Whilst in work on Friday night i picked up a copy of Red magazine that was lying around while i was on my break. I generally don’t read celebrity type magazines. Sometimes if i am stupidly bored i might pick one up and flick through the pages, not reading any text but just looking at the photos. But they are dull and all.the.same.
But i picked this copy of red up because it had an article about Jools Oliver in it. With her looking particularly stunning on the front. I really have a lot of time for her OH and not because of his cookery skills or his books but because of his heart and his desire to try and change things. Although im thinking the good old U S of cheeseburger is a bit too big a bite for even him!
The title of this article was ‘Jools: one of us, sort of” In the article they were essentially trying to convey that she is just like every other mummy out there. Reading the article it started to niggle a bit..Kind of like it does when you have these parenting, baby sleep, gurus who tell you to ‘just leave baby to cry” when they don’t have kids and have never been so fatigued that you can’t remember when you last changed your knickers.
yeah they are using the “sort of”…
But personally i struggle to see where there are similarities.
Yes we both have large families and yes in fact both of us have more women in our house than men. But the same?
So i thought id do a little compare and contrast..remember that from Uni days? I hated questions that started with those words..but anyways..lets see how similar we are? huh..
talking about her house:
“Luckily we got the chance to buy next door a few years ago and knock it through’
hmmm..the guy who lives next door to me hasn’t opened his curtains in five years so im not even sure if we could convince the bank to lend us even more money that we would even want to buy the neighbours house.
“the kitchen is contemporary with vintage touches like 1930’s tiles and taps”
“my kitchen is chipped plywood with vintage felt tip marks and fingerprinted tiles and taps”
She has become a poster girl for the ultimate yummy mummy”
I am neither a poster girl nor a yummy mummy. I might appear on the 10 most frazzled mummy’s list”
She and her nanny are a tag team. “there are no let ups with 4 kids, even with someone helping, its a total relay”
Yes, totally..dar-ling…..nanny? who what now? Nope, thats just me. 5 kids. no relay. just a bloody long marathon.
“its every inch the domestic scene, right down to the cath kidston wallpaper in the downstairs loo, next to the signed OBE.
Now hang on, Cath kidston does wallpaper? Surely there is some kind of law against that? and digressing but if the decorations of your toilet define your state of domestic bliss..then i hate to think what the couple of pairs of lingering knickers, that odd smelly sock, some toothpaste smears and the occasional floater say about us!?..
“Britain’s most famous stay at home mum is getting a job designing clothes for mothercare. She went to LA recently to find some inspiration for her brand. I am dizzy with excitement”
ah god love her! Last time my job made me dizzy was when i worked a 12 hour night shift, my blood sugar was somewhere in my boots and driving home i thought my car had broken down only to pull over and find out it just wasn’t in gear!’
The couple split their week between their London base and their essex home
We split our time between the upstairs and downstairs of our house…
Hmmm..im thinking that being married to someone who features on the Sunday Times Rich List alone probably means that she can hardly be considered ‘just like us’
Slightly off the point a little i actually really liked the shoot they did with the kids. I would love to be able to create a shoot very similar..only i need the large estate house, boat, cath kidston accessories, couple of thousands to spend on cute designer kids clothes and id be laughing! But i have kept the article because i really like the concept they created…
Im not saying she isnt a hands on, get involved and loving on her kids loads mum. Im not judging her parenting.I like her…really i do. Her name choices for her kids are slightly far out and remind me a little bit of the cast of Fifi and the flowertots.. But one of us?
what do you think?
Im linking this post up today with my fabulous friend Sarah Miles who has bravely started a linky thing (technical term!) over on her blog. You can skip over there and see some others. Just press the button 🙂
