CHRISTMAS GIFT GUIDE VOL. III: ME, ME, ME*

*Christmas and birthday combined Bumper Edition

Fans of Scottish indie superhero Edwyn Collins will remember how he suffered a massive brain haemorrhage in 2005, but they might not know that his miraculous recovery was aided by extensive art therapy, including a project where he sketched a bird a day. Liberty have taken these lovely illustrations and created a range of fabrics and homewares, and I would trade some of my much-loved Wedgwood for just one piece. This barn owl dinner plate is £23.50. I only need six of them. And one of the smaller cake plates for Violet, because, after all, the owl is her spirit animal.

The Mr Bright chair from John Lewis has been an obsession of mine for a couple of years now, and I have to sit in it every time I pass it. I wouldn’t even mind what colour I got it in, although mustard, rust, mint and claret are my favourites. It’s £899. One day.

These black ponyskin wedges are basically the fifth love of my life. Okay, the fact that the leather hasn’t been depilated doesn’t exactly make them practical for snowy days, but the tread means I at least wouldn’t slip. They are £180 from Kurt Geiger. I go into the shop and stroke them at least twice a week.

It’s practically unheard of for me to wear anything remotely colourful, but I could break the habit of a lifetime for the sake of owning this cashmere-mix scarf from the Yarnz collection at Liberty. It’s £125 and massive - 135cm x 126cm - so I would probably wear it as a lap blanket while knitting in front of the television. Multi-functional and ain’t I just SO zany and cute?!

FYI, Rose gold is back. You heard it here first. And you know how I know it’s back? I know this because I’m bringing it back. This Michael Kors watch is only £240, which is amazing. I also think the colour of the gold would make my fake tan look dreamy.

These beauties are from the Essie Luxeffects Glitzy Topcoats range and I have genuinely never seen a glitter nail polish quite like the rosy loveliness of A Cut Above. I can see it looking amazing on its own or layered. The silver version, Set In Stones, would look amazing layered over an opaque grey. So wintery. They’re only £10.50 each, and there’s a mix of circular and hexagonal glitter and irregular flakies in each one. 

I will own this Diana Mini Gold Edition. It’s £109 from Lomography.com which is pretty pricey compared to the Diana+, but the fact that it uses normal film makes the initial outlay understandable. That’s the problem with medium format cameras; the film is so expensive to buy and develop. My friend Richard has a Diana Mini and I couldn’t believe how small it was. It’s palm-sized! His one wasn’t gold though.

My birthday is on Tuesday, FYI.

Born this way,

Hetty

CHRISTMAS GIFT GUIDE VOL. II: YOUR MOTHER*

*or your Aunt/Grandmother/any other female

I absolutely adore these Anthropologie snowglobes. I’ve seen tutorials for similar things online before and it’s definitely something I’d like to try when my daughter is a bit older. I just know they are the sort of thing my mum would go crazy for. The mason jar is £32 and the adorable salt shaker is a cute twelve bucks.

I am so over the whole china teacup/chintzy look and there’s nothing delicate about this two-tier tin cake stand, with it’s bold colour and folky owl pattern. Obviously, we’ve seen these Scandinavian style motifs before, but not with such a modern colour palette. It’s only £28.95 from The Contemporary Home at Not On The High Street.

Everyone loves a cosy-smelling candle at winter-time. I can’t imagine Christmas without candles creating atmosphere and they are always so evocative of childhood festivities. This diptyque Winter Coffret is £60 and the candles smell of wood smoke, pine and spices. I also love the Jo Malone Deluxe Roasted Chestnut Candle, which at £80 is slightly more expensive, but is the ultimate Christmas smell. Chestnuts, caramel, cedarwood and spices. Dreamy.

My mum doesn’t collect Crown Derby birds, because, as everybody knows, collecting ornaments (particularly wildlife-related ones) is the first sign of insanity. She does have a couple though (the robin and the wren) and I think she’d be overjoyed for either the Chaffinch or the Blue Tit to complete the triad. I would only choose garden birds for her; as a kitchen-window ornithologist, I think she’d be weirded out if I presented her with a barn owl, or a kingfisher. It just wouldn’t make sense. The chaffinch (down to £60 because it’s retiring) and the blue tit (£92) are two over-indulged, regular visitors to her bird table.

This Wedgwood Christmas bauble is just beautiful and is definite heirloom material. It’s £25 from John Lewis and would make such a special, memorable gift.

Born to be wild,

Hetty

CHRISTMAS GIFT GUIDE VOL. I: Your Girlfriend*

*or, in my case, my bestie and sisters

Penhaligon’s is one of my favourite perfume brands. You really feel like you are getting something extra special when you buy one of their perfumes. The signature bottles are beautifully simple, and the labels all feature gorgeous illustrations. Violetta is obviously a favourite of mine, but I also recommend Artemesia for its hauntingly musky jasmine, spice, amber and vanilla notes, and Ellenisia for its magical blend of tuberose (the olfactory aphrodisiac), vanilla and sugared plums. Both are £95 for 100ml EDP, but if you plan ahead, you can tailor your choice to the recipient of this gift by getting them to complete Penhaligon’s Online Fragrance Profiling. 

I can’t think of one girl I know who hasn’t asked Santa for Lady Gaga x Terry Richardson. It’s out now, and I had to stop myself from demolishing it in Waterstones yesterday. I don’t do delayed gratification very well, but I am waiting until Christmas Day. Everyone loves a coffee-table book, so I’m sure I won’t be the only member of the clan at chez Bavidge-Longmuir who’ll be dying to peruse it. 

I adore this! It’s from the Yarnz collection at Liberty and at £125, not over-priced for 132cm x 126cm of 50% wool 50% cashmere Karl Lagerfeld cosiness. The backwards C is such a good touch, and I didn’t even notice it at first.

WOW. Deborah Lippman, QUEEN OF GLITTER. Of the four new polishes released for the festive period, my favourites are the super chunky gold glitter of Shake Your Groove Thing (perfection, save for the cringe-y name) and Stairway To Heaven. They are kind of like next-generation versions of Boom Boom Pow and Glitter In The Air. They’re $18 each direct from the DL online store but will probably be £14-18 when House of Fraser gets them in.

Cute vintage luggage and briefcases are something I want to get in to collecting (I have two - does that constitute a collection yet?) and this miniature Liberty suitcase in the iconic Hera print would be such a beautiful addition to any girl’s dressing room. Wow, I have such delusions! At only £65 though, it’s totally reasonable and would satisfy me until I can afford monogrammed Louis.

Born to be wild,

Hetty

Parenting: How I Do It

I have just unfollowed a bunch of parenting blogs, because they were pious and preachy. In an era where 60% of UK mothers work, it bothers me when bored stay-at-home housewives take to the blogging platforms to wax lyrical about their godlike children and idyllic lives as “full-time mums”. Full-time mothers. Such an oxymoron. I study full-time, and I work part-time, and I’m a full-time mum. I’m not a part-time mother just because I do other things.

Women are under immense pressure to keep up with the demands of having a family whether they work or not, so I’m not saying that stay-at-home mothers have it easy. I personally found the housebound stage of having a child to be boring, monotonous and lonely. That’s why I cringe a little when I read articles by women who seem to think that contrary to all evidence, they are “doing a better job” than those who work, study, use childcare or choose not to define themselves solely as a mother by pursuing their own interests and ambitions alongside raising their children.

Working before your children reach school age is not a moral issue. It’s a choice you make based on your income, availability, boredom threshold and drive to achieve the dreams you dreamt before your parenting dream came true. I feel exactly the same way about breast feeding. If you have the time and the inclination to do it, then that’s great. If not, there are alternatives that won’t be detrimental to your child in any way, and nothing is more beneficial to a baby than a calm, happy mother.

Obviously, I’m not going to provide links to the worst offenders, but I have seen posts on Tumblr and Blogspot where the agenda-pushing has been tantamount to Parenting Nazism. It seems that the three things you need to become a parenting expert are a child, a desktop PC and a Mumsnet account. Even worse than the insensitive lambasting of women who work/don’t breastfeed/don’t believe their children are the Second Coming, are the comments below the posts themselves. The vitriol that spews forth from these cackling fishwives is shameful, and proof, if proof were needed, that the life of a stay-at-home mum is boring, monotonous and lonely.

So, as I have a child, a laptop and a blog, I feel more than qualified to compose my own list of “Parenting Suggestions”. Feel free to disagree with me, but this is just how I am doing it.

Rule #1 aka The Golden Rule:

All children want is to feel safe and secure, and to have stuff to do. It’s very simple. From toddlerhood right up until the late teens, nothing makes a child act up more than boredom. The urge to learn, explore and create is inate, so a stimulated child is a happy one. There’s no need to spend a lot of money or create elaborate games for toddlers and there’s no room for snobbery when it comes to keeping them entertained. My daughter is never happier than when she’s got a pile of blank paper and a pot of brightly coloured crayons. Of course, colouring in and drawing has helped to tune her fine motor skills, but that’s not what it’s about: it’s about keeping her busy and stimulated, and clapping my hands when she presents me with her mad scribblings.

Rule #2:

Young children are born helpers. Not only do little tasks keep them busy (see above), but making them do their bit ensures they learn negotiation skills and gives them a sense of pride and achievement. From the moment she could walk, my daughter has helped load the washing machine and tidy her toys away. Of course, sometimes she’s not interested and that’s fine, but 9 times out of 10, she relishes being the one that gets to put the last book on the bookshelf or, even better, press the start button on the tumble dryer.

Rule #3:

Let your child watch television. I’m going to say something controversial here. The television is a great babysitter. Of course, I’m not talking about shackling them to the idiot box to the point of neglect, but children’s TV, in small doses, is absolutely invaluable. I’m sure I owe a lot of my daughter’s huge vocabulary to carefully selected educational television programmes. Admittedly, I’d need a strait-jacket if I wanted Violet to sit still through a whole episode of one of her favourite shows, but I know that if Show Me Show Me comes on, I have half an hour where she’ll keep one eye on the television and I can do the dishes, or clean the bathroom. While I was keeping her safe from the chemicals in bathroom cleaner, she was being kept company by friendly characters and learning to count to ten at the age of 19 months.

Rule #4:

Give your child into trouble. They won’t hate you. You don’t even have to feel guilty, although you probably will. When my daughter does something bad (hang on, am I allowed to use that word? Mumsnet says I’ll give her a complex!), I come down to her eye-level, hold her hands, and tell her in a firm voice that what she did was naughty and why. For example: “You DON’T throw Mummy’s phone. That’s naughty. You will break it.” Of course, I get the big bottom lip, and she throws her arms around me, but the long-term upshot of the momentary guilt is that I have a child who I can take virtually anywhere and know she’ll behave as well as a 21-month-old toddler can. Respect and boundaries are so important, more important than any fear you might have of turning them against you. As long as you let them know they are safe and loved, the chances of them rejecting you are slim. If you let them please themselves 100% of the time, the chances of them growing up a brat are high.

Rule #5:

“Talk to your daughter before the beauty industry does”

Rule #6:

You don’t own your children. You are merely a custodian. Everyone has hopes and aspirations for their children, but it’s so important to remember that you are guiding them for a fraction of their lives. Obviously, I want Violet to have opportunities I never had, but I can’t impose my agenda or expectations on her. I can only steer her in the right direction, and accept that she will make her own decisions. She is her own person, and not an extension of me.

Rule #7:

Make up silly songs and do funny dances.

Born this way,

Hetty

Enchanté IV: The Places I Have Lived: Rosemount Young Team

Having discovered my impending motherhood while living in the dirty KFC-hellflat, it obviously made sense that my then-boyfriend and I should find immediately start looking for a new flat. The criteria were as follows:

We needed space for lots of clothes, shoes, records and baby stuff.

The furniture shouldn’t look like it had been salvaged from an 80’s house clearance.

It had to be in Rosemount. That extra five minute walk from the centre of town makes all the difference. 

On our second day of viewings we found a cute little ground-floor flat right at the West end of Rosemount and it was totally affordable too at £565 a month. It had a big living room which featured a huge black chandelier and the ubiquitous black and white NYC taxi print on the wall. Everything was monochrome from the white faux-marble fireplace to the black faux-granite worktops in the kitchen. It was perfect! Our application was accepted and within a week, we moved in.

And the cracks began to show. The flat had its weaknesses, but nothing was weaker than the relationship between myself and the man I had set up home with. It became apparent within a few weeks that we were unsuited, and that’s putting it kindly. Pregnancy transformed me from a messy, unpunctual person into the most anally-retentive control-freak Nazi on the planet. I can’t have been easy to live with. 

Things didn’t get much better once Violet was born. I cooked and cleaned without rest, and mothered Violet and her dad, and did everything I could to go beyond people’s expectations of what a young mum can achieve. That, combined with a stiflingly unhappy relationship, and the baby-related paraphernalia taking up all the space, meant that after a year, I couldn’t stand the place at all. I still think of it as a very unhappy home, despite the magical moments I encountered there. The funny thing is, that even though we only moved out 13 months ago, I can barely remember the particulars; the furniture is gone, the dimensions of the room are lost to the back of my memory. 

We moved on to the flat that Violet and I live in now, with every intention to stay for as long as possible. Her dad moved with us, but, within a couple of months, we gave up and he moved back in with his parents. And here we are.

Born this way,

Hetty

Back To School

No Teflon-coated trousers needed here; just a couple of moderately-priced items and I’ll practically be perfect.

“Bleeding Chanel” t-shirt, Tequila Star, £20

Large frame clasp top bag, Ally Capellino, £632

“Ablaze” lace-up wedges, ASOS, £65

“Arabesque” bubblegum/gold duochrome nailpolish, NARS, £13.50

And these are just four of many longed-for things that are completely unattainable to me right now.

Born this way,

Hetty

Enchanté III: The Places I Have Lived: The Rosemount Years

After Rose Street, I obviously couldn’t afford to live alone and got wind of an available room in a flat up in Rosemount with a much older guy I kind of knew, and a much older woman I didn’t know at all. My application (a tearful phonecall) was immediately accepted and I moved in.

The flat had potential to be absolutely amazing, but it was full of clutter. There were two televisions in the living room: one for tv and one for gaming. There was a huge pile of speakers at the front door, and no one ever bothered to determine which ones still worked. We rarely took the glass to the bottle bank so we had about 200 San Pellegrino bottles on our landing. None of that mattered though because I was allowed to have my dog there, a privilege I’d never had in any other rented flat.

Almost straight away I discovered that a) the guy’s friends were round every night and b) the guy and his friends did not like the girl. She was a primary school teacher and thick as two short planks. Despite repeated explanations she couldn’t grasp the concept of Dragon’s Den. She had a penchant for Strongbow which led to repeated tardiness. Good luck to those six year old minds she’s shaping.

She lived off boiled spirelli with Campbell’s condensed chicken soup for sauce and I once had a huge argument with her because I ate a rustic roll that belonged to her. In my defense, I had only EVER seen her eat her signature dish, and so thought the roll belonged to our flatmate. The worst part was that throughout the argument she insisted on calling it a ciabatta. It was a wholemeal rustic roll.

After about six months living in the flat, I would accidentally fall into a relationship with the guy and my room (not the smallest this time!) would become a glorified dressing room. It was so messy. I have photographs of it; clothes strewn everywhere. I kept the bed in it though, which came in handy for whenever I was in a huff with my boyfriend and wanted to make him pay.

When the alcoholic teacher moved out, a tall, dark, handsome New Yorker moved in. He cooked the best chile con carne I have ever tasted and would always feed me and comfort me when I cried due to my self-imposed steady diet of nothing. Once, he took Harvey, the dog, out for a walk and when he hadn’t returned three hours later, I was a sobbing, broken heap on the floor. I was convinced that they were both dead, or that Harvey had slipped his lead and NYC was searching for him, too scared to come back. Inconsolable, I cried hysterically on the hallway floor until my boyfriend came back with both of those handsome boys, alive and well. They’d just been walking.

I was totally indulged by my flatmates, but sadly, after more than two years of financial heaven (I paid rent of £220 and nothing more) the dream was over: our landlady wanted her flat back.

I didn’t move in anywhere after that flat. My boyfriend took a place round the corner but it only had one bedroom. I went between there and my parents’ house for a couple of months then we broke up.

A brief stint above KFC followed and this time, my flatmate was a total unknown. She found me on Gumtree after I posted an advert saying I was looking for a room in a nice place. Desperation obviously took over, because this place was not nice in the slightest. I made my room acceptable, but the rest of the flat was just the absolute pits. I barely left my bedroom, to be honest, and we were partaking in the unspoken “I’ll wait until she goes for a bath then I’ll venture in to the kitchen for a cup of tea”-dance. This bears a striking resemblance to the “Yes! She’s in bed, I can go for a wee-wee now”- dance.

She would make comments about how much I ate, despite the fact she was twice my size. Strangely, I didn’t see her eat for at least the first month I stayed there. Then, when I started paying more attention, I realised she was ordering in pizzas which she would follow with a Sizzler’s burger a few hours later! I guess we were both indulging in secret eating, but I had the financial good sense to binge on various Marks & Spencer antipasto products.

There are no good memories of that place. You couldn’t open the bathroom window because the whole flat would stink to high heaven of fried chicken. Once, I saw the girl sitting in the living room with about six bluebottles buzzing round her head. The radiators were those storage heaters that smell acrid when they’re switched on. There was no shower. No, actually, there was a shower! It was about halfway up the wall, and you could rinse your hair by crouching beneath it. Dignified. The living room had a smell and the three-piece suite was black pleather with red vinyl accents.

I hated the flat so much that I didn’t even bother paying rent. There’s no way I paid for all of the five months I lived there. I proved that the old saying that nobody says is true: “Once you go Rosemount, you never don’t want to live there”. Hmm. I might have to work on that slogan.

Born this way,

Hetty

Enchanté II: The Places I Have Lived Part II

Once the doom and gloom of living in a condemned building got too much for me, I moved on to a modern block of flats with two friends. My rent was doubled and I suddenly had to pay council tax too (council tax didn’t exist on Bon Accord St.)

Once again, I had the smallest room and this time, the SHAME of it, a single bed. I wasn’t allowed to smoke in this flat, so I spent a good deal of time out on the landing or downstairs, languishing next to the wheelie-bins, smoking Drum Light rolies with menthol filters.

No one ever did the dishes. Well, I did the dishes, but only after hoping for days that someone else would do the dishes. The flat was either completely full (post-Exodus doss-house) or totally empty. It was quite a lonely place for me. My flatmates were always going home or going on tour, so I spent much of the nine months I lived there rattling about, being self-indulgent. The soundtrack to my late-night pottering was Mazzy Star and Sparklehorse. God, I was dreary. I had to move on.

Next, I moved in to a really nice flat on Rose Street. I moved in with the girl I had been BFFs with since infancy. Suffice to say, living together ended that friendship. She split up with her boyfriend, and when I refused to dump my own in a show of solidarity, I was swiftly dumped by her. And left with a £640pcm lease! I saw the lease out, and I suppose I quite enjoyed living on my own. For the first time, there was no one there to disapprove of my freaky eating habits, or to commandeer the remote control, or to argue over phone bills with. None of it matters now, but at the time I was sad to lose such a dear friend, and for a long time I considered it to be my first experience of true heartache.

Born this way,

Hetty

Survival Tactics III aka The Lucky Escape

Getting past a relationship is much like getting over a bad hangover: time is the only healer. I question whether or not the length of time we mourn a relationship for is directly proportional to the length of time we spend tethered to another. Right now, I don’t think it is. I’ve got over live-in boyfriends in a matter of hours, and then drawn out an adolescent frolic for the best part of a decade.

Most recently though, it was a short, meaningless thing which I was only upset about for about five minutes. The rest of the recovery was spent marvelling at his apparent split-personality and fantasising about witty one-liners and sarky retorts I could coolly deliver if I ever happen to run in to him. So, so counter-productive. You’ll never get the opportunity to use these mentally-rehearsed quips and you know you are just giving them more of your undeserved time, but you can’t stop the bitter, resentful thoughts creeping in.

You see, much like that stage of a hangover where you can’t bear to move but getting back to sleep is a complete impossibility, there is a post break-up limbo where you are no longer upset but are yet to reach the end goal of “Hallelujah! I no longer give a FUCK!”-ness. I’ve found it; the holy grail of mental states. It’s actually really easy when you know how.

First, you pick a man who is totally unsuitable for you, then, when you stop seeing each other, it’s really easy to see his flaws because you never liked him that much anyway. Ha! But seriously, it’s hard to believe that a month ago, I referred to the guy I had just stopped seeing as “a great man”. So keen was I to self-flagellate, that I actually convinced myself for a few days that he was what I wanted. Great man?! How about “posturing little prick with an overdraft”?

In the cold light of day, I can see with absolute clarity that the only thing I was upset about was the amount of time I had wasted. I didn’t want to face up to the fact that I’d pissed away several months for nothing, that the whole exercise had been futile. For that ridiculous, masochistic week, I would have settled.

The great thing is, that while he has to walk away and stay him (shamesies), I get to walk away and be me. Yes, I did just paraphrase Carrie Bradshaw. She’s occasionally totally right on! The fact still remains - while I am growing and progressing and nurturing and learning, his life is like a certain Bill Murray film but with a higher %abv. Different day, same hangover. Let’s have a toast, to waking up and seeing through the bravado.

There’s only one thing more freeing than seeing someone else with utter lucidity, and that’s having a completely unclouded view of yourself. I have never been more sure of myself. I know exactly who I am right now and what I need. True, I’m not getting any younger, but when it comes to realising your worth and getting some standards, it’s a case of better late than never.

Born this way,

Hetty

Enchanté: The Places I Have Lived Part i

The first flat I ever lived in was a big, gloomy basement flat on Bon Accord Street. The subsidence was insane: if you dropped a pen on my flatmate’s bedroom floor it would roll all the way to the other side of the room. My bedroom was the smallest. It had a patterned mustard carpet, like the kind old ladies have in their sitting rooms.

My bedroom walls were plastered with pictures of Primal Scream, Britney Spears, Interpol and Erlend Øye. There was a huge window in to the hallway, which I blocked off with my wardrobe. There was another window, high up above the bed which looked in to the living room/kitchen. I blocked this off with a copy of Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys on 180gm vinyl.

The three of us paid £125 a month each in rent, and we recorded music constantly. I mainly provided the handclaps. One of the things I remember most is the constant presence of cables, winding in and out of the rooms. One of the other things I remember was when the damp bathroom ceiling fell in.

Both my flatmates were convinced the place was haunted. A former tenant later told us that her stuff would be moved around in the night.

We spent the evenings watching Look Around You, Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace and Woody Allen films. One of my flatmates would tell me off for listening to “Moon Pix” by Cat Power too much. We had a huge pantry full of junk, including the top-half of a shop mannequin who was christened Barnald. He wore a hat and sunglasses; we were ever so zany.

We drank a ridiculous amount of Rosé and smoked endless Richmond Menthols (or Consulates, if we’d just been paid). Once we dipped into our rent for a trip to Buffet King (a cheaper and more authentic Jimmy Chung’s, which sadly no longer exists) but our ancient landlord, Mr Legg, didn’t bat an eyelid. Landlords can’t take umbrage to tenants being late with rent when you can poke holes in one of the kitchen walls. I eventually moved out because I couldn’t cope with the poor living standards. But it was the most fun I have ever had living anywhere.

Born this way,

Hetty