A Day in the life of a PA - Part 2

CEO is back from LA – he has been out there since two weeks ago for Oscar’s season and frankly, I’ve enjoyed the break (and used the time wisely to learn skills including InDesign, website building, and Photoshop).  I know  the moment he lands (his arrival time has been imprinted in my brain the moment I booked the flights) thanks to a barrage of emails and texts coming through from his phone. 11 Hours of thinking time can be very dangerous. Phone calls pour in for meeting requests with Him and thank you notes arrive in regards to our latest celebrity bash - and I know that up until Easter things are going to be very busy indeed. 

As central London is hit by torrential downpour, I sit back in my chair grateful that I was sensible enough to bring in homemade soup for lunch, and with CEO safely away at a lunch meeting I have no reason to venture outside. That is until I receive a call from him asking me to go over to the restaurant he is currently at and collect his bags.

Begrudgingly, I put on my (very sensible and very un-cool) ski coat which I have taken to wearing as it continues to amaze me that a thick coat can keep me warm AND dry regardless of the weather (I am no coat-wearer, much to the horror of my aunt). I power-walk over to the restaurant where I see him sitting at the counter deep in (French) conversation with his client. After repeating his name and trying to catch his eye, I resort to tapping his shoulder lightly – feeling like some crazed fan in an upmarket dining room with scruffy hair and an oversized ski jacket. He turns to me and points over to the corner to indicate where his bags have been stores, and there sit three large Fortnum & Mason bags containing CEO-esque purchases: champagne and books. He also rattles off a list of tasks, meetings and dinners to schedule whilst I stand desperately trying not to forget anything as I am without clipboard, notepad or pen. I grab the bags and head for the door when a waiter stops me and points to a table of an elderly couple who are looking very alarmed and almost choking on their food. And then I realise, as the waiter slowly reaches for the three bags clasped firmly in my hand that they are not CEO’s... and in fact I have just tried to leave the restaurant with someone else’s Fortnum & Mason shopping. 

The waiter then heads over to the other bar where he fishes out a battered leather satchel and L.L.Bean canvas bag in bright blue, which I recognise instantly. Despite my apologies to the couple, they still glare at me like I’ve just tried (and failed) to pull off a shopping-thieving heist in broad daylight, and I hurriedly leave before I can cause any more havoc. 

A Second Attempt at Arson

By the second night, Ollie had decided he wanted pancakes as well and I still had the jug of batter mix in the fridge from my failed attempts the previous evening. So after a successful session of cutting his hair without the loss of limb, he entrusted me to make some more pancakes without setting the kitchen on fire again. 

I used a large pan, and decided to make smaller scotch pancakes to avoid any disasters. Despite this, I still managed to drop a lump of butter onto the stove AGAIN, but was able to wipe it away before it caught fire. The pancakes survived, and Ollie was delighted with his stack of belling-style nutella and banana pancakes. I flicked the induction hob off and did the washing up and that was that.

Or so I thought! The next morning Ollie headed into the kitchen and suddenly I heard the same 'CONNIE' my Dad would growl when I was 6 and had stomped on a sieve. I leapt out of bed and dashed to the kitchen. 'You've left the hob on ALL. NIGHT.' he said. I just can't believe it... Apparently this had been the one time he hadn't obsessively checked all the hob switches before bed, and I'd gone and left it on. I can never tease him about his OCD again. In my defence, the hob switch had been resting between 9 and 0, so whilst it was still hot, I don't think it had been on really hot...? I hope. And the good news is I haven't 'burnt the element out' or whatever technical term it is. I think for not I'm just going to sit with my hands in oven gloves and rock in the corner of the sitting room, as far away from the kitchen as possible. I'm starting to feel like Edward Scissorhands with my culinary expertise rapidly going down the drain. All I can do is be thankful that pancake day is a year away and in the meantime I need to work on not setting fire to the kitchen! 

How Not To Make Pancakes

Hallelujah! It's pancake day again. I've been craving pancakes since I realised Shrove Tuesday was upon us again... yesterday.

I raced home this evening, dreaming of all the guilt-free Nutella I could eat, with bananas all chopped and folded up in a gloriously stodgy yet fluffy pancake. During dinner we had a small incident with some questionable pasta sauce, but I didn't let that deter me. After I'd tidied away I set about making pancakes, using the three vital ingredients that every cupboard has: an egg, plain flour, and milk.

I take pride in the fact that I do not require a recipe for a batter mix - it's all about getting the right consistency. If it's too thick, you add more milk; too sloppy: more flour. So I popped my penultimate Clarence Court Burford Brown egg into a pyrex jug, and started pouring out the flour. There were a lot of large crumb-like objects in the packet which I assumed were just larger clumps of flour, and among the noise of the butter sizzling in the pan and the extractor fan, I said to my boyfriend 'I didn't know flour had a best before date?' after seeing that the packet in my hand read '2012'. Then, after giving the nearly-empty bag a good shake and more 'crumbs' falling out into a heap on top of my beautiful (and expensive) egg, I looked down and realised that the flour was spotty... and had weird seeds in. All this was done with a narrative to my boyfriend, until I suddenly realised that these 'seeds' were grey and wriggling. In an instant, I shoved the jug into the sink and ran into the bathroom in terror to wash my hands and make sure I hadn't accidentally inhaled a whateverthatwas or had one crawling up my arm.

By the time I returned (in washing up gloves and outdoor boots) the boyfriend had disposed of the flour and egg contents, so I spent the subsequent half hour emptying out our food cupboard and binning anything in open packets or that we hadn't used in months (lentils, pearl barley, paella rice). I also interrogated the boyfriend who insisted that the rice, icing sugar, raisins and dry pasta would be safe as weevils (what a disgusting word) don't like dry or sweet stuff and they don't have the amino acids that flour has. I then phoned my Dad for secondary guidance who advised that if I got the pan hot enough I wouldn't have to worry about weevils - they'd provide extra protein, followed by a call to my mother for some sympathy - who suggested SIEVING out the weevils. Sometimes I think I'm adopted.

So back to square one, feeling traumatised and seriously considering living a gluten free lifestyle thanks to the flour fiasco. After deciding that I really did want pancakes and that it was worth using up the last posh egg, I dug out a Kilner jar of flour - probably even older but with a trusty seal to deter any creepy crawlies - and started again. Making the batter went smoothly this time, sans hiccups, and it was all starting to look quite promising... until I set fire to the kitchen.

I added some mixture to the hot, buttery pan and swirled the mix around. The first pancake came out quite thin and crispy, so I added a bit more mixture on the second go. As I was twirling the pan around - very gently - half the pancake suddenly stuck to the pan so I gave it a small nudge and before I knew it, the other half had slopped right over the pan and across the entire hob, like pancake vomit. I let out a short scream, prompting the boyfriend to check from the safe distance of the sofa if I was alright. So far, things were still under control if a little messy, so I replied 'no, no.. It's fine' whilst scraping the batter mix off with the spatula. Then suddenly, the melted butter used to grease the pan - which had also slopped onto the hob - set on fire in such a comical way, and all I could do was scream a bit louder and stand there waving an empty frying pan madly at the hob as the flames quivered on the glass hob - leaving me utterly speechless, and remembering something about using a damp cloth to put it out. Thank goodness the boyfriend had sense to take on board the seriousness of me becoming speechless with stifled yelps and rushed over in time to guide the pan directly onto the flames to put it out.

The pancake mixture lay in a horrible splatter across the stove and there was now a giant burnt crust forming on the stove and bottom of the pan. If you had been there at that moment, you would not have believed that in on a 'good' day, I am quite the talented chef. The remains looked like a pancake slaughter session or the aftermath of a food fight, and I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, so I ended up doing both. At the same time.

It took the boyfriend a while before he could see the funny side... He was more bothered about the glass stove, our security deposit, and scraping off the gloopy mess from the hob, whilst I was sad about wasting my last two Clarence Court eggs. We opened the kitchen windows for the first time in months to rid the room of the billowing clouds of smoke that would invariably set the fire alarm off (fortunately we were relieved of that calamity), and attempted to scrape the burnt batter off the hob ring which arguably made the damage look even worse. Boyfriend then got annoyed because I'd promised to cut his hair that evening and pancakes had taken priority (duh), and if I couldn't cook a simple pancake without setting the house on fire, why would he let me go near his head with a pair of scissors? (Like cooking, I am extremely skilled in the art of men's hair cutting... just not this evening it seems.)

Suffice it to say, there was no hair cutting this evening... And I ended up skipping the lonely cold and crispy pancake and having a banana with Nutella instead, feeling like I had the opposite of the Midas touch. I am also mentally scarred at the idea of any form of cooking now, thanks to the culinary catastrophes I experienced in the space of two hours, leading me to believe that maybe I should have given up and gone to bed after the pasta sauce debacle. There is a lesson to be learned here about flour, the importance of Kilner jars, and the dangers of making pancakes.

The remains of the second pancake.

A Fruitless Search: The Reasons Why Supermarkets are Failing

• I want to buy a can of soup and not worry that it might be half price at the next store. A pot of Tesco Finest fresh soup is £2.40 in one store, and 2 for £2 in another. What the hell? 

• All these silly offers. Cut the crap, and just cut pounds. I don’t need to be confused into whether it’s cheaper to buy peppers individually or in a pack of three or five, and I don’t need three packs of butter in my fridge. With the nation wasting 15 millions tonnes of uneaten food each year, don’t persuade me to buy more than one to get the best deal - just lower the price for one. Give straight discounts and show some self-respect.

• A trip round Tesco metro takes me 45 minutes so don’t get me started on the huge superstores. I want to nip in, find what I want and pay for it, without being led round each display counters, past the pyramid of Philadelphia cheese on offer, and zig zag up every aisle just to find ten items.

• Vouchers. Why on earth do I want a voucher for 5p off strawberry yoghurt? I don’t even eat strawberry yoghurt! They might aim to save you some money on your next shop, but I was really hoping on leaving and never coming back until your receipt machine printed off five different vouchers - money off my first online shop, bonus points for fuel, money off the next time I buy a 5kg bag of rice (just bought one and probably won’t need one for another year), and even more maddening, a voucher telling me how much I could have saved elsewhere. You get my point. 

• Staff who don’t know their aisle 2 from their aisle 32. ‘In the olden days…’ store staff would know your first name, and your ‘usual’ shopping items. They’d know that you came in to shop at exactly 10:30am on a Saturday, and how you like your ham carved. Now it’s just a generation waiting until they can clock out who don’t know much about the produce that they’re selling - I’ve had to describe okra and quinoa to hapless school drop-outs many a time. Waitrose actually succeeds in giving the impression that the staff actually quite like food.

• ‘Ripen at home’. Oh come on! I’d like to find one person who’s never bought a cheaper ‘ripen at home’ avocado and it actually ripened into a soft and creamy avocado. Selling ‘ripe and ready’ fruit at a premium is a joke. The fact that these bananas/plums/nectarines/avocados are 50p cheaper just so you can have it sitting in your fruit basket going from rock-solid to mouldy overnight is obscene.

• No one gives a shit about self-service checkouts. Whilst it was fun five years ago as a teen to ‘scan all your shopping yourself’, the appeal has severely withered away. Despite the fact I am young and tech-savvy, rarely are there any staff attending the self-service checkouts and usually I am stuck in a queue halfway up an aisle whilst the elderly jab at the screens, attempting to swipe a bar code without listening to the instruction that an item has been removed from the bagging area. I know, I know, the machines are over-sensitive and play up and I have been caught out several times, but why have them? You want us to do the job for you but you have to do it anyhow. When you could just be putting more staff on the regular tills. As for “ten items or less” it is “fewer”. Fewer!

Lose lbs, Save Pounds

Despite costly gym memberships, the price of a personal trainer, and waiting lists to get into the local Zumba class, working out doesn’t have to cost a fortune. Or any price for that matter! Stop blaming membership prices for your lack of exercise and start getting fit for free (and plenty more fun, too).

Fitness DVDs. No need to turn your nose up at Jane Fonda rolling around on a stability ball, nor a Z-lister weight-loss DVD. The Ministry of Sound does some good dance workouts, and for the serious fitness bunnies the Jillian Michaels 30 day Shred will soon whittle you into shape. Doing a range of workout DVDs gives you the opportunity to try many different routines and will stave off workout boredom. Push the furniture to the side and turn your lounge into a dance floor to work away your ‘wobbly bits’.

Fitness Store Events. Many local running and athletic apparel stores offer running groups or classes led by certified coaches and trainers, including Sweaty Betty, Nike Training Club and Sweatshop Running. This is a great way to get expert advice and find new workout buddies. Don’t be shy - enquire and a store and give it a go.

Party in the Park. Get a group of friends together and plan a 5k round the park, or get doing outdoor circuits together. This could be doing tricep dips on a park bench, running on uneven terrain, or crunches and lunges on the grass. The more friends you take, the more fun you’ll all have. Wherever you live has to be more scenic than staring at the four walls of your gym from a treadmill.

Don't Take Shortcuts. All around us are short cuts and conveniences: lifts, escalators, trains, cars. Whilst they may make our life a little easier, they certainly don't help our waistline. Get off the tube one stop earlier, don't get the bus and walk instead, or take the stairs - find ways throughout your day to incorporate exercise and extra calorie-burners rather than taking the easy way. These little efforts all add up leading to a high calorie burn overall and trim measurements. 

Get 'Appy. There are hundreds of fitness apps available for smartphones. Couch-to-5k is a free and popular app for those who have never attempted running before, and will soon have you up and setting your own personal best records. Other ones include Adidas MiCoach which provides voice coaching and training plans, Office Yoga, for those workaholics chained to their desk through lunch breaks, Fitness Buddy offering over 300 exercises, and the Nike Training Club app so you can get down and ‘just do it’ with their audio guidance and video demos from top fitness trainers.

Think Drink. You don't need to guzzle sports drinks and fizzy pop to give you energy and keep you fit. H2O does the job perfectly, without the additives and fat-preserving chemicals. What you put in your body is just as important (if not more important) than what you do with your body, and can make all the difference. Substituting fizzy drinks for still unadulterated water is the single best diet, and won't spike your blood sugar levels like sugary drinks and lead to cravings and snacking. Unless you're a professional athlete and training for more than four hours a day, you shouldn't even need lucozade to get through a gym sesh - your body, a bottle of water and a banana at the end of a workout is sufficient without the need for chemicals. 

Scrub Up Well - The Benefits of Exfoliating

Give me a facial salt scrub and I'll scrape off a layer of skin like a sand-grinder. Whilst this is definitely not the method most optimum for cleaning your delicate skin, there are many benefits to a (gentle) regular facial exfoliation, leading to a younger-looking and blemish-free face.

Dermatologists have found that helping your skin with the removal of dead cells will increase cell turnover, revealing newer, healthier skin cells plus a decrease in blackheads, pigmentation and fine lines. Here are five reasons why picking up a pot of microbead exfoliator or salt crystal facial scrub with crushed coffee beans and shards of diamonds (okay, so I made that bit up) could transform your face and help you scrub up. 

Helps Clear Acne & Breakouts

 Exfoliation helps to reduce the occurrence of acne and blackhead breakouts. Acne-prone skin sheds extra skin cells more than other skin types, but the cells do not fall away. Instead, they stick to the skin, clogging pores and hair follicles. As this dead cell debris builds, the skin produces excess follicle oils—which leads to blackheads and blemishes. Regular exfoliation is like “taking out the rubbish”, reducing the likelihood of clogged pores and acne.

1. Improve Your Skins Texture

    Exfoliating the tired, dead cells also speeds up the skin renewal process, allowing new healthy cells to take their place. This process turns your complexion from dull and dry to bright, vibrant, and smooth. In addition, regular exfoliation reduces fine lines and wrinkles and keeps your skin much softer. 

2. Reduces Appearance of Large Pores

    Along with dead cells, exfoliating also removes the dirt stuck deep inside your pores. Washing your skin alone will not accomplish this. When pores become clogged, they appear larger, which is the last thing we all want. By “decongesting” your pores through exfoliation, they will diminish in size and allow your skin a healthy polished glow.

3. Exfoliate Away All Signs of Aging

    As you age, your skin becomes drier and loses plasticity (that magic word!), which can result in lines and wrinkles. You also may find your skin is more rough in texture than it used to be. This is because of the multiple layers of dead skin cells that accumulate of the years. Exfoliators containing renitoid compounds which are effective and safe options to reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles.

4. Better Absorption

    Serum and moisturizers are better absorbed into skin that’s not blocked by layers of dead cells and dirt. Exfoliating allows your skin to be properly moisturized and stay healthy. Regular exfoliating of your face will aid a smoother application of makeup and will also allow your sunscreen to better protect your skin.

Three of the best.... Cleansers

Elemental Herbology Cool & Clear Oil Control Facial Cleanser - £29 for 100ml

This was given to me as a 'get well' treat from a friend. I love it! It smells gorgeous and is full of glorious botanicals and anti-oxidant ingredients like lavender, tea-tree oil and green tea to fight bacteria and soothe and protect the skin, making you feel like a floral goddess.

The pump action on the bottle ensures that I don't waste too much cleanser, but I do have to pump out 4 to 6 squirts of the stuff to get a 'clean' feeling and even lather over my face. It doesn't foam much but this isn't necessarily a bad thing - it's like a botanical gel for your face which penetrates your face, slowly doing you good. For someone with oily skin, this is great at balancing oil to leave the skin feeling clean and purified. I have taken to using this product as a 'treat' instead a daily cleanser just to make it last a bit longer. 

Boots Tea Tree and Witch Hazel Foaming Face Wash - £3.59 for 150ml

This is a clean-feeling and refreshing foaming cleanser infused with tea tree oil. Being the avid spot-squeezer, I often get into the shower with a red and blotchy face from where I've pinched and poked at my skin. The tea tree and witch hazel is very good at calming down my skin and cleaning out the holes I've made in my face. 

It pumps out as a thick mousse-like foam onto my hand, but as I rub it on my face most of the bubbles 'flatten' and disappear. However, it's very good at removing foundation, dirt and oil, so usually I use this first for my skincare regime. I also like this face wash as it's not too astringent, so I know it won't dry out my skin. Out of all my cleansers and face washes, this is the one that feels like it's ridding my skin of spot-causing bacteria and helping to unblock pores - I also use their toning lotion. 

  

Nip+Fab Glycolic Fix Cleanser - £7.95 for 150ml

I just love Nip+Fab products! They're not overpriced, yet they claim (and seem) to do beneficial and scientific wonders to your skin. I hope to do a 'three of the best' on their other products, but I couldn't miss an opportunity to praise their cleanser. 

When you tip the bottle upside down it sort of pours out like water. I was dubious to start with because usually you don't get much foam out of watery cleansers like this. However, within seconds of hitting my face I was trying not to breathe bubbles up my nose - this is the foamiest cleanser yet, in a really good way. It has a delicate smell of hints of apple and grapefruit, and the 2% glycolic acid aims to exfoliate and retexture, whilst apple amino acids cleanse and purify. My skin feels so hydrated after using this and I feel like I'm doing something good for my skin - to combat the heavy scrubbing I do when I'm using an exfoliator. I always try to hold my breath for as long as possible so I can rub it round my face that little bit longer, before I have to wash it off or breathe the bubbles up my nose.

Party Fever - Beating January Flu's

The first of January is usually a day of starting resolutions with the gusto of Goliath: heading out on that 10k (even if you do come back home after 2k); abstaining from all foods which aren’t kale or beetroot; and putting your new Nutri-bullet juice extractor to good use. Despite all good intentions and insatiable willpower, sadly I spent next four days in bed - and this was not due to the NYE celebrations we had. Upon consulting Siri, I am told that I am not pregnant nor suffering from ebola; rather, I have flu. With symptoms of feverishness, chills, lack of appetite, fatigue, muscle soreness, back and stomach pain, headache, coughing and a sore throat, I can tell I’m in for a ride here - with the added bonus of beating New Year weight-loss resolutions in double time. 

During the fourth evening spent suffering and after another teary-episode about facing another sleepless night, I attempt a ‘vicks bowl’. I’d seen the boyfriend do it once, and if it weren’t for my slightly disturbing fascination with gruesome bodily fluids, our relationship may have been seriously traumatised. It’s basically creating a mini steam room - where, thankfully, no one wants to join you. The Vicks bowl appears to be something of a minor success. Whilst I still feel exhausted, my nose is as dry as the tissue box empty and everything below my chest still feeling below par, I can actually take relatively full breaths, I’m not clearing my throat every ten seconds, and my head feels slightly less pressurised. If all these symptoms return within the next five minutes, a good Vicks steam has shown to be very beneficial to the facial pores and has put me one step towards feeling rather relaxed. Sadly the symptoms do return pretty pronto (throbbing eyes and forehead, aching ears and I think my heart is actually starting to slow down due to regular overdoses of cough syrup). I should really start measuring doses out with a teaspoon instead of drinking estimated gulps of it… in the darkness… whilst half asleep… when looking for ANY solution to end this fix this. Please do not try this at home. I am by no means an advocate of guestimation, particularly when it comes to medication. Or cocktail making. 

The night before I return to work and I’m contemplating adding an extra pair of ski socks - on top of the sports socks and ski socks I already have on my feet - and crawling into the oven, both for warmth purposed and as a way to end this misery. My head feels like a tightly filled balloon, waiting to burst any second and I have a huge lump in my throat - and not because I keep gulping alarming amounts of chesty cough mixture. When I do get to sleep, my body goes into hibernation and I end up sleeping for 12 hours at a time. I am mentally and physically exhausted from this illness which no amount of sleep will cure. I am lucky that by day four of this my muscles and joints have ceased aching every time I move, lift something, or expend marginal energy on a meagre activity like making the bed. 

As a last ditch attempt to ensure a sound night’s sleep (who am I kidding) I slather Vicks VapoRub over my skin - including pointless places like my neck and spine in some vague hope it will penetrate and steam my insides - shove the nozzle of Olbas Oil up my nose like a crack addict, and bury myself under two winter duvet covers and a thick velvet throw, whilst wearing a giant fur-lined hoody. 

I am not usually an ill person, and this sudden knock-down in my prime is not due to my over attentive-ness to hand washing, wet wipes and a steady supply of anti-bac gel. I like to think I have a strong immune system and I always achieve my 5-a-day (and unlike my BF, I know this does not include Terry’s chocolate orange). When the landlord brought his coughing 10-year-old round whilst inspecting our boiler, within minutes of him leaving all door handles and light switches were sanitised to within an inch of their life. 

I blame London, and those infernal bus pillars and tube poles that the filthiest and most unhygienic commuters insist on wiping their noses over. Whilst I try and avoid such germ-havens, the regular jerk of the bus or race to get off may have me clinging onto these poles of death in a bid to stay upright. 

Yesterday we ventured over to Westfield shopping centre (20 minutes from our house) where I proceeded to cough over a Clarins' sales advisor, struggle to eat half a tortilla, breath into my scarf like a deranged psychopath and generally act and sound like a dying pensioner. Is this what dying feels like? Pass me my skinny jeans - I need one last piece of satisfaction before this kills me, whether it’s by chewy vitamin, severe overheating, or my head erupting (finally) over our White Company bed sheets.