Dilly’s Sunday Brunch

For new readers to this blog I should probably explain that this is part of a recurring post, detailing my regular family Sunday brunch and mulling over events/news/excitement from the week.

Another chaotic affair for brunch today. I offered to look after my friend’s 5 and 3 year old boys while she caught up on work. The brunch menu was a basic scrambled eggs, sausages and bacon, except he boys don’t like scrambled eggs so I made them (and Betty who jumped on the bandwagon) boiled eggs.  I don’t usually offer choices for eggs as I am not a short order cook, however guests, especially little ones, get special treatment. Sadly my usually fab egg timer has given up the ghost so they were rather well done, bu the visitors seemed happy enough.

So, I really hate it when people say “oh I don’t read the papers/watch the news” it’s too depressing”. I instantly put a mental black mark against their name. Wilful ignorance in those who should know better is inexcusable.

There are some self help books that insist that you stop watching the news so it doesn’t drag you down on your road to positivity.

Yes, the news can be depressing, but without knowing what is going on in the world how can we try to make it better. Even when things happen in seemingly far flung places like Syria or Somalia, where most of us can’t possibly do anything that can make a difference, I feel that we owe it to the people of these countries to acknowledge the horrors of their lives.

However, this is the first week where I have really started to feel worn down by all that I read in the papers or on the web. The awful allegations against Jimmy Savile, made worse by the people excusing the behaviours with arguments like “it was different back then”. The anguish of the parents of 5 year old April Jones, who has yet to be found after nearly two weeks. And the entitled, classist nonsense coming from the Conservative conference, spelling more cuts for the poorest, and no let up in our battle with rising costs and falling wages. All these and more leave me with the feeling of helplessness and despair, and the beginnings of the attitude of sometimes it’s just best not to know these things.

So in the spirit of denial, after depressing you with that introduction, today’s brunch post is going to be a frivolous affair!

I’ll start with my new necklace. I had some belated birthday money given to me recently and decided to splash out on some handmade jewellery. ‘Splash out’ is a bit of an overstatement really as this was a bargain. It’s a wooden necklace spelling out the word “hello” on a gold plated chain. It’s by Rock Cakes at Etsy and cost just under £14. It came in a lovely little box which made it feel even more special. I shall be wearing it to Mumsnet Blogfest so even if no one remembers my name I can be “the woman with the ‘hello’ necklace”!

We made a trip to Ikea yesterday. Since Iris is such a light sleeper and Betty has a persistent cough every winter we have had to accept that it will be a while before they can share a room. This also means accepting that we can no longer call the spare room the spare room or the office. After 2 years it has now been officially designated Iris’s room. So DH has taken down his big desk and we have moved some toys into her room, but we wanted to create a small home office space downstairs and managed to find some suitable furniture in Ikea. I might post more on that later but you know how when you go to Ikea you inevitably come out with a load of crap you don’t really need, chopping board? Check. Tea lights? Check. Weird shaped soft toy to keep the kids happy? Check. Well, one of my pointless purchases was this:

I heart my cactus

Isn’t it lovely? I just thought it was something nice to brighten my day.

Finally, back to the topic of Iris’s room. In an effort to make it seem a bit more like her room rather than somewhere we squeezed her in between chucking her out of our room and offloading her onto her sister, we bought some wall stickers to brighten the place up. There are loads online but these butterfly stickers from Dotty Frog were the nicest I found. They are theoretically reusable. We’ll see how well that works out when Iris tries to peel them off. But for now she thinks they are ‘bootiful’.

There now, it is much easier to digest the depressing news when you have a heart cactus and a very cute two year old to look at. We should still watch the news and yell at politicians and cry at people’s pain. That is what makes us human and humane. But it’s good to balance it out with a bit of frivolity and a novelty succulent, because we are lucky we can.