Welcome To Your Renaissance

I am going to turn in to a tub of Greek yoghurt. I live on the stuff and lately I have been dabbling with turning it into bagels and muffins and chucking it willy-nilly on this, that and everything else. I’ve never (thankfully) managed to cultivate a true addiction to anything at all but I am prone to foody fads and for a while nothing else will do beyond my latest obsession. I used to feel the same about cucumber. And latterly...

Well now, one minute I was fretting about whether Father Christmas had managed to stuff Finn’s stocking with all that a nineteen year old man-boy could desire and the next, in the flash of a reindeer’s nose, it was over and I have oh too promptly reached the stage of the festivities when I would like a steamroller to come through the house and banish all elements of the season so I can hurtle into the new year!

It has been the...

I am wandering around the house in bright red lipstick. A mad bow in my hair and my floaty kimono wafting around me as I skip down the stairs, narrowly avoiding killing myself because my lovely Meep, a carpet of a cat, insists on rolling on each step as I try to get to the front door in all my lipsticked glory, laughing and cursing him as I swing the door open and dazzle the window cleaner.

He stares at me in surprise. It is eight...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Today. Bright and sunny and a child sick in bed. Bacon for breakfast, sat on a bed of spinach. The music of the washing machine reaching a crescendo as I pop the last forkful in to my mouth. A strong cup of coffee to get the fire of domestic industry burning. And a long glass of water cloudy with aloe vera for heaven knows what.

In the diffuser, a single note of Ylang Ylang to soothe my Monday morning frazzle and in the fridge sorry looking...