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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
SUNDAY MORNING was spent on the sofa with a 15-minute sheet mask on, poring over the FT Weekend. There was an interesting article about the concept of time, and how not to waste it by using the time you have now to do at least a little of what you care about, instead of banking on finding time for it in the future. That novel that you always wanted to write? Now is the time.
IT IS A BANK HOLIDAY weekend here, so today is essentially a holiday, but since we feel like we've been holiday-ing quite a bit already in these last summer weeks, it felt good to get back into routine with Weekend Links, workouts and other Monday essentials. This weekend, also finished the Sylvia Plath book I was reading and have started on David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature, a much more difficult read, for certain, but an important one, I think. The weather has turned chilly with cloudy skies and showers, and soon it will be cable knit jumpers and tall leather boots in place of white denim and espadrilles ...
SOME OF YOU are still processing the fact that we are not updating the TIG Instagram account regularly anymore, and if you’re one of the many people who have tried to leave us DMs, unfortunately, we will not get them. A few of you have also emailed to request that we enable comments for articles again, so you’ll be able to leave us messages here instead, if you like ...
WE HAVE BEEN glued to the news detailing the events unfolding in Afghanistan with shock and horror, feeling so sad for the Afghan people desperately clinging to airplanes trying to escape a country that has descended into chaos once again. Sometimes this job is difficult because we know you come here to see the beauty in the world ...
EVER SINCE Edinburgh, we have been off our routines—the workouts, the cardio sessions on the exercise bike, the daily countryside walks. Summer might have something to do with that as well, but it has been a while now that we've not been able to keep all of our Monday, Wednesday, Friday workout commitments. I had thought today might be a start, but in truth, perhaps nothing will be back to normal until September. (Can you believe that it is already nearly mid-August?)
IT HAS BEEN TWO weeks since we took a break from updating the TIG Instagram account, and since then, we have received so many notes and emails from you saying how much you love stopping by the site again. We have so many more wonderful things to share with you here, but things are a little sporadic at the moment due to summer festivals and sunny days ...
It's 9:00 o'clock on a Saturday night and I'm listening to P's grandmother on the phone telling me about a program she's about to watch on channel 5 called Meghan: The Climb to Power (or something like that). We've just had the most wonderful dinner of cod filets with a parmesan parsley crust and Moules-frites. There's a bottle of cava chilling in the refrigerator ...
THE WEATHER has been beautiful, so on both Friday and Saturday, we took our new folding bicycles out for very long countryside rides through hilly landscapes filled with roaming sheep and giant bales of hay framed by rambling stone walls covered in moss that have been there for hundreds of years. There were castles and viaducts and cosy country pubs along the way where we would stop for a drink and mingle with the locals ...
WE HAVE BEEN reminiscing about our former life in Spain and all the summer mornings spent eating sandía on the back terrace in the sun, the terracotta tiles warm under our bare feet. We've been craving gazpacho, which is proving difficult to find here in the English countryside ...
THIS WEEKEND I decided to try Gigi Hadid's recipe for Spicy Vodka Pasta that everyone has been raving about. It's an occasion when I actually cook, for I don't do it often and it normally never turns out (which is why I don't do it often). P is the one who makes all the gourmet meals now that we live in the countryside and don't have access to takeaway food delivery services ...
