1 A bizarre, summer-time virus has hit Sam and he has been stopped in his tracks for four days with a temperature, a headache, rotten guts and, most spectacularly, intense emotional dis-regulation. He watched Charlie & Lola, too weak to absorb anything else, and wept with uncontrollable nostalgia for the passing of his childhood. He was willingly tucked-in for 3pm naps, completely docile (unheard-of). At night, he thrashed about, claiming loudly that his knee was broken so that he would be unable to run in sports day; he sat up and with his eyes fully, spookily, open, asked me the name of the “guy in charge of this hi-jack”, thumbing over his shoulder in the imagined direction of a cockpit. All of this while sweating so heavily from fevers raging and breaking that his sheets had to be changed daily. It has been extraordinary to witness such a full body-snatch of a perfectly healthy boy. He is now recovering but still rather weak. It’s at times like this I miss our buggy - if we still had it and if he was still small enough we could go for long walks in the manner of a Victorian convalescent.
2 I was enormously disappointed by The Librarianist by Patrick deWitt. I am a huge fan of deWitt on the basis of The Sisters Brothers and French Exit and so approached this book with possibly too high expectations. It is a terrible bore. What on earth is he playing at.
I had more success with Everything’s Fine by Cecilia Rabess, which has the punchy premise of a white Republican and a Black liberal falling in love. It is nicely written but it sags horribly in the last quarter. Rabess gets a lot of things off her chest with this book but I did wonder, by the end of it, what exactly her point was. It also turns into too much of a romantic near-miss O-Whence-My-Boyfriend thing, which I’m afraid I find quite dull.
3 A very disappointing shopping experience with bloody ba&sh, who took TEN DAYS to send me a dress I bought in the sale and were uncontactable when I had a question and then the dress had the audacity to arrive and be a true size 8 and not a generous size 8 so I put it on and just felt really fat, even though I’m not fat, I’m just not a size 8. Then the returns process was so annoying that I actually just drove to the nearest ba&sh store in order to take it back. What a waste of time. This is why I don’t bother buying clothes any more.
4 I have settled on my final, final list of skincare that I will be taking on my holidays this year: 1 tube of L’Oreal Revitalift SPF 50, 1 bottle of The Inkey List Salicylic Acid Cleanser, 1 bottle of Tatcha Luminous Dewy Skin Mist. This last item was £48!!! and I bought it in a fit of insane profligacy (PMT?). It’s the most fabulous, luxurious stuff but I’ve still got the same dreary pouchy middle-aged face after a fortnight of using it, so I won’t be buying it again.
How about you? Any notes to add? Have you cancelled your holiday to Italy because it’s too hot? What is your final, final list of skincare for your summer break. Please leave a comment in the handy box below.
For more than a year these are my staples and I am superhappy and not changing them ever:
Inkey List Fulvic acid cleanser
Omorovicza Bitaminc C serum for day
Murad retinol serum for night
First Aid moisturiser on top of serums
Ultraviolet/ Supergoop tinted / Trish McEvoy tinted SPF50s depending on what I’m more inclined to.
And I get all of this off ebay, with crazy discounts and probably am buying off people who steal from shops but saves me soo much money!
Moved to Australia and now have a mega cold- my sympathies with Sam. I think the inflammation and changes to your gut bacteria can make you down and irritable. Glad he is better.
Sunscreen I like Australian Gold bb cream. SPF 50, can get the slightest bit orange- and with this cold I do a hell of a Chief Cheeto impression. Esther, Australian Gold is the winningest sunscreen, the best sunscreen in the entire universe, ask anyone. :)