It’s a been a few weeks, I’ve been having a lovely time. But I forgot to write anything down, which is ridiculous considering I am very time rich. Free time, I have in bucket loads.
A few nice things happened that have cheered my soul. We’ve been on a few adventures, which always makes me happy.
Plus another really good thing is Marks and Spencer have taken stoma wear mainstream, high street, normal!
Which is fabulous, because stomas are the new normal for a lot of people.
They are now selling stoma knickers, along side their other products.
I don’t happen to wear stoma knickers, I like thongs, because I don’t like the feel of big knicks, but I appreciate I’m probably in the minority on this, and more than anything, I love that something which can be considered different and negative, is being thought about and normalised, anything along that line can only be a good thing.
I’ve seen a few stoma influencers giving them a try and have heard nothing but positives feedback about them.
So if you are looking for some stoma undies they might be worth a try.
There are over 200, 000 stoma users in the UK. It would be fabulous if we could normalise having one, in all aspects of life. For example, Madrid airport has a sign on their disabled toilets that say they are stoma friendly, and I really think just simple things like that could and would make a huge difference to people with stomas lives.
I’ve had people try and loo shame me for being abled bodied and coming out of a disabled toilet.
Luckily I am very gobby and bold, I have simply flashed my bag at them and told them to go **** themselves, because it’s none of their business why I need to use the bathroom quickly.
But why should any of us with a stoma put up with such negativity and ignorance?
I totally understand that it can be very distressing to be interrogated by someone about toilet access. I have myself felt awkward about using them, feeling like I have to explain my situation ~ I don’t of course, but that’s not how you feel in that moment.
Actually, it’s not just stoma users who get this sort of treatment. I have a friend with MS and she’s been questioned about using the disabled bathroom before. And a friend who has a child with cerebral palsy has been questioned too.
It’s almost like people should mind their own business and stop getting involved.
In a similar vein, I’ve heard from some friends that at times ‘support group’ members treat life like a misery olympics ~ the ‘well it’s alright for you, I’m so much iller’ brigade ~ I believe that disabled toilet use seems to bring that energy out in people too.
It would be so nice if we all try and be a bit more tolerant and respectful of everyone and their needs, that would be the dream.
A bit of inclusivity on the signage would be a great start. And bringing stoma underwear to high street stores is definitely going to open up conversations about what a stoma is, because unbelievably some adult humans have never heard of them before, which is really shocking.
I had heard of them before there was even any smidgen of a hint that I’d ever need one. Although I will be completely honest, I didn’t know much about them, how they worked etc, but I had at least heard of them.
Someone messaged me on Instagram the other day, they sent a screenshot of me in my bikini with my bag on show and bluntly asked “Is that a purse?”
A purse? I felt this wasn’t a question with good intentions. So I explained what it was, told him to grow up and Google it.
He responded that how was he meant to know what it was, because he was an engineering student, not a medical one.
I will always answer questions about my life and stoma ~ genuine, sincere, questions, from a good place.
This person was being deliberately ignorant, I believe he wanted me to feel embarrassed about it, which isn’t going to happen is it!? I’m standing there in all my glory with my bag on show, I hardly think I’m the ideal candidate to be harassed about having a colostomy.
But there are a lot of people who genuinely don’t know what a stoma is, and have never heard of them.
That’s why I think having stoma knickers hanging next to the “normal” knickers can only be a good thing. Firstly it provides easily accessible underwear for those who like big supportive stoma knickers, and secondly it might open up awareness about stomas in general.
More of that please!
What have I been doing and wearing?
Top and trousers from Ralph Lauren, Shoes from Hermes
Since losing some weight I have found that my stoma is flowing more freely in general. Although it’s still prone to constipation at times.
I think the weight loss from my tummy has eased the burden on my two hernias. Which is greatly appreciated.
But as I eat a lot of fibre it can at times flare up a little bit, but certainly nothing like it was.
With flare ups in mind I’ve been choosing some loose fit outfits. Preparing for any possible event.
I still want to look smart (and attempt stylish) but I really don’t want the hernia pain roaring back into life.
Top from Ralph Lauren, Trousers from M&S, Shoes from Hermes
Dress from Jigsaw, Shoes from LK Bennett
Dress from The White Company. Shoes from Dior
I know it’s very unlike me to actually consciously think about preventing problems. I’m not usually so considered.
But I really think going to the sunflower field yoga has given me a bit of a pep up.
I feel so energised after it, which is a new one on me.
But I’m actually getting loads of things done on my little life admin to do list. And all I can put it down to is the outdoor yoga.
I went along again, and met up with someone who I’d only known via instagram before, so that was really lovely to see the live action version of a social media friend.
Social media does have its dark side, I accept that, even though I get very little interaction with horrors, but I really truly believe it has more good than bad in it.
Meeting people from there in real life being one of them.
We had such a nice time at the yoga. And then went off a coffee and a chat after, which was lovely.
I came home from it feeling energised and ready to start dejunking the house. Which always feels good.
Then along came the weekend with a new adventure to be had.
A few weeks ago Chris just randomly said “We’re going to Jersey!”.
To which I replied “Oh smashing? Happy to, why?”.
…he responded “why not”…and to be honest that’s all I ever think too, why not?
But what was very funny is he booked us to go business class!! For what we thought was only an hour and 5 minutes flight. Which was funny enough to start with, but it actually only took 34 minutes to get there…and we had an inflight meal provided! 😂
Bread roll, main course and dessert.
They pretty much serve it as you are still going up, and collect it back from you a few minutes later on the way down.
It’s a ridiculously quick flight, which Chris got for an absolute bargain price, hence the random trip to Jersey.
If you fancy a trip to a Channel Island it’s definitely worth looking out for bargain prices on all the airlines.
I spoke to someone who had flown there a while back for £18 return on EasyJet from Southend airport.
What’s Jersey like?
Very pretty, very safe, very clean. Spotless in fact. Very small.
(their rivers and sea is very clean, because their previous government hadn’t let water companies discharge raw sewage into the waters for 14 years. It’s amazing how clean a place can be if you care for it properly).
It’s absolutely minuscule, it’s only 9 long miles by 5 miles, so it’s tiny.
It’s three times smaller than the Isle of Wight, and I find that tiny enough to make me feel claustrophobic.
So being able to see the entire island as we approached it by air made me feel a bit odd to be completely honest.
It is small but perfectly formed. I couldn’t live there, but it was worth a visit for a long weekend.
It must be how people from Texas or anywhere massive feels arriving in the UK. :)
Top from Ralph Lauren, Trousers from M&S, Bag from Goyard, Shoes from Hermes.
The hotel was okay, but I wouldn’t book it again. Although the location was perfect for getting about the island.
We stayed in St Helier, which is the main town. And it has the best transport system of any country I’ve ever been to.
So we didn’t hire a car, we went everywhere by bus…yes, me, on a bus 😂.
In fairness I would use public transport everywhere here if it was as reliable, as regular and as cheap as Jersey buses!
I hate driving, so it would suit me perfectly. It just isn’t possible where I live because my closest bus and train are on an hourly service, like we’re living in the 1800s or something.
We explored a lot. Jersey has some of the best beaches in the world. We visited a few and were blown away by them. And Chris hates beaches, but even he was impressed.
I’m not exactly sure what you’d do if the weather was bad, but we were spoilt with gloriously scorching weather.
We hopped on this little boat/bus for a trip over to Elizabeth Island, which was a fun trip. It’s an amphibious vehicle, so it runs all day, whether the tide is in or out you can get it to go across.
There is a causeway to walk over at low tide though if you don’t fancy the ferry.
It’s a very nice place to go. There’s actually accommodation on the little island that’s completely cut off and isolated once the staff go home at night. I think it would be great fun to stay there!
It’s definitely worth a visit to the little island off of a little island. We walked over the causeway at low tide the next day too.
From amphibious vehicle, straight on to the bus, to St. Brelade’s beach. Someone I got chatting to there recommended it.
It was absolutely stunning! With loads of great restaurants too!
We went to the Oyster Box, and the food was amazing, with great views of the beach.
I had the best salad of my life here.
So without knowing it, Chris booked us in on the busiest weekend of the Jersey season - it was Battle of flowers, where all the parishes of the island compete for best floral arrangement.
No, obviously we’d never heard of it either. But it’s a flower festival on floats that they display in a parade. Usually it’s only in the day time, but they’d added a night time display this year and added lights to all the floats and dancers.
Chris booked us tickets to see the night time show. It was absolutely beautiful.
Then the next day we woke up to yet more glorious weather.
I very much love a sea view.
Dress from Burberry, Shoes from LV.
We headed off on the bus to Jersey Zoo.
Chris and I have a very deep love of Gerald Durrell, and Corfu. We’re watching the TV series The Durrell’s, with Keely Hawes on Netflix for the third time. I would definitely recommend it if you’ve not seen it before, or even if you have it’s worth watching again.
Anyway, Gerald Durrell not only wrote wonderful books, he created a zoo on Jersey where he specialised in conservation.
It’s a fabulous little place, with the best orang-utan enclosure I’ve ever seen, which I really thought was going to be the highlight of the trip, until we entered the bat enclosure.
Now that ladies and gentlemen is a show stopper, and a heart stopper. I’m not a big bat fan, we have a little one that flies round here at night that I call Benny, but he’s tiny, and quite sweet from a distance.
The bats in the enclosure at Jersey zoo are the size of cats. And there were loads of them, and the enclosure is like a warehouse of them!
I’ve never seen anything so eerily captivating in my life. I thought I’d be scared and freaked out, but actually it was fascinating.
The zoo is worth a visit if you are in the area. I’ve spoken to 5 different people who have been to Jersey who have never been to the zoo. I’m not sure what they were doing while they were there, but it’s definitely worth a visit.
There are some old war tunnels to look at, but it’s not my cup of tea, mainly because they weren’t built by us for our defence, they were built by the Germans.
We visited Stutthof, the former concentration camp in Poland on one of our visits, still utterly haunted by it to this day, it’s harrowing, and unsurprisingly it has completely put me off anything Nazi related.
(The War Tunnels are only one of many fortifications that the Germans built on Jersey. In order to build the tunnels, a huge workforce was needed, and this was supplied by the Organisation Todt. More than 5,000 slave labourers were brought over to Jersey - Russians, Poles, Frenchmen and Spaniards).
I prefer more positive vibes.
One of the best things about Jersey is their cows, and their milk.
I have become addicted to the milk and I’ve had about a pint of it a day for about 4 months (unfortunately for me I have a brain type that can get addicted to anything, and over the years I have been, so gold top milk is probably the least problematic one).
It is very delicious, and it’s easier to digest than normal cow’s milk (have a google, I can’t remember the facts about it, but it’s very good for you (allergies permitting)).
They are rightly very proud of their milk in Jersey.
This was all that was in the fridge in our hotel room, and I’ve got to be honest, I was not disappointed. :)
This was on the table at breakfast :)
This beauty can be found in St Helier town, in Liberation Square. I would highly recommend.
Had to be done, seeing as we’d walked so far in the heat all day.
We then headed back over to Elizabeth Island, by foot this time.
Then headed to the airport.
We would have taken the bus to the airport, but there were still a lot of road closures due to the flower festival, so we got a taxi.
It was such a fun weekend away. I’d really recommend a trip to Jersey, even though I’m unlikely to go back.
Small, but beautiful. And very safe and very clean. Can’t ask for more than that.
And only 35 minutes away!
Dress from Aubin and Wills, Shoes from Hobbs. Both about 15 years old, but I felt like they deserved a trip out of the wardrobe.
Sam, Milly and Zak flew back from our house in Spain, and stayed a little longer with us so Zak could play with my friend Kim’s twins.
The children had tried to arrange a play date when we went to the polo just before they went off on holiday.
As the girls were coming for lunch I asked Zak if he’d like to create his own table scape for them.
I assumed he’d say no thanks, but actually he was very keen and very into the idea. And this scape is all his own work. I was merely his intern who carried the bits for it in for him.
At first he thought he wanted a blue display, then once we looked through my 3 sheds of table scaping (one of my addictions) he decided on pink. Then he gave it some more thought and felt a nature theme would be best, with animals and plants and a brown tablecloth as the mud.
It’s absolutely stunning. And it makes me feel so happy to see it that I haven’t been able to dismantle it. So it looks like that’s a permanent fixture now! Hahaha
The children played so well together. The weather was hot, so they had a water fight in the garden.
Where Bel got so wet she was soaked through. Kim hadn’t brought any spare clothes with her, so I lent Bel one of my T shirts, which looked really good on her.
With my black T shirt as a dress, she was giving Holly Golightly vibes.
Especially when we came in away from the heat of the day, and they played with the jewellery shop I made a few years back.
They were playing so nicely that none of the adults in the house noticed how quiet the children were.
I then popped into the kitchen to find they had taken the little Indian play cookery set I bought in Mumbai and made it come alive with fun!
They’d added water (using my Klimchi glasses to get said water in, I nearly fainted when I saw them laying on a stone floor. Miraculously they survived the water play session though, so no harm done).
They had helped themselves to oats, salt, pepper and herbs, to make ‘recipes’. Hahahahah. They had a blast!
I’m a fully qualified NNEB nursery nurse, and I understand how important play is for making happy memories and learning about life.
I did ask them to refrain from using my good glassware in future, and perhaps ask if it’s okay to make potions in the kitchen…but as someone who has a long history of preferring to seek forgiveness rather than asking permission I couldn’t really comment too much. Hahahaha.
Probably best to remember that quiet children are probably up to something they shouldn’t be. 😂
Thankfully my lovely friend Sue helped with the post play clean up, which took a pretty long time, so I’m very grateful to her.
Once all the children had gone home Chris and I headed to Ben and Erin’s flat to try and cat proof the patio doors, as Titi doesn’t know that there is a four story drop if he were to jump over the balcony rail.
I bought some special cat mesh for windows, and hoping that it will do the trick. Open to ideas if anyone has any suggestions though.
Friday night we headed out for a curry at Mowgli in Chelmsford. Our friend Michael was home from Saudi Arabia where he works, so we got the gang together for a Curry Club reunion.
Which was so lovely.
Dress from a boutique about 15 years ago, Shoes from Manolo Blahnik, Bag from Valentino.
The company was of course wonderful, the food is really good…so much so Chris and I popped back in for lunch the next day too.
Dress from Me&Em, Shoes from Gina.
Curry is one of my favourite things to do, and one of the least problematic. :)
Then Sunday was a very special day. It was my baby son’s 26th birthday, for which I sent him a 25th birthday card for it…25, 26, who’s counting?!? I mean, really, who is counting because it clearly isn’t me! 😬
I decided on a different style for this outing. I had been in M&S a few days prior and I had seen these crazy (in my opinion) jeans, and I thought ‘wowzers! They’re wild!’
So I tried them on for a bit of a laugh, and found that to my absolute surprise, I really liked them on me.
I tried them on when I got home to show Chris, assuming he’d say “no! Take them back!”
…But he said “I don’t know how or why but I love them on you!”
So they stayed. And I wore them. And I really really like them. Even though they are a bit out there.
They are comfy, which is a bonus but not always an expectation or experience.
Ben chose a restaurant in Shoreditch (my least favourite part of London) but as it was his special day he got to choose. So we went to Manteca for lunch.
The food was delicious, it’s one of those nose to tail restaurants, as most European countries are.
It’s only Brits that get a bit squeamish about animal products, even though they all seem to like eating them.
Blouse and palazzo jeans from M&S, Shoes and Bag from Christian Dior.
A bird decided to shit on me as I sat here, so that was nice, apparently it’s good luck. Hahaha. The good luck bit being that I always carry stain removal wipes with me, so that was handy.
I don’t eat the meat ones, but what I did eat was delicious. And I wouldn’t be opposed to going again…hahah, praise indeed! ;)
It was such a lovely day. Spent with lovely people. One of whom is 26, not 25. :)
I think it’s clear that Chris and I dine out a lot, but we had to find the right balance to make it work for us.
We wanted to lose weight and still enjoy food, that part was very important to both of us.
I wanted something that was workable in the long term too. Because any weight loss you choose has to be forever or it won’t be long lasting, and I was fed up with the ups and downs.
So any form of drastic new fangled weight loss ideas wouldn’t suit us. Of course they can be very effective, but very expensive long term, and I’d rather spend the money on shoes.
We went back to basics, we now don’t eat anything ultra processed, and if we do eat something that has been through a process it has to be the highest fibre version; For example wholemeal pasta or brown rice.
If we have potatoes, we will eat them with the skin on.
We eat more protein and veg, and have a small portion of carbs, rather than no carbs at all (because it has to be sustainable for the long term, and we wouldn’t be able to maintain it if we gave up everything we love).
We eat a lot of fruit as the snacks, rather than try and fit fruit in as well as snacks.
Cut out ultra processed foods and most snacks disappear from the menu anyway.
Eating nuts and fruit as the snack becomes the new normal, and weirdly after a while you stop craving shit food. I’d have assumed it was the other way round, but most of the things I used to eat now turn my stomach.
I was the queen of a Greggs vegan sausage roll, but I haven’t had one since December 17th when we started eating healthily. I don’t yearn to have them either.
A few weeks ago I had a really upsetting day, I took myself off to Tesco to buy something to make me feel better…and came home with a punnet of strawberries!! This was new to me!
Plus I move more than I did. Once you start eating well everything else seems to fall into place.
Im no expert on weight loss or nutrition. But I’m learning how to eat well to nourish myself. Feeling good on the inside to make me feel good about the outside.
The most important thing is to appreciate what you have right now. And then build from there. Xx
Keep well. See you soon. Xx