May 2025: Sunshine, a terrible waitress and many pot plants

May’s done already, which feels slightly illegal. I swear I only just wrote April’s post. Actually it was written over a week late, so maybe that’s why this month felt like it turned up, downed a pint, and bolted.

May is often one of my favourite months of the year. The sun occasionally makes a guest appearance – actual sun, not that pale grey nonsense that looks warm but lies to your face. Real, jacket-off, shall we have a cider in the garden? kind of sun. Three-loads-of-washing-a-day sun.

And then there’s the sheer joy of not one but TWO bank holidays. That’s basically a long weekend every time you blink.

Anyway, here’s what went down during the sunshiney blur that was the month of May.

(If you want to read the other monthly updates because you’re bored or just a nosey bastard, you can find them all here).

I made a few trips up to London

After becoming sick death of the place in March, I gave it a wide berth in April. By May I felt healed and ready to face the capital again, and booked in a couple of nights out with friends.

The first one was around Baker Street, where we drank lovely drinks, ate lovely food, had lovely conversation, and I found a bird-and-flower picture wall to rival my own (which you can scroll down to see, if you’re so inclined):

Great to see friends, slight hangover the next day was well worth it. No further notes.

The next outing was to Covent Garden.

It was to be a nice Friday evening out with two friends. Adult conversation. Outdoor seating. A bottle of crisp white wine. Maybe even food. I know, dangerous optimism.

In a shocking and rare twist of fate, I was the first to arrive at the place I’d booked. This never happens. Usually I show up hot, flustered, and apologising for something I haven’t done yet. But no; for once, I was smugly early. The universe should have warned me that this was the first sign of doom.

The waitress seated me, handed me some menus, and I thought, I know, I’ll be a good friend and order the wine. Because I am thoughtful. And thirsty.

“Oh, sorry, we don’t have any white wine,” she said cheerfully. “Would red be OK?”

No, actually. It would not be OK.

I don’t care what kind of drama you’re living through, red wine in direct sunlight is a hard no. I’m not here to pass out in a maxi dress from heatstroke and merlot.

So I politely said I’d wait for my friends, and maybe we’d head elsewhere. No wine, no dice. What central London restaurant doesn’t have white wine for god’s sake?!

Two minutes later, the waitress reappeared – miracle of miracles! – and said she’d made a mistake. They did have white wine, just not one of them which I didn’t want anyway. I ordered the other and all was forgiven.

Until she came back and immediately started pouring wine to the brim into three glasses.

Now, bear in mind:

I was still sat there, alone, looking like a desperate housewife abandoned at her own hen do as my friends were yet to arrive.
I don’t tend to drink my wine in pints. Half way up the glass is absolute a-ok; it’s not a free bar.
It was VERY warm outside.
One of my friends doesn’t even drink.

I was so busy messaging my friends (I’m here, no white wine – total debacle, don’t ask), I didn’t clock what she was doing until it was too late.

I had to ask her to please, very Britishly, pour the wine back into the bottle, so it could go into an ice bucket. Because I may be chaotic, but I do not drink warm white wine in public like some sort of criminal.

Eventually, my friends arrived.

I think I may have been a glass or so down by this point.

Bella wasn’t drinking and ordered a bottle of tonic water. Actually, two bottles like the forward-thinking queen that she is. Three sips in, she realised her tonic was in fact strangely sugary and lemony. The waitress returned and admitted she hadn’t had diet tonic water so just brought lemonade instead.

Then the drinks bill arrived, in case we wanted to settle it before Bella had even received the correct drink. Nice touch, that.

It included:

A seating charge. Three quid each, just for existing! And, I assume for the privilege of enduring all this.
An additional service charge of 15% (cheeky, bold, ambitious).
Both bottles of unasked-for lemonade; the one which was accidentally sipped and the one which wasn’t even touched.
The actual bottle of tonic water that did eventually appear.
The only bottle of (the cheapest, yet still vastly overpriced) Pinot Grigio they’d had in stock.

The bill was about £70, essentially for a bottle of distinctly average and far too warm wine. We looked at each other. No words. Just ‘absolutely the fuck not‘.

After two rounds of polite but stern words with the waitress about removing the rogue items from the bill (because no, we are not paying for mystery mixers and ambient incompetence), twice, we left, and we went to The Ivy over the road where the food was perfect, the drinks were cold, and the toilets were a vision in gold and pink birds.

I always say that a rubbish experience makes for a fun story, I just wish they weren’t so expensive.

I wrote some blog posts!

I don’t know what came over me – divine inspiration? Too much caffeine? A brief personality swap with someone productive? – Whatever it was, after managing a grand total of like two blog posts for the whole of 2024, I’ve somehow bashed out three this month alone. Who even am I?

If you’ve not read them, then honestly: why the hell not?! I’ve poured my heart, soul, and at least one glass of wine into them.

Go forth. Read. Laugh. Validate me.

The first one about moving house can be found here:

14 things they don’t tell you about moving house

I then wrote a short one about my nemesis; dog hair:

Why I can’t wear black anymore: A Labrador owner’s memoir

And then, inspired by True Life Events, I wrote another post about the fun of being middle aged.

Fifteen ways your body betrays you after you turn 40

I attended my first Spartan run

I ran out of snacks about 30 minutes in and the reception was crap so I had to read a book instead of listening to a podcast.

I imagine it was even worse for the people who actually ran it (but you don’t get a medal for looking after phones).

I got trapped in my house by parcels

There’s something quite special about being held hostage by your own online shopping habit. Not emotionally trapped, you understand. Literally. As in: unable to open your own front door without risking personal injury, structural damage, or the violent toppling of a 20kg sack of dog biscuits.

This has now happened to me not once, not twice, but three separate times. I live in fear of the next Amazon notification.

Exhibit A: The Dog Food

A 20kg bag.
Wedged snugly against my outward-opening front door.
I had to get myself out sideways with the grace of a pregnant lady (specifically me) exiting a car just to avoid death by kibble avalanche.

Exhibit B: The Fan

Nothing screams optimism like ordering a fan in May.
It arrived in a box so large I could have fit in it. I tried to open the door and it just… stopped. Like the house was saying I think you should probably just stay in here and rethink your life.

Exhibit C: The Parrot

This one, friends, was a framed picture of a parrot destined for the Great Picture Wall (Vinted, a fiver). It had been leaned gently against the front door, ready to greet me with a smash the moment I dared to exit. It was only due to my ninja-like reflexes that I managed to catch it mid-fall.

I’ve had to make a sign for the front door, which I fully expect the delivery men to ignore entirely.

PS Sharing this on social media was WILD. There are a whole lot of people out there who a. Don’t understand the concept of living in a house with no side access and b. Outward opening doors.

Insane amounts of ‘Didn’t Happen’ wankers all over the place.

I ended up having to provide pictorial evidence, and people were still fucking dicks about it. In case you’re the kind of tedious person that thinks everything on the internet no matter how dull is made up, these pictures are for you.

As for this one…

Also, for your enjoyment: A picture of my front step, vs where my other Vinted parcel was delivered to at 9.40pm. That was a fun mission!

But the pictures look nice don’t they? It’s not entirely done – not quite pub-wall-worthy – but I feel like I’m getting there.

Thanks to Bella from Passport & Pixels for the cheeky Kingfisher photograph. If you’re into wildlife photography, you can buy prints of her stunning work here.

I accidentally paid all my money to the wrong account

In a bold and uncharacteristically grown-up move, I’ve been trying to overpay my mortgage. You know, just in case my back-up plan of winning the lottery in the next 28 years doesn’t pan out. Seems unlikely but you never know.

This mortgage, thankfully, is a lot less painful than the last one, so I’ve reasoned that I probably won’t miss the extra. I’ve got my mortgage and current account with the same bank, and while logging in to see that my massive monthly sacrifice has shaved approximately 7p off the total is deeply depressing, it does make overpaying incredibly easy.

Too easy, as it turns out.

It was payday. I was feeling smug and responsible. I decided to chuck an extra £300 towards the mortgage and, because I wasn’t paying proper attention, I accidentally tacked on an extra zero.

So that’s £3,000, not £300 (aka my entire month’s wages) leaving me £39 to live on for the rest of the month.

Now, I’m sure I could sort it out with a phone call, but instead, I decided to interpret it as a cosmic sign to dip into my savings, delay buying a new car (or, frankly, a new yoghurt), and pretend my tax return doesn’t exist for a bit longer.

I shared it online (obviously), and the comments were full of people who’d done similar. But hands down, this was my favourite reply:

Before I read that I didn’t know it was physically possible to injure yourself cringing on someone else’s behalf.

Predictably, the ‘Didn’t Happen’ wankers were there also. Because this is the type of unbelievable story that Netflix would surely have bought the rights to had it actually been true, obviously.