Poland fits, 2023

Continuing my style series highlighting my holiday wardrobes, here is a retrospective look at the outfits I wore during my trip to Kraków and Warsaw back in October 2023.

Day 1

Football shirt: Chelsea megastore
Glasses: Red or Dead
Floral hairclip: Rock n Rose

Dangly earrings: Monsoon Accessorize
Ring: Monsoon Accessorize

9 things I learned from the BBFC 2025 annual report

Long-time readers of this blog will know I have an "inside baseball" obsession with film classification. I’m fascinated by film classification, especially BBFC ratings, why films are rated what they are, and decisions that were the source of contention. For me, the release of the BBFC’s annual report is like Christmas; the ultimate chance to indulge my inner film nerd.

Back when I was doing my PhD, and then when I had started my job in Finance, I went on a generational run of reading and summarizing my key takeaways from the Annual Reports from 2016 to 2019. But then my job got very busy, and my actuarial exams got more difficult, forcing my niche hobby onto the back burner, leaving the 2020 through 2024 reports unchronicled.

Being on maternity leave, I can now right some of those wrongs, and thus, for the first time in six years, have the time to pore over the 2025 Annual Report, and tell you what I found interesting! Below are nine things that I learned from reading the 2025 annual report.

1. Complaints for non-standard reasons I

The section of the Annual Report that attracts most attention from BBFC nerds, is the complaints section, because this reveals the temperature of the British public, not just in regards to their pressure points in terms of film content, but broader societal issues as well.

Marrakech fits, 2023.

Continuing with my holiday outfit retrospectives, here are all the outfits I wore for a holiday to Marrakech in February 2023!

Dressing for Morocco posed a unique sartorial challenge; I usually lean into playful, shorter silhouettes on holiday, but local custom calls for a more conservative approach. I had to get creative to ensure my personality still shone through while staying stylishly covered up.

Day 1

Oscar predictions, 2026.

Back to film awards prognosticating, the very reason I started this blog! Whilst I haven't dedicated a full blog post to predicting the Oscars since 2021, I've still religiously recorded my predictions for the Oscars and various precursors, so I can track my accuracy. In the case of this year's BAFTAs, I did pretty atrociously, and I'm looking to redeem myself with my predictions today!

The irony that Zootropolis 2 is one of the reasons why I lost the prediction game!

Best Picture: One Battle After Another

SAG predictions, 2026.

Best ensemble: Sinners 

Lisbon fits, 2022.

Part of my return to blogging will be some retrospective outfits of the day. As I tend to dress more adventurously when on holiday, I've raided my iPhone vaults containing photos from various holidays in recent years to showcase my more interesting 'fits!

Thus, I bring to thee: every outfit that I wore on a girls' holiday to Lisbon in October 2022 (with some bonus pictures of the delicious food we had)!

Day 1

Emma's favourite songs, 2026.

Hi readers! I know, it’s been an embarrassingly long time since I last blogged. I was hoping that I’d have more time to spare, following qualification, to work on my blog. But in reality, being a qualified actuary just meant an increase in responsibility at work, so the time that I'd previously spent studying for FIA exams, was instead swallowed up with longer working hours, meaning that my poor blog got neglected.

I'm currently on maternity leave, and for the first time in forever, I've found a tiny sliver of time to myself. In between feeding and changing my newborn bubba (who is all kinds of adorable!), I now have a bit of spare time to turn back to my favourite creative outlet: writing.

To kick off my foray back into blogging, I bring you, my 100 favourite songs list! Whether it contains some genius wordplay or sensational vocal performance, was employed to iconic effect in a film or TV scene, it being one that I love singing at karaoke, or it hitting some emotional beats that really speak to me, each of these songs carries a special place in my heart.

Dress review: blue floral dress (Albaray)

I received the good news in July of this year that I passed my last actuarial exam, which marked the end of me studying for the actuarial qualification since 2018, as well as the end of me studying for the rest of my life! 

After accruing an undergraduate degree, an MSc, a PhD, and then the actuarial qualification, I feel like I have thoroughly had more than my share of studying, and am very much looking forward to having my evenings free to relax! (and hopefully blog a bit more!)

To celebrate, I treated myself to this pretty blue floral dress from John Lewis, in the hopes of having a not-so-Cruel Summer (obligatory Taylor Swift reference). The dress is from Albaray.

As you may have gauged from my outfits in the past, I really like having flowers on my clothes (exhibits A, B, C and D).

Alcohol review: The King of Soho Copacetic Vodka and Variorum Gin

As I said in a previous blog, I’ve really been leaning into playing host of late, and an integral component of that is ensuring my guests have a drink in their hand at all times. If that drink is made from an exotic spirit, such as those from The King Soho, even better!

I was provided with a full bottle of The King Soho Copacetic Vodka and a sample bottle of The King Soho Variorum Gin

Alcohol review: Kwai Feh Lychee Liqueur

Since moving into my flat in September last year, I’ve been really enjoying hosting friends, and part of my hosting duties include mixing fun cocktails for my guests. I was kindly sent a bottle of the Kwai Feh lychee liqueur to review, and had lots of fun using it to jazz up some well-known drinks recipes. 

I love lychees as a fruit, and this liqueur both had a strong lychee taste and smell. This lychee essence goes with a lot of alcoholic spirits, making it a very versatile ingredient for drinks. In the photo below, I made lychee mojitos:

The ingredients for this drink were: a handful of mint (I have a mint plant which I use for this, very helpful!), 25ml of Kwai Feh, 25ml of rum, 25ml of freshly squeezed lime juice, 15ml of sugar syrup, topped up with lychee juice.

Whilst I enjoy rum cocktails, I don’t actually love the flavour of rum on its own, so it was pleasing to my taste buds that the lychee liqueur overpowered the rum in this drink! The lychee mojito was very fruity and fresh, with the mint leaves and lime really bringing out the tastiness of the lychee in the drink.

The next drink I made was the pink señorita cocktail, partially inspired by the pink aesthetic of the Barbie film!

The ingredients here were: 25ml Kwai Feh, 25ml tequila, 25ml Cointreau, 10ml lemon juice, topped up with pink lemonade.

Book review: THE ULTIMATE ACTUARIAL JOKE BOOK (John Lee)

John Lee, whose two books Actuarial Fairy Tales and Confessions of an Actuarial Tutor I have previously reviewed on my blog, continues with his streak of actuarial high jinx with his latest offering, The Ultimate Actuarial Joke Book. I was entertained greatly by those two creations, so I expected more comedy from this book, not least because it is, quite literally, compendium of jokes.

It certainly didn’t disappoint. The book features a wide variety of types of jokes formats, from zingy one-liners, jokes that follow classic ‘knock knock or ‘Doctor, Doctor’ formats, visual comedy in the form of memes, or gags that require more of a build-up before the punchline is delivered. By mixing the way the jokes are delivered, this means reading The Ultimate Actuarial Joke Book never gets stale, with the reader kept on their toes.

Cosplay for Hallowe'en: SQUID GAME with a touch of MIDSOMMAR

For Hallowe'en this year, I dressed up as 456 from Squid Game. Like most people, I was obsessed with the show when Netflix dropped it last year. However, I got on the bandwagon a little too late for Hallowe'en 2021, with most of the items of my cosplay, arriving after last Hallowe'en.

Thus, this year was the perfect opportunity for my 'make-up cosplay', and I did it in style, at the Ballie Ballerson, a Shoreditch hotspot famous for its massive, neon-lit ball pits!

it's me, hi, i'm the problem, it's me!

Product reviews: Fenty Beauty Crush on Cupid blush and Girl Next Door x Chic Phreak highlighter

Fenty Beauty, the make-up brand from Rihanna, was launched in September 2017. It has been praised for its inclusivity, especially in offering products for skin tones where previously there had been scant choice.

Fenty Beauty also broke down gender norms, with its products being accessible to men as well as women. One of its most high-profile advocates was Daniel Kaluuya, who wore shades 480 and 490 of the foundation when attending the 2018 Oscars, where he was nominated for Best Actor, with several media outlets commenting on how glowy his skin looked.

As I’ve discussed before on my blog, I have tended to be quite rigid in the make-up products that I use, with MAC constituting about 80% of my make-up collection.

But, following the positive word of mouth for Fenty Beauty (if it’s good enough for Danny Kaluuya, it has to be good enough for me!), along with the fact that I adore Rihanna’s music, I decided to see for myself, and treated myself to two products from the line: the blush and highlighter.

Review of five Maison Margiela perfume samplers

In my review of the LookFantastic Autumn Scent Edit, I commented that I couldn’t see the fuss around Maison Margiela’s Lazy Sunday Morning fragrance. On FeelUnique, the site where I have been getting perfume samplers for the last few months to share my thoughts on here, they conveniently had several other Maison Margiela fragrances as samplers. Thus, I thought this would be an opportune moment to see if my ‘meh’ response to Lazy Sunday Morning was an anomaly, or if this brand as a whole wasn’t to my taste. 

Review of five perfume samplers from FeelUnique - part 8

You know the drill by now – my brief thoughts on five little samples of perfumes!

Alive by Hugo Boss Eau de Parfum

With top notes of Madagascar vanilla, plum, cinnamon, apple and blackcurrant, there’s no denying that the creators of Alive EDP were aiming for a distinctively fruity scent. The middle notes of jasmine sambac and thyme, and base notes sandalwood, cedar and olive tree aim to complement the traces of fruit with woodsy scents.

Book review: ACTUARIAL FAIRY TALES (John Lee)

John Lee, who gave us the eccentric joys of Confessions of an Actuarial Tutor, turns his brand of nerdy humour into re-telling well-known fairytales, such as The Three Little Pigs, Sleeping Beauty and Goldilocks, with an actuarial slant. The results are cerebral, engrossing and often laugh-out-loud hilarious.

Sponsored post: RINSTA fashion, glamorous Y2K fits

I was kindly sent two cardigans from RINSTA, a hot new website that specialises in Y2K-style aesthetic. Here are some snaps of me in said cardigans!

Jack Grealish / KDB fanfiction, Chapter 5: Margin of Prudence

BBFC rating: PG for mild sex references and mild sexual innuendo

Author's disclaimer: I don't know De Bruyne or Grealish. This story is totally made up.

Catch up on Chapter 4, Red Light, Green Light, here.

Kevin De Bruyne’s 10-day spell in isolation was coming to an end, and for him, it couldn’t come soon enough.

Review: LookFantastic Scent Edit Autumn 2021 box

Getting perfume samplers in the post were one of the little treats that served as a fantastic pick me up during the seemingly never-ending period that was lockdown. As I have now exhausted all the perfume samples that are available on the FeelUnique website, I had to look elsewhere, and was alerted to this very tempting offer from LookFantastic.

It's a box with five fragrances in, luxury-sized (so larger than the usual 1.2ml sample-sizes I reviewed from FeelUnique), with two other non-fragrance samples thrown in. The box costs £55, which may seem pricey… until you consider that the box comes with a voucher code, that gives you £55 off the price of a full-sized bottle of any of the five perfumes it trials (and I made use of this voucher!)

Here are my thoughts on the seven items in the box:

Jack Grealish / KDB fanfiction, Chapter 4: Red Light, Green Light

BBFC rating: 12A (one use of strong language, moderate sex references and moderate sexual innuendo)

Author’s disclaimer: I don’t know Grealish or De Bruyne. This story is complete fiction.

Chapter 3, Optics, was here.