Putting on the glitz.

This is a sponsored post.  But I worked really hard to make it entertaining...

Expat life.  It's all g&t's by the pool, drivers collecting you from shopping trips, manicures, pedicures, and glamorous nights out, isn't it?

Isn't it?

Well, no, actually - not for me, anyway.  And not only because - obviously - it's vodka all the way in Russia rather than gin.

One area where I'm afraid I fall very far short of the mark is the 'glamorous nights out' mentioned above.  Certainly, Husband and I do go out, but there's very little of the champagne-swilling, Triple-A-list-celebrities-spotting, dancing 'til dawn events you might imagine.

However, there is one Black Tie evening that I go to each year in Moscow that does require use of a swanky dress - or at least, would, if I ever got my act together in time to have something suitable to wear.  This year will be the fourth that I've attended, and up until now I have worn, as follows:

Year 1:  15 year-old black on-the-knee Karen Millen dress that I just happened to throw in my suitcase when we moved here, and which got pulled out in a panic when Husband proved unable to locate my 'best' dresses on a trip back to our storage facility in London (aka; His Mum's Attic) the weekend before the event.  (For the record, when I went back to the attic myself a couple of months later, I was able to see the suitbag containing said dresses immediately, before I had even switched on the lights.  Definition of a 'man-look', anyone?)

Year 2:  12 year-old long black bias-cut silk Episode dress extracted from the afore-mentioned suitbag on the visit subsequent to the previous year's debacle.

I know.  Very poor performance, especially considering I was surrounded by Russians wearing creations from McQueen, Matthew Williamson, Missoni and the like.  However, I justified my lazy choices by telling myself that a) nobody there had seen me wearing those outfits before, b) my dresses were so old they were practically vintage and c) I could FIT INTO THEM (no small achievement given the two kids and more sedentary lifestyle I had had since their original purchase...)

However, this does not at all excuse:

Year 3:  12 year-old long black bias-cut silk Episode dress.   Again.  Yes.  I am that lazy woman.  Or more to the point, I am that woman who hates-hates-hates to go shopping, and who convinced herself that no-one would notice; the dress was long and black, like so many others.  Change the jewellery and it'll all be fine, right?

However, we are now at Year 4.  And luckily for my 12 year-old long black bias-cut silk Episode dress, which frankly deserves a bit of a lie down (as do I after typing all that out for the 3rd time), on my last day in London before heading back to Moscow, I just happened to be walking past John Lewis on Oxford Street, and just happened to pop in to pick up a tube of moisturiser, whereupon I just happened to be sucked up the escalator to the first floor, and then just happened to be magnetically pulled into the section with long evening dresses.  And then, well I just happened to find myself enamoured of all the silk and satin and pretty colours and reasonable prices and - oh, you can guess the rest.

Reader, I married one.  Or rather, I tried on 5, and just happened to buy one.

And no, I'm not going to describe this one because it's gorgeous and mine all mine (quite apart from the fact that you can buy it on their website... However, since there are 219 dresses shown on the 'Occasion Dresses' page of the John Lewis website, I figure I've got a pretty good chance you won't guess which it is...), so now all I need to do for the rapidly approaching Year 4 event, is a) find a pair of matching shoes, b) ensure I can still fit into the dress in a few weeks' time and c) to avoid the possibility someone else might also turn up in the same dress, not share the John Lewis website address with anyone in the meantime.

Oh.  Wait...


This was a sponsored post - but all opinions are my own, and I paid for the dress myself.

Memories

I was trawling through old posts on The Potty Diaries this afternoon, checking for links to this piece in the Saturday Telegraph 4 years ago so I could compare and contrast with this piece in last Saturday's Guardian.  Why?  Well, mainly so I could marvel at how much the blogging universe - or at least, the one I'm part of - has changed in the last five years.  Take a look at both pieces, if you have a moment, and you'll see what I mean.


But that's not the point of this post.  


The point of this post is that whilst I was fruitlessly searching the blog for a link to the Telegraph piece (thank god for online archives), I realised how much more I used to post about my children than I do now.  As they've grown older, the number of times they get mentioned on here has decreased; perhaps because I've become more conscious of their privacy, perhaps because my own world has expanded since I started blogging.  Probably it's due to a little of both.  But reading back through those old posts, two things struck me.  Firstly that actually, I like reading my own writing from back then.  It's funny.  Probably funnier than what I write now.  Almost certainly more honest - but that's a subject for another post.  And secondly, that - assuming I continue to save what I write in some fashion - this blog is providing one of the things I started it for; a record of those moments I would like to somehow bottle and hold onto from my children's lives.

So here, for my posterity, are two more to add to the memory box...


Boy #2 

We're trying to minimise the chances of summer learning loss - and perhaps even make some progress over the next few weeks - by working on Boy #2's reading skills over the holiday.  UK residents with children aged 4 - 6 years may be familiar with the epic adventures experienced by Biff, Chip and Kipper in the Oxford Reading Tree's series of phonics books, and today Boy #2 was - very slooooooooowly - working his way through one entitled 'The Mud Bath'.  In it, Dad falls flat on his face playing football, covers himself in mud, and goes home to take a bath.  Whilst running the bath, he is distracted by football on the television, settles down to watch it on the sofa and - well, you can guess the rest.

Boy #2 found this hilarious.  Although not quite as hilarious as I found his comment when the Dad - somewhat inevitably - sat down to make himself comfy on the sofa.

"He's just so, so, so, PREDICTABLE, Mama!"


Boy #1

Taking children to Amsterdam for the weekend is a great idea; there's lots for them to do and see, as I wrote about here.  However, one should never lose sight of the fact that for many people Amsterdam is empahatically not somewhere they would take the children, and that the city caters more than adequately for people who visit it for much more adult forms of entertainment than playgrounds and museums.

I won't dwell here on a close shave we had with some red-lit windows other than to say that I think I very possibly should qualify for a Quick Thinking Mother of the Year Award; "Look over there (on the opposite side of the street) boys!  Who can spot the tallest steeple on that building?" as we moved smartly past the ladies on show.  No, instead I wanted to share with you Boy #1's reaction to a rather questionable poster for a forthcoming festival near Amsterdam.  It featured a very ordinary-bodied woman in a bikini, with milkshake dripping suggestively down her front.  There was no avoiding these posters; they were everywhere, so Boy #1 noticed one, as I knew he would.

There was a sharp intake of breath.  Then, "That's inappropriate, Mum..."

This was a sponsored post

• • Sofas
  • Beds
  • Furniture
  • Tables
  • Furnishing Accessories

• Sofas

  Buying sofas can be daunting – it’s a major investment. John Lewis has the expert advice you need to feel comfy with your choice.

• Beds

  Want a good night’s sleep? Our beds are hand-made by the UK’s best craftsmen to help you get some decent shut-eye.

• Furniture

  The way you furnish your personal space should reflect you. Be inspired by our designer wallpaper and bedroom furniture.

• Tables

  A new coffee or dining table can refresh the look of any room. John Lewis has beautiful tables to help you make a style statement.

• Furnishing

  A stylish full length mirror and the right home lighting can really set the mood in a room, creating the illusion of space, adding warmth and even drama.
• Shop Online Today!
  

Blogging changed my life...

... no, really; it has.

I never thought it would, back when I started this lark in Summer 2007. I certainly never planned that it might. But last week's ice-dipping post prompted the following comment from the wonderful Iota:

'(and you really did it for the blog fodder, didn't you?!)'

Pshaw! I thought. How dare she suggest I would do such a cheap, populist thing. But I know that - as ever - she's right, at least in part. I mean, it's all very well to throw yourself into a pool of freezing, smelly, pond water with a girlfriend just for fun (doesn't everyone do that to celebrate a birthday? No?), but it's another thing entirely to do it and then to be able to write about it. That makes it a lot more attractive to a sick and twisted blogging individual such as myself...

And then at lunch on Sunday with some friends, as they recoiled in horror at news of my ice dip and questioned my sanity in doing it, someone (OK, Husband, the sweet man) pointed out that there are a whole load of things that I have done that I may not have if I hadn't known I would have the chance to write about them afterward. Meeting complete strangers off a bus from Cardiff with the intention of spending an afternoon with them, for one example. Going to a gay club and watching a bloggy mate from across the pond perform her 90's hit for a crowd of adoring fans, for another. Going to the launch of the John Lewis Christmas range - on a hot day in July. Spending a morning road-testing a Dyson vacuum cleaner (you know how to live; rock and roll PM, rock and roll...).

And the big one; moving to Russia. OK, that would probably have happened anyway, but I was certainly a lot more sanguine about making the move knowing that I could write about it and reinvent it, making it funny if it proved not to be...

And this is just for starters; I know if I went back through the 800 or so posts on The Potty Diaries one by one, I would discover a lot more examples of my behaving in an uncharacteristically confident and gung-ho fashion just because I knew I would be able to show off about it to my online mates afterwards...

(Because if I'm honest, there is just a teensy bit of showing off involved when I do these things. I know. Such a surprise!)

Right now, for example, encouraged by the same friend who persuaded me to jump into a frozen lake last week, I'm even considering the madness that is running the Lake Baikal half marathon next March. You know; the one that takes place in minus 15degC, on ice, and which this year had the contestants running the first 15k's through 6 inches of fresh snow in their hobnailed running shoes. The one which has to be completed in 3 hours, or the race organisers pick you up to make sure you don't freeze to death.

I won't do it, of course; I'm the world's worst runner. Well. I probably won't.

But just imagine the blog-fodder if I did.

What about you? If you blog, are there things you've done just because you knew it would make good blog fodder?

John Lewis; sheepskin-lined bovver boots and dresses worth die(t)ing for...

I'm not a natural shopper. It's a big effort for me to go out and spend on stuff that I don't need yesterday (other than on clothes for the Boys, where for some reason money trickles through my fingers like water...). I suspect this is based on some deep-seated subconscious memory of there not being a lot of cash to spare whilst growing up (credit cards? What were they?) and painful shopping trips with my mum, looking for clothes for me and where we had vastly differing expectations of the outcome...

I'm not one to hold a grudge, you understand, but to give you an example there was that time she had one idea about what I was going to wear to the 3rd year end of term party (involving taffeta and burgundy), and I had another (involving funky knickerbockers, high heeled boots and a tinsel-threaded scarf, with possibly a glittery band worn Adam Ant-style around my forehead). No need to say who won, I suspect - but I remember the slippery feel of that taffeta to this day...

One of the few shops that seems to escape this unconscious embargo however, and which I am happy to wander around in is Peter Jones, the John Lewis flagship store on the Kings Road. For some reason it seems to be one of the few places where I can almost always find what I need, so when JL offered bloggers the chance to get a preview of their Autumn/Winter Christmas range last Thursday I jumped at it.

Can I just say now that it's a good thing I'm spending most of my time in Russia at the moment? Otherwise I think most of my disposable income would be headed straight for the JL Partners pockets. In the kitchenware department I saw an ingenious soup maker that also blends and crushes ice (Cuisinart, £139), a bread maker that also bakes cakes and makes jam (John Lewis, £60), a cup-cake maker that resembles nothing so much as breville sandwich toaster in the way that it works, and a speaker system that streams from it's own console or alternatively from your i-phone, internet or for all I know, the kitchen sink (Sonos S5, £349).

Then the nice people giving the tour took us down to where the fashion buyers had assembled a limited range of the gorgeous numbers they'll be selling this winter, where I had dark and lustful thoughts about Barbours with English Eccentric linings, a Celia Birtwell dress that looked like it could stylishly disguise the evidence of any pre-Christmas mince-pie excess (£80), and any number of pieces in their Russian Military range (but especially the sheepskin lined Dr Martens which sound awful but aren't, and which would be PERFECT for the snow and ice of the school run in down-town Moscow in January...)

And that's not all. There was a new line by Mint Velvet, some gorgeous 'lounging about' lingerie (which of course has no place in my life but I can dream, can't I?), and lots of reasonably priced evening wear that would even be worth die(t)ing for. Not to mention the 'casual sparkle' pieces to spice up JL's Rebel Rebel themed line which should probably be worn by fresh-faced teenagers and 20-somethings, but which definitely will appear in the wardrobes of some 40+ ladies who should know better (myself included), and a pair of Henry Holland-designed JL tights which feature Big Ben as a motif. (I am a London girl at heart, after all).

And then - and then - they took us to the home-wares section where bloggers from across the land made plans to acquire an Allegra bedspread which was a thing of great beauty (at £60), various pieces of gorgeous Ercol furniture, and a skinny artificial Christmas tree to show-case some Nordic themed tree-decorations.

I would love to have some fantastic photos or footage of all this stuff, but whilst I didn't lie when I told the lovely ladies at reception that I do know how to use the Flip Mino camera they so kindly gave me on my arrival, it turns out - on viewing what I did film - that I'm not actually very good at recording anything worth seeing. Instead I've lifted this photo off it as the best I can offer, which whilst it isn't moving pictures is at least a good illustration of how easy it is to get high quality stills off the hd movies that the Flip takes. Sorry JL - I'm sure that's not at all what you had in mind when you handed it over...

Oh well; maybe by next year I'll have learnt how to use it. And look at the pretty colours!

Anyone for Tennis?

I've had an exhausting day. Not because I spent 3 hours alongside some other bloggers in the company of the lovely people at John Lewis as they showed us their Christmas range, which by the way was fabulous, and some of the clothes were even worth die(t)ing for (see what I did there? I'm not an ancient blogger for nothing, you know...). Nor because I followed that up with a trip on the London Eye with Boys #1 and #2 and Mother-in-Law. And not even because today I wore far-too-high wedges that whilst they are perfectly comfortable in the 'standing still and looking tall' department, are a little precarious and require some concentration when it comes to the 'walking down-hill in the rain on the way to the tube first thing in the morning' department.

No, I'm knackered because after we got back home, Boy#1 and I had a game of 'Boy#2 Tennis'.

Boy #1, you see, has been inspired by Wimbledon. Now, personally I'm not a tennis player. Actually, that's something of an understatement; I am SO bad at it that at school the sports teachers used to walk past the court I was attempting to play on, sadly shaking their heads. So you can imagine how delighted I was when my older son insisted we dig out my mother-in-law's state of the art tennis kit (2 plastic bats and a number of plastic balls sent over the wall by the adjacent school) and play so he could pretend to be a Wimbledon champion.

As expected, my son did not take to the game like a duck to water. The look of confusion on his face when he realised that this is a game that takes just a little practice took me right back to our school playing fields circa 1979 when I made the same discovery. However, the day was saved and any looming tantrums were cut off by Boy #2 happening upon us, and deciding that whilst he might not want to play himself, he was damned well going to be in charge of those of us who did.

He appointed himself Umpire, and installed himself on a deckchair to one side of our 3 metre wide court, but not before he had set the game up the way he wanted it. The rules? Well, they changed slightly from the ones you might know. We had no net, so instead a line of plastic skittles was set up across the middle of the court. Then, Boy #1 and I were informed that the new aim of the game was to hit the skittles and knock them over rather than to hit over the top of them. Points were to be awarded based on the number of skittles knocked over, and whoever had accumulated the most points by the end of the game (or bath-time, whichever came first) was to be the winner.

But this was not all, oh no...

No; before each and every ball was hit (because let's be honest, managing to return a serve that is meant to skim along the grass and knock the skittles over is highly unlikely), we had to wait for permission from the umpire. To grant that, the Umpire had to stomp to the middle of the court, count to 5 (or 4, or 6, depending on how he felt or how high he could remember), and then blow a short blast on an old wooden recorder as loudly as he could. Then - and only then - were Boy #1 or I allowed to hit the ball. Failure to wait for permission could result in general huffiness, some shouting, and a threat to knock the skittles over himself before being placated and starting the whole process all over again.

Sounds awful, doesn't it?

Dear Internet, I enjoyed this game of 'Boy #2 Tennis' more than any other game of normal tennis that I've ever played in my life.

Have they finally broken me, do you think?