JUST FINISHED booking a hotel for another quick trip to Edinburgh in a few weeks. It feels strange to continue with ordinary things when the world feels anything but. It's the same reason why you probably noticed that we've been a little quiet on all of our social media channels lately. On the first day of spring, our little niece turns three, so I had the pleasure of spending some time ordering tiny clothing, books and toys to send as gifts ...
FRIDAY WE WERE glued to the coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I saw women saying tearful good-byes to their soldier husbands and boyfriends, and Ukrainians forming long queues to donate blood and do their bit for their country. I saw a man at a train station saying good-bye to his wife and children, and when he got to his youngest (who couldn't be more than two years old) break down with heavy wracking sobs, hugging her for what he feared might be his very last time ...
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 ...
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 ...
AS YOU PROBABLY already know, TIG was down due to technical issues with the server from late Friday afternoon until this morning―apologies to those of you who receive the newsletter and were unable to click through to the site from any of the links. For the first time in a very long time, there was no chance to sneak in a few extra moments of work over the weekend or catch up on upcoming projects, which meant making the most of the sunny mornings ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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.
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.
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.
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
