Recent Posts

  • Pre-Loved Back to School

    Pre-Loved Back to School
  • Only Girl Travel Guide: Family Glamping at Sumners Ponds Safari Tent

    Only Girl Travel Guide: Family Glamping at Sumners Ponds Safari Tent
  • The Only Girl Guide to Buying on Ebay | Secondhand & Pre-Loved Top Tips

    The Only Girl Guide to Buying on Ebay | Secondhand & Pre-Loved Top Tips
  • When Lockdown Broke Us

    When Lockdown Broke Us

Pre-Loved Back to School

Second Hand, Hand Me Downs and Pre-Loved Uniform – A Love Affair. My mum spent a lot of time cultivating her relationship with Mrs Drew, the incredibly stern boarding house mistress who waddled around our…

My mum spent a lot of time cultivating her relationship with Mrs Drew, the incredibly stern boarding house mistress who waddled around our school grounds in very sensible shoes and calf length skirts that billowed from her generous hips, with her loyal terrier at her heels. She was formidable, but she'd taken a liking to my mum which worked in our favour - more than I knew at the time.

You see, thanks to my mum's determination to 'raise me better' she poured everything she had, and at times even what she didn't have, into sending me to an all-girls private school. But working 7 days a week; opening our home to foreign language students paying for board and lodging (while we shared a bedroom); and, downsizing our house just sometimes wasn't enough. Not only were there the fees, school meals and trips to cover, there was also the strict uniform code which covered everything from the wool overcoat for chapel to the thick, navy blue (but still my faves ever) PE knickers.

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Only Girl Travel Guide: Family Glamping at Sumners Ponds Safari Tent

For years, every summer I’d kick myself for not getting my wholesome arse (yes, I have many arses) into gear and booking the boys and myself in for a camping trip to Sumners Ponds with…

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The Only Girl Guide to Buying on Ebay | Secondhand & Pre-Loved Top Tips

The second in my series of sharing my secondhand buying secrets focusing on how to get the most from Ebay. All my top tips on finding heirloom treasures for your home to cosy cashmere for the chilly months.

It was a Miss Sixty Coat from Germany back in 2001 that got me hooked on the non-stop bargain merry-go-round that is Ebay. That first Ebay purchase never actually arrived, but that didn’t put me off.

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When Lockdown Broke Us

120 school hours, 68 work hours, 6 football training sessions, 3 football matches and a swimming lesson – a week – I’m not sure we all really knew each other anymore. They talk about ‘passing ships in the night’ but we’d become more like satellites zooming light years apart in space. So, on 23rd March 2020, when Boris told us all to spend the foreseeable with each other, a collision of satellites was only a matter of time.

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The Only Girl Guide: Buying Secondhand & Pre-Loved, Part 1 – How to Search

Before the sun rose on cold, often wet, Sunday mornings my mum and I would leave our seafront flat in Brighton (me in my buggy) and head to the station for the weekly car boot sale. Before I could even walk I bore witness to my market-trader mum bartering, haggling and sniffing out the treasures that furnished our home. To say second-hand treasure hunting is in my DNA would be an understatement, it’s my way of life.

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