🌸 Clinique My Happy perfumes. I had a Sparks offer for 20% off beauty at M&S, and while browsing I came across the My Happy perfume range from Clinique (yes, you can buy Clinique products at M&S now!). It’s a set of six scents, designed to be worn alone or combined - because what beauty company doesn’t love designing things in such a way that encourages you to buy more than one? Being a total sucker for Lily perfumes (for obvious reasons) and vanilla (as previously mentioned), I bought the Lily on the Beach and Cookies & Kisses scents; they’re gorgeous. I love that they come in little 15ml bottles which are easy to throw into my gym bag and which I might actually be able to use up before they go bad.
🛍️ Activewear skorts. I’m writing on one of the first 20 degree days of the year, and I am so happy to have these in my wardrobe. Last year, I bought this Lululemon one, and I’ve added to it with the much cheaper M&S offering. On warm days, they do the same job as a pair of jeans - a comfortable way of dressing my lower half. The built in shorts mean I don’t have to faff around looking for a pair of Snag shorts, and make me feel happy wearing a much shorter hemline than I otherwise might. I might even wear them for ballet classes if the weather stays warm and putting on tights seems unappealing.
📚 Between Us by Mhairi McFarlane. Mhairi is one of those authors whose books I will always pre-order, and she just gets better and better. One of the best bits of her books is that the main characters’ friends aren’t only there as supporting players; they have real personalities and character arcs, while not distracting from the main story. Mhairi always dials it up to eleven. Highly recommended! (Bookshop.org | Amazon - affiliate links)
Sometimes our bodies have a way of telling us to take a break. After a couple of months of solidly getting up every day and writing 500 words on my new book project before logging into my day job, I realised that burning the candle at both ends was leaving me in real danger of burning out. On top of that, I’m dealing with the chaos that comes with preparing my flat to sell (my bathroom walls are currently covered in patches of Polyfilla and waiting to be painted); safe to say, there are a lot of moving parts right now.
And then one day last week, I woke up feeling unusually unenthusiastic about my day job. After telling myself to buck up, I joined my first Teams meeting of the day, opened my mouth and… realised I was on the edge of losing my voice. As they say on TikTok, sometimes the body really does keep the score.
I didn’t feel ill - I wasn’t coughing or spluttering - and I took a Covid test as a precaution. Thankfully, it was negative, so I put myself on ‘vocal rest’ for most of the rest of the week (and missed both my ballet classes, sadly), until I felt more like myself again.
My favourite home remedy for a tickly or dry throat is hot Robinson’s apple and blackcurrant squash, with a teaspoon of honey stirred in. An added bonus of that was that my best friend gave me some incredibly luxurious honey for my birthday earlier this year, so I was able to feel like I was being looked after by someone as well as myself.
After a few days of that, it felt like the perfect time to crack open Eleanor Ross’s book Good Enough, which is all about fighting the urge to try to be exceptional in every aspect of life. That desire to expect far more of myself than is reasonable is something I’ve been working on for years, and around exam time every summer it tends to hit strongest. As the viral Instagram reel by musician Boy Jr says: ‘You don’t have to be perfect, or exceptionally great… but I do!’
To go with a summer vibe and a focus on enjoying myself, I’ve been putting together my Summer 2023 Spotify playlist, which obviously had to start with Summertime by DJ Jazzy Jeff. It’s a wild ride through songs about falling into and out of love - and while it’ll be great on shuffle, I have also put some thought into the story that the songs tell in the order they sit in the playlist - do tell me if you like it.
Speak soon,
Lily
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