A visit to the Mulberry Factory Shop at Shepton Mallet

Yesterday, I happened to be cruising the country lanes of Dorset and Somerset, when I remembered there was a much fabled Mulberry Factory Shop in not-too-far-away Shepton Mallet, full of discounted and bargainous Mulberry bags, shoes, clothes and accessories. It was only right that I paid it a visit to see if anything needed buying...

The shop is in a converted infants' school dating from 1900, and has a large open-plan layout inside. The main part of the interior is devoted to women's clothes, shoes and handbags, with a men's leather goods section leading through to a coffee shop and women's sale items area.

Browsing the rails, there were loads of really beautiful and classic items to choose from - leather jackets (more on this topic below!), smart trousers, raincoats, cute dresses, soft tshirts, dainty skirts - all typically discounted by several hundred pounds from the full price tag, e.g. this midnight blue tshirt with sewn-on plastic stars seen here on the right - £79 reduced from £250.

Various different bag styles and sizes were in stock - including the Alexa, Bayswater, Effie, Evelina and Tillie - in a range of really nice muted colours and leather finishes, but also a few vibrant tones and more unusual materials too, such as a stunning and unusual 'red onion' (burgundy to you and me!) haircalf quilted Bayswater which was reduced by over £1,000. 

The most popular bags in the most popular colours were about £200 cheaper than their full RRP, so it's really worth a visit if you're after a Mulberry bag but can't quite / don't want to stretch to the full price latest style in the latest colour or material.

I happened to try on a studded leather jacket just to see how it fitted - as it was a 10, I wasn't actually expecting it to fit but it seems it did, and it somehow left the shop with me - whoops! It was discounted by £1,050 which in my book makes it a veritable bargain (well, almost...).

I've been looking for a classic biker jacket with a twist for a while, and this really ticked all the boxes. The quality of the leather, cut and finishing is far superior to other jackets I've been looking at costing not that much less than what I paid for this. So I'm happy. (Credit card less so, possibly...)

Here's a closer look at the jacket - black leather with black crystal and silver studs on the front, with quilted sleeve bottoms, pewter metal studs on the epaulettes, and zipped pockets. Quite the beaut!

Mulberry Willow bag - how gorgeous?!

I did ask one of the sales assistants if they ever get any Mulberry Willow bags in at discount prices, but sadly the answer was no - they've been flying off the shelves at full price retail stores since they were introduced at the start of this year - boo!

I'll just have to carry on stroking them lovingly every time I pass through Selfridges instead...

Best hand cream in the world EVER (IMHO)

I keep meaning to tell you all - and I DO tell people on a regular basis - that this is the BEST hand cream EVER:

It's Balance Me super moisturising hand cream. Believe me, I've tried all the fancy and expensive hand creams going - L'Occitane Shea Butter, Eve Lom, Elemis Pro-Radiance, Clarins etc, plus cheaper alternatives like Body Shop Hemp, Soap & Glory, and good old Neutrogena. But this really does beat them all hands down, particularly for the following two reasons:

1. Consistency - rich, but not so rich that it doesn't absorb into your skin. And with the right ingredients to make dry hands soft within seconds, with impressively long-lasting results.
2. Fragrance - within 10 seconds of putting it on, people around you will say 'what's that gorgeous smell?' - and you can merrily say 'ME!'. It features lavender, patchouli, geranium, bergamot and yarrow, and lots more beside. It basically smells TREMAZE, and not nana-ish at all.

It's £14.50 for 100ml, and worth every penny in my opinion! You can get it from the Balance Me website, or in John Lewis and selected Waitrose stores. In fact, it's even on offer in Waitrose on occasion.

Let me know if you give it a go :)

Taste Test: Lotus caramelised biscuit spread

A long-time fan of those little individually-wrapped Lotus biscuits you get in meetings or hotels, when I found out last year they also made a Lotus biscuit-flavoured SPREAD, I was very keen to try some. However, research revealed that it was mostly only available in Belgium, and £10 shipping costs put me off investigating further.

Until the lovely Groggits tweeted that her husband had bought her some in Waitrose... it now seems to be available in this country too - so now I have a pot, hurrah!

Within 10 minutes of getting back from the supermarket, I had tried it on both bread and toast. Oh and straight from the jar ...all in the name of research of course! I think bread was my preferred option. Less time to wait than toast, possibly? :) Although yes, it tastes amazing any way you choose. It's cinnamony and sweet (so sweet my teeth almost shook!) - just like the biscuit. I bought the Smooth option, but there's a crunchy version too.

I just checked the fat content against Nutella in case I could justify eating it on a regular basis, but sadly it's 39g fat per 100g, against 31g in Nutella. Booooooo! But peanut butter is 50g fat, so it's *almost* a less fattening option?!

Do you like Lotus biscuits? Will you be trying the spreadable version? It's £2.49 for a 400g pot at Waitrose. 

New flavour Pimm's - blackberry & elderflower

Went to the Swan pub in Pangbourne last night to have a glass of wine by the river. Just too late to change my order, I spotted a bottle of Pimm's behind the bar in packaging I didn't recognise. Asked the barman what it was, and he said it was a new limited edition flavour - Blackberry & Elderflower!

A trip to Waitrose this evening has secured me a bottle - £16 for 70cl. The label blurb on the back tells me to serve it over ice with 1 part Pimm's to 2 parts lemonade. So I have :)

It's quite sweet, and the first taste comparison to spring to mind was liquid Tunes! That's not necessarily a bad thing - it does have a slightly medicinal taste, but it's still fruity and summery, and I'll happily have several glasses more once the weather starts behaving itself properly.

It won't replace a full-on jug of standard Pimm's in my book, but then not many things can. There's room in my life for this too though. Cheers!

I developed an old film...

Poking through a box of old things, I found a 35mm film that I never developed. The excitement! What tales from the past did it hold? Would they still be on there after what must be at least 10 years, based on how long I've had a digital camera...?

Apparently the big Boots in town doesn't develop film on site any more, so after a helpful tweet from Snappy Snaps, I headed there in my lunch hour to put it through their one hour service. Not necessarily expecting the photos to come out, I was pleased to find out they did.

And so we have what must've been New Year's Eve 2002 with friends at my sister's old flat in Tunbridge Wells. Good times!

Then a few days after, a trip down to Brighton after hearing that part of the beautiful West Pier had collapsed into the sea :(

Brighton's West Pier after part of its walkway collapsed on 29 December 2002

It's strange looking back on these photos and remembering how sad it seemed at the time - who knew what was to come... the concert hall fully collapsed into the sea shortly afterwards (January 2003), the main part of the Pier (the Pavilion) was torched in a suspected arson attack in May 2003, and the collapsed concert hall finally removed from the site in 2010, just leaving the skeletal Pavilion standing out at sea alone.

I've always loved taking photos of the West Pier on trips to Brighton, so it's lovely to have these to add to my collection. Here are a few select ones from more recent times.





Anyone else out there with mysterious undeveloped film...? :)

Slimming World sweet chilli pork burgers & Thai cucumber salad

I've reached my target weight now, but making an effort not to put it all back on again, so am sticking to Slimming World-friendly recipes most days of the week (weekends are a different story, ahem!).

Tonight I made sweet chilli pork burgers with Thai cucumber salad, and here's the recipe (serves 2):

Burgers:
400g extra lean pork mince (approx 1 Syn per person)
1 onion, whizzed in the blender
2 garlic cloves, crushed
2 tbsp sweet chilli sauce (1.5 Syns per person)
Handful of fresh coriander, chopped

Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl, then divide into 4 patties (try to make them flat and fairly thin - about 1.5 cm high). Heat up a frying pan with a few squirts of FryLight and add the burgers. Fry for 5 minutes or so each side, pressing down every so often to get them cooked through.

Salad:
Half a cucumber, peeled, halved and cut into thin slices
10 or so cherry tomatoes, halved (I had a pack of mixed red and yellow ones which was a bit jazzy)
2 shallots, peeled and thinly sliced
1 fresh red chilli, chopped (I use scissors to save my fingers and eyes)
A couple of splashes of cider vinegar (probably should be rice wine/vinegar but I didn't have any in)
A few snips of fresh coriander
Half a fresh lime, squeezed
Teaspoon of Splenda
A few grinds of salt

Mix it all up to ensure the Splenda and salt dissolve. Serve with the burgers. Enjoy :D

Pilchard Curry recipe - try it, you might like it!

A girl at work is an absolute superstar at making curries. She gave me a recipe for Malaysian pilchard curry, after I revealed Mr G's tendency for hoarding things, including tins of pilchards (he had about 20 cans in his kitchen cupboard when I first knew him!), so I made it this week and it was an absolute WINNER. I tweaked her recipe (i.e. avoided the tin of fattening coconut milk) to make it Slimming World-friendly, so this is my version below. I know it sounds a bit weird, but it's LUSH...

Ingredients
1 425g tin of pilchards in tomato sauce
1 400g tin tomatoes
1 inch of ginger, peeled
2 cloves of garlic, peeled
2 fresh red chillies (deseeded)
1 large onion
2 tbsp Malaysian fish curry powder (more about this below)
2 potatoes chopped into bite-sized chunks
A few squirts of FryLight
Salt

Method

1. Put the chillies, ginger, garlic, and chopped onion into a blender with a little water, and blitz.
2. Coat a heated frying pan with a few sprays of Fry-Light, then tip in the above mixture and stir-fry for about 10 minutes.
3. Add in the curry powder, salt and tin of tomatoes and cook on a low heat for about 10 minutes.
4. Add the chopped potatoes and a tin of water, and leave to simmer for 15 minutes or so.
5. When the potatoes are cooked, halve the pilchards lengthways and add them in (the recipe also says to debone them, but I might leave them in next time as I don't mind eating them, and it's extra calcium innit...), and bring to the boil for a few minutes to heat them through.
6. Serve with boiled rice.

The recipe was allegedly for 4 people, but we were so hungry and it was so nice, we ate the lot :|

My friend gave me the curry powder from her personal supply brought back from Malaysia, as it's hard to find in the UK. However, after a bit of research, I found someone on eBay who sells it in varying packet sizes. It's called Baba's Fish Curry Powder and is apparently a blend of coriander, chilli, cumin, turmeric, fennel, dhal, fenugreek, pepper and "other spices". I've ordered a pack of 4 250g sachets for £12.50 which should keep me going for a long while. I'm quite sure the more adventurous among you could make up your own spice blend.

If you do make this, please let me know what you think!