JANUARY LASTED a million days but February seems to be flying by. There is sunshine and birdsong, snowdrops, and today we saw a tree blooming with delicate white blossoms. It just as quickly clouded over and there were rainy spells here and there (it is England, after all), but overall, it's been feeling rather springlike. Of course, there are terrible floods again in the south, but hopefully all these weekend storms will pass by soon and we can look forward to warmer days ...
THIS WEEKEND was a classic homebody one with slow mornings and late evenings. P stopped by the local delicatessen for a fancy loaf of bread for brunch and contemplated making Fideuà ...
P MADE THE MOST delicious Eggs Benedict on the morning of the first day of the new year. It was sunny and beautiful out, which was perfect, as we had decided the night before that we would go a long bicycle ride in the English countryside on New Year's Day. We ended up in a quaint pub we'd been to a few times before, but always only outside in the garden. This time, we had the best seats in the place, right in front of the roaring wood fire ...
YOU MAY HAVE noticed that aside from last week's Links and one set of articles on Monday, there were no new posts this past week. We spent the entire week in London, taking time off from everything and it was wonderful. We ate Italian food in Marylebone and discovered a wine club housed in bare-brick vaults and lit by candlelight ...
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 ...
HAPPY VALENTINE'S Day! Do you have anything special planned? This weekend we finally had a chance to watch Nomadland the 2020 film written, produced, edited and directed by Chloé Zhao. It was, in a word, depressing. Poignant, perhaps to the point of heartbreak. In way though, it also made me thankful for my life and the things I have and reminded me to not take them for granted (ever), just as it made me really think about the future in a way I never had before, being someone who spends life between living in the moment and dwelling on the past ...
THIS WEEKEND, finally ordered a new Mac Mini to replace my iMac, which has been running on the slow side for a little while now. Also ordered a fancy new white (non-Mac) monitor as well as a Lacie external drive and have been spending the first two weeks of this new year sorting through hundreds of files and folders and photos and taking stock, both literally and figuratively ...
WOKE UP YESTERDAY morning thinking that it was Monday and thought about getting back on track after Christmas‘s excess of trifles and puddings and cava and far too much food and thought about Weekend Links and workouts. Of course, that was until I realised shortly after that it was actually Sunday, and then it was back to lounging about, a late breakfast and drinks in the evening by the fire.
ON FRIDAY NIGHT enormous fluffy snowflakes fell furiously here in the countryside, covering everything in a mesmerising blanket of wet snow. You may have watched it falling on our Instagram Stories, for we knew we had to capture it as it would not last. Within an hour or so, the rain fell, and by morning, it was gone, but for a little while, things felt rather festive ...
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!
ON FRIDAY WE travelled to a seaside village about an hour from here to celebrate something special. P had made late lunch reservations at a new restaurant that has only been open for less than a year (and much of it during various lockdowns) and we'd heard that it was supposed to be good, locally grown produce and all that. It's one of those charming places that have several roaring fires and wood-burning stoves and promised to be cosy ...
WE ARE ONE week into Dry January and it's all workouts and spinach salads so far. Okay, well not quite. Our eating habits from the holidays haven't exactly been as they should be, but we're trying our best. On the weekend we had Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Brownie Party as well as a lot of other sweet things, so it's not perfect, but the Châteauneuf-du-Pape has been replaced by elderflower pressé ...
TO SAY THAT it has been a strange week is an understatement (more on that later). It has been a week spent nearly entirely indoors and we're going a bit crazy. Christmas is now only five days away and the end of the year, a mere 11. It's strange how a year where not much happened flew by so quickly. It's a pensive, melancholic time, for many reasons, (one being that I hate endings), but especially since it feels like there hasn't been a proper holiday season in a very long time ...
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 ...
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 ...
