My Delights

This weekend I read a wonderful article by the even more wonderful Dolly Alderton, one of my favourite journalists and, to be honest, girl crushes. I love everything she writes – I remember reading a quote by Joss Whedon once in which he said that he wishes he could ‘eat someone’s brain and steal their ideas’ – and that’s kind of how I feel about her, except to 'ideas' you could also add 'insane legs'.

But her latest piece was one of my favourites -  this beautiful list of all her delights in life. A lot of posts on my blog focus on this idea that happiness is found in the ordinary, but I’ve never been able to sum up as perfectly as Dolly how the beauty of life resides not in the extraordinary but in the everyday. I’m sure I still won’t be able to put it as well as she did, and you are perfectly welcome to click off and go and read her list instead (no, don't. She's already famous. Read mine).  

It’s quite long, I warn you. I’m quite a happy person. Sorry about that. But here we go anyway.

5 weird things about Instagram

 I love Instagram, I’m not even ashamed to admit it. (@Catscruse, FOLLOW ME, I take a lot of photos of white wine and sunsets and I love pink, okay that’s enough, shameless self promotion over.)

I always used Facebook mostly for sharing photographs, and then along came this entire site dedicated to just that, so I didn’t have to force my pretty avocado on toast upon unwilling family or friends or people I used to work with in 2005 anymore. And ignoring the part where you compare yourself to someone’s edit of a perfect life, and get obsessed with followers and cry over why someone else got 20281 likes on their photograph of an egg and your selfie only got 189, and oh my god I'm uglier than an egg, blah, blah, I think Instagram is mostly a nice thing. It’s fun, it’s pretty, and most people don’t believe it’s real. 

But okay, sometimes it’s a bit weird, isn’t it? Here are 5 of the weird things about Instagram that I’ve noticed. You've noticed them too, but if you've noticed more, feel free to leave them in the comments section below.

10 things to love about hen dos

A few weeks ago I went to a brilliant hen do.

We had a buffet and prosecco and played stupid games on the Friday night. A spa, including a hot lava shell massage (best. thing. EVER) on the Saturday, followed by cocktail making and a night out. Then waffles with bacon on the Sunday.

It was an absolutely textbook hen do, the type I feel now gets a really bad rep and I can't work out why. So if you've got a hen do coming up and you're dreading it right now, here's 10 things to get excited about... 

Beautiful bride, short stunted friend (me)

Why your girlfriends are the best kind of friends

I just came back from a hen do and was having a polite conversation about it with a colleague in the kitchen (you know: ‘How was your weekend?’ ‘Good…not long enough! You?’ and so on). When I mentioned I was on a hen do she screwed up her face and said,

‘Ugh, yeah, I dread those…I just get on so much better with men, you know?’

No. I don’t know. But I do know that this seems to be the cool thing to say these days. As if saying you don’t like hanging out with girls even though you are a girl makes you one of the lads – yeah, you’re basically Zoe Ball, you are, downing pints and playing pool surrounded by blokes, looking amazing even though you're just in denim jeans and a band t shirt - you’re so down to earth, you, and they’re all your mates but they're also all secretly in love with you because you’re just so awesome and attractive. What a narrative to tell yourself.