When the Pashmina craze hit a thousand years ago, I threw away my customary silk neck ties and upgraded as soon as I had the money. I just loved the way it made my employer look so casually elegant, thrown over her shoulders on a summer evening, or wrapped round her neck on winter days. Wonderfully versatile, I thought, and they have been part of my wardrobe ever since.
Never have I been more glad of a Pashmina (or cotton-based-copy which I thriftily paid less than a fiver for in a local Charity Shop) than on this particular holiday. It has been the dictionary definition of versatile. They should use some of these ideas for their next advertising campaign:
- Baby sling: because you never expect your pushchair to break on the first day of your holiday and for you to be stuck getting around with a three- and one-year-old on foot.
- Blanket: for when your three-year-old, who claims vociferously that she does not need a sleep, crashes out mid-sentence five minutes later on a sun lounger.
- Emergency shopping bag: crucial if your overloaded shopping bag bursts on the way home from the supermarket with the aforementioned three-year-old.
- Sick bag: perfect for catching an unexpectedly violent spray of vomit from your one-year-old who appears to have inadvertently ingested cheese (to which she is intolerant) at some point earlier in the day.
- Wet wipe: ideal when you realise that someone has removed the wipes from your baby bag and you have a child covered in chocolate ice-cream who is making a bee-line for your as-yet-unblemished white trousers.
- Sling: wet bathroom floor + ability to injure yourself in ridiculous ways = sprained wrist.
- Towel: for the one-year-old who, having been introduced to the baby pool for the first time, now views every pool of water as something to sit in. Fully clothed if necessary.
- Nappy: you can only take so many nappies on the plane. Apparently I needed one more than I had.
- Picnic blanket: the DG family are cursed when it comes to delayed planes, and there are never enough chairs in airports.
- Fishing net: it’s such a special moment in your life when you have to wade into a pool fully clothed to reclaim your child’s fresh turd as surreptitiously as you can.
Don’t you just love family holidays. One day I’ll get to waft my pashmina glamorously……
Blanket, sun cover-up, dress for a child…yes. But thankfully my kids were potty trained before I had to use my big wraps as a diaper! Great post.