enough about this to forsake camembert and ossau-iraty. Pray for me.




I was raised in a faith which teaches that humans are intended to be custodians over the Earth - guardians who are supposed to manage and look after the natural resources around us, not exploit them to the point of destruction. A faith that, long before we had scientific proof of the dangerous effects of over-eating meat, promoted eating meat ‘sparingly’ and only in times of nutritional need (https://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/89?lang=eng). (Incidentally this revelation also advises “tobacco is not for the body, neither for the belly, and is not good for man” 100 years before science confirmed cigarettes are essentially coffin nails).




To the compassionate amongst you: please send me care packages of vegan cheese and Green and Blacks 85% cocoa dark chocolate. It’s milk free. And so am I.





Some P.S's:

Here's an article about the production of milk that I just find abhorrent (you're welcome):


And helpful info for anyone wanting to cut unethical meat out of their diets:


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Friday, 5 February 2016

These Are A Few of My Faaavourite Things

I’d like to think I’m not an overly materialistic person, but anyone who claims ‘money can’t buy happiness’ has just been shopping in the wrong places. Sure you can’t buy a sunset, the adoring smile of a child or satisfaction of bossing it through a hard level on Candy crush without using any boosters. But I honestly find myself wandering around the house and addressing inanimate objects with a silent ‘hello friend. You make me a happier human’. Here are a few of my possession-recommendations. Only seems fair to share the joy!
Jack Wills sweatpants £39.50 - £44.50
Do you crave the comfort of chav fashion but without the stigma of elective unemployment? Do you enjoy wearing sportswear with zero intention of actually exerting yourself? Cue Jack Wills joggers - making it legit to stay in pajamas all day since 1999. Essentially you’re paying £35 quid more for a bit of iron-on plastic. HOWEVER, is £35 not a reasonable price for your dignity? Plus, they throw in these adorable little anti-fray metal bits on the end of the toggles instead of just tying them in a knot. It’s a bona fide bargain!
As a side note, my mother raised me to shun labels and will no doubt disown me after reading this blog post. C’est la vie. I can now open the door to the Amazon delivery man at 7.30am with pride.
You too can get into unnecessary debt at http://www.jackwills.com/

Clarins Eau De Jardins Body Cream, £29
You know the amazing smell that hits you when you walk onto the beauty floor of a department store? That. In a tube. Smells so good when you put in on it’ll make you want to lick your own face clean.


Stock up here:





Leather notebook
Do you have profound thoughts? Is your daily to-do list just too hot for a WHSmith spiral notepad to handle? What you need, is a pungent leather notebook. It’s the best favour the unappreciated genius can do themselves. Makes writing a shopping list feel like you’re Hemingway penning your post-combat memoirs. Combine with apartment that smells of rich mahogany for best effect.
BONUS TIP: In times of austerity, can be transformed into a tasty stew





Molton Brown Peppercorn Bodywash, £18
The first time I encountered this was as a child in my Uncle’s uber-trendy Antwerpian apartment. As a child, Uncle J was Uncle Culture, Uncle Jetsetter, Uncle Bringer-of-exotic-gifts  - in short, a bit of classy bloke. So I didn’t quite get why the man I considered the epitome of cosmopolitan-cool would want to smell like a roast dinner. One cheeky sniff later and I was a lifelong convert. I kid you not, this stuff is incredible. The best kind of manly stink.


Guys: Wash with this, and beautiful women will prostrate themselves on the floor before you, offering you their firstborn sons in exchange for one whiff of your armpit.


Ladies: do not buy this for your man. Wash with this, and beautiful women will prostrate themselves on the floor before him, offering him their firstborn sons in exchange for one whiff of his armpit.


You can buy it here:
Asda organic apple baby bars £1.99 (or £1.60 if you’re lucky)
Baby food is infamously revolting, but whenever we get these in, my offspring don’t even get a look-in. They are sososo tasty. I get fat off them by breaking them into fruit yoghurt or slying one when I’m on the phone to a loved one and they’re going on about some nonsense for forever and a day. With them being a bit smaller you can be on number 7 and still be telling yourself you’re eating responsibly - which is pretty much top of my snack-choosing criteria. WARNING: tastegasm almost guaranteed. Avoid eating in public to sidestep ‘When Harry Met Sally’ type humiliation.


If you’re too lazy to walk to the supermarket:
Neom Candle, ‘Happiness’ £30


These badboys are not overly cheap, but they are the unprecedented boss of scented candles. I have one in ‘Happiness’ and it’s so convincingly summer-gardeny that you feel like you should be having a hayfever attack just from stepping within 30 feet of it. The scent is super pervasive and lingers forever without making you feel like you’re in a changing room full of trigger-happy 13 year olds who’ve just discovered the joys of deodorant.

This candle is close to my heart as it saved my life during the puke and poonamis of early ‘16. I was elbow deep in the stuff and couldn’t smell a thing. If I shut my eyes I could almost believe I was in skipping through tulip fields of Holland rather than on all fours, scooping cottage cheese into an Asda carrier bag.
You can thank me later:
Personalised Vintage Typewriter Cushion £35

Ok, so this is not everyone’s taste, but my the point here is not so much the cushion as the source. Not On The Highstreet and Etsy are the besssst for the quirky uniqueness of back-alley hole-in-the-wall type shops but + the insurance of a reputable mediator and - the threat of being mugged.



Anyway the story behind this cushion… My husband is not renowned for his cutesyness. But when we were dating he left a sneaky message for me on my typewriter, which I didn’t even notice until several days later. He totes wrecked the piece I was working on. But it was the nicest thing :) And kind of epitomises that period in our lives for me. So now I have a tangible reminder of it that sits in our front room every day.



You can get all sorts of weird and wonderful personalisable stuff here http:www.notonthehighstreet.com/ and here https://www.etsy.com/uk/.

And in case you want ma cushion:
http://www.notonthehighstreet.com/snapdragon/product/personalised-vintage-typewriter-cushion

Happy shopping u guyzzz xox
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