Tag Archives: lifestyle

Cocoon’d in Madeira

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Eyes down for a full house! We’re on a pensioners’ vacation in Madeira.

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When I mentioned I’d booked an Easter break to Madeira, I couldn’t find a single soul who had holidayed here. Friends’ reactions varied from polite curiosity, open-jawed incredulity, and the no-holds barred, ‘WTF? Isn’t that where all the old biddies go?’

To be fair, the reviews for our hotel read a little something like this… ‘Having just recovered from a heart attack, a trip to the Cliff Bay was just the tonic…’ and ‘Cliff Bay was the perfect place to celebrate our Golden Wedding Anniversary…’.

Great, I thought, there’ll be no rowdy horse-play around the pool, no blaring bar music and the ageing residents – me included – will be tucked up in bed by 10pm. It sounded like my kind of holiday.

The husband was also wholly underwhelmed by news of the impending excursion.

To be fair, I did book it on a whim while he was busy lording it up – P Diddy style – on a ‘business’ trip to Miami, in what is purported to be the city’s trendiest hotel (the Fontain Bleu, for those interested). To a Miami socialite, Madeira is a bit of a step down.

In a final attempt to prove Madeira wasn’t just for the over 60s, I Wikipediaed the capital Funchal, where we were staying.

One statement stood out above the rest: ‘Madeira has drawn ailing visitors since the 19th Century. Many were so ill that they never made it home; they are buried in Funchal’s unassuming British cemetery.’

Jesus.

So it was with some misgivings that the husband and I boarded the flight to Funchal. As we suspected, there was a sea of grey heads stretching as far as the eye could see.

The flight itself was a very civilised affair. Large queues for the toilets admittedly, but lots of friendly, smiling elders (and not a lager lout in sight).

And when the captain announced that there was no charge for the trolleys at the airport, there was a collective ripple of approval from the silver-haired masses.

It was a seamless glide through baggage collection and a pleasant taxi ride to our hotel. Madeira was as pretty as you’d imagine: terracotta-roofed villas dotted the lush green landscape and as the taxi wove down the steep hills, the Atlantic sparked alluringly in the distance.

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We decided to take an evening stroll along the promenade. Due to its influx of the more mature visitor, the island had an unhurried and relaxed feel to it – a stark contrast to our usual frenetic lives.

As we trundled past many golden oldies with their walking sticks, we spotted a man unzipping the bottom portion of his trousers to turn them into shorts. I privately thought this was quite an ingenious idea.

‘If I ever wear shorts with zip off leg bits or open-toed sandals with or without socks, shoot me on the spot,’ said the husband.

‘One day, we’ll be old too,’ I mused.

‘We will,’ the husband agreed. ‘But I still won’t ever wear open-toed sandals. I will retain my keen aesthetic eye.’

Back at the hotel room, I weighed up our rather large bed.

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At first glance, it appeared to be a super king – in fact bigger than super king (uber king?!) But on closer inspection, I realised it was in fact two large single beds, each with their own separate sheets.

This meant an end to the husband hogging the duvet, digs from stray limbs in the night, or in-your-ear snoring… Here was the future of slumber. And I liked it.

Next door to our hotel, perched atop the hillside was the grand dame itself, Reid’s Palace – former holiday residence of Winston Churchill, no less. Visiting it for drinks one evening, I instantly fell in love.

Black and white photographs adorned the grand tiled entrance and the cocktail lounge was straight out of Mad Men. There was even a bridge room!

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The clientele were nearly as old as the walls themselves: all Panama hats and cream suits, sipping Martinis with shaky hands, while haughty waiters circled officiously. It was timeless elegance and OTT pomposity at its finest. I felt like I’d stepped back into the 50s.

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Romanticism aside, there’s another advantage to being on a senior citizen’s break: no need to rise at the crack of dawn to seize a sunbed (see last year’s Battle Of The Sun Beds in Croatia).

The elderly, it seems (with the exception of the occasional sun-baked wrinkly) prefer to seek shade, rather than bask in the Portuguese sun. By midday, there was still a bountiful supply of available loungers. The gym was virtually empty too.

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I lay on my sunbed for a couple of hours. There wasn’t a soul around. I started to get bored.

I missed people-watching; the occasional booming bronze-bellied buffoon to chuckle at (see The Ghost of Holidays Past)… Hell, I even missed the race to secure the most coveted sun-lounger.

I was on a Saga holiday and I wanted a saga.

‘It’s too quiet,’ I groaned, prodding the husband with my big toe.

The husband merely gave a sanctimonious smile, popped his headphones in, and closed his eyes.

He was only one step away from a pair of open-toed sandals.

She’s Got A Ticket To Ride

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I took a trip back home on Thursday to spend the day with my mum. I miss hanging out with her and enjoying her everyday idiosyncrasies. She’s a lot of fun.

Isn’t it funny how you still refer to the family homestead as ‘home’? Even though I haven’t lived at my parents’ home for 16 years and they’ve since moved house from our childhood domicile, I still have their number programmed in my phone as ‘Home’. I suppose it always will be home to me.

Pulling up on the driveway, I ventured round to the back garden to find 67-year-old mother slide-tackling her grandson in a competitive game of football. When I said I was spending the day with my mum, I actually meant my mother and her little partner in crime aka my four-year-old nephew Max. As my mum loves to say, there’s no show without Punch.

‘You’re back!’ cried my mother, clutching hold of the garden bench to regain her breath. ‘We’re just having a quick kick around.’

My mother is the most virile 67-year-old you’ll meet. Having never learnt to drive (despite a top qualification in backseat driving), she still cycles everywhere on her trusty bicycle; her day is just one long list of energetic escapades.

In fact, nephew Max complained to my sister that after a day with my mother, he is absolutely exhausted. His favourite phrase at bed time is, ‘I’m so tired. Nanny’s worn me out – again!’

Inside the house, my father’s original inflatable boat ‘Chrismick’ was laid on the floor of the kitchen, sad and deflated.

‘Your dad’s been trying to pump it up but it keeps going down,’ said my mother. (I hope she was referring to the boat!). The parents seem oblivious to the fact that they bought the dinghy in 1976 and it would struggle to stay afloat in a swimming pool, let alone the sea. Even Max looked sceptical.

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Despite replacing it with Chrismick II in the early 90s (more on that here), my father seems unable to discard his original Chrismick (pictured in its heyday below), preferring to carry on adding more and more puncture patches, in the hope it will once again make a glorious return to sail the River Fowey (and stalk Dawn French).

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Over lunch, I made enquiries as to the welfare of my mother’s best friend Val. Every other Friday, Val and my mother head out to the local bingo hall (they’ve been meeting on alternate Fridays for the last 40 years). Unbelievably, they manage to play two hours of bingo without spending a penny.

I’ve never really got to the bottom of how this is possible but I think it is something to do with bingo hall offering free games of bingo, thinking that they will make money on drinks at the bar.

However, they’ve clearly underestimated my frugal mother, who doesn’t drink and gets by on glasses of tap water. Sometimes, they actually win at bingo so end up coming back in profit. This is my mum and Val having a boogie at my wedding (Val on left; mother on right).

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The trips to bingo have been a little few and far between recently after a terrible incident befell Val on her annual holiday to Benidorm. On the second day of the holiday, her husband Laurence took a tumble and took all the skin off his shin. He had to have a skin graft and was admitted to hospital for week.

During Val’s visit, a patient in the bed next to Laurence asked if Val would be so kind as to lift his suitcase down from the cupboard above. Unfortunately for Val, this particular patient appeared to be harbouring several slabs of concrete in his case. As Val struggled under its immense weight, her kind deed ended up giving her a hernia!

Poor Val was instantly admitted to hospital herself and found herself laid up in the hospital bed next to her husband. She went from hospital visitor to fellow patient within an hour. It was the holiday from hell.

Val now does all the driving in the family, my mother went on. But for inexplicable reasons, she is only able to turn left in the vehicle, being too fearful of right turns. This means that every journey she takes has to be meticulously planned so that the car only travels in an anti-clockwise direction.

In other news, the days of riding the Blackpool tram using a pensioner’s bus pass have come to a sad end. My mother, father and Uncle Stephen (pictured) used to regularly ride along the promenade for free, using their bus pass.

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They weren’t the only ones; scores of grey-haired pensioners would clamber aboard and ride up and down all day at tax payer’s expense. At the end stop, they were forced to alight the tram for 10 minutes for the driver to take a toilet break, where they would stand grumbling and shivering until the tram re-opened in order for them to repeat the journey all over again.

Naturally, Uncle Stephen drove up to Blackpool the day before the new ‘no bus passes’ rule came into force, and went up and down a few times on his own: one final free hurrah.

After watching one episode too many of Homes Under The Hammer, my family have recently invested in a bungalow and is in the process of doing it up. My mother was keen to show me how it was coming along.

We pulled up outside and my mother and Max tiptoed out of the car in an exaggerated fashion, like two pantomime characters.

‘What are you doing?’ I hissed.

‘Trying not to alert the neighbour that we’re here,’ said my mother in hushed tones. ‘She’s a bit S.I.M.P.L.E.’

Max nodded sagely, in agreement.

As I’ve mentioned before, the number of simple people my mother encounters on a weekly basis is disproportionately high.

‘What do you mean?’ I whispered back.

‘She not quite all there,’ said my mother, reciting another of her favourite phrases. ‘She keep asking me if I’m a farmer!”

Driving home from the bungalow, we hit rush hour traffic and I suddenly realised I was going to be late to meet my friend at Starbucks.

My mother foraged feverishly in her pocket. ‘Don’t worry,’ she cried triumphantly. ‘I’ve got my bus pass!’

‘Just drop us off here and they you can get to Stardrops!’ she continued, leaping out of the car.

‘Stardrops is what you use to clean the carpet with!’ I called out of the window. ‘It’s STARBUCKS!’

But she didn’t hear me; she was already marching purposefully in the direction of the bus stop, Max trotting obediently at her side.

With a free bus pass in her hand and an open road ahead, it was anybody’s guess where she might end up.

Poo Diddy

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It’s 3pm on Sunday and as we drive past a car garage, the husband decides on a whim he might want to buy a new sports car. 

This is classic behaviour for a man who has just reached 35 years of age, I think. So, for now, I am going to play along.

We enter the Porsche garage and the husband immediately sets about sizing up the car he’s after. I’m not sure what car it is exactly but it has the word ‘turbo’ in its title.

My limited experience of luxury car garages is that unless you arrive in a chauffeur-driven Bentley, wearing shades and lots of bling, you largely get ignored.

When the husband wanted to buy his last car three years ago, he walked into Leeds Audi to hand over the readies – and simply couldn’t get anyone to serve him.

This happened on two occasions and eventually we were forced to drive to Wakefield Audi, where there was no end of car salesmen queuing up to help us. Unfortunately, the one we ended up with was called Julian and had recently recovered from a nervous breakdown.

Here’s what we learnt about Julian: he has a phobia of tomatoes and instantly shakes and vomits at the sight of them; he can’t stop biting his nails; he appeared to know nothing about the cars he’s attempting to sell.

In fact, Julian was so useless that for some unfathomable reason, he forgot to input any of the husband’s optional extras onto the computer system so that the regional manager of Audi actually had to phone through to the production line in Germany to sort Julian’s mess out.

Still, we grew very fond of Julian and talk of him often. The husband is still planning on sending him an anonymous crate of tomatoes in the post as a thank you.

Back at the Porsche garage, in true form we stand around for about half an hour, patiently waiting for someone to see us. Eventually, the manager disappears into the back room and re-emerges with the most hapless salesman he can lay his hands on. This new simpleton goes by the name of Vinnie and is a thinner, more pudding-brained version of Vinnie Jones.

Inevitably, Vinnie has only just started working at Porsche and knows nothing about the model the husband is interested in.

‘He’s another Julian!’ I whisper. ‘It’s a code red. Evacuate! Evacuate!’

We say goodbye to Vinnie and climb back into the car. The husband concludes that although he likes the Porsche, he thinks he still likes his current car more, even though it is exceedingly dirty.

We arrive at the gym and I hand the keys over to the guys at the car wash.

An hour later, we exit the gym. Now that it has been washed and is gleaming again, the husband decides that he still loves his old car.

Having the car washed is the best £5 we’ve spent this year.

Still, I decide to surprise the husband with new number plate. This may be a foolish move, as the husband doesn’t like showy personalised number plates.

After a lot of delicate negotiating on the phone with a man called Dean (Mean Dean!), I finally close a deal on a plate with the husband’s initials.

There’s a reason I call him P Diddy and it’s not just his love of shower puffs.

1 PDD arrives in the post two weeks later. I proudly unwrap it and present it to the husband.

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He squints at it for a while. ‘From a distance, I think it looks like 1 POO,’ he says.

I narrow my eyes.

‘I know what you mean,’ I said.

‘In fact, it looks more like ‘I POO’, he adds.

‘It’s not that bad,’ I said. ‘After all, everyone DOES poo.

‘I POO, you poo… we all poo.’

‘I’m going to be driving around in a car that announces to the world I POO,’ says the husband, shaking his head.

‘Oh dear,’ I say.

Right Plaice, Wrong Face

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It’s Friday and I’m anxiously awaiting a delivery of a rubber fish.

I need a rubber fish as a prop for my annual school musical production (along with a giant hotdog, a super-sized pair of knickers and – amongst other mad things – a pantomime cow).

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About this time every year, I expend a lot of energy trying to teach 10 year olds how to act – and failing badly.

By day, I sit in my director’s chair haranguing hapless children and bellowing clichés such as, ‘This acting is as flat as a pancake!’ and, ‘Don’t tell the floor; tell the audience!’

By night, I scour Amazon for more props and hare around the thrift stores of Leeds, haggling over battered suitcases and old-fashioned typewriters.

In the final weeks leading up to the play, I sigh a lot in the staff room; I puff out my cheeks in an exasperated fashion and tell other teachers, ‘I’m VERY worried about the play. None of them seem to know their lines and there’s only TWO WEEKS TO GO!’

Secretly, I love it.

The phone rings. It’s the Amazon delivery man with my parcel containing the rubber fish. I’m actually sat in Starbucks, having recently eschewed my usual haunt of Caffé Nero.

This is because Porridge-loving Pensioner (who I found out today is 85 years old!) keeps coming over and grabbing hold of my cheeks saying, ‘You need to get some sun’. He’s done this on three separate occasions now and I’m starting to get scared.

That, coupled with the unwanted attentions of a host of other strange retirees, has led me to the relatively safe anonymity of Starbucks up the road.

‘I’m on my way to your apartment,’ said the Amazon delivery man. ‘I’ll be there in half hour and I’ll phone you back when I get to Chapel Allerton.’

Half an hour passes and the phone rings.

‘Do you watch Emmerdale?’ cries the Amazon delivery man.

‘Er, no…’ I said.

‘Well, you’re never going to believe who I just delivered a parcel too… Debbie Dingle!’ he went on. ‘She lives on the next road to you.’

This Amazon delivery guy sounds like A LOT of fun, I thought.

‘Where are you right now?’ I said.

‘Pulled up outside the Nag’s Head pub,’ he replied.

‘Wait there,’ I said. ‘And I’ll come to you; I’ll be there in three minutes.’

(I had an important appointment with a nail technician around the corner; I thought this would save me time).

As I drove to meet him, I thought, ‘I never knew that a minor celebrity was living round the corner from me.

‘I don’t know who Debbie Dingle is but she could be my NBF. We could meet for coffees in Caffé Nero and share acting tips.’

I decided I would try to elicit Debbie Dingle’s address from the Amazon delivery man.

Minutes later, I pulled up alongside him and gave a beaming wave.

He wound down his window. ‘I.D please,’ he said.

I handed over several bank cards.

He shook his head. ‘No can do. I’m going to need some photo identification.’

‘Really?’ I said.

‘Yep. You could be anyone off the street,’ he said.

‘Well I’m hardly anyone off the street,’ I said. ‘All the clues point to the fact that I am Katy Palmer. I’m driving around with her credit cards, her mobile phone and her car.

‘You could be anyone,’ he repeated, the joviality of earlier having evaporated completely.

‘The only way I couldn’t be Katy Palmer, is if I had kidnapped her and stolen her identity, which seems a little extreme given that in the parcel you are holding is a RUBBER FISH.’

‘A rubber fish?’ he said, sceptically.

‘Yes. It’s a prop for my musical production,’ I said, rather grandly.

‘I don’t care if you’re taking delivery of the crown jewels,’ he said. ‘I ain’t handing anything over without photo I.D.’

‘BUT YOU PHONED ME!’ I wailed.

‘I.D,’ he repeated again.

‘Right!’ I stomped back to my car, crunched the gears into action, and set off at speed to my apartment, the overly-officious parcel man following me in his van.

I made a great show of pulling up, slamming the door, and striding into the apartment. Re-appearing on the street, I held my passport aloft in an exaggerated Sergeant Major manner.

He stared at it for an infuriating amount of time, cross checking it with my name.

‘Just admit this is slightly silly,’ I said.

‘It is not silly,’ he said.

‘Just concede that red tape has taken over from basic common sense,’ I said. ‘You know deep down that I couldn’t be anyone else other than Katy Palmer.’

‘I will not concede that,’ he said.

‘Just concede 10 per cent then,’ I said. ‘Give me a NUGGET!’

‘No,’ he said, stubbornly.

Satisfied with my particulars, he handed over the parcel and hoisted himself back into his van with a shake of his head.

I leapt back in my own car but not before ripping the parcel open, wrenching the rubber fish out of its plastic packaging, and hastily holding it up at the passenger window – wild-eyed – mouthing ‘SEE!’

For a split second, our eyes locked through our car windows. He stared back at me like I was a Truly Crazy Person before roaring off into the night, leaving me clutching my sad-looking seabass.

It was only then that I realised I’d forgotten to ask him for the address of Debbie Dingle.

New Kid On The Blog No More

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Happy 1st Birthday to the blog.

That’s one whole year of whimsical witterings, narcissistic natterings, and very first world woes. Thank you for suffering through it.

Here’s what I’ve learnt about blogging:

1. People read the blog but never, ever comment.

I seriously thought no-one read my blog apart from two friends and my sister. Then, I kept meeting up with random people who would say, ‘I like your blog by the way’. Apparently, some of the husband’s work colleagues read it too (much to his alarm). When you’re writing to a largely silent audience, you would just never know.

So, without wanting to write a gushing Gwynnie-style Oscar speech, thank you to the small band of people who do like, share and comment on a frequent basis. It really is appreciated.

2. Friends live in fear of me blogging about them.

My friend’s husband – a loveable hybrid of a harried Hugh Grant and a bumbling Mr Bean – is a walking calamity, frequently getting himself into sticky situations and social awkwardities. As a result, he lives in a perpetual state of fear that I’m going to blog about him.

He should be worried.

I mean why wouldn’t I want to write about the time he leapt up from the seat in our local bar and got a lampshade stuck on his head?

Or the time he came bounding out of his house – arm outstretched – to meet The Husband for the first time, hollering: ‘Great to meet you Phil, I’ve heard SO much about you,’ (The husband’s name isn’t Phil).

Or just the other Saturday, when I was conversing with him in Caffe Nero, he absent-mindedly STOLE another man’s £10 note off the counter, popped it in his wallet and ambled off with his cappuccino.

3. People actually want to be written about.

Contrary to point 2, people do actually love a name check. My friend Anna (actress/ psychologist/ Jacqueline-of-all-trades) said, ‘If I’m not in the blog by Christmas, something’s gone awry.’

Shortly after, she clambered up on to the bar, started dancing, and then set her hair alight with a nearby candle.

Another zany friend Abi – owner of the boisterous dog, a yacht that she impulsive purchased in St Tropez, and many other loveable qualities (terrible tardiness not being one of them) – also longs for a starring role. Given the amount of material I have on her, I think she should be worried.

Here’s a taster: This Saturday, Abi was hungover, tired, and faced with the prospect of cooking dinner for five people. So she did the only sensible thing: throw money at the problem.

Following a trip to Marks and Spencer’s – in which she somehow managed to part with £106 – she threw all of her vacuum-packed purchases into ceramic pots to give it a homemade feel, and passed it off to her dinner guests as her own three-course culinary concoction.

4. The blog evolves over time.

My Family And Other Oddities (inspired by Gerald Durrell’s famous novel of a similar name) began as a little way of charting my parents’ quirks and foibles, which I found so endearing I believed they deserved a platform of their own.

Over time, this kind of progressed to little stories about other eccentricities, including our nosy neighbours, strangers in the coffee shop, yours truly, and, of course, the long-suffering husband – poking fun at our largely middle class lifestyles.

Last week, I made an impulsive decision to change the name of my blog. I happened to be ordering my usual latte, when One Shot Extra Hot sprang to mind.

On a whim, I emailed the helpful people at WordPress and before I could say one-shot-extra-hot-no-foam-soya latte, they’d transferred the whole site to its frothy new name.

Things seemed to be going well until I was faced by a host of technical issues: lots of images hadn’t made it across in the transfer; my tiny fan base (Hi Ted!) couldn’t get the link to the latest post via their email; and all my old links were broken.

Things might not have been so bad, had I not have met up with friends Anna and Sam that very evening, who took one look at my new blog name and said curiously:

‘One’s Hot, Extra Hot?!’ (note the apostrophe).

Yep, depending on how you viewed my new URL oneshotextrahot, it could be read as either:

a: the way the author orders her coffee.

or

b: a posh mentalist proclaiming how ‘hot’ she is/ the Queen having a hot flush.

I hastily emailed WordPress back, who managed to switch it all back again (thank god!). My Family And Other Oddities is currently back in business.

I’m still thinking of new names… Cheese At Fourpence (a proper Lancashire saying) is a favourite. It means to be left standing awkwardly, as in ‘I felt like cheese at fourpence’. Lancashire folk actually do say it as well (my mother included). I like it.

5. People don’t like what you write.

Blogging about everyday stuff and escapades of your nearest and dearest invariably leads to upsetting the odd friend or two. I’m still living in fear of our busybody neighbours-at-large SuDick getting wind of my posts.

And who could forget Barry Scott the man who turned his shower power spray on me? ‘I’ve never read such vacuous, self-indulgent nonsense in all my life,’ he wrote.

I thought I was a pithy Carrie Bradshaw but it turns out I’m more of a loathsome Liz Jones.

I had a little read back through my posts. Old Cillit Bang Barry has got a point. The blog is frivolous, vainglorious and any other self-seeking synonym you want to throw my way.

But I hope a healthy dollop of self-irony still makes it through.

To quote another of my mother’s favourite phrases: you can’t please all of the people all of the time.

I suppose if you don’t like what I write, there is a simple solution: just don’t read it.

(But please let me know if you do!)

In The Shade Of The Palms

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I seem to have developed an obsession with palm trees. It kind of crept up on me. I’m not even sure I actually like palm trees. All I know about them is that they’re prickly, high maintenance and only thrive in warm climates. A bit like me really.

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My passion for palm trees developed purely because of my surname. When I was younger, I got called Palms or Palmtree. It kind of stuck.

At Sheffield University, I had a weekly horoscope column in the uni newspaper called ‘Mystic Palms’. It involved a really bad picture of me staring vacantly into a mock crystal ball. I had to come up with 12 different forecasts, as pithy and humorous as possible. Every single week. And I didn’t even get paid to do it.

In the university bar, fellow students would occasionally peer curiously at me and say, ‘Are you that weird Mystic Meg character from the uni paper?’ It didn’t do much for my street cred.

When I was 19 years old, I did some work experience at a media company in Manchester (this sounds a lot grander that it actually was; the reality being that I had to spend a whole week writing articles about gnarly feet for a podiatry website). At the end of the week, the man in charge actually wrote out a cheque for my expenses to ‘Katy Palmtree’, believing my email moniker to be my actual name. I thought this was very funny.

To my knowledge, no one has the surname Palmtree. But there are a few genuine people called Palms knocking around.

I was approached by one such person in Harrogate, resplendent in a cream suit and a man-from-Del-Monte hat – the kind of get-up you’d expect from someone who goes by the name of Mr Palms.

‘My name is Ted Palms,’ he said, shaking my hand. ‘And I wondered if you would be interested in selling me your number plate.’ (My number plate is P4LMS).

‘I’ve only just acquired it,’ I said.

But Ted Palms wouldn’t be palmed off that easily.

‘What’s your surname?’ he asked, suspiciously.

‘It’s Palm-er,’ I stuttered.

Our eyes locked in a competitive Palm-off. He was probably thinking, ‘I’m a bona fide Palms; I deserve this number plate more.’

‘But lots of my friends call me Palms,’ I hastily added.

Ted Palms shuffled off, not before pressing an embossed business card in my, er, palm – if I should ever change my mind.

And then there’s the clothes. Palm tree top? Tick. Palm tree skirt? Tick.

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Palm tree dress? Tick. Tick.

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Palm tree shoes? Not quite.

In the first throes of love, the husband was only too happy to embrace my love of palm trees, purchasing said number plate, and then – on the eve of our wedding – procuring a little palm tree pendant from Tiffany’s (cheese alert).

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These trendy palm tree slipper shoes, as endorsed by Alexa Chung no less, were on my Christmas wish list too.

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The husband, whose interest in all things palm-based has begun to wane, took one look at them and said, ‘Do you actually like these shoes, or is it simply the fact that they’ve got palm trees on them?’

‘It’s simply the fact they’ve got palm trees on,’ I said, in a small voice.

Santa never brought the shoes.

Things came to a head in Topshop Oxford Circus this Saturday, where I found myself wrestling with a two-piece palm tree suit. It looked ridiculous.

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That afternoon, I had two missed phone calls from Someone Important. Someone Important was terribly baffled because she was greeted by a recorded answerphone message of my 21-year-old self saying: ‘You’re through to Palmtree Productions. Please leave a message.’

She was convinced she’d mistakenly stumbled across some Miami-based TV studios. It took a lot of explaining.

I’m afraid there is no such thing as Palmtree Productions. I’ve had vague intentions of removing this silly message for the last 13 years – usually after a call from Someone Important – but then promptly forget.

‘You need to remove that answerphone message,’ said the husband. ‘It’s really, really embarrassing.’

I told my friend Anna about my intention to purchase the shoes with palm trees on.

‘Be careful,’ she said. ‘A woman I know once decided she liked hippos.

‘She’s now basically drowning in chintzy china hippos. Her house is cluttered with them. Soon, she might start looking like a hippo too.

‘If you’re not careful, people will start buying you ceramic palm tree ornaments,’ she went on. ‘You’ll end up being known as that weird woman with the peculiar obsession with palm trees.’

I’m not sure I want to end up as a mad old woman head-to-toe in palm leaves and surrounded by porcelain palm trees.

I think it’s time to say goodbye to Palms.

The Duke of Wellington

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Thought Hunters were the daddies of the welly world? Me too.

But allow me to introduce you to Aigle: the king of rubber footwear.

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These bad-ass boots, handcrafted in France, turn everything you thought you knew about wellingtons (rubbery and er, green) on its head. I first heard whisperings about them in the last year or two (although they’ve been around since 1853).

But it wasn’t until the husband entered the market for a pair of new wellies this winter, that I knew there was only one brand I was going to turn too.

(Quick ‘foot’note here: Aigle are arguably usurped by French brand Le Chameau – the absolute crème de la crème for those in the know. But at £200+ a pop, you have to basically be Prince Charles to own a pair.)

Naturally, procuring a pair of Aigles wasn’t as straightforward as simply popping down to the local shoe shop (is it ever?). I won’t go into details but let’s just say it involved much internet research and a train ride to London. Excessive, I know.

I finally settled on a pair of Aigle’s ISO Parcours 2. With their neoprene surface, special ankle-hugging contours and anti-fatigue insulation, these water-repellant bad boys laugh in the face of puddles and sneer at cold toes.

The husband was a little sceptical about his new wellies at first. Like the electric toothbrush, I had to convince him that these really were WELLIES FOR LIFE.

But as soon as he’d paced around the lounge a few times, he deemed them incredibly comfortable and very warm (in fact there’s even been internet rumours of them being TOO warm. First world problem alert).

Today’s walk from Addingham to Ilkley was the perfect day to try them out: the first sunny day after two months of torrential rain.

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If you’ve never been to Ilkley, I urge you to get in your car and head there immediately. It’s an attractive market town nestled in the Yorkshire Dales. There’s a Betty’s tea room, independent book shops and an air of English finery about the place. It’s little wonder that is was recently dubbed the happiest place to live in the UK.

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We sat and ate a M&S sandwich on a bench outside Betty’s (the only downside to donning wellies for a muddy walk is that they don’t quite cut the mustard in posh tea rooms). Still, we love park benches (and there wasn’t a Pizza Hut pizza in sight!).

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If there’s one criticism, Ilkley is trifle twee and a bit middle class. Heck, even the buskers appear to be straight out of the local grammar school.

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Addingham is Ilkley’s little sister further up the River Wharfe: all bubbling brooks, cutesy cottages and waddling ducks.

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The village is also home to the husband’s favourite-ever house: a Georgian beast of beauty that he believes he will one day retire to.

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Anyway, before I digress into one of those smug ‘lifestyle’ blogs rambling on about bracing country walks and Gywnnie-style organic juices, let’s get back to the boots.

The husband bloomin loved them. He sloshed through sludgy mud, sploshed in bulging becks, and splashed in over-sized puddles.

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As more and more walkers passed us in their hoi-polloi Hunters (moi included), he felt like the Duke of Wellington.

And then the inevitable happened.

Striding towards him – looking every inch the country squire in his flat cap and black Labrador trotting obediently at his heels – was a man, wearing… an identical pair of brown Aigle boots.

As he passed, the husband locked eyes competitively. They exchanged a knowing look.

‘He has your boots on!’ I whispered.

‘I know,’ said the husband. ‘And he knew that I knew he had!’

‘But did he know that you knew that he knew that you knew?’ I said.

‘That makes no sense whatsoever,’ said the husband.

Back in Addingham, the duke lingered longingly over the gate of his favourite house.

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He might be the duke of wellingtons…

But he wasn’t quite the lord of Addingham.

La Dolce Vita

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It’s Friday night and the husband arrives home from work.

‘Are we going to the Thai?’ he says.

The local Thai has become a Friday night fixture. We go so often now that the woman who runs it has begun to giggle inanely when we set foot in the door. She foists free mango sorbet upon us, and throws in the occasional basket of complimentary prawn crackers. We’ve taken to bowing to her with our hands clasped as we leave.

‘We could go for a civilised meal at the Thai,’ I said.

‘Or… we could roam down to our local grubby Pizza Hut, snap up a £5 pizza each on their ‘Special 5′ deal, and eat it on a park bench.’

‘Pizza on a park bench!’ says hubby.

We’ve developed a new hobby of eating pizzas on park benches, walls – and even one of those yellow grit bins at the end of the road. It’s a lot of fun. Go and try it. There’s something reassuringly back to basics about shivering on street corners, chomping your way through a pizza that you’ve managed to procure for a mere fiver.

If it takes off, it could even be developed as some form of middle-class therapy: kind of reconnecting with your youth. And I suppose you could go the whole hog and wash it down with a bottle of Diamond White while you’re at it.

After a couple of drinks at the bar up the road (the giant dog was in situ again. It was Friday night after all; he’s almost a regular now), we wandered down to Pizza Hut to collect our pepperoni feasts.

We were greeted by a portly man of dubious hygiene, who grunted and then disappeared into the back to forage for our pizzas. He looked like Mr Twit.

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Our local Pizza Hut is basically a shed attached to the end of a row of shops, largely staffed by scruffy-looking students. It looks absolutely filthy and is probably over-run with rodents gnawing on left-over pizza crusts in the backyard. But when the pizzas only cost £5, you shouldn’t bite the hand that feeds you.

We wandered up the road, sat on a yellow grit bin and started working our way through the two medium-sized feasts.

‘I think I’m going to have half here and then half back at home,’ I said.

‘It’s an interesting strategy,’ said the husband. ‘My only fear is that it will be too cold by the time you get home.’

‘Not if you close the lid in between each slice and contain the warmth,’ I said.

As we greedily chomped away, two police officers came strolling towards us.

‘Evening, officer,’ said the husband, in a terribly British voice.

‘Evening, officer,’ I chirped.

The policeman and policewoman didn’t return our greeting, choosing to stare at us curiously instead.

I don’t know what is about encountering a couple of bobbies on the beat that turns one into an extra from Midsomer Murders. When I see a police officer, I immediately transform into a blustering buffoon, convinced that I’ve got something to hide.

As the police officers eyed us suspiciously, I had to fight the urge to say, ‘There’s nothing to see here officers: just me and my double pepperoni pizza. We don’t want any trouble!’

The police officers moved on and we ambled home.

‘Did you know that Philip Seymour Hoffman was found with 70 bags of heroin in his apartment? 70 bags! ‘ mused the husband.

‘It’s very sad,’ I said.

‘I think he might have been my favourite actor in the last 20 years,’ added the husband.

‘Really?!’ I said. ‘In all the years I’ve known you, I’ve never heard you so much as utter the words Phillip Seymour Hoffman, let alone proclaim he’s your favourite-ever actor!’

‘If was found dead in an apartment, I’d probably be surrounded by 50 empty boxes of double pepperoni pizza,’ said the husband, sadly.

Back at the ranch, the husband chewed thoughtfully.

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‘Do you think that Pizza Hut tell people about the ‘Special 5′ deal or do you think they allow people to just stumble in and blindly order a medium-sized pizza for £9.95, knowing that they could get it for £5?’ pondered the husband.

‘I’ve no idea,’ I said. ‘But next Friday, let’s give it a go. We’ll go in pretending we don’t know about the deal and see what happens. And if hairy man keeps us in the dark about the deal, we’ll reveal all.’

‘Next Friday is Valentine’s Day,’ said the husband.

‘Even better!’ I said.

Exercising My Patience

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It’s 6.30pm on a dismal Monday night and I’m circling the car park at the gym trying to find somewhere to park. Problem is, there is nowhere to park. Out of 250 parking bays, not a single one is free.

This is because the gym has become overrun by sanctimonious gym-goers, hellbent on toning up their blamangey bottoms after an extended period of grave overindulgence and gluttony (me included!). By March, this madness will be over. But for now, the chaos continues.

In the end, I parked in the only free parking bay left: a ‘mother and baby’ space, while glancing anxiously around, should a wild-haired earth mom appear out of the bushes to berate me. I figured nobody would be bringing their baby to the gym at this late hour. But post-Christmas, anything is possible.

I’ve always thought that the gym attracts some of stranger members of society. But January brings with it a whole new species of treadmill-pounding peculiarities.

First up, it’s the teenagers. The place is overrun with them. There they are… clogging up the running machines in their Superdry togs: chatting, flirting, giggling and typing on their iPhones – basically doing anything except actually breaking into a sweat.

A teenager on the cross-trainer next to me yesterday – all glossy hair and Sweaty Betty attire – clambered on board and started slowly moving up and down on Level 1. Level 1, for those of you who have yet to make the acquaintance with a cross-trainer, basically involves as much exertion as passing wind.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m all for healthy habits at a young age but seriously what are they all doing here? Shouldn’t they be swigging bottles of Kiwi-flavoured 20-20 on a park bench somewhere?! The idea of running on a cross-trainer, aged 14, wouldn’t have even crossed my mind. 

Teenagers aside, I’ve begun to develop an irrational irritation for one particular woman who is constantly hogging one of the special cross-trainers that I like to go on (there’s only two of them in the whole gym). This grey-haired, bespectacled being seems to spend half her life slowly moving up and down on it. 6.30am in the morning, she’s there. 6.30pm in the evening, she’s still there. I even went at 8pm the other night and she was STILL there.

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The dotty old dear wears a knitted jumper and spends hours playing solitaire on the cross-trainer’s built-in computer screen, peddling away in an infuriatingly slow manner (Level 1, no doubt). No sane person would come to the gym simply to play solitaire – or wear a knitted jumper on a cross-trainer, for that matter.

I’ve begun to scowl at her and make a ‘harrumphing’ sound as I pass. She hasn’t registered this (too engrossed in Solitaire) but it makes me feel slightly better.

Further infuriation can be found in the swimming pool, where a whole clutch of glacially-slow swimmers seem to have descended in the mornings, feebly traversing the pool like gormless goldfish – doing breast stroke and extending their delicate necks so as not to get their hair wet (anyone who attempts to go swimming without getting their hair wet is, in my eyes, ridiculous. Sorry mum).

They are seemingly oblivious to the unwritten etiquette of the pool. ie. Don’t clog up the fast lane; don’t meander across the pool in front of those coming up behind you; and – above all – DON’T TREAT SWIMMING AT THE GYM LIKE A LEISURELY DIP IN SPAIN.

And then there’s the gross changing room habits: people who patrol up and down completely naked with absolutely no modicum of modesty whatsoever. Granted, I’m a total prude but there’s no way I’d casually wander around the changing rooms starkers.

Boys, shield your eyes now, but I once witnessed one of these nudists nonchalantly lift up one leg and insert something, ahem, intimate in an intimate place – in full view of everyone.

And only yesterday morning, there was another naked woman, one leg extended up on the counter, proudly exposing her front bottom to the world, as she feverishly dried her toes – with a hairdryer.

At the gym, it seems, there is no decorum left.