Holiday Round-Up

And in time-honoured tradition, a catch-up bullet post!

• Of all the caterpillar cakes, we feel that Tesco’s Slinky is the worst, made with little care and with a fondant face that borders on the deranged. Morrison’s Morris put in a decent showing, though!

• The houses at Graven Hill are a great advertisement for the case of planning. Most of the self-builds resemble office blocks (with larch cladding, obviously), with a few totally bizarre choices — yes, I guess you can build a Carolina blue beach house in the middle of Bicester…but should you? Really? Still, respect to the house with the 40ft metal giraffe in the driveway.

• You’ll be surprised just how happy a small child can be with a chair that looks like a lion. And possessive of it, too!

• The South Bank was weird this time around…I found something was odd, something that I couldn’t really describe, and I didn’t want to be there that much…

• I’m convinced that all the self-checkout systems in UK supermarkets are designed specifically to be user-hostile. Trying to simply get out of Sainsbury’s was an event.

• I wonder how often the vocal tracks on the bus tours are re-recorded?

• If I can go all “middle-class parent” for a moment, the gb Pockit+ All-Terrain is an amazing buggy. It folds up so small you can put it in a backpack! It’s light and manoeuvrable enough that you don’t feel like you’re being a pain on the Underground, and Maeryn seems to love being in it for the moment. 10/10!

• I miss the New York Bloomer from Pret (I know they have something similar in roll form now, but it’s not quite the same).

• Trains are good! Trains are good!

• It’s weird watching linear broadcast television again.

• Hopefully, Maeryn doesn’t get too many ideas from our surprise upgrade on the flight back home. It’s not always going to be three-course meals and seats that can lay flat, I’m afraid!