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Indoor plants and a sense of calm…

October 4, 2016 By Poppy Dinsey 3 Comments

As a child, I never understood my mum’s fascination with hanging baskets. Being summoned away from Byker Grove to water endless pots of sprouting leaves was my least favourite chore, in part because a massive frog lived in the cobweb-covered watering can but also because I just couldn’t see the point of it. It’s a garden. There are plants. So what?

Fast-forward to adulthood, where even the idea of having a concrete balcony to call my own seems like an impossible dream, and I get it. Gardens are great.

Sorry Mum. Like with many things, you were right.

My mother’s pride and joy.

One day I hope to have my very own garden, but until then I’ve tried to do what I can with indoor plants. Flowers in the home are gorgeous – obviously – but there’s something exceptionally satisfying about tending for a plant. They’re real living things which need care and attention. Some are sensitive enough to induce panic, others can withstand even the most useless attempts of fortnightly nurturing.

I was exceptionally smug about keeping a peace lily going til its second birthday, until my mum informed me that hers was at least 10 years old and she barely touches it.

Flowers may try to steal the show, but a plant – or a TREE – is a commitment.

My favourite plant has to be the palm tree which is currently trying to break through our ceiling. He’s my second palm, having been left here by previous owners and abandoned for being too much trouble. (I may be dramatising here slightly because I like to think I swept in and saved him from an untimely end in a skip, but he was pretty much left for dead). I gave myself a couple of months to try and turn his fate around and nearly three years later he’s still here, albeit looking quite sparse at the moment as I had to give him a haircut…

I’ve got little plants dotted all over: mini cacti, peace lilies, teeny airplants…anything that will help bring a bit of green indoors. I had a gigantic rubber plant in the past (that thing nearly took over our last flat, we had to decorate it with tinsel and baubles every Christmas) and smaller palms too, all very rewarding in their own ways. I haven’t grown anything substantial from a seed yet, but I’m tempted to try with some indoor window boxes.

I’m not alone in noticing the calming properties of tending to soil and leaves, a survey by PG Tips Green Tea has found that caring for plants has become a top self-care pastime. With a fifth of the UK feeling stressed on a daily basis and 39% feeling stressed weekly, the study revealed that greenery-focused wellbeing is a real growing trend with nearly half of us (46%) using plants as an escape from all things online.

That’s a LOT of green-fingers, but I was surprised to read that tending to plants has overtaken the more “obvious” wellbeing pastimes, with 25.4% opting to unleash their inner gardener ahead of baking (25%), yoga (13%) and knitting (8%) when they want to relax. (To be fair, GBBO has shown that baking is often far from relaxing. Plants can be tricky but they don’t collapse if you accidentally look at them for too long. Soggy soil is far less traumatic than a soggy bottom).

The art of topiary was singled out by the survey as the next retro trend set for revival, with 40% of respondents saying they’d like to learn more about it. Having been sent a PG Tips “desktop monkey topiary” to try and look after myself, I can totally see the appeal. Much easier than knitting or namaste-ing, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed having this cheeky chap around and can’t wait to see how he grows…

I’m sure just having more green around makes me feel calmer, but pruning with the teeny sheers is a lovely task. (With the added benefit of being able to feel like a giant).

It’s not always easy to look after plants though. I know I’ve really panicked about whether my palm was getting too much sun/not enough sun/too many minerals/not enough minerals on numerous occasions. My fears were allayed by trips to the greenhouses at Kew where I realised that even their world-class palms often have brown fronds, it’s just part of the life cycle of the plant and doesn’t mean that OMG YOU’RE DOING IT ALL WRONG.

Over two thirds of the survey respondents said they struggle to know how best to tend to their plants though, so I’m certainly not alone. I find Google is usually my friend when I’m having a leaf symptom crisis, but perhaps we’ll soon see a gardening version of Bake Off on our screens. We’ve had Sewing Bee, is it too crazy to imagine some sort of topiary trophy challenge?!

I suppose the bottom line with plants is that you can’t rush them. In a world where everything can feel very RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW, it’s a real treat to go back to nature (literally) and be patient. Plants take time to cultivate and nurture and nothing will make that process any faster. Similarly, any “mistakes” you do make can often be rectified. Plants which I’ve been certain have died whilst I’ve been on holiday have often miraculously recovered overnight after a good watering and some sunshine. It’s joyous.

TV Horticulturist Frances Tophill has partnered with PG tips Green Tea for the survey and she points out that lots of Generation Y types have turned to topiary to help chill out: “Topiary has been a growing trend over the past few years, following in the footsteps of bakery and knitting as the latest craft craze. It’s no longer reserved for the older generation or those with large ornamental gardens, anyone can try and I encourage everyone to give it a go. There is a huge movement among twenty and thirty something’s who are turning to plants to help them de-stress and re-energise. It’s a brilliant and relaxing hobby.”

I snapped this elephant topiary during Chelsea Flower Show earlier this year, could something like this be my next project?! I’ll see how Monkey goes first…

Soon I’ll be sharing a video on the 10 things that help me feel calm and plants will definitely be one of them, so look out for that. (Update! The video is live here!)

In the meantime, I seem to be daydreaming about buying another rubber plant. Do we have room for one? No. Do I want one anyway? Of course. It seems a small compromise to make as I can’t get a dog.

Watch this space!

This post is sponsored by PG Tips Green Tea but as always, I have full creative control and all thoughts are my own. You can read more about how I work with brands here.

Learning to drive abroad and hitting the test track at Lommel Proving Ground…

September 27, 2016 By Poppy Dinsey Leave a Comment

Reading a definitely inaccurate tourist map for my sister-in-law in Palma the other week (you know the type, they give them to you at the airport and they pinpoint things like dolphin displays but not helpful things like “actual road names”), I did begin to wonder if I’d ever have the confidence to drive abroad myself.

It’s silly really because I genuinely love driving, yet I’ve always assumed that a left hand drive car on the “wrong” side of the road would be a step too far for me. Maybe it’s because I enjoy driving so much that I didn’t want to put myself into a position where I might hate it. Or maybe I’m just a massive baby. Either way, I had come to the conclusion that I’d probably never drive abroad.

That was until last Wednesday, when I was given a map and the keys to a Ford Fiesta EcoBoost and told to find my way to a restaurant in the Dutch countryside.

Oh.

I don’t know why this driving challenge had come as such a shock to me, I was on a press trip with Ford and I knew that I’d be getting behind the wheel at some point, but obviously I’d just foolishly assumed all the driving would take place at Ford’s Lommel Proving Ground in Belgium. Test tracks are safe, after all. Test tracks don’t have traffic!

Yet there I suddenly was in the driver’s seat, acutely aware of the size of the lorries dashing past (are lorries bigger in the Netherlands? I swear they are bigger) and a dawning realisation that maybe I didn’t know how to drive at all and the last 13 years of my car-owning life had been a lie.

Motorways aren’t very forgiving for daydreamers though, so I just had to get on with it.

A credit no doubt to the Fiesta which was extremely easy to drive, but it all clicked into place for me very quickly. The navigation side of things wasn’t quite so simple (I am now fully versed in all the roads in/out of Eindhoven airport despite having never flown there) but once I was on the rural roads it was genuinely very enjoyable. The fact that every other farm seemed to have Shetland ponies grazing by the roadside certainly helped.

The point of this driving challenge was to demonstrate the improvements in engine technology and fuel economy since the original Ford Fiesta was launched forty years ago in 1976, but my main takeaway as you can probably imagine was just an immense sense of “OMG I DID IT” overseas driving pride. I liked the car very much, but I liked the confidence it had given me even more.

The next day, it was time to head to Lommel for the real adventurous stuff. I knew we were going to get to take the ST200 for a spin and experience a proper hot lap with a professional driver, but I was equally excited about the parking and braking challenges that awaited us.

As the whole point of the trip was to celebrate the Fiesta’s 40th birthday, we weren’t just going to be using the brand new models – oh no! We arrived to a whole fleet of Fiestas from the 70s, 80s and 90s – including the exact model (even the exact colour) that my best friend’s mum had when we were kids. I can’t tell you how exciting it was to do a “waltzer” challenge in the car that used to pick me up from netball.

It was a ridiculously fun day, especially as I’ve never driven older cars before. If you’ve always had ABS and power steering, it’s a real eye opener to drive without them. I’ll admit that I loved the sofa-like qualities of the 1976 Fiesta’s slouchy seats, but my shoulders certainly knew about the steering the next day!

It’s very easy to say that cars have come on in the past forty years, what surprised me more was just how advanced the 2016 Fiestas seemed in comparison to my own car at home. I drive a 2001 Mercedes SLK day-to-day and I’ve never really considered it to be particularly “old”. Yes, my sat nav is mounted onto the window rather than built into the dash and no, it didn’t come with an iPhone charger but when it comes to the actual driving, I never thought it was THAT dated.

Fifteen years is a long time in car terms though (and yes, I did only just realise that 2001 was 15 years ago and now I feel VERY VERY OLD) and these new engines seemed almost silent compared to what I was used to. Heck, cars have changed so much that I didn’t even know how to start the engine.

The brakes and handling felt a world apart too, it actually took me quite a while to get used to how little I had to do compared to how I would usually drive at home. The new models seemed much more sensitive but at the same time very forgiving – it felt near enough impossible to stall despite the fact I gave it a pretty good go during one of the challenges.

Of course it was the hot lap in the ST200 which was the real highlight of the day. There are few things as fun as flying around a test track with someone who truly knows what they’re doing.

One thing’s for sure, vlogging at 180kmh is not easy…

I’m so grateful to Ford for inviting me on this press trip. It was SO much fun and I met some great people, but more importantly for me I now have the confidence to drive abroad and I know this will open up so many options when it comes to holidays.

I’m determined to see more of Europe by car now…I may need to do it in a very specific model of Fiesta, but I know I can do it.

Vroom vroom indeed.

brb

September 6, 2016 By Poppy Dinsey Leave a Comment

Just thought I’d scribble a quick post – similar to a voicemail greeting I suppose – to say that “I’m not here”.

I’ll be back soon, but I didn’t want to schedule 10 posts for while I was away as I knew they’d just be churned out nonsense. Plus all the post ideas I had were holiday related which didn’t seem quite right at a time where everyone is going wild for pumpkin spice lattes (despite the fact I’ve never met anyone who likes them irl?) and fallen leaves.

I’ll probably be on Instagram Stories a lot (and I’m not going to stop checking Twitter every five seconds, ARE YOU MAD?) but I’ll save the proper blog posts for when I’m back.

Me – from tomorrow. I will definitely look like this and not like a strung up ham.

Now, let me just check for the umpteenth time that GBBO and X Factor are set to record….

Five things that have helped me fall back in love with blogging…

August 22, 2016 By Poppy Dinsey 5 Comments

I know that “blogging about blogging” can become incredibly tiresome, especially when combined with a hankering for “the good old days” (which almost certainly didn’t exist btw, things were just annoying back then in different ways) but you’ll have to indulge me on this one…

I AM BLOGGING ABOUT BLOGGING.

Again.

This is a positive post though as over the last month or so I’ve really started to enjoy blogging a lot more and it’s all down to some really simple – and in hindsight, obvious – changes.

These are the five things that have helped me fall back in love with blogging…

1. Blogging about whatever I want…

Over the last few weeks I’ve felt like you can see a lot more of my true personality in my posts, simply because I’ve written about a much wider range of things. Re-introducing my Sunday round-up posts have been particularly fun to write as they cover all sorts, but even outside of those I’ve blogged about a wider range of topics. Movies, football, personal things, restaurants, recipes, telly – they’re all welcome here.

It’s silly really because THE WHOLE POINT of setting up this blog post-WIWT was to have a proper personal blog again where I could chat about *anything*. Yet of course, I ended up sticking mostly to beauty and typical lifestyle posts because of nonsensical pigeon holes.

I’ve talked about whether or not bloggers need a niche before and I really do think niches are important for commercial work and making clear to readers what the purpose of a blog is, but despite niches being helpful I’ve realised I can’t stick to one niche long term and truly enjoy blogging.

So that’s that.

I want strangers to be able to read this blog and get a proper sense of “me” (well, to an extent – I don’t want to turn it into a United fan blog that just talks about true crime reconstructions I’ve watched at 3am on Really) and avoiding entire subjects purely to stick to a theme makes me sad. Allowing myself to blog about *anything* has made me much happier.

2. Holding back on social media…

By far and away the biggest obstacle I’d had to blogging recently was feeling like I’d already shared everything on social media. Twitter and Instagram (not to mention Stories and Snapchat) persuade us to cover things “live” as they happen, which can make it hard to bother to sit down and blog about something properly. It can also make followers lazy about clicking through to posts because they can feel like they’ve heard everything you’ve got to say on a subject, when actually your blog post goes into a lot more depth.

Saving images and thoughts for blog posts, like a proper patient adult, has made blogging SO much easier.

And anyway, if you share EVERYTHING on social media why would anyone ever read a blog?

Restraint is not something that comes naturally to me, but I’m enjoying it.

3. Not reading blogs I don’t like…

There are loads of popular blogs that I don’t like yet I still used to obsessively read. I wasn’t doing it for a bitchy “hate-read” but because I was genuinely trying to understand why they were popular. It didn’t matter if I thought they were boring and uninspired, the masses had chosen and this was what EVERYBODY must want to read. Or so I’d convince myself.

Comparison is a slippery slope and it’s a topic that gets covered a lot within the blogosphere but you really do have to just stick to your own thing if you want to be happy and proud of your content. I used to find myself second-guessing what I thought were good ideas because I didn’t see them on other blogs or trying to replicate things from other people just because they worked well for them.

And guess what?

It doesn’t work.

There’s no point trying to rationalise why some really great blogs never get any accolades whilst some fairly vanilla ones get hailed as unmissable. People are all different and in every realm of popular culture there are examples of amazing things that go unrecognised and average things that get over-celebrated. It’s just a fact of life.

When I stopped trying to find the magic formula from blogs I didn’t enjoy and instead started spending more time reading blogs that actually appealed to my interests, I unsurprisingly found I really liked the world of blogging again.

4. Having some sort of schedule…

I haven’t massively embraced having an editorial schedule that spans way into the future as I enjoy blogging more when I approach it with flexibility, but knowing that Fridays are dedicated to Friday Food Memories and Sundays are for The Week That Was posts makes life that little bit easier. I don’t post on Saturdays, so I only have to find four posts to fill Monday-Thursday and I have a long list of post ideas that I keep on my phone as back-up if I can’t think of anything event-based or current.

Now that I’m being more flexible about what I deem “worthy enough” to post on here (see point 1 above) I’ve found it SO much easier to come up with ideas.

5. Not stressing about photos…

Like a lot of bloggers, I often think I can’t post about something because I don’t have good enough imagery. It’s *such* a shame to self-edit like this though; to not share something brilliant because you don’t have the right photos is bonkers. (Also some people – myself included – actually prefer posts with less images because reading posts on mobile with crap data and trying to load endless MASSIVE images of the same thing from slightly different angles is definitely not the one).

I can’t take glossy photos and I know people don’t come to my blog for the photography, so I do my best with an iPhone and Afterlight and remember that my strength is in written content and that’s absolutely fine. Some of the best blogs in terms of photos and creativity are poorly written, it’s just one of those things and different readers will always place more importance on different elements.

Some blogs have gorgeous photography AND the best of the best in terms of words of course, but we don’t worry about those bloggers. They’re probably magic and can’t be trusted.

I hope this renewed love for blogging hangs around a while. It probably won’t but hey, I can always blog about feeling uninspired if so 😉

The week that was…Chicama, Michael Jackson and the Bristol hum

August 21, 2016 By Poppy Dinsey 1 Comment

Oh I really do like writing these Sunday round-up posts. I forgot they take forever to write but hey! They make me feel like a proper blogger again 😀

This week I’ve been watching…

Two things in particular stuck out for me this week, the first being Linda Geddes’s 12 minute BBC Future video on “the mysterious noise driving the world mad”.

Since the 1970s, many people across the world have reported hearing a faint humming sound. To some it’s a low pulsating sound, to others it’s more of a buzz. Whether you hear it as a quiet rumble or a constant vibration, it’s inescapable and irritating…especially given nobody has been able to explain where it’s coming from.

This haunting short looks at “the Bristol hum” in particular, as the south west city has an unusually high number of people all reporting to hear the same as yet unidentified sound. Unplugging the fridge, router or phone doesn’t help, but leaving Bristol can provide some relief.

It’s a gorgeously curious phenomena, although that’s easy for me to say as I am not being plagued by it. Is it some sort of government conspiracy? Or is it, quite literally, all in the head? And if the latter, why do multiple people hear the same thing in the same places?

It’s a beautifully paced film with some great interviews, almost tip toeing on the edges of sci-fi thriller. You can see why people in some cities have been driven mad by this anonymous hum.

Watch it here.

The second thing that really stuck out for me this week came from the BBC again: Phoebe Waller Bridge’s Fleabag on BBC Three. I already wrote about my love for the show in last week’s The Week That Was, but having now seen the fourth episode it deserves another shoutout as the Hugh Dennis scene caught me completely off-guard and moved me to tears.

I was watching it in the bath and generally feeling quite moved by the relationship between the two sisters as we’re getting to know them better, then the Hugh Dennis scene kind of came out of nowhere and really knocked me for six in its simplicity. Maybe I was being hormonal, but I thought it was special.

You can watch the fourth episode here, but obviously start from the beginning if you’re yet to watch the other episodes. I love how the stories are developing.

Sticking with the BBC Three theme for a sec, the third series of People Just Do Nothing started this week and whilst I haven’t had time to watch the first episode yet, the trailer reminded me why Grindah is still my number one lyrical don…

I find it hard to imagine there’s anyone out there left to discover the Kurupt FM greatness, but all of the first and second series of PJDN are on iPlayer and you should start there before treating yourself to series three. I CANNOT WAIT TO WATCH IT.

Naturally I relished Bailly/Pogba/Zlatan’s general greatness on Friday night but I also really enjoyed G-Nev’s return to MNF and thought this interview was really honest. Can’t be easy to have to go back to your old job because you’ve failed so publicly at trying something new. It’s worth a watch as he’s very candid in it. I don’t think you need to like football to find it interesting.

Of course I also saw Tickled, the new documentary that delves into the murky underworlds of competitive endurance tickling (yep, it’s a real thing!) and I blogged about that in full here. It’s dark.

I’ve visited…

I went to Chiswick on Tuesday to visit the Sipsmith distillery. It was a really fun tour as I’ve already covered here but aside from the actual Sipsmith bit, it reminded me how much I love this part of London. I’d never really walked around the residential streets of Chiswick before as I’ve only visited for dinner in the past, but my goodness…it’s up there with Kew I reckon for #dreamhousegoalz. I have spent a lot of time on Zoopla since Tuesday.

Then we’ve been in Cheshire since Thursday night for my mother-in-law’s birthday, meaning I’ve had the perfect excuse to go to The Hollies (aka my dream farm-shop) and stare longingly at all the food. I’m worried that browsing the shelves of this place (and, errrr, nibbling the cheese samples) is one of my all-time favourite hobbies…

I’ve been listening to…

I feel like this week has flown by with nary a song played, but I did put Bad on in the car when I got fed up of how crackly the 5 Live Olympics coverage was on the M6. I long for the day where 5 Live is remotely pleasant to listen to in the car. Maybe that’s what the Bristol hum is: 5 Live desperately trying to reach across the airwaves. (I’m bitter because I got a new car radio fitted JUST FOR 5 LIVE and the signal is still shocking).

I’ve been eating and drinking…

I tried new Kings Road restaurant Chicama on Sunday night. It had only been open a couple of weeks at that point and we weren’t intending to go but as our fave Italian next door was unexpectedly closed (gotta love Italians in August, they know how to live life right) we thought we’d give this exceptionally trendy-looking place a go.

It’s from the same folk as Pachamama in Marylebone (which we’ve not tried) and we weren’t sure what to expect but the menu promised “Peruvian seafood” and there were enough vegetable dishes for me to make it enticing. Plus the open plan pink marbled decor was pretty much my dream million dollar kitchen so I was happy just to spend an evening in what felt like a Pinterest board come to life.

Without a doubt, the standout dish was the fried aubergine with plantain miso and crushed pecans. It doesn’t look handsome, but it was an exceptional interpretation of the humble aubergine – even rivalling the similarly sticky miso version from Kurobuta a few doors down.

The chimichurri & huancaína sauce with the roasted cauliflower was another favourite and ST said the Tiger’s Milk oysters (apparently delivered fresh daily from Cornwall) were the best he had *ever* had. He doesn’t throw around accolades like that very often, so they must have been very nice indeed. The Piura Porcelana chocolate dessert was also ruddy nice.

It was great food all round really, but you can tell it’s a recent opening and they’re still tinkering with the menus. If you get irate about food arriving in stages, like we do, then you may find your patience pushed. The food is worth it though. Price-wise, let’s just say you know you’re on the King’s Road.

From one glam location to another…Oxford Services!

I’ve never been to a Harry Ramsden’s that doesn’t include an hour long queue in the driving rain and bitter gales blowing off Blackpool beach, so to just be able to walk up to a counter and get a plate of Harry Ramsden chips without any fanfare seems slightly surreal to me. Anyway, this unexpected motorway treat reminded me how much I love chips with mushy peas and beans and loads of vinegar, so I was happy. It may not be the most balanced meal choice but hey, it’s better than some sad bean burger nonsense from Burger King. And we all know service station calories don’t count.

Courtesy of my mother-in-law, I tried my first florentine this weekend in the form of a very special M&S one with dark chocolate, brazil nuts, chilli and coconut.

They’re from their “Spirit of Summer” range so I doubt they’ll be sticking around in the shops for long but if you’re in an M&S and you appreciate that dark chocolate/brazil nut/chilli/coconut is a great combo then you MUST try them.

Lastly, I can finally say that I have eaten a Paul A. Young chocolate. Not just one actually, but TWO. By the time this post goes live, I suspect I’ll have had a bunch more too…

I can’t remember when I first read about Paul but it was aaaaaaaages ago and I’ve been meaning to try his award-winning chocs ever since. I knew how many accolades he’d received and as the store had recently been crowned one of the top ten chocolate shops IN THE ENTIRE WORLD, I was a bit giddy when I realised ST had bought a big box of them for his mum’s birthday celebrations. I’ve never tasted a salted caramel chocolate quite like the one I had last night from this beautiful box of treats. SUBLIME. (Thank you Sue for sharing them, I’m not sure I would have!)

I’ve written…

Feels like tonnes but hasn’t been really, although I’ve written some pieces for City airport this week which have made me desperate to book a holiday. Have you been to Bern? I think I really need to go to Bern.

Blog-wise, I’ve linked to my Tickled review and Sipsmith distillery tour posts already but I also wrote about a cake of ketchup and cornflakes from the Biff, Chip and Kipper books and a review of Greek restaurant Opso. If you only read one thing I write this week though (well, apart from this post you’re reading right now) please let it be this post I wrote on meningitis and the friend I lost to the horrible disease.

Next week, I’m looking forward to…

Working through some ideas I’ve had, my Adidas sale order arriving (assuming by some miracle I don’t hate it all), enjoying a long Bank Holiday weekend and maybe deep cleaning the oven and the dishwasher – two tasks which I enjoy far more than I should.

Want more? Last week’s edition is here.