THESE LINKS COME to you late, as the short trip we made to Edinburgh to visit family ended up spiralling into chaos due to the heat wave over these past three days. We left for the city on Sunday morning and were only supposed to stay one night, but the temperature rose on Monday and created mayhem⏤schools were closed, shops were shut, people stayed home from work, and trains, tubes, and subways were cancelled.
THE WEATHER has been amazing over the past few days, so the weekend was, of course, perfect. We spent most of it outside, eating gazpacho and watermelon, talking of our upcoming travels and plans and places we want to visit, such as Villa di Geggiano, an Italian restaurant in Chiswick. We also talked about books and films, and well, pretty much everything.
HEARD ON A podcast that Napoleon hired someone to read books to him while doing mundane tasks like brushing his teeth. P listens to podcasts while shaving and cooking, and I've begun listening to an economics podcast while putting on makeup. I still read only books and my Kindle though⏤no audio books for me.
OUR COUNTRYSIDE village has these charming events and one of them, which happens every year, is a Midsummer's Evening and this year, it was held last Thursday, one day after the Summer Solstice. There were food trucks and folk dancers and face-painting. All the shops were opened late and there was live music (a cover band act).
IT WAS ONE OF THOSE sipping cava in the sun kind of weekends, hazy and warm and filled with the quiet languidness and melancholy that comes with the knowledge that these days must be savoured before they fade away. I love summertime so much that I am already sad about the thought of it ending before it even begins.
THIS EXTRA LONG Bank Holiday weekend felt more like five days instead of four, as we stopped working on Wednesday and took the next few days off. There were sunny afternoons and a surprise visit from someone far away; faded vermilion-coloured roses in pink glass vases and lingering drinks on pub garden terraces; freshly baked crusty loaves of sourdough bread for breakfast and really good coffee ...
HAPPY MONDAY! It's the start of a three-day workweek before a four-day weekend and despite the gloomy skies and incessant rain, there seems to be a bounce in everyone's steps today. Last week had told you that we were repainting the living room and we finished on Thursday and it looks gorgeous! Can't believe I managed to pick such a beautiful colour without ordering any swatches or sample pots ...
WE'RE TRYING out one of those food services that deliver a huge box of fresh ingredients to your home⏤enough to make five different meals from scratch, all packaged in separate numbered paper bags with recipe cards for each. It arrived on Saturday and the first meal we (actually just P) made was Cauliflower Mac and Cheese with Blue Cheese Crumb and Sriracha Drizzle. It was actually really good.
HAD FORGOTTEN to mention that a couple of weeks ago, we saw the film Everything Everywhere All at Once. It was a bit crazy, a little hard to follow at times, manic and funny and perhaps worth it if only for the wildly romantic line, "...I wanted to say, in another life, I would have really liked just doing laundry and taxes with you."
THIS BANK HOLIDAY weekend we saw The Batman. We're not normally into superhero films, but this one is with Robert Pattinson, so we made an exception. It was really long⏤nearly three hours! And maybe a little on the slow side? It began very promisingly with the gritty cityscape and a voiceover and Nirvana's Something in the Way drifting through the air but then lost its way ...
IF YOU WANT to know my idea of perfect happiness, it's the somnolence of a Sunday morning, freshly ground coffee beans from our favourite roastery in London, conversations over P's homemade oat milk flat whites (in my new handmade pottery cups), a late lingering breakfast and nothing to do with a whole day ahead. That's the kind of weekend we had it was wonderful ...
HOW IS YOUR long weekend going? It's an official bank holiday here in England, so some things are still closed and there are no parcel deliveries, which means that everything we've been expecting will have to wait until at least tomorrow or later. The weather was perfect! Warm and springlike, sunny and filled with cherry blossoms and the last of the daffodils ...
WAS SPEAKING to P today about how these little musings are becoming more and more difficult with everything that has been going on in the world over the past while. After seeing all the horrific images that come out of Ukraine this weekend, feel like I've finally seen too much. That I know too much to still be optimistic. And yet, can't help but still believe in the beauty of this world, of this life⏤even if we have to look extra hard these days to find it ...
THIS WEEKEND WE screened the 1983 film Risky Business on the projector. P has seen it many times before, but it was my first time, much to his horror⏤a classic in his opinion. On Monday we awoke to the chaotic madness of the Oscars slap and is it just us, or is the world getting weirder?
THE BEAUTIFUL sunshine streaming through the windows is at odds with this morning's news of more shelling in Ukraine and a plane crash in China. Every night for the past week, I have been falling asleep to dreams of war. The nights are frenetic and uneasy, the mornings much more calm with lucid thoughts over coffee, at least until the news cycle begins again ...
