Back on two wheels

On yer bike

Well it finally happened, I’ve joined the lockdown bike brigade! Ever since we got Tilda cycling it’s made me want to get back on a bike so that I can cycle with her. Seeing so many families out together cycling around the park has been so nice to see and the aim will be of course to get Ivy cycling confidently too so that we can do plenty of days out on two wheels.

It wasn’t that easy to get hold of a bike for me though, that’s for sure. Everyone has gone bike crazy and seen bike sales rise 677% in the UK during lockdown!!! Most places are completely sold out and the one that I wanted was too but was supposedly coming back into stock. I checked back every day and finally the ‘back in stock soon’ notice turned into ‘we don’t know when this will be back in stock’.

I figured it wasn’t going to happen this summer until out of the blue a friend of mine posted on Facebook that she had ordered a bike from Amsterdam but hadn’t factored the measurements properly and at 5 ft 4 she was way too small for it and needed to sell it. Bless her, she had waited 12 weeks for it to arrive only for it to be completely wrong for her.

A brand new beautiful Dutch city bike, just the sort of thing that I wanted. So I went round last week to see it, in her garden of course (social distanced of course) to try it and I fell in love with it straight away. What a turn up for the books. I already had a helmet so we headed to our local park to try it out. I’m not going to lie to you, I was nervous at first, I haven’t ridden a bike for years so I wheeled it down the first part of the road!! I got over my fear quite quickly though and I was off and I loved it. I did not however like the hills on the way back! I guess I need to build my up hill leg muscles.

I’m wearing the Ruth Langsford Open Weave Summer Tunic in Tan.

Father’s Day

On father’s day the wind was a blowing! Which for Fred, meant only one thing. Windsurfing! Windsurfing has always been a huge part of Fred’s life, in fact that’s how I came to meet him. I was working on a stand at the Earls Court Boat show and Fred was on the stand opposite me with a windsurfing magazine called Boards where he was the advertising sales manager. It’s why we live on the coast and why most of our holidays before kids centred around it, chasing the wind and waves to places like Cape Town South Africa and Dahab in Egypt.

Yes I did give it a try but it wasn’t the sport for me, I prefer laying on the beach! Fred doesn’t get to do it very much anymore due to kids, work and life so it was great for him to get out on the waves while me and the girls ran around on the windy beach. Ivy of course was desperate to join in even if she can’t windsurf yet but she at least wanted to be in her wetsuit to splash about in the water and try out daddy’s board.

It was lovely to see so many of our friends down there too getting out on the water, it was definitely the father’s day out that’s for sure. I always love to see Tilda and Ivy out in the blustery fresh air of the beach too. We say it often but we count ourselves very lucky that our girls are able to have this kind of childhood with the beach on their doorstep.

Heatwave – Dyson Cool me Purifier Fan

Boy has this weather been amazing, even though it brought half the country down to the coast! I won’t go on about that though as I am still angry about the state of the beaches and the chaos it caused. It meant that we stayed away from the beach on those days and it was soooooo hot and muggy at home. So the Dyson Cool Me Fan has been an absolute godsend! I’ve been trying one out this last few months and it has been used so much more than I expected.

We have had it on for Joe Wicks workouts on full blast and on most days we have it on the lowest setting just to keep the air purifier going as the air gets so dusty in this weather and Tilda gets a little hayfever so it’s been great for her. When the heat went up last week this really became the star of the house.

The Cool Me fan is actually designed so that you can be really specific about the direction and who it’s blowing cold air over, so if one person wants the breeze but another doesn’t you can set it so it just hits that one person. However when Fred and I have been chilling out watching Glastonbury catch-ups in the muggy heat we have had it full blast and oscillating so that we both get the benefit of the breeze.

It’s a really slick design as you would expect from Dyson and of course has a remote control too so that you don’t even have to get up to change the setting. We currently have it on Easy Payments and two colour options of White and Fuchsia.

Fruit tree update

I’ve got fruit!! You may remember I bought the Today’s Special Value fruit tree collection from Thompson & Morgan back in April. Well I thought I would give you an update because I’ve actually managed to grow some fruit!

I wasn’t sure if I would stick to it and manage to keep them all alive but I have and I am so pleased with myself to now be seeing the results. My strawberries are now busting out all over the place ( I did manage to kill a few of the plants I will admit but the rest are doing great), one of my gooseberry bushes has also got fruit and my favourite of them all, my blueberry bush even has 5 little berries. I know it’s not enough for a bowl of Summer fruits yet but it’s a start and I love checking in on them all to see how they are doing. Who else got this offer, how are yours doing?

Speaking of Thompson & Morgan, I had an hour show yesterday and I wanted to mention my favourite plant of the hour. I fell in love with the ‘Runaway Bride’ hydrangea. It has the most beautiful glossy white flowers and a combination of large petals and small dainty ones. It won Plant of the Year at Chelsea in 2019 and it’s a real show-stopper.

You get two plants in 1L pots. Of course the one we had in the studio is what it can become in a few years but I think I might have to buy them and see if I can get mine to turn out half as good as that.

So how are you guys doing? Please do let me know in the comments how you are all getting on and what you’ve been up to.

I’ll be at QVC this week, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings. Hope you’ll be tuning in.

Lots of love Katy xx

PS. As always you can keep up with me on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.