YouWish

…is apparently Paris Hilton.

No, I’m not kidding.  And nor apparently is her lawyer, who should have been held in contempt for such an obviously baseless description of his client.

So busy she’s never seen a mobile phone bill, and doesn’t know who does see her mobile bills.

So busy she can’t remember what she was doing two weeks ago and simply Googles herself to see where she was.  Even though she does little more than attend parties and go on holiday.

Personally, if asked to say who the single busiest person on the planet was, I’d probably come back with a not very original answer along the lines of one of the many heads of state battling with recession, war, poverty or selling climate change initiatives to big business.  Or possibly Her Majesty, who still has a fairly punishing schedule of engagements despite being well past retirement age.  And if I was feeling flippant I might even suggest Madonna’s adoption lawyer was a better candidate than Paris Hilton for this title.

And yet, there are times when I would pick someone relatively unknown.  My mother-in-law, for example, who is in her sixties and spends much of her life attending meetings in far-flung places as an advisor to UNESCO and whose work will have a far greater long-term impact on the world than Paris Hilton’s.  

Or a friend of mine who is a stay-at-home-mum of three kids aged 4-13, one of whom is profoundly autistic.  Her time is almost entirely taken up with delivering the kids to three different schools, sorting out the housework and planning wildly varying meals to accommodate the likes and dislikes of her family.  And giving her kids the attention they need outside of school in order to flourish – and they do.

Or people who run their own companies and who have the commitment to live and breathe that business, while still managing to find some space for family and friends.  

And sometimes – like many of us, I suspect – when I’m pushing up against a deadline while simultaneously trying to sort out my son’s tea, listen to what he’s been doing at pre-school and juggle a phone call with a couple of urgent email exchanges, it feels like the single busiest person on the planet is me.  It’s all a matter of perspective.

And there’s something I can do about it at least.  Rather than privately wishing I had a babysitter, or a personal menu planner and grocery shopper, or a PA to handle correspondence and phone calls so I can get on with doing the things I can’t delegate, I should probably get on and post these wishes on the site.

But right now there’s one overriding wish I have: I wish I was only as busy as Paris Hilton…

Hello, everyone.  My name is Melanie and I’m a chocaholic.  I’m also joining Nick on the YouWish blog, so I’m looking forward to getting to know you all.  You’ll be glad to hear chocolate is not my only interest, but starting with one of your favourite things is as good a place as any!

But despite my status as a self-professed chocaholic, I eat surprisingly little of the stuff.  This is not because I have masses of willpower, or because I am self-disciplined enough not to go hunting down a bar of chocolate if I have one in the house.  Far from it.  And I’m really not fussy or some kind of chocolate snob, either – until very recently I was a sucker for a nice bar of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk or Fruit and Nut.  And there was always room for a Leonidas praline.   In fact, if I go any further this will simply start reading as chocolate porn and I shall have to go and lie down.

But you catch my drift: I love chocolate.   All was well until I was diagnosed with coeliac disease, when some of my favourites were suddenly ruled out on the basis they may contain traces of gluten.  But that still left me with Giant Buttons and all was well.  I then found out I had a secondary intolerance to lactose because of the coeliac disease.  This very nearly caused a breakdown – what would life be without Cadbury’s?  The final nail in the coffin came when I discovered that I’m also intolerant to soya.

I’m not bad at tracking things down.  And I used all of my abilities to try and find chocolate that avoided gluten, lactose and soy, pretty much to no avail.  The only chocolate left was dark chocolate and, much of the time, the only dark chocolate I could eat was too bitter, or too coarse in flavour to be truly enjoyable unless it was used to make something else.

Come Easter, and I was miserable at the prospect of missing out not only on an egg, but indeed on any chocolate at all.  Fortunately, as I walked through Spitalfields Market on Easter Saturday, I remembered there was a Montezuma’s shop there.  Might they be able to help?  Fully expecting them to say no, I decided it couldn’t hurt to at least ask.

It was most definitely worth the effort.  Not only were they able to point me in the right direction, they also fed me samples of chocolate that was safe for me to eat and checked ingredients lists to ensure I didn’t end up eating something I’d regret.  The thing that really finished me off was them pointing me in the direction of their ‘create a kilo’ service, where you can choose your basic chocolate from dark, milk and white, then add two other ingredients of your choice to create your own take on the perfect bar of chocolate.

The reason I’m mentioning them today is that I’ve just received my own designer kilo of chocolate.  It is just as delicious as I imagined it would be – dark chocolate with brazil nuts and orange oil – and it has reminded me what I love about shopping.  

It’s not the hunt for that bargain or for the perfect item or the product that will comply with X, Y and Z restrictions imposed: whether I’m walking round shops or getting RSI trawling through web sites, it’s still a pain in the neck.  It’s finding a shop – and in this case a web site as well – where the service is as important as the product, and the product is better than you could ever have hoped.

If you want to join me in chocolate heaven, you can find Montezuma’s web site here.