Welcome To Your Renaissance

One of the things that is ridiculous about me (and trust me I am positively abundant in ridiculousity) is my quiet passion for Scooby Doo. In fact sometimes when I am wandering the house wearing my woman on the verge face, a little voice inside my head whispers “How about a little Scooby Doo?”.

Where once upon a time this was a passion I could indulge without judgement, by pretending that Finn too loved Scooby and his mates (he doesn’t, never ha...

I do believe I have just two modes: serene and swanlike or completely off my head. And honestly, completely off my head seems to be the way I’m rolling through most of my days at the moment. It isn’t pretty.

I try to be normal. Of course I do. I try to tumble out of bed in the morning, do a bit of yoga and pop my sensible face on, but by the time I have made it to the kitchen (to pour myself a cup of ambition) it is clear to all, sundry and the ...

The Easter holiday is almost upon us and in my house that means I will be inundated with boys lounging around the place, which calls, I think you will agree, for a bookish antidote in the form of the frivolous lovely I can dip in and out of at will when discussions about wrestling and football and John Cena’s portrayal of The Peacemaker (funny, and surprisingly deep if you care, which I’m sure most not in possession of a Finn don’t!) threaten to ...

I used to work for a lady called Sara. I was young, living in my first flat and she had just bought a beautiful barn she wanted me to decorate with hand-painted soldiers marching around her walls and multiplication tables in her children’s bathrooms.

As it was one of my first major jobs I was both nervous and rather in awe of her lovely sprawling barn, with stables in the garden and a fireplace that shared a wall between living rooms and kept th...

It is March. And I am fifty. Two things that strike me as quite impossible for wasn’t it Christmas just yesterday. And surely I am just twenty-eight? Time, my sister tells me, doesn’t exist, so therefore yes, I declare myself under thirty and just about ready to step into the New Year if you don’t mind?

Gosh yes, March and not a child in the house washed as we like to say in these parts. Though rest assured I am thoroughly scrubbed after a bliss...

Sometimes the need for change wallops you in the face. But more often than not, its a creeping sensation. Truth that wraps around you like a vine, tendrils growing around static discontent and moss forming on all the stones so far left unturned.

A few months ago I felt it. A vine around my neck. Thorns poking out the truth. I am not my own version of enough. It’s a modern day cliche, isn’t it? You are enough. I see it everywhere. “I am enough” t...

Good lord. Let us not speak of the fact that It is already the middle of February and I have been missing in domestic action since Christmas. One does tend to rather lose January in a fog of new bath oils, books and big ideas, and then emerge blinking like the mole we must be the minute the daffodils poke their darling little heads up in the borders of a garden made drab by a wet Winter.

I have always adored daffodils. And now as Spring shyly po...

Brrrrrrr. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, my heating isn’t working!! It’s either on or its off and there is no in-between, so having it set to come on in the morning isn’t a possibility and keeping it on throughout the night might kill us all dead.  These then are a collection of Vintage Brocante tips and tricks to make falling out of bed that little bit cosier. For my own benefit and yours…

* Set the alarm for an hour before you n...

You need to be very, very happy that you are not going to be the not very glad recipient of a gift from me this year. No really. even I feel a bit sorry for anyone getting a little something in their stocking from yours truly because some things have no decent explanation and they just… happen and this year five boxes of fresh stuffing *happened* to the gifts I had safely stashed away in the tiny wardrobe in my bedroom and honestly, let’s just ac...

Well now, it has arrived in good time this year, my annual festive meltdown. For despite being Mrs.Christmas of all the lovely twinkly ideas, each and every twelve months, come the middle of December, I throw a tantrum of spectacular proportions, and everyone LAUGHS. They do. They look at me, ranting and stropping around the Christmas tree (have a happy holiday…), and they LAUGH.

Oh yes, my Christmas tantrum arrives with monotonous regularity. S...

The oddest of nights. Ste so out of sorts, that only a trip to Marks and Spencer in search of their finest Macaroni Cheese and a chocolate pudding could cheer him up and Finley out for the evening, because he does that these days, he goes out for the evening, leaving me wondering if one day soon, I too, might find myself perpetually out of sorts without my lovely boy so permanently at my side.

Suddenly I find myself worrying about my cosy little...

The house is grumpy in the quiet hours of the morning. creaking and groaning in to life, and for a while apparently determined to make her reluctance to start the day known to those still sleeping. The gutter dripping outside the living room window, the boiler spluttering in the loft, the old boards of the floors wincing as tired bodies throw themselves upright.

I am already up. Cossetted in a nest of blankets and cushions in the candlelit conse...

Now that the clocks have gone back I am ready to truly embrace the season ahead. To recognise that in just a few short weeks Winter will arrive and so I need to turn my head towards enjoying a few tranquil, purposeful days focused on creating a life inside these four walls that will see us through the colder weeks ahead: a  home-centred, abundant Winter full of the gloriously cosy pleasures of the kitchen and the fireside.

Perhaps you too have a...

The lane is shut while men in yellow jackets do things at the end of it. And oh what bliss it is to have it to ourselves without the thundering lorries or, as one neighbour described it, the “whump” of tractors going about their clattery business at five in the morning. And yet, because I am a contrary cow, I miss the noise. At night I plunder through muddled dreams into startled alertness, spooked by the silence, and then lie awake listening to ...

Hello friends. How nice to be here talking to you again. I woke up this morning with the urge to write to you tingling in my fingertips and a person cannot be expected to resist a tingle now can a person, even if she has declared herself to be on her annual August holiday from all things online!

So today, a pint mug of coffee for the sheer hell of it, and the world's tiniest cinnamon bun. A rush of desire for order. The sweeping away of what can...

Today. A long call with my doctor and then a drive with Finn, to sit staring at the geese gathered like so many gossiping Mothers at the school gates, cooing at each other and gathering their babies into groups dotted along the coast line. Changeable weather. One moment sun cracking the flags. The next the finest fluttering of snow. Ugly political graffiti on the old bridge down the lane. And traffic lights causing havoc in the village.

I have c...