Modern Life is Rubbish

Well, not all of it, obviously. I'm not advocating we go and set up camp in the woods. I like my flushing toilet too much for that... and Come Dine With Me. I'd hate to miss that.

What I can't stand is being contacted by or having to contact any call centre.

When they call you it's always a bad time. The poor sap on the other end of the line asks how you are. They don't care. I'd prefer it if they said 'I'm from British Whatever and I'm calling about increasing your monthly direct debit'. They don't do this. They first ask you to confirm who you are. 'BUT YOU RANG MEEEEE!' I cry, trying not to shout. Failing.

The worst calls are from energy suppliers asking why you left them. My answer is 'because you keep ringing me'. I try to be polite, I honestly do. But it's hard. The conversation usually ends with me calming down and kindly asking them to remove me from their list. This never works.

It's even worse when you try to contact these behemoth corporations. We moved house twice last year. That's two lots of moving house type phone calls. This process reduced me to tears. If you don't have your account number you may as well not bother calling, as I found to my annoyance.

Why can't my call be answered by a person, when that person is ready to answer? I'm paying for the call, I just want to talk to a person. I don't want to be told that they are currently experiencing a high volume of calls and I'm being held in a queue. That's not good customer service, that's just pants.

Automated answering service:
"Hello, you're through to British Whatever. Listen carefully to the following options..."

None of the 17 options are any good to me whatsoever.

Me, crying:
"Oh for crying out loud. I JUST WANT TO TALK TO SOMEONE. AAARRRRGGGGHHH".

It's not all doom and gloom. I do have a sneaky top tip for getting through to a person. Crying and shouting at the machine does nothing. When you're given the list of options, pretend you're a new customer and you'll get through to a jolly person in no time. I did this once when I wanted to change my Sky package and saved myself 40 minutes.

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Modern Life is Rubbish

Recipe for Chocolate Cupcakes with a Salted Butter Fudge Frosting

My friend, Jen, reminded me today that I never used to bake. I've only really been a wannabe domestic goddess for a few months. Now I made cookies, cakes and soda bread on a regular basis. I have two willing assistants too. Presley and Cash love to measure all of the ingredients (and taste each one while my back is turned). They love mixing and rolling and cutting and shaping and - of course - licking the spoon.

I'd rather my children ate something home made instead of shop bought (if they're having a sweet treat). We're getting there.

Today I made these amazing chocolate cakes. I adapted the recipe from 200 Cupcakes by Joanna Farrow. The cake underneath is dark and quite simply chocolatey, and the frosting is rich and sweet with a hint of salt (from the butter). They are grown-up cupcakes that your children will enjoy too.

Chocolate Cupcakes with a Salted Butter Fudge Frosting

Cupcakes
125g butter
150g soft brown sugar
2 eggs
100g self-raising flour
50g cocoa powder
1/2 tsp baking powder

• Preheat over to 180c/Gas mark 4. 
• Put 12 cases in a cake tin.
• Use the all-in-one method and mix all the ingredients until the mixture turns pale and fluffy. I used my hand-held electric mixer.
• Spoon into the cases and bake for 20 minutes.

Frosting
100g milk chocolate, chopped
2 tbsp milk
50g butter
75g icing sugar

• Gently heat the chocolate, milk and butter in a pan, stirring until the chocolate and butter has melted.
• Remove from the heat and vigorously stir in the icing sugar.
• Spread over the cakes while they and the frosting are both still warm.

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Recipe for Chocolate Cupcakes with a Salted Butter Fudge Frosting

Sunset over the Thames

As always, nature has all the best colours.

This photograph was taken with my iPhone, but I'm really pleased with it.

This is my entry for Tara's Gallery. I'm looking forward to my Google Reader being full of colour today.


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Sunset over the Thames

My Small Stuff

One of my favourite bloggers, Is there a Plan B?, wrote a beautiful post this week called The Small Stuff.

Sometimes we spend far too much of our precious time preoccupied with the big stuff. Of course this is important, but what really matters is the small stuff.

Here is my small stuff. There is a lot of it. It makes me happy. This is the tip of the iceberg.

The first cup of tea of the day. Cuddles with my children. Sweet peas. Holding hands. Coloured glass.

Robert Downey Jr, Robert Pattinson and David Tennant. Fitting everything in the dishwasher. Blossom. Daffodils. My kitchen table.

Keeping on top of the laundry. Washing drying on the line. Getting into a freshly made bed. Tia Maria and Diet Coke. Diet Coke. Christmas. Sprouts. Jumper dresses.

Chit-chat before bed with my boys. The Smartest Giant in Town. The Snail and the Whale. Panda and Gander: Tutti Frutti. Numtums. Tree Fu Magic.

The smile on Presley's face when he counts to 100. Baking soda bread and eating it with butter. Decorating cakes. Licking the spoon. Being pleased with something I've written. Owls and dragonflies.

Only Connect, Desperate Housewives, Come Dine With Me, BBC4. Singing along to the Moulin Rouge soundtrack. Garden birds. Knowing I have tickets for the Olympics.

Amanda and John, Paul and Dez, Liz, Lisa, Valerie. Wuthering Heights. Jane Eyre. Sea otters. Dugongs. Giraffes. Duplo. Rowland Rivron. Squirrel nutcrackers.

Carrots with red-pepper hummous, Chocolate Philadelphia, jacket potato with cheese and salad. My Mum's Yorkshire pudding. Chorizo, pimento stuffed olives, Applewood cheese.

Tim Minchin, Sean Lock, Christopher Guest films. Peonies, forsythia, honeysuckle, lavender. Lemon flavour anything. Twirling ribbon between my fingers. Rosy cheeks. Down in the Jungle.

Cats. Sharpening pencils. Rebecca. Caitlin Moran. A clean house. Roses and castles art. Klimt. Rolf Harris. John Lewis. Salad bars. Paul Weller's hair. Rockeries. Swimming.

The smell of bonfire night. Cash pretending there are lions and tigers in the bedroom. Ron Sexsmith, The Flaming Lips, kd lang, Midlake. Making lists. Still quoting from The Youngs Ones and Blackadder after thirty years.

Father Ted. The Magic Flute. New socks. Orange. Laughing. Elizabeth Arden hand cream. Liz Earle cleanser. Notebooks. Singapore noodles. Salted caramels. MC Heapey.

The Smiths, Prefab Sprout, ABC, Heaven 17, Japan, Duran Duran, Adam Ant, Orange Juice, The Communards. People who collect jugs or teapots. People who smile a lot. BPP biros.

My iPhone. Comfortable shoes. BOGOF's, sales and bargains. How organised my Google Reader is these days. Blood Brothers. Double entry bookkeeping. Microsoft Excel.

Reading about children's names. Knowing what I would call my next four children (if I was having any more children). Minky Monkey and Big Teddy. Saying 'but it's not google' in my head every time I see bing.com.

Going to bed super early because I've got a great book to read. Staying up late with my husband, drinking, talking, laughing and queuing up songs on Spotify. Getting the guitar out. Getting through 'Sweet Child of Mine' or 'Don't Stop Me Now' at karaoke without laughing. Scarves.

The smell of rain on a hot day. Sunshine. Sydney. Central Otago. Barcelona. Manhattan. Looking at maps. Downward dogs. The Lemonheads. Tapas. Live music. The Ray Mears sketch on Shooting Stars.

What's your small stuff?

My Small Stuff

Give up Clothes for Good

I wore these Carvela shoes on a hot date with my husband. It was in the early days of our relationship, before we were married.

During the day we had filled a skip with my late father's stuff. I looked towards the sky and said 'sorry, Dad' every time I lobbed something in. That evening we had booked into a nice hotel. We washed away the dust of the day and got ready to go out. I was wearing a black top and skirt, finished off with stockings and my pretty new £60 shoes. As I said, our relationship was still very new.

We strolled a short distance from the hotel to a lovely Thai restaurant. We had a fun, flirty evening. As we set off to walk back to the hotel my feet started to hurt. I suspect Andy thought I was making a fuss, but I insisted we got a taxi back to the hotel. Yes, it was embarrassing to take a taxi such a short distance, but my  toes were covered in blisters.

I can not begin to describe the relief when I took the sodding shoes off in the hotel reception. We then drank far too much red wine and gate-crashed a wedding reception. We managed to dance the night away, with me in my stocking feet.

The Carvela shoes were put back in their box and were never worn again.

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In April I will be taking my hardly worn shoes to my local TK Maxx store to be bagged and tagged and sent to Cancer Research to sell in one of their shops to raise money for childhood cancers. The Give Up Clothes For Good campaign is being supported by the Tots100 with a blogging carnival.

If you would like to join in please consider yourself tagged. Simply write a post about a much-loved item of quality clothing that you are willing to give up for charity. Include the links above and maybe embed this YouTube video too. Then email your post to me: sandy [at] tots100.co.uk.

Give up Clothes for Good