Ffs Tesco. It's carrot and swede mash. What do you mean a substitution wasn't available?? Any kind of mash would have done. I'm feeling very hard done to today.

Connections. What the hell. You can't just have one category where the words are the category. Ffs.

Hey a thing I really don’t want to get lost here is that while Tylenol doesn’t cause autism, IT’S FINE TO BE AUTISTIC. Let’s not grant them the premise that autism should be eradicated in our way to correct the science, okay? Okay.

Paracetamol is pretty much the only thing you can do for anything in pregnancy. If you have pain, you can't even have a properly hot bath. Just paracetamol. It's not about autism, it's about making women suffer in pain.

Tonight the baby has chosen to fight a wet wipe, with every sign of glee, but alas it too is winning.

We are into week 3 of school and I can now state that I have solved global warming. Change school uniform: no more white polos, all children to wear splodgy grey ones, to save time and energy.

Today in Samantha Gets Baffling Adverts: Netflix. I am paying the minimum amount of money to you in order to get some TV and loads of bloody adverts. What on earth makes you think I could afford a Porsche?

A) cornflakes is the best one and b) they're called sport because of the shape - exactly the right size to put in the pocket of your 1930s sports jacket.

Baby is aggressively snogging another baby, but unfortunately for him it's the mirror baby and it's fighting back

I have finally managed to download the PowerPoint (!!) containing the weekly blog (yes, via ppt, yes I know that's not what that word means). I can't view it properly on my phone due to the layout and the fact that ppt is a terrible format for a newsletter.

The effect of tariffs on small businesses and on people who just want to make a nice jumper. Turns out the US doesn't really have a quality wool industry of their own, hence why so many US crafters buy from the UK. And how they can't.

Out of the box, but do read this. Nice illustration of the way the world is changing right now.

Discussing what fruit and veg my parents had as children as part of fruitless attempt to get 5 yo to at least try the odd new taste. Dad reports that apples and pears were about the only thing readily available "at least if you could climb and were good at running".

I had planned a chilli, so I'm making a chili, weather be damned. I've just had to eat half a truffle though because I needed half a tspn of cocoa powder and I used it all in biscuits yesterday.

The shopping just arrived and I made The Banana Mistake again. This time it was too many and the kind Tesco man has taken them back.

Can anyone recommend me a good children's version of the Iliad and the Odyssey? The big girl picked one out at a charity shop and it's AWFUL, I think it's been translated from modern Greek via German, but she's really interested.

Petition for humans to evolve tortoise-like keratin beaks that regrow painlessly throughout life and don't keep mummy up all bloody night

I have just seen an elderly man use the baby food microwave in John Lewis to warm up his scone and my god the genius

I mean. You did know he was Peter Mandelson, though. Didn't they used to call him the Prince of Darkness in the 90s? www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Breaking news: starting to suspect that my dd was lying about the restaurant revolving.

We split the evening tasks today. Husband took cleaning up, I took childwrangling. So I put the baby on the floor to bother things and told the big girl that her dad was a pirate captain and she needed to help him clear the decks. I'm reading a cookbook. It's meal planning!! #EvilParentingWin

If I were going to make everyone want to wear my spy glasses out of the back of the Beano, I'd make them look much less like they came out of the back of the Beano, tbh

*Finally* put up my @gailmyerscough.co.uk print of Forton Services. It's so great! Because when I saw Forton as a little girl it usually meant we were on our way to my grandparents - or nearly home. Really need to paint the walls in here though...

Scientists have not quite, but almost, 'cured' cystic fibrosis symptoms for a lot of people. I don't fully understand it but I know a little boy who has a slightly reduced life expectancy bc he can have the treatment. When I was his age, he'd have died in his teens. www.bmj.com/content/389/...

I remembered to bring my lemongrass inside! It was new this year, I planted a tiny thing in a pot and it clearly liked it because it's gone mad.

Dammit. Everyone kept talking to me and I rushed Connections and now my streak is no more 😔

Has anyone here ever used unbranded Kitchenaid accessories for the 4.7l model? I'm looking to upgrade mine to stainless steel and the non-kitchenaid ones are muuuuch cheaper but I'm concerned about the quality. And they're not cheap enough that I feel OK taking a punt.

We survived an at-home party! The baby ate some blue tissue paper but I caught him before he swallowed it. He didn't know what to make of all the people in our quiet house!

Alright. I am really pretty pleased with this one. It was worth doing two cakes to get this one right!

I'm doing a puzzle and this is supposed to be an anagram for something but I'm completely stumped. Anyone any ideas? STAUN It's also the NYT Stranded game so there's some orders the letters can't go in, because it's a bit like a word search in the layout.

So the baby's new hobby is crime. Crime against the router, which is going to have to be moved, is the favourite crime, but any kind of pesting including getting trapped under things and trying to get to the stairs is very popular.

Flipping heck. The baby just pulled himself up to standing on a bed so he could bother some power cables. He only managed crawling last week. He still hasn't properly learned to roll front to back. Batten down the hatches.

I have just had my house cleaned my someone else for the first time in my life and my god it's brilliant. It wasn't in an awful state but we've got a lot on and it was all too much so I paid for a light clean and it's heaven! Going to see if we can squeeze it into the budget when I go back to work.

I hope all families have the same quantity of utterly Things that they do. Husband and big girl are playing Bits of Ham Robot upstairs, who is a robot who can only say "bits of ham". We cannot remember how it started.

Oh dear. Our birthday shrinkies are refusing to shrink properly.

Went to a neighbouring town on a whim, bumped into our graduating students and three academic colleagues - very lovely indeed. They were very pleased to meet giant baby.

Feedback from Ms 5: too much icing. One cannot win.

Wordle 1,543 4/6 🟨⬛🟨⬛⬛ ⬛⬛🟩🟩🟩 ⬛🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Annoying but at least I got it - I crashed out of my 23 day Connections streak!

Not my best work but it'll do! Palette knife easier to work with than the kitchen spatula I usually use but still not very flat. Suspect I need to beat the buttercream much, much more.

You know how *everyone* is always complaining about noisy pedicabs in London? Guess how many people filled in the TfL survey about regulating them? 7,699. It doesn't take many people to make a big impact. Anyway, please respond to the final consultation haveyoursay.tfl.gov.uk/pedicabs-lic...

My lunch date just threw a spoon at me.

My current least favourite thing about the tatty flags is the lazy racists didn't even clip tbf cheap cable ties they put them up with.

Supposed to be making icing for the big girl's first* birthday cake but naptrapped. Oops. *not her 1st Birthday, the first of two birthday cakes. This one is the practice run. I'm testing out a new recipe (a French yogurt cake) and using a palate knife to ice it for the first time.

What is wrong with me. I've never even made a tarte tatin and I've become low key obsessed with a Le Creuset tarte tatin dish. It's £155 and doesn't even have a lid. You couldn't even use it for anything else. I'm absolutely not going to buy it but BRAIN WANT.

Eating half a Costco chicken with mayo for lunch is fine as long as I don't eat carbs, right? That's how protein works? I'm not a monster, I have basil too.

Smug smug smug smug smug show off is showing off. www.nytimes.com/badges/games...

Thanks iPlayer, a random bit of Scottish Parliament TV was exactly what I wanted to watch after Point Break, yes. That was exactly the right thing to put on and not at all insane.

I know it sounds mad but if you had regular exposure to trees and sunlight and started reading again for pleasure, it would heal you.

I had utterly and completely forgotten that Dr Cox was in Point Break. Which is on iPlayer, btw

I had empty wash baskets for almost 50 minutes there. Then the big one fell in the loo so we're on a new outfit after a bath.