ON SATURDAY a wild winter storm resulted in a rare red weather warning for parts of the UK. There were extremely hight winds, some places had a beautiful snowfall, while here it was just really windy and rainy and by 10:00pm Saturday night, we were sitting by firelight and candlelight and no wi-fi due to a sudden power outage ...
THOSE WHO KNOW me know that I can't watch films that are violent or scary, or gory or too intense or sad. I just get far too upset and emotionally invested, and often replay the entire film in my dreams later that night. I'd thought that I was unusual, but as it turns out, we make up 20% of the population, those of us who are highly sensitive. According to Genevieve von Lob, a clinical psychologist, when highly sensitive people receive information, they process it much more deeply and more elaborately ...
TIG NEWSLETTER subscribers always love Weekend Links best—in fact, it's also one of the most popular regular features on the site and I've often wondered what it is that readers like so much. This weekend was one of those cosy homebody types of weekends: a fire, some drinks, and P made Aubergine & Cauliflower Korma, a vegetarian dish with toasted cumin and coriander seeds, ginger, desiccated coconut and flaked almonds. It was delicious!
IT IS THAT TIME of year again, the time for wreaths and fairy lights and holiday films and bits of gift wrap and ribbon and shortbread cookies everywhere. We saw an Instagram comment by someone yesterday stating that she might get drunk and put up the tree tonight (it was a Tuesday). Yes, regular hours and workdays fade away during this time of year, which is decidedly more free-flowing and therefore, festive ...
I AM WRAPPED in quilted jackets and wearing boots exclusively now, just as the trees are half empty of their leaves. The fallen ones are strewn everywhere and can't help but be drawn to pasta dishes and saving brioche bread recipes that I will never make. Darkness falling at 4:30pm takes getting used to, even if it happens every year, but we passed a house with a Christmas tree up already, all lit up with fairy lights, so that's one way to deal with it ...
I READ AN article this weekend about the things you can do to increase your chances of living to 100 and felt smug that I was already doing many of them (Strength training? Check. Dark chocolate? Yes. A Mediterranean Diet? Of course.). The ones that I wasn't doing, I started immediately, buying a box of green tea and ordering a high bar to install in the door frame outside our upstairs home gym ...
I have been watching the late Anthony Bourdain's series, Parts Unknown, during my one-hour cardio sessions on the exercise bike every day. I am very particular when it comes to this part of my workout, preferring not to follow live or digital classes, but rather, to ride along to something entertaining on Netflix. It is for this reason that I ended up watching The Crown and The Queen's Gambit, but this series is by far the best. I've started from the very beginning, at Season 1, which first aired in 2013, and includes Myanmar, Colombia and Libya—episodes which were interesting, fascinating, heartwarming, at times gruesome, but always enlightening.
I SEEM TO HAVE become fond of Esty once again, after not really finding anything there for years, and then, all of a sudden, ordering handmade soaps and avocado oil face creams, art and photo frames and even gold jewellery. There is also a soft hand-knit mohair sweater from Greece currently in my cart, as well as a beautiful wicker chandelier, and a small oil painting ...
A LITTLE LATE with this week's links (for the first time in a very long time), as have been busy with new projects and new content for TIG, including the Talking Points series. We've also been getting things ready at The Shop for the holiday season and organising things in general, for autumn always seems like the perfect time for such things ...
AT THIS MOMENT, Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp are all down and have been for a few hours now. It's such a big deal that it made the six o'clock news. I deleted WhatsApp a long time ago, when Facebook changed the privacy rules, but we do use Facebook for TIG and Instagram as well, although to a much lesser extent the past few weeks. It feels strangely peaceful without them and it's made me wonder what life would be like if all three of them just vanished forever ...
IT WAS ONE OF THOSE sipping drinks at sunset kind of weekends, the clouds tinged pink at the edges and a hazy light falling on the countryside and hills in the distance, causing P to remark that you could mistake it for Tuscany. I have been melancholic, of course, because I always feel this way when the days get shorter and the leaves begin to fall, but it's also kind of cosy and very romantic, our late nights now spent by the fireplace ...
THIS WEEKEND WE were glued to the news, trying to find more information about the missing van-life blogger Gabby Petito and the generally strange circumstances surrounding the entire case. Coincidentally, we had been talking about the whole #vanlife phenomenon which has swept social media the past few years, because P had been watching videos of tiny homes and the algorithm began throwing converted vans across his path ...
SUMMER RETURNED for two glorious days last week, so like all self-respecting Brits, we dropped everything to enjoy the late-summer sun while it was still here. We spent both days on long bicycle rides to places we'd never been before, including hiking to the most photographed tree in the county (it was even in a famous film once). We had drinks on pub terraces in the middle of nowhere and got sunburned and ate truffle oil garlic bread pizzas and basically had the most wonderful time ...