Welcome To Your Renaissance

And just like that, it feels like its over when we know deep within our bones that it is not. But there has been a shift. A shift towards the normality that right in the midst of the virus we told each other we would not welcome again. That our “new normality” suited us, suited society, suited earth. That we would no longer tolerate what went before, virus or no virus.

And yet, and yet, and yet. Here we are. Shops opening and our tiniest, lit...

One of the things I’m missing most in the midst of this isolation is the library. I like everything about it. The whole kit and caboodle. From popping the library bag Finn brought me back from Paris into my handbag before I go, to practically running to the NEW IN stand as I arrive, in case some curmudgeonly old man sets his sights on the latest housekeeping tome and whacks me out of the way with his walking stick.

The library I like best is ...

Yesterday I found a collaged journal I kept seventeen years ago. A journal stuffed with lovely life, hopes and the dreams of a woman trying to magic up a future full of curly haired children and gingham tablecloths.

I was sitting in my little office in my armchair as Finley toiled at his darn GCSE’s, my presence there necessary to stop his head wandering off on flights of fantasy, his curly head bent over an exam full of scientific equations ...

I keep waking up with my arms folded across my chest, like a stern, disappointed headmistress and for a moment I forget that the world is standing on its head and wonder how many more minutes I can steal in bed before I have to persuade the child into his uniform and send him out into the world all over again.

And then I remember. And it is with both grief and relief that I burrow further into cosy nest and realise that today, like yesterday,...

It is possible that over the years I have become less truthful than I once was. Less willing to spill my woes on to the virtual page for fear of not fulfilling my imaginary duty as purveyor of floral, dotty dreams. As If I have now convinced myself that you want nothing more from me than inspiration, where once there was a kind of female mutilation of self that was cathartic for us all.

In pandemic, as in wartime, I have convinced myself that...

One of the things I believe to be most true about this most peculiar and trying times of our lives, is that in the future we will look back in gratitude on the sense of community around us, the teeny joys that made up the long days at home and how we chose to use the time that stretched before us.

I want, I think, to be able to say that I contributed to that sense of community, that I filled my families day with silly, heartfelt treats and th...

If truth be told, this virus has rendered me a teeny bit bonkers, for though I am doing my best to appear unruffled, it is quite possible my family are experiencing me in quite a way they have never had to deal with before. At once the Mother Hen and she of the mini-meltdown.

I have become preposterously organised. Fussing and worrying out loud. Turning out meals worthy of a Michelin star from store cupboard basics and harassing my bewildered...

While it would be terribly easy to work oneself into the most terrible tizzy over a pandemic like this one, hysteria never helped anyone and so it is our role as she in charge of all things domestic, to be like swans – as calm and unruffled as can be as we float through troubled waters, even if it means our legs are going like clappers beyond the surface.

Though this may be asking a lot of us as we manage our own anxiety, it is my belief that...

Can someone press the off switch please? I swear its been raining for longer than I care to remember and frankly I’m in the mood for Spring. Oh wouldn’t Spring be lovely right now? I simply cannot wait until I can sip my first cup of the tea while I say good morning to all the little buds forcing their way through the soil. I do so like a little garden-wandering in my nightie.

But today the sky is falling down. The lawn is mushy and the rain ...

I had a thought today. Or perhaps more a joining of the dots than a thought? A kind of awakening where before there was only drowsy acceptance that sleepwalking through our own lives is the only possibility. It struck me you see that each and very day we are bargaining with the promise of tomorrow and that I for one am striking up something of a rubbish deal.

What if, I thought, we have to EARN our lives? Every smile, every joyful moment, eve...

Perhaps you have noticed the changes around here and wondered what is happening. Perhaps you have noticed that the site has a cleaner, simpler look and that the shop is no longer a muddle of random little somethings I have taken a liking to? Maybe you have noticed the consistency with which I have been issuing the loveliest of prompts in the Brocantehome Living Room and have enjoyed the conversation this January?

Or perhaps you haven’t notice...

My washing machine heard a rumour, just before Christmas, that washing machines of its ilk were setting themselves on fire and so being an obedient little thing, she duly did as she was told and two days after the machines were recalled she started to smoulder, apparently in sheer worry about being left out of the fire-starting posse. #FOMO

And so I find myself knee deep in laundry because all though the powers that be are insisting that said...

On the brink of a new decade my head seems filled with the muchiness of all I want to say. To do. To encourage. And to be. Excitement balanced by the relieved melancholy so familiar to many in the days after Christmas. That it is over, thank heaven, and oh woe is me that it is over for another year!

It has been a lovely Christmas. Rich in books, and films and my boys. In the peace of the days after the day, I have followed my own instructions...

Oh December, you really have been the most obstructive of Mistresses! Between the engine going kaput in the car, the miserable black fingers of rising damp crawling through the living room walls, the drama of insisting a reluctant sixteen year old revise for mock GCSE exams unhelpfully stuffed into no time at all just before Christmas, the most preposterous of mean-spirited arguments with a woman who will not re-consider her more greedy and ou...

One of the things I am terribly good at is tuning out all the bodily signals telling me to stop. To pause. To rest. To turn away from the screen and put down the darn mop. To listen. To hush the must-do’s and to allow myself to sit in the quiet silence of nothing.

While I remain a dedicated transcendental meditator, still meditation is not “nothing” – it is always something. Sometimes a something that is easier done on one day than it is on the ...

There are words in this life no sane woman wants to hear. Namely, “I’m really sorry but I have dripped fish juice all the way from the kitchen to the front door and I haven’t got time to sort it out, sooooooo sorry, byeeeee, mwah!“

Fish juice!! At seven forty-five in the morning the very idea of “fish-juice” makes me want to vomit. Actually scrap that, at any time, day or night, the term “fish-juice” makes me want to vomit. So yes. My day starte...