This isn’t the dress or cape pattern I got, but it’s cute. And similar. But not the same. The actual pattern remains a state secret.

My eldest is having her first holy communion in a few months.

When I had mine, I wore a mini bride dress. This was waaaay before My Big Fat Gypsy wedding. It wasn’t as voluminous as the dresses in MBFGW, but it was the 1970’s so it wasn’t a cool dress. I mean, I had a veil. And everything.

I do of course shudder when I think about it, although I try and focus on the positives, such as the green jam tarts we had at the ‘reception’.

My sister’s holy communion was held at one of the most beautiful and dramatic churches in the world (built on a mountain side, reached by funicular railway), in Italy, and had a lavish (to me) reception afterwards. I had mine at the school’s local church with a reception in the church hall.

The injustice, readers, has never left me. (1)

The very first thing I asked our priest, when my daughter enrolled on her holy communion classes was “does she have to dress as a child bride”. Because, frankly, I can’t be doing with all that.

Gloriously, the answer was no, she doesn’t.

Since every other little girl will probably be wearing white, or cream, I didn’t want to go too rad. I mean appropriateness and all that. I thought I’d go for a smart, white/cream dress. Except she didn’t have one, and the only ones you can buy are distinctly bridesmaid led. And expensive.

Recently, my mum had hauled out of the trunk that holds all of our childhood treasures one of my old tricot dresses, super simple, 1960’s (even though I wore it in the 1970’s). But it was red. My daughter looked amazing in it and I loved its simplicity.

I hoped she would fit into another old dress of mine, a cream crochet tunic. But it is too short. But it did give me an idea which is: super simple 1960’s dress. With a cape. Think Courrege. Space age, but without (possibly, cos I don’t think the priest will like that) the helmet.

Finding one of these off the peg is impossible. I know, I’ve tried and I’m pretty good at searching things out.

The only thing is to Make It. I was, after all, once seamstress to the Queen Mother. (2) And I do still have friends from that time. Well, one. Who makes spectacular clothes and has made spectacular clothes for my children. And has offered to help me. (3)

So I searched on line. And I found the perfect, perfect pattern. For a dress. And a cape. I mean: P.E.R.F.E.C.T. It was from a website called What I Found, in the US. I emailed the owner and said “can you send it to me here and if so how much”. I never expected an answer. But one came within five minutes. Fantastic service from someone called Tina.

The whole lot, plus postage, came to £8.70.

(1) Not really. I couldn’t care less. But I use it to torment my parents occasionally.
(2) I was, for one month, before I was fired for painting my nails over the Queen Mother’s chiffon. 
(3) This means she’ll make it.

Linseeds (aka flax seeds). From L-R: whole linseeds, ground up, in the water.

Growing up in an Italian family, especially with a southern Italian mother, toilet habits were discussed often, openly, and everywhere. You’d meet someone, and within minutes they’d be talking about how constipated they were. If you were sat eating, even better.

Thus it is that I am very private about such matters. I discuss them rarely.

So it is with some trepidation that I tell you about something that my excellent nutritionist of yore, Vicki Edgson told me about when I was pregnant with my first. When you’re pregnant, you can suffer really badly from constipation (I didn’t cos of this tip). What Vicki recommended is that you take some linseeds (which are the highest vegetable source of omega 3 essential fatty acids), grind them up (this makes them more bio-available) and put them in a glass of water – I use hot water, the ground up seeds sort of swell up to make almost like a gel. They don’t dissolve, getting them all down is a bit of an art and they’re pretty disgusting to take, I warn you. But persevere. It’s so worth it.

Do it first thing in the morning, glug it back and you don’t have to worry about it again for 24 hours. If you try to hide the seeds in bread, biscuits, salads, soups you’ll struggle to have as many as you need and you probably will end up not doing it (as well as taking in loads of extra calories that you may or may not need). Far better to just get it over with.

Linseeds are a bulker so they need to be taken with water (otherwise you may end up in pain!). I’d start with a teaspoon full and build up to a heaped teaspoon/half a tablespoon. You don’t have to be precise.

Now, if you suffer from constipation and don’t know why and you think you need to see a doctor, see a sodding doctor. I’m not one. But if you suffer occasionally, or find it hard to get enough fibre in your diet, this is a great, great trick. Plus you get a shot of omega 3s which ain’t no bad thing – my cracked heels have completely gone since doing this again (I stopped for ages as I got lazy).

Indoor play sand. In action.

Yesterday I found myself with three hours between appointments. So I did what any sane person finding themselves in Oxford Street would do. I went to Selfridges, the place of my birth (really, almost, plus my Holy Communion dress was made there by my aunt who used to work in alterations there).

After wondering around books, buying myself a miniature Lola cupcake (red velvet with cream cheese topping, £1.25, delicious), looking at the artisan food stuffs that are beautiful but ludicrously expensive, I found myself in the not-small magazine section.

The world of crafts is really big now isn’t it? There are sooo many magazines devoted to it. Most aren’t really my thing but there was one which had a bit of everything in it and in it there was a recipe for playsand (cept they called it something else, but I don’t remember what). It looked really easy (unlike everything else in those magazines that require old socks, broom  handles, glue, cut up gloves etc), so I tried it this morning.

You need:

Five measures of flour (methinks this is a good way to use up past sell-by-date flour)
One measures of baby oil

A bowl
A large, shallow plastic container, such as you see above. This you put the sand in to play.

You then mix the flour and baby oil together, kinda rub it together like crumble mixture. It’ll look all dry but when you squeeze it together it holds. So it’s brilliant for putting into containers and generally playing with.

My three year old has been playing with it for the past nearly-two hours. Then she found my Chanel lip gloss.

Okay. So it’s not actually a kettle and it doesn’t really cost £1000 exactly (it costs from £830 at the time of writing). But it grabbed your attention didn’t it?

It’s actually a Quooker boiling water tap which stores water in a 3L tank (you can get a 7L one but it costs much more, is much bigger and you don’t really need that, really you don’t in normal domestic circumstances) under the sink at 110C and delivers it at 100C – filtered. No more scummy tea. And it comes in a few different designs and finishes if you don’t like that one.

(God, look. I know I sound like an ad. This isn’t an ad. No-one has paid me to write this and I don’t give a toss if you buy one or not. The only reason I’m writing this is because when I was considering one, there were no really useful reviews and it’s an expensive thing. So anyone with any Qs, do ask away…)

So, anyway, I’d been thinking about getting one of these for ages. Partly because I was sick of leaky kettles or ones that just kept breaking down after two years. But the cost was really putting me off. And the people who already had one were evanfuckinggelical about their bloody Quookers, and that was putting me off.

Anyway, Quooker isn’t the only company that does these. Zip also does (Google them) but the tank that fits under the sink is hooge and they’re even more expensive. Advantage with the Zip is that you also get cold filtered water through them but we didn’t need this as we already have a Brita filter tap that delivers cold filtered water.

It’s a very high-end piece of kit. You can’t justify it in terms of cost of this vs not ever having to buy a kettle again, because you could buy several, several kettles for the price. The advantages are no more kettles or kettle leads, you take only the water you need (so it’s more economical than boiling a kettle when you only need one cup). No more boiling the kettle, forgetting you’ve boiled it and then having to reboil it. But again you can’t justify it in terms of electricity saving because the outlay is BIG. So I’m not going to. All I’m going to say is that we’ve had ours in use for about a year now and it’s fantastic. Our electricity bills have definitely gone down, but whether it’s due to that or not, I can’t say.

It delivers perfectly boiling, filtered water and yes, tea tastes better. No more waiting for the water to boil to make pasta, or anything. (Yeah yeah, I know it only takes minutes but still.) You can sterilise knives you’ve just used to cut raw meat, chopping boards, blanch veg etc. But all of these things you can do with a kettle.

It’s just that I don’t want to.

It has a safety device which is you have to hold the tap handle down and turn it at the same time (but once pushed in it stays on). It’s safer than a kettle in that if a child pulls a kettle on top of them, the entire contents will go on them. The Quooker delivers water at 0.05litres of a second. You still need to be careful with it however but in situ, it’s incredibly safe even if the idea of it isn’t.

Once it’s dispensed 3L of water it takes about 10 minutes to refill and reheat. I’ve never found this a pain. It stores the water in a 3L or 7L triple insulated tank. If I recall correctly, the heated up water doesn’t mix with the new cold water, i.e. you’re not constantly boiling up the whole tank every time you dispense some water and the tank tops up. We have a electricity monitor and I can see that, when not actively heating the water – i.e. just storing it, it doesn’t seem to use up any electricity.

There are various other hot water taps out there that cost not much at all, but they don’t dispense water at 100C, so they’re not boiling water taps.

If you’re having your kitchen refitted or just like the latest gadgets this is one to seriously consider. I love love love mine.

In the meantime, let me tell you a true story about a very famous designer having her Quooker fitted. So VFD leaves her assistant to deal with the Quooker engineer. Quooker engineer fits the Quooker and shows VFD’s assistant how to use it. “Oh no,” says VFD’s assistant, flapping the steam away, “VFD won’t like that, it steams”.

“That’s because,” says the Quooker engineer, “it’s a boiling water tap and water at 100C causes steam.”

“Oh no,” says VFD’s assistant “VFD won’t like that, can’t you do anything about the steam?”

Luckily, VFD loved the steam and the tap and had another fitted and everyone lived happily ever after.