THE HEATWAVE has subsided, and now, instead of hot sticky air seeping through the walls, cool breezes are making gauzy white curtains flutter in every room and it's a little easier to breath at noon, when the sun is at its highest. It's also much easier to workout out now...
I AM WRITING to you from my brand new desk, which is actually an enormous solid oak dining table that arrived from Paris this morning. It is enormously heavy and makes a dramatic statement in the dining-area-turned-office and I’ve been googling how to make the back of a computer look nice (or at least tidy), as that’s what you see when you first enter the room, when your dining table is now your office.
IN GERMAN, the word lebensfreude refers to the joy of life, the love of living and enjoying life's pleasures, and the appreciation of the beauty of existence. An optimistic and positive term, the word reflects a happy and contented attitude towards life.
YES, IT’S STILL the weekend here, so to speak, as today is a holiday, but we thought we’d still bring you the Weekend Links as usual, since you might be around and looking for something to read while you’re home or at a café or pub somewhere.
ON SATURDAY, near the end of a three-and-a-half hour salon appointment, my stylist’s next client arrived, an half an hour early. An elderly blond English woman, after sharing hellos and niceties with us, she was content to busy herself with her phone, that is, until through the mirror, I caught her curiously appraising me. “Where are you going tonight?” she asked.
WE ARE IN the midst of a heatwave and it's intense. Even I, who is always cold, am overheating a little and during last night's cardio, it felt like I was in a sweat lodge. Of course, I've never actually been in a sweat lodge, but it felt like what I imagine being in what would feel like.
THIS WEEKEND was one of those quintessential ones, all sunshine and water fountains, heady pink roses outside the gallery before taking in all the stunning unfinished Turners with their secrets and sunsets.
WHERE HAS everyone gone? The internet seems a bit quiet lately. Spring break, perhaps? On holiday? Out and about in the world and spending less time online? That's what we've been doing lately. Long walks along the river to the flutterings of fallen apple blossoms and rearranging pink roses in vintage glass vases.
WE HAVE been eating mango and coconut mochi ice cream lately (the coconut is my favourite), something to celebrate these spring days, especially since we've given up our favourite sourdough bread which we used to pick up from the local larder every Friday or Saturday morning. P has been on a health kick since last August, with no alcohol, and well, no bread.
A NEW CAFE opened in town last week, and one of the owners is an old Tuesday night football acquaintance of P's, who has opened the place with his partner, who moved up from London. It's in the centre of the village, in the place another café used to be, and they're planning on serving "typical café fare", including speciality coffee and tea, and using locally sourced produce.
ON SATURDAY we embarked on an epic bicycle ride way past Wimbledon for a panini from a food truck run by an Italian couple. It was the latest episode in P's food frenzy since we've been here, and he has many more places that he's been dying to try.
LAST WEEK was the first time in a very long time that I missed the Weekend Links. And if you're a TIG subscriber, you'll know that it was the first time in years that we took an unplanned week off. But it was all with good reason: we made a major life change...
THIS MORNING, accidentally overwrote an entire website that had been working on for days, completely wiping out all of the content. I was distracted and had no business clicking around and hitting “okay” to big decisions while not fully focussed on what I was doing.
EARLY SUNDAY morning, we quietly lost an hour to British Summer Time. We would not know about it until much later in the day, when we suddenly remembered about the clocks changing, and it all made sense why we felt so tired. Last Friday we drove up to Scotland, armed with a Victoria Sponge cake to celebrate a 95th birthday. The drive was sunny and scenic and as always, we had a lot to talk about. We stopped by the new café in the market square for two flat whites (mine, oat; his, regular) before setting off.
P AND I WERE caught up in a long conversation about AI this weekend, and it's something that has also been mentioned here at TIG quite a bit lately. He is an early adopter for most things, while I can be a nostalgist⏤not because I don't love technology (I do), but because I can be a bit sentimental sometimes.
