Sun, sea and pasty...

One has to have a little variety in life... I had my first pasty today. It's hard, but if I don't limit myself to one pasty every week or so I could pile on at least half a stone a week. The best ones round here, in my humble pasty taster opinion, are from the beach shop down at Putsborough. Hot from the oven and eaten outdoors of course. Very nice. Lots of crumbly, light pastry - yum. I was musing that it would be very funny to get Gillian McKeith, she of 'You are what you eat' fame down to Putsborough beach shop to cast her eye over the menu. Chip bap, chips with cheese, scampi and chips amongst other items. It's a top place though - you can get yummy baps with all sorts of filling, including bacon and egg. You can have an early bacon bap if you go for an early morning swim or a yummy cone of fish and chips if you're down to catch the evening tide. Heavenly.

And you can peruse a top quality selection of spades and other beach paraphernalia. I do like a good spade, and luckily, now I have two fabulous nieces, I can pretend that I am buying spades for them so I can build sand castles for them. Ha. I love building sand castles. If I'm honest, I do get a little bit competitive on the sand castle front. In fact, I've even been known to build fairly impressive structures in Clapham Common playground sandpit if the gauntlet is thrown down. My nieces come down with my sister and my mum and dad next week. Can't wait.

I love family holidays. I think because we had such brilliant family holidays when we were younger I always feel very excited when I'm by the seaside. We pretty much did the whole of the western coast of the UK over our formative years. Many in Anglesey, which I think is compulsory if you live in the North West, then we worked our way down through North Wales - Aberdarron, South Wales - Pembrokeshire and The Gower, and then Devon. We only strayed abroad once, to Brittany. We stayed in a caravan on a rather militaristic campsite. My Dad looks back fondly on that time as 'Two weeks of sheer misery on the Brittany Coast'.

I'm just wondering whether I have left a sufficient amount of time since my pasty before I can go and have an ice cream. I know, I know. I need to shift my life focus from food. It's just hard. Food is so nice. Enjoy.

Rx

Sun, sea and ice cream...

I love Devon. Particularly north Devon where I am holed up for the next few weeks. The weather is just amazing, the beach is in walking distance - very short walking distance. I can hear the sea through my open window when I wake up in the morning. There is an ice cream shop - where they know my name - within 100m. The pasty shop is even closer than that. I went in the sea for the first time yesterday. Blissful. It is verging on warm and the water is crystal clear. Such a wonderful place.

I have recently purchased a shopping trolley called Molly. I haven't given the trolley a name in a strange invisible friend like way, the trolley is actually called Molly by its manufacturers, Tripp. You can find them online or you can get them from Debenhams and I'm telling you, they are brilliant. A bit like a rucksack on wheels, you can get all your shopping in them, wheel them through town with ease and get on the bus no problem. For those of us not able to drive - me because of lack of vision, not excess points I might add - they are hugely liberating and make lugging heavy bags of shopping home with hands tingling and arms ever lengthening a thing of the past. You need to get the picture of the tartan shopper so beloved of the older trolley user right out of your mind. This is cool turquoise, yellow or black (mine is turquoise), is fully waterproof, has rucksack like fastening on the front, zips open down both sides for easy access, has a lovely squashy comfort grip and, wait for it, has a bell! I can't tell you how excited I am to be able to give those pavement hogging pram pushers a run for their money. Have I ever mentioned the Clapham anti-pram league? No? Well, that's another story. Enough about shopping trolleys - you'd think I'd just turned 70.

Anyway, loving every minute. Just got my 47th free picnic gift from M&S in Barnstaple for having bought 6 picnic items or more - food I was going to buy anyway. One can really get the value in life if one tries. I even went to Argos today - that's twice in one month and I'm not sure I've done that since I was about twelve.

Have a lovely weekend.

Rx