JUST A FEW SNAPSHOTS of the things we've been up to this past July, including a quick trip to Edinburgh that ended up taking longer due to the heatwave, so iced coffees on the morning of the day that we were supposed to return home; pink English roses in the bright June sun and Sweet Potato, Ginger & Garlic Tofu Stew (with Lime and Spinach) ...
ABOUT A MONTH ago, I wrote about my many misadventures at the hair salon. That article resonated with many of you, so I thought that I'd share with you the funny habit I have of documenting the exact way my hair looks following these salon appointments.
IT'S STRAWBERRY SEASON and Wimbledon, which can only mean one thing: strawberries and cream. Have you been watching the tennis? Also, Summer Solstice was just a couple of weeks ago and we said a bittersweet good-bye to the longest day of the year. Here is a little of our lately: homemade gazpacho and June rose; pints on a sunny pub terrace and wildflower meadows; friendly llamas and gin and tonics and so much more...
REMEMBER, HE WORKS FOR YOU, he's not doing you a favour―he's offering a service. It's the night before my first hair appointment since lockdown began in March, and P is coaching me to speak up for myself at the salon tomorrow so that I get what I want. There is a reason why he feels the need to do this, as I have a long history of disastrous hair appointments ...
NOW THAT WE'RE updating the TIG Instagram a lot less, we thought we'd begin posting our favourite snapshots here, like we used to. Just because we're not using our social media platforms as much as before does not mean we've stopped making beautiful memories or taking beautiful photos, and since this is, in essence, the scrapbook of lives, why not here?
P recently dusted off an old Fuji camera he bought when it first came out a few years ago. He still has two good lenses for it, so he thought it might work fine with a just few firmware updates. We had a late lunch planned for last Friday at a place by the seaside that had only just opened last spring, so it was a good chance to try the camera then. He took pictures of the sea, the dune grasses, and me.
THE TROUBLE with having so much storage on my phone is that it has inadvertently become a digital hoard of images that have been all but forgotten, the favourites already printed and framed, or made into polaroids. The rest are meant to be sorted at some point, but there are so many of them that it's become a tedious task to be avoided ...
P HAS BEEN teasing me about writing my New Year’s Resolutions in mid-February, but that was before I’d told him about all the messages I’d received from you asking after them. It’s so nice how much you love these yearly lists, and to be honest, wasn’t sure I was even going to do it this year, as so far, this new year has been particularly difficult to define...
When we booked our trip to London for the second week of December, we had no idea that a new variant was about to rage through the city and quickly become the dominant strain. We were both double-vaccinated, but were still very cautious and wondered if we should get the booster vaccination before we left.
IT WAS THE NIGHT before Christmas Eve and I had just finished some last-minute shopping with P and was on the way home when I heard the news that Joan Didion had passed away at her home in Manhattan from Parkinson's disease. She was 87. This news hit me really hard. I had first read The Year of Magical Thinking (the 2005 memoir about the sudden loss of the author's husband, John Gregory Dunne) in 2019 and was so moved by this book that the next year, I read Play It As It Lays, The White Album, and Blue Nights. As I write this by the light of my desk lamp over a glass of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, I thought about what it was that really drew me to Didion's work. Perhaps it was because I really connected with the spare, straight-forward yet wonderfully poetic writing of this Californian culture columnist, this acclaimed writer and journalist.
THIS PAST WEEK, we were back in London, thinking it might be the last time in a long time again that we would be able to be out and about before another national lockdown. We were also there to celebrate the holidays and two anniversaries. When we were last here, it was May, and things were only tentatively opening up again. All the pubs and restaurants were outdoor seating only, which mean it was difficult to find a table without booking the good places in advance through an app. The weather was unseasonably rainy and cold and we wondered if it had been a good decision to come ...
WE ARE BACK with the second instalment of our new series, Talking Points, and in this edition, we’ll be looking at the relationship between the body and mind; the notion of Mass Fame, and the concept of temporal neutrality.
YOU MAY HAVE noticed a certain modular sofa set all over social media the past year and a half in the homes of celebrities and influencers alike, and you may even have known that it was the Camaleonda sofa, originally designed by Mario Bellini over fifty years ago, but did you know that it has become so popular in contemporary times that it was reissued in 2020? The Camaleonda currently has such a following, that four of the homes we featured recently here at TIG all included it: here, here, here, and here. In this instalment of Design History, we will be taking a closer look at the über-trendy Camaleonda, beginning with its designer, Mario Bellini.
I try to read as many books as possible when I’m not working (currently it’s David Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature), but a lot of the time, all I have time for are work-related articles. Many are a little on the dry side, but every once in a while, come across new topics or ideas that are really interesting or even enlightening.
WE HAVE BEEN BACK to Edinburgh many times since we moved away in 2015, but it was not until this past visit in June did we notice how much things had changed in the city since we left, but more so, how much had changed just in the past year of lockdown. One of P's favourite pubs, Smithie's, where he would often go after playing football (soccer) on Thursday nights, closed forever, set to be turned into a block of flats ...