One of my favourite local restaurants is Crockers, which opened in my hometown of Tring in 2018. Since then, they’ve expanded to a second location in Henley and grown their Tring restaurant, adding an informal dining room option and a downstairs bar. They even launched some dine at home options in lockdown – their bottled cocktails were next level, the 2020 Christmas specials were incredible.  It’s a real asset to the town. Tring is small, but has steadily grown more and more foodie since we’ve moved there. The high street is full of independent restaurants (I’ve reviewed a few of them ..read more

I’ve not blogged for ages and ages, and I thought I should come back with a whole big explanation and stuff but honestly: life got busy, I realised I missed it, so I’m gonna dive back in with some local restaurant reviews. That okay with you? GREAT.  The husband and I had a rare joint Friday off recently and decided to try The Alford Arms, a lovely country pub in Frithsden, just outside Berkhamsted. It’s in the Michelin Guide so I had high hopes for a really good pub lunch, and said hopes were met. It was lovely.  Inside it was more traditional than I expected – dogs were heartily ..read more

  It turns out that having a baby has left me with a whole lot of opinions. I mean, god knows I didn’t have those before. But I thought I’d at least make use of some of them and put together some helpful tips, not just for new parents but for friends of new parents – starting with this! A list of some nice things you can buy that new mum friend of yours and their baby.  Some are useful, some are thoughtful, some are just pretty and some are just for fun. All bases covered, I think.   FOR THE PARENTS (MOSTLY MUM): Photo from Cook Food All the snacks I remember reading another ..read more

As this week is National Baby Loss Awareness Week, I felt it was time to share my story in full. Please note that the title of the post was written many months ago and is not meant to cast judgement on anyone who does share their pregnancy on the internet - it is an incredibly personal thing and everyone will feel differently about it.  I'm an oversharer. I'm fairly known for it. I will cheerfully tell a total stranger intimate details about my life, and the internet is not much different. So why didn't I say anything about being pregnant until I announced I'd had a baby in January ..read more

One of the best pieces of advice I got during pregnancy was from one of my friends who said ‘They’re going to tell you you’re a bit fat and a bit old, but don’t worry about it.’ Not in a mean way - they'd said it to her. And it’s true, they said it to me, too. I mean, they didn’t put it quite so bluntly, but instead showed me a tick list of risk factors and which ones I ticked. Over 35. A higher BMI than they’d like. And a first pregnancy that had gone very, very wrong. Having a high risk pregnancy wasn’t actually a terrible thing, but that’s because the risks were concerns that didn’t seem ..read more

So, it's been a long old time since my last blog post. And there's a pretty good reason for that. A reason that you'll already know if you follow me on social media, which I'm assuming most of you do, but just in case you don't - surprise! I had a baby! Briony Isla Vernon-Smith joined our family at 5.19pm on 28 January 2020 weighing in at 6lb 9oz, and we're completely obsessed with her. She's ace. Throughout my pregnancy I wrote a fair bit about the experience with the intention of sharing it here, so now that naptime is a bit more consistent and, like the rest of you, I have absolutely no ..read more

Well, it has been a long old time since I've done a food review, but I felt like I would get back into the swing of things pretty easily. I even joked the day before we went to try out the Lazy Pig in Chesham that I hoped I remembered how to use my DSLR... and then when we sat down, realised I'd forgotten the battery. So that'll learn me not to tempt fate, won't it? Luckily, the camera on my iPhone isn't toooo terrible and VSCO and Photoshop managed to take care of the rest. But my point is that these pictures aren't quite as good as I usually take, and that's annoying. And down entirely to ..read more

I'd always loved the idea of being a Lipstick Person. You know, the kind of person who wouldn't be seen dead without a splash of red lipstick. Who always looks put together and glamorous. It always seemed like people who wear lipstick every day had their life together. As unlikely as that is to be true, I still aspired to it. But the problem was that lipstick just didn't seem to suit me. Every time I put on red lipstick, I felt like I was wearing fancy dress. I've even visited MAC and Sephora and asked them to help me find my perfect red. Whenever I had my makeup done professionally, they a ..read more

I have spent a lot of time trying to decide if I've given up blogging or not. A seemingly simple question which was emphatically... not simple. I haven't blogged for nearly seven months, and I couldn't work out if I missed it. There are some things I don't like about blogging. The politics. The hierarchy. The FOMO. The encouragement to place so much focus on numbers and views. I recently stopped using hashtags on Instagram because it suddenly stopped mattering to me if strangers or bots (mostly bots) liked my photos. I stopped trying to post every day, and just post when I want to. Sporadic ..read more

I don't feel like I go out in London all too much nowadays. Sure, I have a list of places I want to eat at or go back to (ticked one of each list off on my birthday at the end of last month, thank you very much) but now I'm living a little further out, it's less convenient to pop in on a whim. But every now and then the stars align and I'm in London town for work in the day, with a delicious restaurant to review lined up for the evening. Usually, I combine this with the holy trinity of meeting a London-based pal, but this time people were busy and whatnot so I thought I'd treat the husband ..read more