The days have gotten ridiculously short here in Sweden. By that I mean of course, the hours of daylight have been re-scheduled into a rather inconvenient slot somewhere between 8 am and 3.30 pm rather than the customary 24 hours being slimmed down as some sort of money saving precaution.

I am very grateful for the fact that I work from home and can go out walking at lunch time so that I at least get a bit of fresh air when it’s light – unlike poor Christoffer who only gets to see what our area looks like in the daylight on weekends! But I really have have to keep an eye on the time to make sure that I have taken Pixie dog for a nice long walk before it gets too dark. One damp, cloudy day when it had barely gotten light at all thanks to the grey sky I caught myself having a little moan at this. I had to have a little giggle though because I realised that I was trying to find someone to blame the lack of light on: the government, the recession, the price of out-of-season tomatoes….but then I realised ‘it is as it is’ and asides from moving to a warmer sunnier country there is not much I can do about it, but stop moaning, put on my walking boots and get some air and exercise!

Which reminds me of an interesting fact I read in Gabriel Cousens ‘Conscious Eating’ where research shows that exercise gives relief from depression in 80% of cases where as Prozac helps about 65-70%. I think that is an amazing, and probably not well-known fact. And the side effects of exercise are heck of a lot more positive than those of Prozac!

I am not about to naively bang on about how to cure depression by slipping on a pair of leg warmers and doing an aerobics class as I am no expert in Prozac or depression. Besides, if I was depressed I am not sure how I would react to someone saying ‘C’mon grumpy pants, get your trainers on a give me 100 sit-ups’ as I am sure it’s more complex than that, but now when I am just mildly bored of the dark damp grey days (hurry up and snow properly will you!!?) I know that I certainly feel better for getting daily exercise.

But I do believe that exercise has to be fun. I love a walk in the forest with Pixie. Christoffer loves spending a day on the golf course (actually, yes, it is physically demanding – I have seen how his physique improved when spending hours on the course each week, which rather put a stop to my ‘golf isn’t a sport, it’s a recreational stroll for pensioners’ attitude!) I also love a good dance but don’t do it enough, which is a shame as it puts such a big smile on my face. So next time I get a bit fed up with the weather I will reclaim my power and make sure I ‘don’t blame it on the (lack of) sunshine, don’t blame it on the (lack of) moonlight (damn clouds!), don’t blame it on the good times; blame it on the (lack of) the boogie’. Ooohhh, yeah!

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As you probably know, I am in the process of writing a recipe book. To be honest I had hoped that it would have been finished by now but during the past few months I have been feeling some big shifts in my development which I haven’t been able to put on the shelf for later.

When I first launched Miss Best I wasn’t totally sure of my direction. I knew what my passions and skills were (food, design, writing) so I felt that in order to take the first small steps towards working with things I love, I needed to just start somewhere, even if from an external eye it didn’t look very focused.

Over the past couple of months, I have really felt the pull to focus on sharing my food and recipes and knowledge of health related topics with others and have been spending a lot of time working on getting clear in my head what exactly I have to offer so that I can communicate this to the world with more clarity.

Well, I am extremely excited to finally reveal my new focus to you today. This is what’s new:

Loving Life – Loving Food – these are the words that reflect what Miss Best is about.

I believe that what we eat is closely linked not to just our physical health but indeed to all areas of our lives. To be able to love your life you need to be well and healthy and feel clear-headed and balanced. You need to love your food and your life, and your food needs to love you and your life. It’s about Life-Loving Food! Read more here.

I have finally named my first recipe e-book and can reveal that it is called…*drum roll*… Loving Life – Loving Desserts. I really love this name as it represents so much of what my food is about. Again, it’s about loving life and loving food (desserts) and it’s about food that loves life: Life-Loving Desserts!

My website has been updated to reflect my new focus and I would love you to go visit and let me know what you think. I have also used some of the beautiful photos that will be appearing in Loving Life – Loving Desserts. I am super happy with them as I really do think they represent my food well!

I will shortly be sending out a monthly newsletter to bring you yummy recipes, links to my weekly blog posts, super helpful tips, interesting facts, inspiration and exciting news. You can sign up for my free newsletter on my site.

You can also sign up for email updates of my blog posts. Just fill in the form at the top right hand side of this page.

Of course, the Miss Best site is a work in progress and I haven’t yet added all the information and tips that I want to, so please pop back again for another visit sometime soon.

In the mean time I wish you a wonderful weekend and would like to share with you this yummy recipe for a creamy, tasty healthy drink. Serve it in cocktail glasses and join me in a toast to my new adventure and to yours.

Love and chocolate-dipped strawberries,
Miss Best xx

Creamy Frozen Melon Drinkie
Serves 2

This shake is 100% melon but it’s so creamy it’s hard to believe there is no nut milk in there. Make sure your melons are nice and ripe! (oooh-er!!)

2 C honeydew or cantaloupe melon
1 C frozen honeydew or cantaloupe melon

Blend together and serve in decadent glasses.

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My Love Christoffer has been engaged in a very cool personal experiment. Since August he has adopted one new routine per month to work towards improving his health, fitness and well-being.

The first one was to get up at 5am (!) in order to have time in the mornings for things he wants to do before leaving for work. So now he gets up, takes Pixie Dog for a nice walk in the forest, does some yoga and weight-bearing exercises, and works on his personal projects before heading off for the day. I am super proud of him. He is the first to admit that he has not previously been one for sticking at things. After the initial enthusiasm wears off the good habits get left at the wayside. But now he gets on with it, and as each month passes he has got in to a good routine, and each month adds something positive to his daily life.

His latest ‘good habit’ is doing push-ups. You can read about it here.

But I wonder how people react to such a blog post. Just like when someone Tweets or Facebooks that they are on a juice feast, running marathons, or succeeding in balancing productivity with relaxation. Is your first reaction ‘Yeah, nice for you, no need to brag about it. You want a medal or something’? Or do you think ‘ Wow!, good for them. Sounds like a great idea…I wonder how I would benefit from trying that.’ Maybe you feel a mixture of the both: an initial recoil, small feelings of jealousy perhaps. Then maybe you realise that hell, if they can do it so can you. And you go dig out your running shoes and look up that recipe for a yummy healthy smoothie.

I think it’s OK to feel a little negative at first, as long as you try to recognize why you want to put down their achievement. Are you perhaps making a comparison that if they are getting healthier, fitter, happier then it makes you less healthy, fit, happy? Does it remind you of a time when you tried to get in to a good habit but ‘failed’?

What would be most useful is if you can progress and be inspired by what they do. OK, so you may not be able to run a marathon straight away, but neither did they. Look at Christoffer’s chart in his blog post – he wasn’t too impressed by his initial results, but every day he gets better and better. And for the record, I can actually see the positive changes in his body. And even better is his sense of achievement and increasing well-being.

So please do try and take those small steps towards your goal, whatever it may be – you will get there! And along your journey you will doubtlessly inspire others too.

Now, where are those running shoes?

Image: said_w

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When we moved to our house a few months ago I needed to acquire a desk. I had a look around for second hand ones but nothing came up that I wanted or wasn’t a ridiculously long drive away, so after a month of looking I decided that I couldn’t wait any longer (as I needed a desk to work on) and so went to IKEA.

As I was putting together my lovely new desk I got to a point where the thingy had to be put in the whatsit, but it really didn’t want to fit. So I just pushed it harder. And then, begrudgingly, it did eventually fit. But then I reliased that it wasn’t actually meant to go there, and I had to remove the thingy that I had managed to jam into the whatsit pretty firmly. Silly, Miss Best! Double silly Miss Best as this happened twice. It was only after the second time that I realised that I had accidentally skipped 2 pages of the instruction leaflet. Figuring this out made it much somewhat easier to get things into place as they should.

But while I sat there on the floor, surrounded by bits and bobs, and tools and packaging, I couldn’t help but compare my little flat-pack project to a bigger project called Life. It reminded me of a time in my life when I thought I wanted something. I had to struggle really hard to get it, and obviously when I did get it, it did not make me content as it wasn’t the life for the real, authentic me. And so I had to deconstruct my life, and start from scratch. That was during my twenties, and now I am 32 and finally feel that I am beginning to live the life I want and need, but I do feel like I have missed 2 pages in the instruction leaflet.

I was brought up with a slightly mainstream attitude to education, work and life, and it took me many years to figure out that mainstream life wasn’t for me. I know that part of life is the journey, but I do almost wish that I had been saved those non-authentic years so that I could have more joyful living behind me. Of course, I can console myself by saying that if we don’t have those painful times to compare with, we don’t appreciate the good times as much.

I am, however, hugely consoled and inspired by young people who can see that their lives lie along a less ordinary path and have the courage to follow it. I recall reading about a teenager who had been home educated and instead of sitting GCSEs (the exams that are sat in the UK around the age of 16) she chose to follow her joy and studied to become a massage therapist. So while her peers were stressing about exams, university, jobs, she already had the skills to earn money doing something she loved. Fabulous! And of course she is free to sit exams, and go to university should she change her mind. But she (and her parents) could see that there is not just one way and that we are all different.

So let’s not pass on our fear of being ‘different’ to the next generations. Let’s encourage them to develop themselves in the areas they really enjoy. Oh, and if any of them end up making instruction leaflets for IKEA, please ask them to design them so that the pages don’t stick together so easily!

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- I am not a robot and I don’t eat robot food!

- What on earth are you talking about Miss Best?

- What I mean is that I refuse to work on soulless tasks for hours on end without motivation, rest and a friendly word or two.

- And the food?

- Yes, robot food. I get cross when I get served (this usually seems to happen in pricey establishments) a fruit platter spread with nicely presented unripe fruit. The food I eat is natural and living. It wont be ripe just because you want it to be. It will be good and ripe in it’s own time. So please don’t charge me or my host and whole purseful of gold for unripe, hard fruit that tastes of nothing and makes my tummy ache just because it’s on the menu and to you a pear is just a pear and nothing more. If you want food that’s ready on demand eat nuts and bolts

End Rant….

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This week I received my new business cards from the printer. I just LOVE them. The benefit of designing them myself is that I get them to look exactly how I want. It’s a bit like life really, isn’t it? When we know how we want it to look all we have to do is figure out how to create that look!

Get in touch if you would like me to design you some too!
Email: hello(at)miss-best.com

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Through listening regularly to a BBC 2 radio show I came to learn of Sarah Outen’s challenge to become the first woman, and youngest and fastest person, to row solo from Western Australia to Mauritius. A journey of 3,100 miles across the Indian Ocean rowing her tiny boat ‘Serendipity’ “up to 12 hours a day under a scorching sun, riding 30ft waves, battling winds and currents, sharks, capsizes and shipping traffic.” Just reading those words from Sarah gives me the tingles. They are just words, but we can try and visualize her experience. However, set our imaginations free and I am sure we still have no idea of the intensity of this journey.

On Tuesday 3rd August, after 124 days at sea, 24 year old Sarah made her very rough but successful landing on the island of Mauritius, thus achieving her goal to enter the record books as well as helping raise money for charity in memory of her late father.

Following Sarah with her regular chats on the radio show when she always seemed upbeat and positive despite her progress, and through her blog, then finally hearing of her arrival thrills and chills me to such a great level I had to take a moment and ask myself why.

On a basic level the thought of being alone in the middle of the ocean at the mercy of the elements and fellow sea dwellers such as sharks and beautiful but giant whales sends my head spinning almost as much as when I try and grasp the concept of the vastness that lies beyond our galaxy. But on a deeper level I am moved by the challenge she set herself. It reminds me of the adventures that we all embark on. These adventures may not be as perhaps as huge or as physically risky as Sarah’s journey but they probably feel to us just as daunting and exciting.

To me, her journey at sea mirrors those times when you are on your adventure; some days you are smiling up at the blue sky, gazing in marvel at the things around you, rowing along with the tide almost effortlessly. A flat sea bringing wafts of foreign and exciting things. But like Sarah you also experience those times when the sea is raging, the sky is black and you can’t even try and plod onwards. Your only option is to just drop anchor to try and not get swept too far away from your path.

We are often alone on our own personal adventures, and though sometimes only we can make the decision (on either a conscious or sub-conscious level) whether we have the balls to continue with our adventure, the hero/ine of your story will always have the equivalent of Sarah’s radio back-up. Though they are not in the boat with you, your support crew of family and friends – people you have met in person and on line, and those who you don’t even know exist but are rooting for your success anyway – will be there for support, motivation and to send out the search boats should you send up a distress flare. I am sure that knowing this brought Sarah to those safe shores. Knowing this maybe even gave her the strength to come up with her personal challenge, put it into action and to slip in to the ocean in her boat on the first day of her voyage.

This was a huge adventure to embark upon but it should not overshadow our own challenges. What was the biggest adventure you have set sail on? Does it make you tingle now thinking of your journey: of the unknown, the actual voyage and the outcome (be it as you planned or not)?

I am sure that this adventure was just something Sarah had to do. Perhaps in order to progress in her life and to grow. I would be very surprised and impressed if I did anything on that level (I am pretty reserved when it come to physical danger) but my own journeys have been just as big to me. And the exciting thing is that when one has journeyed along one adventure and jumped nervously outside of one’s comfort zone the next adventure is probably even bigger and perhaps even more awe inspiring.

We may well take time in between each adventure to appreciate our efforts (regardless of the outcome), re-assess our lives and our ways of thinking and doing things, and to gain the inspiration and energy for the next challenge. Sarah will be writing a book about her experience before she plans her next challenge, and I for one am looking forward to what can only be an inspiring and thrilling read.

Wishing you courage and joy on your journeys, you wonderful spirited adventurer! Give me a wave when we cross paths out there in the vast sea of life.

Read about Sarah’s journey here: http://www.sarahouten.co.uk/

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Forget The Celebrity ‘X Factor’ – It’s Our ‘Appreciation Factor’ That Counts!

I have to admit that I avoid reading and listening to the news. I feel that it delivers us just a teeny tiny fraction of the world’s events and are highly manipulating. I prefer instead to read optimistic and inspiring news such as Ode magazine.

But since I am hard-core Facebook user it’s hard to avoid hearing what’s going on the world. To be honest that’s good in a way as it would have been a bit weird if in 5 years I discovered that Michael Jackson had left planet Earth back in 2009. It would have been like that part in ‘Dumb & Dumber’ when Jim Carey’s character sees a framed article of man landing on the moon and runs out of the bar shouting ‘We’ve landed on the moon, everybody!’

I have to admit that Michael Jackson (MJ) was probably my first crush. Back in the late 80s he was much hotter than of late, and I have fond memories of listening to him in my bedroom as a kid, dreaming of seeing him in concert. I never did, and by the time I was old enough for such a possibility I felt his best period had passed and never made an effort to go.

I don’t know much about MJ but if anyone who isn’t causing harm to others dies – famous or otherwise – then it’s a sad thing. And regardless of who he was or wasn’t in his personal life, he did bring the world some great music. But guess what? So have so many other people. And guess what? So many non-famous people bring us fantastic things every day, but are not appreciated on the scale that people like MJ are.

It’s just the mass scale that intensifies the appreciation of these people. Take this little anecdote for example. A few weeks ago I had a naughty celebrity dream. Come on hands up who has NEVER had one of those dreams? I know you have! Well, me being me, didn’t dream of steamy passion with the latest heart-throb. No I dreamed of , let’s call him ‘Mr Celebrity’, serving me cake. Yes, it’s true! He was making a big effort to score me some vegan cake. Fully clothed. Cake – that’s all it was. Nothing to make the vicar blush what so ever. Nothing. But when someone gives a girl cake in her dream, it’s hard for her not to wake feeling rather fond of that person. Funnily enough a few days later my friend was having a cat-fight on Facebook about who gets to ‘have’ this celeb. I refrained from joining in on this public declaration of fondness for ‘Mr C’, knowing that he had served me cake and all was good. I knew where his loyalty lay.

And being the loyal girl that I am myself, I started to feel guilty for going around feeling fondness (and that’s all it was) for a chap that wasn’t my Christoffer. So my little mind went into analyze mode and I realized that Christoffer was actually very much like this celebrity. The character this actor played is a slightly nerdy but funny, kind, smart and handsome young man. He is the celebrity version of Christoffer! And I thought that if Christoffer and I had never met and he was a celeb I would definitely be having cakey dreams about him.

And am sure I wouldn’t be the only one. I am certain my friends would be fighting over him on Facebook. So what stops them from doing that now? Well, apart from the fact that I would scratch their little beady eyes out for lusting over MY man they don’t really know who he is! It’s all a numbers game. If you are a non-celebrity and say you score an average ‘appreciation factor’ (how much people appreciate your gifts to the world) of 7/10 then your total ‘appreciation rating’ would probably be (bearing in mind I am a creative person and not a numbers girl!) n x 0.7 where n is the number of people who know about your existence. The more people who know about you, the higher your total score will be.

So what’s my point? Well, let’s look at people’s ‘appreciation factor’ rather than the total score. Let’s look at our partners, friend’s, colleagues, neighbours, family with the same adoring eyes as we have when stroking pictures of our celebrity idols. Let’s assess our own ‘appreciation factor’. How can we better deliver our gifts to the world so that people can benefit from what we have to offer. How can we up our ‘appreciation factor’ to live a more fulfilling and giving life?

And since we are suddenly being bombarded with MJ songs on the radio when we hadn’t really heard much about him recently let’s remember to celebrate people now. How many people make a special effort to go to a funeral, but wouldn’t make the time to go and see that person when they were alive and well? Let’s appreciate the gifts that are given to us by others (and ourselves) on a daily basis – now! Let’s not allow ourselves and each other to become ‘famous after they died’ figures. Let’s love life now!

Oh, I guess you may be wondering who ‘Mr Celebrity’ is? Well, if you hadn’t already figured it out, the chap who was going to great efforts to bring Miss Best vegan cake in dream land was in fact Adam Brody, who played Seth in the series O.C.

Now if I can just get Christoffer to bring me vegan cake in real life then that would be something to make the vicar blush

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I invest a large proportion of my energy and resources into my health and well-being. I prioritize good quality, healthy, home made organic food over many things. I would rather forgo a few trips to the cinema/pub every month in favour of ensuring that what I eat makes me feel well, happy and healthy both physically and mentally.

Much of what I read helps my personal growth, and I try to exercise and stretch regularly to keep myself in reasonable shape, and to avoid stiffness and back pain which I can get from sitting at a desk all day. (Notice the ‘try to’…there honestly are days when I can’t be bothered and so my little body scrunches up in to a crippled chair shape until I am literally forced to un-scrunch my self again with a brisk walk and some yoga!)

I know that not everyone has these priorities in life, which I respect. But also know that many people have looked at my lifestyle choice and wonder why I bother. I mean I do spend a silly amount on fresh, health giving food, I go without many things for sake of the environment, and I seriously narrow my job prospects for the sake of not working for obviously ‘evil’ companies that harm my health, the health of others, the environmental or animals.

I think that some doubt the usefulness of investing in their physical and mental health for the future. One person justified their lack of investment in their health by saying ‘Life’s too short – I could get run over by a bus tomorrow’. Indeed that is true, and we must live with this in mind. Not to be depressing, but we need to remind ourselves that life is short and the years tick by so quickly that if we don’t live the life we want to live now, then it may be too late.

But I am not just investing in my future I am investing in my now. If I eat non-supportive food today and don’t exercise for weeks then I feel the negative effects immediately; not just physically, but also emotionally and mentally. It’s not just about giving myself the best chance to avoid illness later in life. It still may happen, but if my todays are good then my tomorrows are more likely to be good too. If I have a clear mind (which eating mostly raw food and plenty of greens does indeed give me) I will more likely make better life choices today. Today is my future.

The ironic thing is that when this person told me that life was too short – that he might get run over by a bus tomorrow, so there was no point in stopping smoking – he was working as a cleaner in the office where I worked. My instant thought was: if this guy thinks he may die tomorrow then why the hell is he emptying bins and not living his life to the max spending time with his kids or fulfilling that dream he had always had?

I fully appreciate the commitment and challenges it takes to shift one’s life from a place of bad health to good health, but if we discover that the benefits will be felt immediately then perhaps we would be more motivated to make these changes. After all, someone may live a healthy life and feel great on a daily basis and still get seriously sick at age 80. Someone may abuse their body and mind with bad food, cigarettes and lack of self respect and live till they are 100, but every day might pass with them feeling low in energy, unenthusiastic, unhappy and with a foggy mind. Thinking short term and looking forward to a shift in our well-being in the immediate future may seem more motivating than doing it to prevent an unimaginable, bad thing that may or may not ever happen.

Personally, I know that if I am looking after my physical and mental health it gives me more clarity, strength, creativity and passion to get on with the things I really want to do in life. It’s an investment that gives amazing returns. So even if I end up having to empty bins to earn a living, at least I can do it with a spring in my step and a smile on my face.

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Apologies for the rather tabloid-like play on words. In fact during the past few days it seems that most people we have spoken to have managed to come up with some amusing toilet humour. It’s not that we have suddenly starting hanging out with a bunch of Viz readers (http://www.viz.co.uk/) or anything it’s just that we have had a – shall we say – less-than-fully-functional toilet for a short while.

All of Christoffer’s colleagues all know about it; the guy at the hardware store who sold me some unblocking tools knows about it – ‘Skitkul’ was his gleeful reply to my problem; the guy who we bought from the house knows about it; and now you, dear Reader, know about it. (Am sure my translator friend would come up with a good English equivalent for the Swedish ‘Skitkul’, but I have a pot of green chai to drink and so will have to leave you with a literal translation of ‘Shit fun’. ‘Skit’ is often used in Swedish where us Brits might use the word ‘Bloody’ like ’skitbra’ meaning ‘bloody good’ or in this case ’skitkul’ meaning ‘bloody fun’.)

It all started last week when I noticed a strange flapping sound coming from the toilet. The next day things weren’t disappearing as quickly as they should, and soon after began our five-day long battle of the bog. (For the benefit of those of you not familiar with the British vernacular, ‘bog’ is a rather inelegant word for ‘toilet’!)

Day 1: We started with buckets of water, and random stabbing with the toilet brush. We couldn’t see anything that was blocking it, and things would gradually flush away, but our ’special thinking seat’ certainly wasn’t working like it should do.

Day 2: Christoffer bought a plunger. Then Christoffer needed a shower. No luck.

Day 3: Christoffer found a number of a local plumber, but I didn’t want to book one until we had had a proper go at resolving it ourselves, for financial reasons as well as wanting to save face. I mean how silly does it feel to call a plumber to poke around in the household poopments when one can have the pleasure of doing that oneself?

I had a go with the plunger and quickly found out why C had needed to shower afterwards. I rummaged around the house and created myself a ‘plunging mask’ consisting of a pair of workshop protective goggles and an old vest top that I used as a bandanna to protect my mouth from…well, you get the picture!

No luck. Another evening of tentative toilet trips, multiple flushings and prayers to the Bog God.

Day 4: Determined to fix the problem without the need of a plumber, I went to a hardware store near work and came back with a 7m wire thingy, and a can of ‘environmentally friendly expanding gas drain cleaner’. I also tried to call the previous owners for advice in case it was the septic tank, but I couldn’t get through to them.

No luck with my new fancy gadgets, though I did learn a handy trick from the internet. When plunging, cover the toilet in a large plastic dustbin bag…didn’t unblock the toilet, but it did save me from an icky shower!

Day 5: Finally get hold of previous owners. We check the septic tank…looking a bit damp around the extraction pipe…good sign that it should have been emptied – oh about a month ago!!!

Call the kind folks who dedicate their days to driving out in a big truck to suck clean the giant poo tanks of us country dwellers. An emergency call-out would cost 4.000 SEK (approx. £300 / $500 / 370 euro) but if one was to come within 24 hours it would ‘only’ cost about a third of that. If you book one in time so they can come within 5 days, the price sinks to a less depressing figure.

1.500 SEK to empty our septic tank!! Shit! When you work part-time there are not a lot of pennies left over for such ‘fun luxuries’ as spending 1.500 SEK on getting your poo removed. But they had the upper hand, and there was not much we could do about it, except learn from the experience and realize that the previous owners’ estimate of emptying the tank once every 3 months (we have lived here just 2 months) only applies to households of people who don’t eat quite as much fiber as we do.

A friend confided in me that before he turned veggie he would only poop about twice a week. Now he visits the little boys room twice a day! If most other people go around with 3 days worth of food (mainly meat and processed cereals) rotting in their bowels no wonder there are a lot of glum faces around!

Anyway, between us and our fellow ‘regular’ guests we managed to fill up the tank pretty quickly, and even if the regular price of emptying the tank is around a third of the price we had to pay then we would still be paying rather a lot every year for, let’s face it, nothing but shit.

So out came the calculator. And what followed was a rather ‘interesting’ conversation. Christoffer calculated the volume of the septic tank, estimated the amount of water per flush and the cost per toilet visit and cooly gave us a ration of 4 flushes a day each.

Horror!

‘Why, how many times a day do you poo’? he asked.

Horror!

Now that I have already shared so much personal information about our toilet, I may as well share with you the fact that I am a little toilet shy. Some couples are quite comfortable peeing in front of each other. Not us! Or rather, not me. We have been together for nearly 7 years, and I still maintain that some things need not be shared.

And number two’s?? Well since I am a fairy princess from Planet Avocado I expel my waste products through my leaves that I cleverly hide under all my hair and don’t ‘do number two’s’…

… so this question left me with the beginnings of what could have turned into a fit of hysterical nervous laughter.

God! 4 flushes day!?? I am fine about ‘letting it mellow if it’s yellow’, but let’s say for arguments sake, that I was a mortal human and do pass the occasional solid, would 4 flushes a day cover it? And what happens when we have guests? Whose rations do they get? Do I start having to find friends and families with lazy bowels? How do I find that out – issue a poo questionnaire? I could see it in front of me: ‘You are invited to a party at Miss Best’s house – but only if you don’t intend on having a poo while you are there’. Or do we start charging them per flush? Make them go in the garden or the forest??

Horror!

And we were still going to have to wait 24 hours before the tank was emptied. Rations or no rations, we had agreed not to flush again until it was emptied to save any more toilet water overflowing in to our beautiful garden. When you know you can’t flush the loo, that’s when your body starts to mess with you. ‘Ha ha, Miss Best…remember all that fruit you ate this morning, it’s got to come out some time…’ ‘Is that a poop, or just a bit of wind lurking? Well whatever it is, do you dare try and find out?’…

Horror!

And so I went to bed and dreamed of blocked toilets and laughing neighbours, and pipes and drains.

But joy! At 9.30 this morning a truck pulled into our driveway, and I had to stop my self from running downstairs and covering this hero of bowel relief in grateful kisses. Fifteen minutes later I was happily wasting 25% of my daily flush ration to test if the toilet was back in business. And it was! All is good again.

So life in Miss Best’s home is back to normal. Well, apart from the fact that we still have to work around our flush rations. Maybe it’s time to get eco (and wallet) friendly and switch to a compost toilet. Then we can have the pleasure of dealing with our own shit. And we and our guests can poop all day long if we so fancy.

Oh, by the way, if one of my neighbours ever tells you that they saw me sneak in to the forest at 7.30 this morning, with crazy bed hair and a pair of blue flowery wellie boots and a pocket full of tissue, then you know that they are just talking crap.

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