Culture

Reviewing the “Books That Matter” Subscription Box

My Housemate's a Mermaid (Alice E. Bennett) Culture, Humour, Book, Review, Book Review , ,

Question: Do you remember that time when a feminist book subscription service was pitched on Dragon’s Den (the UK version of Shark Tank)?

Here’s a reminder if not.

To quote their website…

Books That Matter is the award-winning subscription box empowering women, powered by women. We platform marginalised voices by curating unique and inspiring reading experiences through our monthly book boxes which contain a female or non-binary authored book and themed gifts.

And guess which lucky sausage got given a box to review?

That’s right, the actual influencers. But through the wonders of a competition I have no recollection of entering (“you say blackout drunk, I say blackout Googling”) I am now the proud owner of a three month subscription. And boy, am I very excited by this development.

(So happy, I decided that throwing a blanket over my office chair would be enough to blend it seamlessly into the background…)

Then I thought “why stop there, why not do one of those unboxing-type videos?”

I enjoyed putting this quick rough-and-ready video together. No makeup, no regrets! It’s simple but heck, aren’t we all?

Debating whether to do this for the subsequent boxes I receive. Given the amount of cards I’m now in possession of and all the leftover Christmas bath bombs, I have visions of me swimming in bath salts by the time I get to June. And reading wise…well, I guess I just need to start reading more (and more quickly!)

Products featured in my Books That Matter subscription box

Book: Amazing Grace Adams by Fran Littlewood

Treat: Greetings cards and bookmark by Sunshine Llama

Treat: 70% coca chocolate by Alter Eco

Treat: Frosting bath slab by Miss Patisserie

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Not Saying I’m a Perfectionist, But…

My Housemate's a Mermaid (Alice E. Bennett) British, Culture, Economy, Humor, Humour, Swindon , , ,

They say a picture paints a thousand words, I say it paints 999.999…

(Yes, the British cost of unleaded petrol (gas) is indeed hideous.)

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Alice Takes on the Pudding Van

My Housemate's a Mermaid (Alice E. Bennett) Baking, British, comedy, Coronavirus, Culture, Event, Everyday Occurances, food, House, Humor, Humour, Mellennial, Mermaid, Nonfiction, Prompt, Social Media, sophistication, Swindon, Uncategorized, Wheelie Bins, Work, Young Professional , , , ,

Someone abandoned their catering van on my housing estate. And I was not happy.

Look at it! It’s massive!

Naturally, I applied a very level-headed attitude to this. That’s right, I sent a ranty email to estate management. It went something like this:

WHY IS THERE A MASSIVE CATERING VAN PARKED IN A VISITOR SPACE? I’VE CHECKED THE REGISTRATION PLATE (“XXX XXX” for your reference) AND IT’S NOT TAXED OR INSURED. IT’S UGLY AND CLEARLY BEEN ABANDONNED. I PAY MY MANAGEMENT FEES, SORT IT OUT!

(The caps are a reflection of the shouty voice in my head…I may have also left the last bit out.)

Estate management responded, saying thay they’d located the vehicle’s owner and told them to move it within the next 48 hours.

48 hours came and went, the van unmoved.

I wish I could say I became tolerant of the pudding van’s presence, but when you’re facing onto something like that every time you go to make a cup of tea, it’s very hard to let go. (Plus, you know, me.)

Whilst waiting for the owners to be chased up again, I did a little investigation of myself. By in investigation, I meant be super nosey.

There weren’t any company details on the van and the only online presence seemed to take me back to a deactivated Facebook page, from when it operated out of Pershore some 56 miles away.

Instead of hard, concrete information, I had to deal with statements like this:

It reads: “Feeling stressed? Stressed backwards is desserts”

I don’t know what bothered me most; the font, the words or the fact that it’s annoyingly true. Everything about it grated on me more than the sugary sweetness of the food it claimed to provide.

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Update: I drafted this post in September 2021, however in June 2022 the van disappeared altogether. I assumed it was at local festival but it never came back and I haven’t seen the van since. No idea what has happened but the problem of the Pudding Van seems to have sorted itself!

I’m totally putting it down to my ability to moan, that or my top-notch judgemental stares out the window.

(And as for why I’m not posting this until now…well, I forgot I’d written it.)

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An Earful of ELO and Bitter Tea: Why I Write

My Housemate's a Mermaid (Alice E. Bennett) British, Commission, Culture, Event, Humour, Literature, Swindon, Uncategorized, Young Professional , , ,

What do you picture when you think of the writer? A recluse, working in the half-light of winter or in the sun-kissed parklands of summer? Novel thoughts that flow through dainty calligraphy on tanned pages? Web string ideas that will one day sit proud and hardbacked in Waterstones or Foyles. Half an hour to transpose to pixel, twelve weeks to complete, another month or two for luck.

Ha.

If that’s the vision, let me grace you with the reality, as I find myself propped in a generic coffee shop. The table is scratched as a post, the air sticky and the green chair worn away to the bare threads. There is only one word for it, uninviting. But what does it matter? My leggings are peppered with rips and holes anyway, the stains and the marks, it’ll wash out.

A train goes past, one of those piddly little things that carry children at walking pace, no, slower than that, a snail’s. The driver sounds its electric toot-toot as it crawls by, my right ear left ringing while my left is pumped with coffee grinding and the tinny music of overhead Electric Light Orchestra. The best ambiance £2.25 of tea can buy. I sip the cold fluid with a grimace, bitter and stewed.

It’s gone 18:00, my hair is wet with grease and my young face slightly more etched from another exhaustive day at the office-come-dining table. Eyes swollen, fingers twisted. I worked through lunch, which every psychologist from here to Timbuktu will say is a one-way trip to an early grave, but the extra hour of toil then means an extra hour of freedom now. A fragment of bliss with a half-eye on time. Later, a stranger beckons at my door to collect dusty offcuts from my garage; he won’t negotiate on the timings and I really could do with that £20.

Writers are leather beaters, we take the skin of an idea and scrape, beat and dunk until that piece of flesh returns gold. Sometimes our elbows linger for too long in foul-smelling liquids that the only thing golden is our stained skin, saturated with stench.

Write. Write harder and faster and quicker and smarter and eloquently, until your fingertip pads run smooth and your skin cracks with effort. That’s what writing is. I’d consider myself a very successful woman indeed if I were ever to stumble across my work in a library or charity shop. Maybe that makes me simplistic, or maybe that makes me even more of a dreamer. I scrub my manuscript some more.

I started putting keyboard to laptop in 2014 on little more than a whim and utter boredom, to fill lonely nights in a strange town I barely knew. Eight years later I find myself plagued with a parasitic urge I can barely comprehend. What time is it? When did I last eat? How long before the staff spot my empty cup and kick me to the curb?

I don’t write because I want to, I write because it is an addiction. Leave hollow hope be for there is nothing to be saved.

My colourless eyes glance sideward as the same empty train edges closer once more.

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This piece was kindly sponsored by Ben Miller, who spotted my business card on a noticeboard and commissioned me to write a post on “Why I Write”.

Please sponsor me to keep doing what I love by donating here: Alice’s Funding Page

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April 14th

My Housemate's a Mermaid (Alice E. Bennett) Classical Music, Culture, Event, Humour, Mermaid, Music, Prompt, Uncategorized , , , ,

Couldn’t let today slip by without sharing this piece of piano music, which always seems to catch me off-guard when it comes up in my music shuffle.

Simply beautiful.

(Song – “Avril 14th”, Artist – Aphex Twin)

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Alice’s Book (Cover) of the Week #2

My Housemate's a Mermaid (Alice E. Bennett) #book, Book, Book Review, British, comedy, Coronavirus, Culture, Death, Europe, Event, Humor, Humour, Mellennial, Mental Health, Mermaid, Nonfiction, Prompt, Review, Social Media, Uncategorized, Writing , , , ,

Again, as per the last one I shared, this too comes from an online forum.

Errrrrr…..

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**Video** A Belter in Belfast (Solo Travels #5)

My Housemate's a Mermaid (Alice E. Bennett) British, Culture, Europe, Holiday, Review, Staycation, Tourist, Travel, Uncategorized , , , ,

As promised after my solo trip to Belfast back in September (Geology, Politics and Guinness: My Week in Belfast), here’s the video covering the highlights of my trip.

(Song: “Belter” by Gerry Cinammon)

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The Spirit of Valentine’s Day, in One Profound Sentence

My Housemate's a Mermaid (Alice E. Bennett) Culture, Event, family, Humor, Humour, love, Mellennial, Mermaid, Uncategorized, Valentines , , , ,

As said by my dearest father to Mumma B.

“If there’s one good thing about Valentine’s Day, it’s that the days are getting longer.’

Deep. Poignant. Truly Cotswolds.

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Best Fashion Purchase of 2022* (*So Far)

My Housemate's a Mermaid (Alice E. Bennett) British, Coffee, comedy, Coronavirus, Cotswolds, Culture, Europe, Event, family, fashion, Humor, Humour, love, Mellennial, Mental Health, Mermaid, Review, shopping, Social Media, Swindon, Uncategorized, Young Professional , , , , ,

Check out this beautiful, hand-made, Japanese silk face covering I just purchased from KatyBeesDesignStudio, on Etsy.

Who needs makeup and filters when you can look this damn fine? (And/or have something covering half your face anyway.) PS – hair was doing its own thing that day, it could not be tamed for love nor a litre of hair-care products.

It’s so incredibly comfy to wear and comes fitted with a top metal strip and slot-in space for a removeable air filter, should you wish to have one. Even before I’d had chance to put it on, I felt like an utter princess from the packaging presentation.

As well as the face covering (delivered in a rainbow pager bag), she sent me an air filter in a drawstring bag and some cute trinkets in a little drawstring pouch. You know how I get over little trinket items. It really was the icing on the cake

Katy hasn’t sponsored me to write this post but it’s been a long two years and it’s been a while since I got excited over something as mundane as a face covering. I simply had to rave about it.

Link: KatyBeesDesignStudio on Etsy

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Alice’s Book (Cover) of the Week

My Housemate's a Mermaid (Alice E. Bennett) #book, Book, Coronavirus, Culture, Humor, Humour, Literature, Mellennial, Mental Health, Mermaid, Social Media, Swindon, Uncategorized , , , ,

Spotted, on one of the rabbit-hole forums I’m part of.

“The Family That Got Abuse Instead of Justic After Reporting Incest”

Okay, okay, let’s hear it out. This book might be something completely different to what the cover suggests. Maybe.

No, you’re right, reading this would be a terrible idea. I’ll stick to watching clips from Mary Poppins.

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