HAVEN'T BEEN able to stop thinking about Sarah Everard since her disappearance the night of March 3rd. We have been consumed with the news for nearly two weeks now. There have been so many thoughts, so many feelings, a lot of sadness, and a lot of anger. I've been slowly trying to put things together into something (hopefully) coherent, but for now, perhaps it's best to take some time to reflect.
I SOMETIMES MISS the magnolia blossoms in London and think of them a lot. Things are slowly getting ready to open again here and perhaps, if all goes well, we'll be able to visit them again, along with the wisteria in Notting Hill. This week we're deep in things from the past, for the vintage Sony stereo that P won on an online auction through reckless bidding finally arrived today ...
P JUST TOLD ME about a new app that has been touted as the new anti-Instagram app. The fact that there is now interest in Instagram alternatives could be a sign that it is losing its popularity. Either that, or with everyone turning away from WhatsApp in favour of more secure options, perhaps Facebook's reign our privacy and data is finally coming to an end.
THERE SEEMS TO be a strange matchstick shortage in England, almost as if everyone here has succumbed to a winter of lockdown by lighting fires all day long in our stone cottages, keeping cosy and making the best of it. That is definitely what we are doing, and I couldn't find any boxes of matches anywhere and had to order mine from Lithuania ...
Valentine's weekend was cosy fires and late-night conversations, glasses of wine in fluted glasses; music and films, and chocolate. P made an extra special dinner on Sunday and while other years may have been spent at dinner reservations at fancy restaurants, and despite the lockdown conditions, it didn't feel like anything was missing.
I'VE BEEN TELLING P that the key to life is finding things that work. There is a small dehumidifier upstairs that quietly collects excess moisture from the air every day and we now have drama-free internet connectivity. I ordered a clothes steamer that quickly gets out wrinkles on cotton duvet covers and heavy sofa slipcovers and it's just well, so satisfying when you find something that works.
AT THIS MOMENT, Mark, our internet service provider engineer, is upstairs installing our new service, replacing Alexa and a year and a half of a very slow and spotty connection once and for all, we hope. We are meeting this new year head-on and have decided to be a little more proactive with things, and so far it seems to be working. This week's links are late, late because have been wrapped in mundane administrative tasks that have piled up until they were no longer avoidable ...
SUNDAY was one of those bright winter days that highlights all the lacy frost patterns on the leaves of hedges and those that trail up tree trunks and along the sides of stone walls. It shone on the frosty blades of grass and the broken panes of ice beside puddles on the gravel road that leads away from the river ...
YESTERDAY, WAS FEELING out of sorts, even before realising that it was Blue Monday, the day that's said to be the most depressing of the year. Had thought it was because the new marble coffee table I'd ordered arrived on Saturday morning in pieces, or perhaps because of the constant rain and gloomy skies, but whatever the reason, I'm happy that today is another day and that yesterday is firmly in the past ...
I AM NOT sure why―when it happens every year―I am so unprepared for winter. The cold. The dampness. The continual overcast skies. And most of all, the darkness. Yes, the days have been, happily, incrimentally longer every day since winter solstice, but tonight, the sun still set 4:17pm. 4:17pm! On Sundays, everything moves a little more slowly ...
AT THE TIME of writing, Lockdown 3.0 has been announced in England for the foreseeable future, signalling an abrupt end to the holiday season that lasted a little longer than past years, simply because the new year fell on a Friday morning. We decided that we might as well begin work again today rather than on the first of January as other years ...
IN THE PAST WEEK, we ate a little too much, drank a little too much, and watched a lot of holiday films. I did something that was very strange to my being, a thing very foreign to me, a thing normal people refer to as relaxing. For the first time in a very long time, I did not work for five days straight. It was wonderful, actually.
Not certain why it took me so long to finally catch up on Pride and Prejudice, the 1995 TV series starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle. It was just added to Netflix this past July, so perhaps that is the reason. I've been watching an episode a day during cardio sessions on the exercise bike and had no idea it was so charming and can now see why the world has been swooning over Colin Firth ever since ...
WE HAVE BEEN eating Christmas chocolates for the past couple of weeks already, and may have popped the cork on a bottle of cava or two, well ahead of holiday festivities. The news has been all Brexit and vaccines and an alarming rise in the number of cases (even in our area, which has been lucky so far) and to say that it's been a difficult year would be an understatement ...
We are city people, P and I. Before Valencia and before Edinburgh, we lived in a huge metropolis filled with millions of people. We barely knew our neighbours in the tall building where we lived, and the ultimate luxury was having an elevator all to ourselves on the way up to our condo after a long day at work in an office complex in the west end ...
