Thanks you notes - just say 'no thanks'...

Apologies before I even start for the Bah Humbug! nature of this post - but I just have to express how much I have come to loathe 'thank you' card sent by post. I hardly ever receive interesting things by Royal Mail - usually just a few red bills, some letters that were meant for the previous occupants of my house and a couple of takeaway pizza menus. So the excitement when one receives a hand-written, what looks like a letter. A letter! Full of news from a friend I've not heard from in a while, maybe? Or perhaps it's an invitation to a party? I'm getting excited as I open it. Or maybe it's a cheque? It looks like an expensive, beautifully designed card - and inside it just says ... 'thanks for the present you gave me.' Could there be a more tedious and disappointing message in the post. It's nice to says thanks for presents - but a quick text or email will do the trick - and I wouldn't be deluded into thinking it was something more exciting. Bah Humbug!

School costumes - just say no

Thank God the season of festive school plays and 'activities' is finished. This term I have been mostly making a tin soldier's outfit (well actually my mother made this one), a Greek outfit (which unfortunately looked more like a Viking costume), a wonky hand-sewn star for the school Christmas tree - not to mention previous season's Tudor costume, Victorian schoolgirl, Viking sword and shield and, er, Tudor handbag. Now, I think what's going on is that the teacher - knowing my inability with handicrafts - has deliberately chosen my children for the most fiendishly difficult ensembles. Do they think I have nothing else to do in my life? Do they not realise, that like many other busy, busy mothers at the school, I have skirting boards to dust, a watch to wind, QVC to peruse and coffee mornings to attend. Not! Actually, I'm busy writing important features about shopping - check out my latest piece in the Daily Mail 'just what I never wanted' about the ghastliest presents ever. The most fun I ever had writing a feature in my entire journalistic career...

Extreme mothering

Extreme mothering

I have been sent information from the rather frightening Full Time Mothers campaigning group (FTM). Their website is filled with research justifications about why working harms your child – and why it’s best to be married. And why daycare makes your child a mentallist. Reading through it started to make me feel angry and a little nauseous - actually a lot nauseous. I don't agree with their claims about attachment disorders setting in if you're not with your child all the time. But, today, there's further reports in the press that daycare isn't that great for your child - more ammunition for the FTM campaigners which I'm sure they will use to full effect. Surely, the issue is about allowing women access to the best quality care possible and giving them the choice about how much, if at all, they want to use it. However, the thought of being a FTM, shuffling around with my babies at home all day, does not appeal.

Chanel hell in John Lewis

As heads of marketing and directors sit around expansive boardroom tables pondering why retail revenue is falling and what they must do about, perhaps they should head into the festive fray and experience customer service - or lack of it themselves. I experienced a tiny but telling moment of bad customer service last weekend. I couldn't have been a more easy sale. I headed for John Lewis' Chanel make-up counter in Norwich with my empty bottle of foundation. It was Sunday and there were no other customers in this section of the shop, let alone at the counter itself. 'I've used this up and I need some more,' I said. The disinterested assistant - peroxide, middle-age, heavy-make up, bored - was checking some product lists. Pen in hand, she looked up and looked dismayed that she needed to attend to me. 'But, I'm not sure exactly what colour I need, whether I might need darker,' I said. Looking yet more annoyed, she squirted three blobs of different coloured foundation on her own hand. I had to lean across and ask if I could test them on myself. She reluctantly agreed. I felt humiliated, embarrassed and as if I was wasting her time. I gave up headed for Debenhams down the road. Here the assistant sat me down, smothered me in reassuring, clucking banalities and tested the foundation colours on my face. Of course, I paid £22 for a pot of foundation. So far away from the John Lewis board room - but such complacency will cost them dearly in sales. I advise them to head for the shop floor and try and buy some foundation from their own Chanel counter - it's not a pleasant experience.

Invisible housework chores

Women do more housework than men. Studies show it. Disgruntled women know it. Dish washers, microwaves and hoovers may have made it less back-breaking but the spread of tasks is still far from even.

Aside from the traditional, obvious tasks like washing up and cleaning the loo, women’s ‘to do’ list always contains a host of invisible housework chores that nobody notices unless they’re not done, nobody cares about, unless they’re not done, and are never considered when it comes to working out who does what and what’s fair.
Women are responsible for strategy management – that usually means planning evening meals, scheduling children’s appointments, arranging birthday and family parties, buying gifts for relatives, buying gifts for kids to take to parties. An endless thankless list of invisible chores.
A new study shows the gender gap is closing for obvious tasks – like putting the baby to bed, washing up or cooking supper. But there is still a hidden inequality for ‘invisible’ household work.
Indeed, Pamela Smock, a University of Michigan sociologist who also works with the council, said a persistent gender gap remains for what she called "invisible" household work — scheduling children's medical appointments, buying the gifts they take to birthday parties, arranging holiday gatherings, for example.
I’ve always said that my husband may start his job earlier than me, but his ends hours before mine does. Mine doesn’t end until the kitchen is clean, the lunch is prepared for the following day, the phone calls are returned and, tired of running through the mental rolodex in my head of things I still need to do, I finally collapse into fitful sleep often to be woken in the middle of the night by some task I failed to do.

Onion peeling eye mask sign of advanced capitalism

My brother will be 39 on Saturday. He is impossible to buy presents for because he doesn't want or need anything. And like most of us in the UK, if he does really,really want something he can probably buy it himself anyway rather than having to wait to be given it as a present. So, as is the typical present-buying dilemma, that just leaves fripperies and coming up with new needs and wants that the recipient never dreamed they had. I was delighted then to discover in John Lewis, at a ridiculous £15.99 an 'onion-eye-peeling mask'. Which is little more than a pair of white sun-glasses with clear plastic frames and a little bit of plastic round the sides to stop fumes upsetting our poor little twenty first century wealthy-nation eyes. Seeing this as a symbol of advanced capitalism gone insane, I just had to have it. He needs it as much as he needs a new pair of socks or another box of Thornton's rather grim-tasting chocolates. The perfect present for the person living in modern Britain who has everything. I want one for myself.

Guide to journalistic cliches

Found this 'guide' on the internet... if you can think of any I should add send them to me at info@lizhollis.co.uk

Reader's Guide to Journalistic Cliches

Controversial: He did something bad but we're not sure what
Scandal-plagued: Guilty
War-torn: We can't find it on a map
Knowledgable observer: The reporter
Knowledgable observers: The reporter and the person at the next desk
Screen Legend: Reporter is too young to remember his movies
Teen idol: Reporter is too old to have heard of him
According to published reports: We got scooped
Embattled: He should quit
Recently: We lost the press release
Shocking revelation: leaked on a slow news day
Highly placed source: one who would talk
Supermodel: picture was printed somewhere
Celebrity: has a publicist
Superstar: has a publicist and an agent
Family Values: right wing idiot
Progressive: left wing idiot
Couldn't be reached for comment: the reporter didn't call until after 5pm
Unclear, uncertain, unknown at press time: no one will tell us
Conflagration: what was a fire in the first paragraph, a blaze in the second and an inferno in the third
Long-time companion: they had sex
Tearful: Could have been crying
Choked up: Definitely could have been crying
Weeping: Tear spotted in one eye
Entrepreneur: Hasn't made it yet, but we're doing a nice story about him
Mogul: Has made it, and we're doing a hatchet job
Hot-button issue: only editors care about it
Towing industry expose: editor got a parking ticket
With news wire services: no original reporting whatsoever