TWO WEEKS AGO, when we were in Edinburgh meeting up with P's brother, I got terrible blisters on my feet wearing the new espadrilles I'd ordered a few days earlier. I was really surprised (and a little confused) because I've had many pairs of espadrilles before and none of them ever gave me any trouble. I thought that maybe I should have broken them in more before the trip, but then I read recently about how many people have been having similar foot trouble getting back into regular shoes again after three years of wearing slippers, trainers, and other comfortable footwear during lockdown ...
IF YOU WANT to know my idea of perfect happiness, it's the somnolence of a Sunday morning, freshly ground coffee beans from our favourite roastery in London, conversations over P's homemade oat milk flat whites (in my new handmade pottery cups), a late lingering breakfast and nothing to do with a whole day ahead. That's the kind of weekend we had it was wonderful ...
If you think of the English countryside, two artists come to mind who, between them, painted some of the most famous English landscape scenes ever put on canvas. It is probably no coincidence that both of them—Thomas Gainsborough and John Constable—came from the same county of Suffolk in the east of England and both were entranced by its rural beauty.
There are few buildings that can rival a French château for sheer romance. I featured the Château la Durantie in the Dordogne region of South West France a few months back here and recently stumbled on some glorious new photographs by the wonderfully talented Katie Mitchell that I just had to share.