Interesting article on the BBC website today. I’m actually really surprised that it’s not done a London Fashion Week show before.
Certainly over the last few years it’s become one of my go-to places if I decide I need new jeans, a particular kind of dress etc. It’s even acceptable to my 16yo DS who’s very particular about where his clothes come from and has quite a small list of “acceptable” high St brands he’ll deign to go into!

Is it cool to wear M&S clothes now? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cje3rk4p39zwo

My dear sister organised a surprise dinner for my 40th last night and I'm beyond grateful, I love her so much.

I'm just a bit embarrassed as all that came in addition to my sister and husband were three friends and four colleagues - most of whom I'm not even that close to. Two other close friends were apparently ill and a third was away on holiday. And my husband didn't think to invite mutual friends, despite the fact I went to their 40ths.

As I said I am so grateful to my lovely sister for all the effort she went to but I'm just a little humiliated that my colleagues must think how sad, why are we here?? Has anyone else had similar experiences?

We are in a local voluntary group and local people planted an orchard in the grounds of a school, for the school.

Now, the school has written to say that we have to remove the nut trees because one pupil has a bad nut allergy.

There are fruit and nut trees, that the local people planted some years ago and we have put a lot of work into weeding and watering. The yield was actually for the kids and we are volunteering with the school with and nature sessions outside.

Before anyone says we are potential child killers, we do understand the importance of safety. There is a management plan in place, but the school has been asked by a parent to remove our trees.
I do feel disheartened - nobody in the school said no to nut trees originally.

Hired “mothers help” on a temp basis. We agreed on self employment. After being sick she is now requesting almost full pay for the days she was sick ,hol pay and pretending we agreed she’d be an employee. She’s been sending her hrs at the end of each week and I’ve been paying net with no deductions.
i am not against setting her up as an employee / worker but I now feel I’m lacking in trusting her as she’s been taking the over payments under the agreement she’d do her own taxes and now is pretending she thought I would do these my end on top. She’s also pressuring me to pay her almost full wage for the days she’s had off this week. She is already employed by another family and I know full well she was working there FT while not with me this week. Feel like I’m being taken for a ride AIBU?

Behind the times I know! However Birkenstock Bostons have caught my eye and I am wondering whether it is a waste to buy some this late in the year, do people wear them through winter?

Finally my hair is just above my ears (cancer). It is as flat as a pancake and very straight.
I seem to have forgotten how to style my hair as it's been ages since I had any.
What I need is something to boost it should that be moose, sprays or what.
Is there a heated brush or anything else I can use.

The dimensions are spot on and it’s ideal that it extends but I’m not sure if it’s too orangey in colour.

Id need to buy a sideboard to match - it’s going into a kitchen diner that has white units and black worktop and I’m hoping to introduce natural wood and rattan to soften the stark kitchen. Will be adding oak shelves and wood / plants etc.

Any suggestions of a sideboard would be appreciated (I’d like curves / ribbed to soften the look).

Im just not sure about the table and had my eye on a glass top round one with oak legs but it won’t extend.

Any thoughts please? Also, what chairs should I use?

I’m freaking out as our fixed term mortgage runs out in July 2027. DP said currently we’d be paying between 4-5k monthly and I’m so scared. Will things change by then and what options are there!? Never done this before!

I’m between jobs at the moment and have decided to use some of the time to basically snag my own house.

I’m going through every room and making a note of all the little things that have mildly irritated me for YEARS, but which I’ve somehow just accepted as part of life. You know the sort of thing - not actual problems, just things you regularly curse under your breath and then continue living with for another five years.

So far I have:

1. Ruthlessly slimmed down the kitchen cupboards so I could lose one cupboard and fit a tumble dryer. Every winter I normally spend approximately 46% of my waking hours hanging damp clothes around the house and rotating them like prize livestock, so I’m disproportionately excited about this.

2. Reorganised the Tupperware so every container now lives WITH ITS OWN LID. No more rummaging through 17 lids while slowly losing the will to live.

3. Thrown out about 12 random, ancient, slightly raggedy towels that had been granted permanent residency in the airing cupboard. It now has SPACE. Things are FOLDED.

4. Replaced the sieve that hasn’t had a handle since approximately 2020. Why did I just... live like that?

5. Put bigger shoe storage by the door, so we no longer have the traditional hallway shoe landslide.

6. Rewired a switch so it finally works the way you instinctively expect it to work rather than requiring a tiny moment of irritation every single time.

Honestly, none of this is exactly world peace, but the cumulative improvement to my quality of life is ridiculous. I keep thinking, WHY DID I PUT UP WITH THIS FOR SO LONG?

So humour me: what tiny, boring, seemingly insignificant thing have you changed/fixed/bought/reorganised in your house that has made you disproportionately happy?

I want the really mundane ones. The things nobody is putting on Grand Designs but which have genuinely made your day-to-day life better.

Basically, tell me what else I should be wandering around my house looking for 😂

It’s heading into autumn and winter and the dark mornings have really crept up on me. Every year I struggle really badly with seasonal depression. I’ve seen my doctor about it and the outcome seems to just be a shrug of the shoulders and a “sorry there’s not much we can do”. I’ve had bloods done, I eat well and maintain a good exercise routine, but just struggle.

One thing I think will help is laying out clothes for the week so each morning is as easy as possible. I really struggle to get myself out of bed, so reducing friction should help.

My partner is dead against it. We have a big space in our bedroom where I’d like to put a small clothing rail to do this. AIBU? He thinks it’ll be too cluttered and tacky. I think it would be worth it to help me in the mornings.

The house we are planning to buy has a fairly new white gloss kitchen with handleless doors. We don't intend to rip out the kitchen but my arthritis means I'd prefer a proper handle to pull on. Would it look weird to add handles and what style should we go for? Most probably bar handles on lowers and knobs on uppers

Looking for recommendations of a black waterproof mascara that does not leave an imprint of lashes on the eyelids 🫩
Thank you!

AIBU to ask if anyone knows where I can pick this up?!

I am obsessed with it. I think it’s gorgeous. I’m trying to find the bits separately but none have the frill. Im looking for either the burgundy or brown but nothing is showing up! Pic attached and in AIBU for traffic

I know this is probably asked every year but I am wondering what people's plans are now with the cost of living crisis.

Last year I went overboard and I really don't want to do that but I also don't want to be stingy. I know my kids aged 4 and 7 will be happy no matter what but the mum guilt of giving them likely less this year is hard to accept.

What dairy free “picky foods” do you recommend?

I’m newly dairy free and already thinking about Christmas!

We are having, what I would call, an unconventional Christmas dinner this year. I am sick of spending hours cooking what ends up being, a fairly standard meal. (More down to my skill than anything else.) I love a grazing board so this the theme I’m going for. Lots of little picky bits I’ll cook throughout the day as well as fresh fruit and vegetables for dips etc. I’m not hosting so no pressure there.

I’ll miss out on anything with milk, butter, cheese - which is fine! But I’d still like to make it a bit more special than usual grazing board fare. Has anyone tried anything recently that would fit the bill of basically fancy finger food. I’m up for any kind of cuisine and a little prep is fine too.

Thank you!

If you were a TA in a primary school, would you be comfortable correcting a fellow TA if they spelt something incorrectly or used bad grammar. Such as, 'I done this' or pacific instead of specific.

Both me and her partner have birthday just 3 days apart from halloween he has on oktober and i have on novemeber. To say it out, i always host my bday parties on halloween or same week halloween is because the pubs and nightclubs always throws fun halloween events and i LOVE halloween most friends know i make my birthday parties every weekend halloween is’ close to as my birthday party. I haven’t made any pre party event at my house yet but all me and my partner’s group friend knows about my upcoming halloween birthday party because they all besides from this friend and her partner came to my boyfriends birthday party this september.

And my friend is throwing him a suprise birthday party and told me in message to keep that day off, i cant totally blame her bcs she didnt know yet by my upcoming birthday party on 31 october aswell.. it seems as she consider me and my boyfriend to be closer friends with him than we really are in reality.. we barely see them after they had their kiddo of 2 years, and im her friend. so i feel like we have fallen out a bit of the friendship, after i told her that i also was making my birthday party on October 31 she got kinda mad because she tought i was just saying it right now as it wasn’t planned in my head 4 months ago.. i did tell her sorry bout it but she didn’t responded, but i wasn’t gonna cancel my own bday party for her partners suprise party either, since i wanna have my people to celebrate with me..

english not my first language so plz be nice :)

Charles Spencer says as Diana's coffin was lowered into the ground, several people there dropped flowers on the coffin. King Charles took a rose from Charles Spencers bouquet and dropped it on Diana's coffin.

This struck me as it shows a very casual disregard for other people's feelings. This was Charles Spencers flowers, but without a thought, king Charles took mine of the flowers. And remember relationships were extremely strained between the two men.

Sometimes I think the smallest incidents like this can reveal someone's true character. It's like someone being rude to a waiter. The king just acts like no one else matters except what he wants.

I need some outside perspective because I genuinely can’t tell anymore if I’m being nitpicky.

My dd is 20 months and stays overnight at her paternal nans. Her dad has MS and significant mobility difficulties, so I completely understand him needing his mum’s help and have never had an issue with that. He doesn’t stay there overnight himself, so his mum does the overnight care and he comes back the next day. She does most of the physical things.

Over the past 6 months there’s just been a buildup of things: she’s fallen off the sofa and bruised her head after he left her in the living room, come back sunburnt, had her car-seat straps left really loose despite being reminded multiple times, and once came back with a deep scratch on her leg that they couldn’t explain. I said maybe the dog did it by accident ( it looked a lot like a claw mark), but they wouldn’t accept it as a possibility. She’s come back wet through with wee before because her dad said he hadn’t had a chance to change her while they were at the park, and on multiple occasions she’s come home with small amounts poo still on her bum after being changed. She was taken to softplay where she wasnt appropriately dressed ( nappy on full display and bare foot), and once I was sent a video of her running in an open field with cows literally a couple metres away (nan and dad were close to her though). I’ve raised some things before and they’ll be addressed, but then something different seems to happen. Or other times it seems her dad just doesn’t see the problem or risk. When I said about being close to cows he said “ fine I’ll just never take her there again”. And it was a lot of back and forth when I said baby/toddler should not be unsupervised/alone around his dog.

Today his mum actually sent me a video where dd nearly fell backwards off a climbing-frame platform onto the hard floor. She was sitting right on the edge with the drop behind her, started going backwards and managed to grab something and pull herself forward. Her nan was in front of her filming.

I also rang her dad to video call dd assuming he’s with her, but he hadn’t gone over there yet, because he thought she may be napping. I feel he doesn’t take any authority as her dad or understand her routine, double checking safety such as the car seat. I’m not sure if it’s a regular occurrence, missing most of the contact day.

I KNOW toddlers fall, get bruises and accidents happen. Anyone of these things in isolation probably wouldn’t make me change anything. It’s the fact there always seems to be something new, even after I’ve raised previous concerns, and the stays are now causing me a lot of anxiety.

I don’t think another reminder will fix the lack of common sense or situation/risk awareness. I know it’s harsh, but I’m thinking about my child. They both love her, make an effort for her and I have a good relationship with the both of them.

I’m thinking of stopping overnights at nans for now and having a conversation about everything. How do I approach this?

I’ve just come home from a girls night in London and it was so fun… we left the bar we was in and spent £1000 on brunch in and when we came back the security wouldn’t let us back in. Even though you could book a reservation online.

I was a bit frustrated and said but we’ve spent money in here all day and went to enjoy the rest of our day and spend more? Someone went to check and then another bouncer came out all angry ‘NO REENTRY’ and I asked about 6 times to speak to a manager, which I was told ‘no’ I probably got a bit annoyed but I never was violent or used any threats.

as I walked away I said ‘we’ll spend our money elsewhere then’ and that one bouncer said ‘yeh do!’

my friend went back and felt the need to apologise and the bouncers went ‘don’t worry it’s just him’ and she said she looked at his phone and it said ‘White female, aggressive, police called’

sorry? I wasn’t aggressive, anyway my friend managed to rebook a table in there to prove a point and we went back 30
minutes later and they let us in and we had a great time.

I’ve been up all night, I suffer with anxiety anyway and the police called bit is playing on my mind- my friend told me stop being silly and stop worrying as I’ve done nothing wrong.

but me being me, I’m ofc worrying!

Buckingham Palace have said they won't be commenting further on the book. But I expect plenty of others will be and it's not even published yet so I started this second thread. I really liked Diana and thought she got treated shabbily by Charles. But really writing a book of gripes 30 years later is not on imho. I noticed on the news Harry declined to comment on it. Sensible decision for once.

My nephew is 24 and has been working full time for about a year after finishing university. When he first started working full time, my sister was charging him £500 per month to live with her and her partner. She has now told him he needs to pay £800 per month which he isn’t happy about as he is trying to save for a house deposit as well as having other costs and wanting to socialise. He spends a lot of time at work or with his girlfriend and friends so I do think £800 is a lot.

Our children are similar ages and my nephew has asked if he could live with us, paying £400 per month. We are happy for him to live here but it is causing a huge problem with my sister and her partner. They don’t think we should allow him to stay with us.

On the one hand I can see why my sister thinks we shouldn’t get involved, but on the other, he’s our nephew and an adult and if we’re happy for him to live here, he should be able to.

My sister has accused us of trying to make money from him which is untrue as we don’t charge our own children anything to live here and IF we take anything from our nephew, it won’t be £400 per month. This isn’t about money for us. I agree with my nephew that £800 is too much and want him to be able to have a life and save like my own children.

AIBU to say he can live here?

I have very fine hair but quite a lot of it. It's long too, below my bra line. Some bleach through it, balayage. I really struggle to find a shampoo and conditioner that work. I wash every other day. My roots get greasy fast, usually after day 1 but I manage to wash every other day and it's ok. Ends are dry and when washing my hair to clean the greasy scalp, my ends get so matted and tangled, no matter how gentle and slow I am with washing and no matter how much conditioner I use.
I have to use a fair amount on conditioner and a detangle spray which then just contributes to weighing my hair down so it's so flat. But if I don't use those things, I can't get a brush through my hair even if I take an hour to do it in tiny sections. Where it's fine it's prone to break so don't want to be ripping it out. And I don't have two hours every time to wash and detangle my hair.
any recommendations for a shampoo that cleanses for volume and a conditioner that can really help dry ends?
thanks

How bad would diarrhoea need to be for you to work from home?

I have had bowel surgery, and from time to time I get what I would consider to be severe diarrhoea. As an example, over the last 24 hours I have been to the toilet 14 times. It’s all very watery, and I feel some nausea and just vaguely unwell.

When talking to my manager, I explained that from time to time I may need to work from home more than expected, as a result of the bowel surgery and the severe diarrhoea I sometimes experience. Her response was to say that we all get stomach bugs and that I need to meet the expectation.

on Monday went past Sainsbury and fuel was £1.61, went past Tesco tonight and its £1.70 - I'm guessing they've all put their prices up and there are 3 supermarkets within 1.5 miles

I'm leaving the car at home as much as possible, and certainly used less fuel than I normally would have by half way through the month

gas is going up on 1 October along with electric

things are going to be tight this winter