Five Items Of Note

A list of things for discussion this month. Potential new homes, Bucks Fizz and cheese fondue. Plus avoiding Super Clubs and single flat sheets, sardine inspiration and bye, Weight Watchers.

Bonjour, bonjour, mes amis. The sun has been out this week almost ALL the time and the boost to the mood is extreme. I am made to live in heat; for me, year round sunshine is the perfect cure for all ills, being blasted with Vitamin D for 365 days is right up my street. The cat, not so much. Flo has been spending many hours either lying like a flattened seal on the cold tiled floor or looking out of the back door wistfully. I have a constant sense of guilt at her housebound status - she’s a British Shorthair which means that she has no sense of direction and if let out, would possibly not return which would probably quite please Joe but that would devastate the rest of us. So she lives the indoor dream, restricted to one place and never allowed to leave, like a fluffy, Victory bound Florence Pugh but with a cat litter tray which is a constant source of drama for my ENTIRE family. I have seen videos of people who train their cats to actually go on the toilet which is deeply impressive, but as a typical BSH, Flo has a constant look of distain on her face and will actively do the exact opposite of everything you would want her to so there is more chance of her willingly sitting on your lap (never happens) than there is of her hovering over the Ideal Standard.

Leo has started his GCSE’s this week and so far, so good. Allegedly. He has 21 - 21! - in total to take (craziness, really) and I messaged him after the first one to ask him how he did, to which he responded that 'he cooked’. Literally NFI what that meant so I googled, only to discover that it means ‘achieved greatness’, which demonstrated an often misplaced extreme self confidence owned by all the Dawson men throughout the extended family without exception. The proof of whether he did actually ‘cook’ or not will be in the pudding but we’ll need to wait until August to find out. Anyway, as I write this we are three down and 18 to go. It’s going to be a long month.

But back to business and again, as always, I have reached dissertation numbers on this essay (sorry) so well done if you get to the end. Here are five items of note that I have been contemplating this month and that I think you need to know about.

1. Downsized. Almost, Anyway.

We are currently in the process of buying a new house. I have tried to keep quiet about this and not jinx it but I am finding it increasingly impossible to do so, mostly because I am hugely excited and want to tell you all about it. Obviously, it could all still go terribly wrong and I could well be sobbing hysterically on to the pages of next months edition of Items Of Note, but so far, so good. Anyway, we are going MUCH smaller and I cannot wait. Those of you who have followed or subscribed for a while will know that our previous home erred on the large side - we bought it ten years ago when our kids were small and it was, in no uncertain terms, a whopper. A mere 5,500 square foot in fact. But, the kids starting leaving and the space felt even larger and I started resenting the house, which I never wanted to do as I bloody LOVED it. But it cost, a lot. We had a large mortgage. The maintenance was extortionate (the gardens took three hours to mow every two weeks, for example). The bills were massive. We had rooms that we never even went into which made me fume at the waste. Oh, and the neighbours all voted for Brexit and didn’t really like Southern people coming to the Yorkshire countryside with their Southern ideas and their house updating. Yes, we were right up their street.

Then one day, we hit our fifties and realised that we didn’t HAVE to live here. I know, right? We realised that if we sold our house, we could take our equity and buy a house without a mortgage - we’d have enough to do it up, plus perhaps even put some aside for a future house in the sunshine. We were actually aghast that we hadn’t considered doing this before. We would have less property to look after, we would have significantly smaller bills and if I got my way, we’d have no garden either. I know, I know, I’ve tried my best to love the outdoors but a small courtyard is my future and I can’t even tell you how happy I am about this.

So this is our plan and hopefully it won’t be long until these dreams are realised. The only slight issue that I have going forward is that I’m going to have to move 5,500 square foot of possessions into 1,800 square foot of new home. It’s not the furniture that’s the issue, btw. I am more than capable of being deeply ruthless with that side of things. It’s the possessions. It’s the cupboards full of stuff. It’s the years of charity shop trawling, the endless glassware, crockery, platters, jugs, ALL THE THINGS. And that’s before I start on an entire library of children’s books dating back to 2001 because I can’t bring myself to ditch them; the boxes of memorabilia from when they were six; the boxes of memorabilia from when I WAS SIX and mostly, the art. Oh yes, the art.

New house view if all goes to plan. Photo via Sykes Cottages.

Last year, I wrote about our climb up at the housing ladder - I’ll link it here. We spent many years going for the ‘bigger’ house, the ‘better’ house, the right catchment area; always had a mortgage that pushed us to the extreme. But when we got there? We realised, actually, that we didn’t need it anymore. We didn’t need that space, we wanted a different type of lifestyle now our kids had got older and the big house just didn’t do it for us. I get messages all the time in my Instagram DM’s asking if I miss our old house but I don’t, not one single bit. Not even vaguely. The anticipation of a new, smaller home that I can really have impact on is just off the scale thrilling. Plus it suits us. I don’t want to be someone who just stops when they reach their fifties and sits around waiting for their kids to visit. I want to live the NEXT stage of my life and I want to do it with multiple bells on; lots of holidays, lazy days, writing for people who want to read it, sitting in my courtyard with friends, some decent wine, a bowl of crisps and the odd Marlboro Light as and when I feel like it. We’ve done the hard work of raising our children (well, almost anyway) - now we want to reap the rewards.

And aside from that, a smaller home feels SO LIBERATING. I am permanently planning out rooms, looking at colours, tiles, floors, all the stuff. This will be the first house that we have ever lived in where I am able to make real, significant changes to reflect what I love from base level up and I am so excited that I spend a lot of the time at the moment smiling hard. Plus, you can see York Minster towering above from the (hopefully) new front door. I’ll keep you updated but in the meantime, if you need me I’ll be setting myself up at York Racecourse car boot sale to try and lessen the possession load. Wish me luck and cross it all, please.

2. I Love Eurovision, But Not As Much As I Used To.

Tonight it’s the Eurovision Song Contest and I am currently trying to coerce Joe into a themed Eurovision evening, just him and I. The chances of getting Leo or Max involved is less than minimal; I feel as if they would rather cut off their own heads than be given a scorecard to mark each entry. When I first met Joe and he was trying to impress me, he was MORE than happy to go along with this. Actually, he was also happy to do so when we had tiny children as we had nothing else to do. But no, not now. He will be looking for ANY excuse not to get involved, mostly because we are hardcore into Your Friends & Neighbours (if you haven’t watched this would HIGHLY recommend - six episodes on Netflix and four more en route) and he also won’t want to stay up late to watch results. FFS.

Eurovision was really at its best in 1981 when the UK managed to win with MakingYour Mind Up. I was ten and OBSESSED with Bucks Fizz. Just totally obsessed. Gen X will recall the skirt whipping off part of their routine which was a genius move and the whole colour blocking outfit situation was just pure, solid 1980’s. Back then, the main magazines of choice for ten year olds were Look In, Blue Jeans and Patches, all of which had pull out poster sections which were an essential bedroom wall feature. I had a huge Bucks Fizz poster on my bedroom wall, alongside Madness and Wham who were my go to loves of choice at that time. Admittedly, Mike and Bobby were not as hot to trot as George and Suggs (Suggs has aged exceptionally well IMO) but the excitement continued for MONTHS with Bucks Fizz going on to hit the charts multiple times (although they then all fell out and no one speaks to each other any more but you know, that’s showbiz).

Genius colour blocking. The joy of the 1980’s.

Eurovision fervour continued the following year with Bardo and One Step Further. I knew every single word to this song; the UK was still riding on the wave of success but despite singing their hearts out in Harrogate, Bardo only managed seventh place and the band disappeared into obscurity. Sad times. The party was over and it would be 16 long years before we won again with Love Shine A Light by Katrina & The Waves. Fun Eurovision fact: since 1997, we haven’t won at all and in fact have only reached the Top Ten three times, coming last a record FIVE times. Impressive.

Actually boyfriend and girlfriend IRL back then.

I feel as though this years song, What The Hell Just Happened? by Remember Monday, is in with a good chance to break this terrible sequence of failure and hit the top spot. Possibly. Anyway, I’m going to attempt to bribe Joe into watching by serving him a Swiss Fondue to get in him in the Basel Eurovision zone. I’ve found this recipe by Anna Glover and will see if he is powerless to resist.

Classic Cheese Fondue

You will need: 200ml dry white wine; 1 tbsp lemon juice; 200g grated Comte or Gruyere cheese; 200g grated Emmental cheese; 2 tsp cornflour; 1 tbsp kirsch or schnapps; 1 garlic clove. To serve: cornichons, pickled onions, baby potatoes, vegetable crudites and crusty bread, plus prongs or bamboo sticks.

Method: Pour wine and lemon juice into a heavy based pan with the garlic clove and heat until steaming. Add the cheese in handfuls, stirring until melted and keep stirring until smooth and creamy. In a separate small bowl, mix the cornflour and kirsch and then add to the cheese mixture until well combined. If you’ve got a fondue set, you can serve on the heat but otherwise just eat it super quickly. Ha.

Photo credit: Good Food website.

3. In The Words Of The Vengaboys, We’re Going To Ibiza. Again.

Long term (read: long suffering) readers will recall that seven years ago, we went with our friends to Ibiza for a long weekend. This was mostly due to my house music loving husbands insistence that he visit a Super Club to throw himself across the dance floor before he was too old to rave. Please bear in mind that at this point, he was only 45 so it was a little preemptive, particularly seeing as Pete Tong is now 64, Carl Cox is 62 and Fat Boy Slim and Paul Oakenfold are both now 61 (respect shown for their apparently never decreasing stamina). Anyway, I gave in to his demands and allowed him to take part in the organisational process and book the flights - this turned out to be a very poor decision that has never since been repeated. I’ll link my write up here and take the paywall off so that you can read why.

Due to popular demand amongst our closest friends (and the urge to have a sunny mini break after all of us have lived the GCSE parenting life for the last six months) we are returning in July. Unfortunately, we didn’t check the school calendar prior to booking the flights and our departure coincides with Leos school prom so we’ve managed to gain a huge shit parenting tick in the box and will now have to spend the majority of the time seeking out fake football shirts in apology. But anyway, readers, this time it’ll be a different sort of trip. Oh yes, indeedy.

Firstly, England aren’t in the semi finals of the World Cup which means we can give Playa D’En Bossa (and Simon, Neil, Jay and Will) a wide berth, heading straight for the spicy margaritas, table service and sunsets rather than standing in bar queues having celebratory beers thrown over us. And secondly, lessons have been learned. There will be no Super Clubbing on this watch, on no. Laid back venues and restaurants have been booked and there is allocated time for sun lounging by the pool and cold glasses of rose. There are slots for tapas. Even time for shopping. And most importantly, I have cast everyone else aside and taken charge of the accommodation,

Now this, my friends, is more like it. If you need me, I’ll be in the far left hand corner and nowhere in hell near a Super Club.

This time, I can confirm that the Hotel will be more White Lotus than Bates Motel. I am exaggerating (sort of); it was perfectly fine but the rooms did give throwbacks to self catering Albufeira 1995 with the girls where the beds were basically MDF ledges with a flat sheet. We are also now in our 50’s instead of our 40’s and there are plenty of things that I will now refuse to do now I am seven years older, notably not stay in a Hostel where the walls are so thin I can hear the people next door breathing and taking their shoes off.

So yes, I will report back in full. Partying past forty? Let’s see how we get on with partying past fifty. Wish me luck and also, drop any recommendations you have for cool, relaxed must do’s below, please. Merci.

4. Stuff With Sardines On.

It is no secret to those who read my newsletters that I have a slight passion for fish, particularly in homeware items. I put this down to the fact that I am a Pisces, even though I have no real belief in the power of the astrological charts if I am being honest. I seem to lack almost all of the common Piscean traits, including gullibility or being easily influenced (I take no prisoners at any time, FYI), a tendency towards spirituality and mysticism (not an ounce of this going on) and oversensitivity (again, no fucks given in most situations). However, I am a Pisces by birth so I’m taking this label and running with it.

I like a sardine. Not so much to eat but the whole visual thing. Sardines (and tinned fish in general) tend to be some of the prettiest on the supermarket shelves - the yellow, blue and red beauty of Ortiz may be four times the price of a standard tin but GOD it looks good. Joe will scoop out a full tin including the oil and smash it on to a piece of bread with no hesitation. One sardine dish I am always here for, though, is sardine pate - I was inspired to make this one below after a visit to our local Portugese restaurant, Tasca Frango, where they served it back in the tin for an aesthetically pleasing starter. It’s super simple and tastes SO GOOD. Would highly recommend.

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A post shared by @_lisa_dawson_

But back to the fishy point and last week, despite the fact that I am allegedly on a no clothes purchase ban I saw a sardine sweatshirt on Pull & Bear and immediately added it to bag. And I think that I must be caught up in some sardine infiltrated algorithm because for the last few days, I’ve been bombarded with them on Pinterest. Anyway, just in case there were any other non Pisces type Pisceans out there, I thought I’d compile a little sardine selection for your viewing pleasure. Just stop me from buying the lot, please.

1.Sweatshirt, Pull & Bear £29.99; 2. Make up bag, Amazon £9.99; 3. Bracelet, Malakai £35; 4. Piexe Iberica plate, Kingdom Of Tableware £3.35; 5. Embroidered cocktail napkins, West Elm £32 for 4; 6. Charm, Enamel Copenhagen £35; 7. Carafe, Anna + Nina £40; 8. Fiona sandals, Anthropologie £140; 9. Small mug, Dunelm £4.50; 10. Paper napkins, H&M £2.49; 11. Oversized t shirt, H&M £12.99.

5. Bye, Weight Watchers. It’s Been Fun (Sort Of).

Finally, I cannot leave this months Items Of Note without a conversation about weight loss injections, a subject which is BLOWING MY MIND at the moment. Weight Watchers collapsed last week, apparently partly due to the increase in people paying for Ozempic and Mounjaro - it’s not widely available on the NHS unless you have Type 2 diabetes. I have never attended a Weight Watchers class but I DID go to Slimming World back in the late nineties. I went with a friend from work, we’d all weigh in and chat about how we’d done and how hard it was to resist temptation before heading off to the local wine bar for a celebratory glass of wine and nachos.

Yes, yes, this did sort of defy the object, but it was fun. We were bound together in our concerted efforts to be healthier and lighter - there was no shame surrounding this fact, no anxiety admitting it and we all supported each other. Diet culture enabled businesses such as Weight Watchers and Slimming World to thrive by basically instructing you what to eat and how much you should weigh which admittedly has some (many) flaws, doesn’t fit well into todays society and there’s a whole load of convo that can be had around it, but whatever your views on this subject, the people who attended these sessions felt supported in their personal quest.

Jean Nidetch, who founded Weight Watchers in 1983 after someone mistakenly thought she was pregnant.

I am wholly in favour of weight loss injections. There are many people who have struggled for years and years to lose weight (affecting their mental and physical health and other areas of their life) and can’t due to medical reasons and for them, this development is a modern day miracle. The same way that statins were to high cholesterol (you can fix some of that with diet, but there are millions of people for whom that’s not possible) or beta blockers are for people with high blood pressure (same, same). I also totally understand people who have tried for years to shift a couple of stone or more and it’s making them unhappy. I get it. In addition, there is research that suggests that these drugs can, in fact, delay age related illnesses and halve the risks of heart attacks in non obese people with significant long term benefits. There is no denying that these ‘wonder drugs’ are a huge step forward and the start of a new age of medicine.

I was an eighties teen and as a result, have the built in conviction that I could always lose a few pounds. I can’t get away from it. It matters not what I weigh or how I look; the joy of my diet cultured (is that a phrase?) upbringing has meant that I always, always feel like I’m JUST NOT THIN ENOUGH. The older you get, the more difficult it is to maintain your personal ideal weight and it’s a proven fact that if you sit on your arse all day at a computer instead of doing 10k steps or some exercise classes then you’re on the back foot. I can see why it’s frustrating once you hit peri menopause and your body doesn’t play ball anymore; I feel it myself. There should be no shame in admitting that you feel this way.

But apparently there is. My social feeds and magazines are full of people - mostly over 40 - who have drastically, quietly, silently lost weight. Significantly HUGE amounts of weight that has transformed the way that they look, loads of people, all across the globe. It’s like a skinny epidemic. But we are deafened, ear muffled, by the cavernous, pin dropping SILENCE around how they got there. And this is where my mind is blown because even if I had lost five of the ten pounds that I’d quite like to lose, then I’d be shouting across the rooftops like Dick Van Dyke to tell everyone how I did it. As we used to do in Slimming World over a glass of wine and a plate of nachos. You wouldn’t be able to escape me, in fact.

But I digress. Back to Weight Watchers and so now, instead of paying £5 a week to be part of a like minded, supportive group with a common goal, in order to be in with the weight loss gang you can cough up around £200 a month to inject yourself skinny (if you can afford to, anyway). But wait - you can’t talk about your experience doing so or share with others how good and positive you feel about yourself because no one else who is doing it is talking about it, so you don’t either. It feels a little bit as if we are living in an episode of Black Mirror. So yes, MIND BLOWN.

Weight Watchers might have been an unfashionable old school outdated institution borne from a diet culture generation but what it DID do was bring people together who wanted help and support and I’m sad for those who won’t now have access to this. Women have enough struggles dealing with historical patriarchal influences and perceived social media perfection that continues to dictate how we should look; it may have been outdated, but it’s a shame that we’ve lost this stalwart support network that many people relied on and there’s nothing to replace it.

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