P JUST TOLD ME about a new app that has been touted as the new anti-Instagram app. The fact that there is now interest in Instagram alternatives could be a sign that it is losing its popularity. Either that, or with everyone turning away from WhatsApp in favour of more secure options, perhaps Facebook's reign our privacy and data is finally coming to an end.
I'VE BEEN TELLING P that the key to life is finding things that work. There is a small dehumidifier upstairs that quietly collects excess moisture from the air every day and we now have drama-free internet connectivity. I ordered a clothes steamer that quickly gets out wrinkles on cotton duvet covers and heavy sofa slipcovers and it's just well, so satisfying when you find something that works.
YESTERDAY, WAS FEELING out of sorts, even before realising that it was Blue Monday, the day that's said to be the most depressing of the year. Had thought it was because the new marble coffee table I'd ordered arrived on Saturday morning in pieces, or perhaps because of the constant rain and gloomy skies, but whatever the reason, I'm happy that today is another day and that yesterday is firmly in the past ...
WE HAVE BEEN eating Christmas chocolates for the past couple of weeks already, and may have popped the cork on a bottle of cava or two, well ahead of holiday festivities. The news has been all Brexit and vaccines and an alarming rise in the number of cases (even in our area, which has been lucky so far) and to say that it's been a difficult year would be an understatement ...
THIS WEEKEND we put up the Christmas lights and watched The Holiday with wine and popcorn. Yes, it might be a little soon, but this year needed cheering up, so we're beginning early. We're also wrapped up in the holiday mayhem that comes with tracking down missing packages and making sure everyone receives everything on time and are in the midst of beginning a brand new ...
THERE SEEMS TO be a strange matchstick shortage in England, almost as if everyone here has succumbed to a winter of lockdown by lighting fires all day long in our stone cottages, keeping cosy and making the best of it. That is definitely what we are doing, and I couldn't find any boxes of matches anywhere and had to order mine from Lithuania ...
AT THIS MOMENT, Mark, our internet service provider engineer, is upstairs installing our new service, replacing Alexa and a year and a half of a very slow and spotty connection once and for all, we hope. We are meeting this new year head-on and have decided to be a little more proactive with things, and so far it seems to be working. This week's links are late, late because have been wrapped in mundane administrative tasks that have piled up until they were no longer avoidable ...
IN THE PAST WEEK, we ate a little too much, drank a little too much, and watched a lot of holiday films. I did something that was very strange to my being, a thing very foreign to me, a thing normal people refer to as relaxing. For the first time in a very long time, I did not work for five days straight. It was wonderful, actually.
LAST WEEK, IT RAINED all day on Thursday and Friday, and by Saturday, cabin fever. So we walked in the sun, which finally came out, and joined a festive food stall set up outside the pub down the street where flatbreads, mulled wine, mince pies and caramel shortbread were on the menu. On Saturday night we watched the film ...
SOMEHOW ENDED UP in the book A Thousand Splendid Suns, the 2007 novel by Afghan-American author Khaled Hosseini. Have you read it? It has the alarming combination of being unbearably depressing, sweet in parts, and insanely anger-inducing all at once, and last night I couldn't sleep because I was so incensed by the plot line ...
Valentine's weekend was cosy fires and late-night conversations, glasses of wine in fluted glasses; music and films, and chocolate. P made an extra special dinner on Sunday and while other years may have been spent at dinner reservations at fancy restaurants, and despite the lockdown conditions, it didn't feel like anything was missing.
SUNDAY was one of those bright winter days that highlights all the lacy frost patterns on the leaves of hedges and those that trail up tree trunks and along the sides of stone walls. It shone on the frosty blades of grass and the broken panes of ice beside puddles on the gravel road that leads away from the river ...
Not certain why it took me so long to finally catch up on Pride and Prejudice, the 1995 TV series starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle. It was just added to Netflix this past July, so perhaps that is the reason. I've been watching an episode a day during cardio sessions on the exercise bike and had no idea it was so charming and can now see why the world has been swooning over Colin Firth ever since ...
AT THE SAME time that I was contemplating wearing sequins over the holidays even if everything ends up small and socially distanced and low-key, a package arrived at the door containing an extra-fancy pair of sweatpants. Now that I (and everyone in the world, it seems) have been spending our lockdown days in sweatshirts and hoodies, it seems foreign to being wearing silk skirts and strappy heels, or button-up blouses and midi dresses.
I ORDERED an exercise bike online last Thursday, even before the announcement on Saturday night of a second nationwide lockdown here in England. A few months into the last lockdown, we ended up ordering enough gym equipment to turn the spare room upstairs into a fitness studio. But after all the delicious bread and pasta and wine of the last lockdown ...
