Hi there!<\/p>\n

I hope this finds you as well as can be and that you\u2019re coping with the lockdown as best you can without going too stir crazy. If you\u2019re unwell, I wish you a speedy recovery.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been thinking about how glad I am that this didn\u2019t happen when my three children were younger. Hats off to those of you that are having to cope with the rigours of homeschooling and keeping young children occupied within the confines of your home. That calls for all sorts of patience, energy and creativity.<\/p>\n

I was on annual leave last week to help celebrate my 60th birthday, but of course, it didn\u2019t go exactly as planned!<\/p>\n

Over a year ago, I booked the house that features in one of my favourite films About Time<\/em>. It\u2019s a British romantic comedy-drama written and directed by Richard Curtis, starring Domhnall Gleeson, Rachel McAdams and Bill Nighy.<\/p>\n

The film is about a young man with the ability to time travel, in which the family home where he learns about this is a beautiful white house positioned above a beach in Cornwall.<\/p>\n

In real life, it\u2019s called Porthpean House and it\u2019s available to rent. It sleeps 21 people and I had hoped to have my family and some friends with me to celebrate my milestone birthday.<\/p>\n

The first person to drop out was Ali Keenan when she starting suffering from Covid-19-like symptoms, then gradually I had calls from everyone!<\/p>\n

In the end, as UK travel hadn\u2019t been banned at that point so insurance wasn\u2019t any help, Olley and I decided to go anyway.<\/p>\n\n

With 12 bedrooms to choose from, we could have enjoyed a different view every morning – and what a view! It\u2019s such a beautiful place and it\u2019s a shame that I couldn\u2019t share it as planned, but it was a perfect place to self-isolate!<\/p>\n

Pubs were closed, so there were no lazy lunches. But I had ordered plenty of food to feed the masses, so we enjoyed picnics in the stunning camellia-filled garden, wrapped up against the cold wind.<\/p>\n\n

The garden was similar to how I imagine the Lost Gardens of Heligan would be – they\u2019re only a few miles from the house and I\u2019d been hoping to enjoy them, but of course, they were closed.<\/p>\n\n

I hadn\u2019t realised quite how captivating camellias, magnolias and rhododendrons can be, which you can see in these photos. It\u2019s inspired me to add some to my own garden, with the help of Plants2 Gardens<\/span><\/a> and Richard Jackson<\/span><\/a>!<\/p>\n\n

I did leave the property to enjoy an exhilarating coastal path walk. When the weather warmed up a bit I managed to have a go on my birthday present, which was a paddleboard from the deserted beach just a few steps down from the garden.<\/p>\n

It was a lovely week, but memorable for me, although not quite the way I had imagined. My 60th birthday will go down in our family history as the day the national lockdown was announced!<\/p>\n\n

It\u2019s certainly a worrying time for us all. My daughter Bex is 30-weeks pregnant and a frontline locum hospital doctor while she\u2019s waiting to resume her GP training, after having moved away from London to live in Cambridgeshire. When the advice for pregnant women was announced, she had to resign from the agency where she received her hospital shifts. The following day she started to cough.<\/p>\n

Toddler Zoe and husband Dan have both had \u2018it\u2019 too. Sadly it meant that Zoe\u2019s second birthday, the day before my big day, was restricted to the three of them and an online rendition of us singing Happy Birthday to her!<\/p>\n

So many people have missed out in bigger ways than my family, I know, with weddings, holidays and all sorts of celebrations being cancelled.<\/p>\n

Hopefully, we can all make up for it when this is all over, but for now, I\u2019m relieved Bex, Dan and Zoe are all feeling better and it seems that the baby is still thriving. Zoe was born six weeks early, and Bex is really hoping to hang onto her new sister until closer to her due date in June.<\/p>\n\n

I\u2019m writing this on April Fools\u2019 Day – it\u2019s after midday, so no worries about being taken for one (a fool)! But it\u2019s good news that the first of the month brings some more special deals at QVC.<\/p>\n

Our Beauty Pick of the Month<\/span><\/a> is something I will be ordering. Even without overseas travel, I use SPF 50 on my face, and the Ultrasun Anti-Pigmentation<\/span><\/a> formula is my choice.<\/p>\n

We have a really generous 150ml size for just under \u00a350 with no delivery charge, while the regular 50ml is normally \u00a332 with \u00a31.95 postage – and still has 59 five star reviews! Have a look here<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

And remember that each week we have several Big Deal<\/span><\/a> offers for you. It\u2019s always worth going to our website to check them out. They launch every Sunday evening, so Monday morning is a good time to make that habit.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been busy buying in the past week, including Joules<\/span><\/a> and Seasalt<\/span><\/a> fashion at outlet prices for my sister in law\u2019s birthday, Wilfreds Pies<\/span><\/a> to help with solving the question of \u2018what\u2019s for tea today?\u2019 and plenty from our Gardening<\/span><\/a> department, too. I\u2019ll maybe share some photos of what I\u2019m doing in our garden next time.<\/p>\n

Before I go, let me give you a couple of ideas on how to occupy yourself during this time!<\/p>\n

Please give yourself a few moments to read lovely Ali Keenan\u2019s latest blog and take part in a heart-warming competition<\/span><\/a> she has set, with loads of wonderful beauty products to win. She remains as upbeat and positive as ever, even though she\u2019s been really poorly with this horrible bug. All her latest news and details of her competition can be found here<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

And finally, if you can bear the sound of my voice and have an hour with nothing better to do, you\u2019ll find the latest QVC podcast<\/span><\/a> where I tell you about my life before QVC here<\/span><\/a>. I must say, Will Gowing is a brilliant person to chat to and the time went really quickly.<\/p>\n

He started backstage at QVC shortly before I joined as a presenter almost 20-years ago and has been a constant cheery presence at the Q ever since. He\u2019s such a lovely guy and has developed into a skilled interviewer (eat your heart out, Parky!!)<\/p>\n

Check out<\/span><\/a> the 27 podcasts episodes before mine. They\u2019re all fascinating…<\/p>\n

That\u2019s enough from me now, though. All my best wishes to you all and I hope you find the strength to cope with whatever difficulties you are facing.<\/p>\n

Do remember to ask for help and not struggle on trying to manage on your own – one good thing to come of this situation is the extraordinary kindness that people are showing to each other.<\/p>\n

One of the reasons that I enjoy the film About Time<\/em> so much is the underlying message that we should be the best we can every day and that being kind to each other is important for our own happiness.<\/p>\n

Helping others makes us feel good, so say \u2018yes please\u2019 if someone offers to help. They wouldn\u2019t ask if they didn\u2019t mean it.<\/p>\n

Take care, stay home and I pray you to keep healthy.<\/p>\n

Love, Kathy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi there! I hope this finds you as well as can be and that you\u2019re coping with the lockdown as best you can without going too stir crazy. If you\u2019re unwell, I wish you a speedy recovery. I\u2019ve been thinking about how glad I am that this didn\u2019t happen when my three children were younger. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":95132,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[263,21],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stories.qvcuk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95056"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stories.qvcuk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stories.qvcuk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stories.qvcuk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stories.qvcuk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95056"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/stories.qvcuk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95145,"href":"https:\/\/stories.qvcuk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95056\/revisions\/95145"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stories.qvcuk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stories.qvcuk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stories.qvcuk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stories.qvcuk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}