Nov 03, 2024
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...
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...
Continuing on with The Book of Days, this post is designed to encourage you to see the blessings of modern technology for even the most old-fashioned of homemakers and to help you divine which tasks could be simplified and which truly do deserve to be elevated to puttery, domestic art…
This then is homemaking the Brocantehome way.
In an age of conveniences so modern we can barely keep up with daily advances in technology, ...
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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 ...
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When faced with the kind of wolf we may not necessarily be able to keep from the door, it falls to us as Mistress of the house not to panic before it is quite clear that panic is necessary.
While precautionary measures may well be an order, sending oneself into a hurricane of anxiety long before there are Corona Virus addled zombies walking the streets, and rushing out to buy preposterous amounts of loo roll, face masks. Pot Noodles (!) and
...
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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...
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...
And oh how I sympathise.
For it takes no time at all for me to lose control of routines that usually run like clockwork and when that happens I recognise how very easy it would be to sit back and let it all go to hell. To watch Jeremy K...
** This is a very old post I am re-issuing because so many of my housekeepers are having trouble finding it…**
It is late and HouseKeepers,  I am exhausted. Some mornings I open my eyes and I just can’t wait till bedtime so I can crawl back into bed. Then other days I am so wrapped up in what I am doing that I put going to bed off until I am nearly dropping with tiredness. Tonight is one of those nights. Upstairs my cosy bedroom is waiting for m...
It feels like you wait forever and then all of a sudden the moment both arrives and passes and all that you were dreaming of is now your new reality.
Oh yes, dear, lovely Housekeepers, we have moved in and though there is still one room full of boxes, the rest of the house is more than liveable and best of all, I have broadband and can enjoy your company all over again…
Here is what relief on this scale feels like: the gentle deflation of
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Well now the week I have been waiting for is finally upon us: we move on Friday and though I am up to my eyes in boxes and muddling through the packing up process all by myself because Ste is working such long hours, I am giddy with excitement and simply cannot wait to begin the process of making our new house a Brocante Home.
There are of course mixed emotions… some of me feels as though I am abandoning my Mum here in the bungalow. Tha
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Today contracts will be exchanged and the house will no longer be mine. I will eat Meze in a new Turkish restaurant with friends and spend many hours before hand in search of something to wear. I am fat with discontent. Grey under the Summer tan. And I have developed a hole behind my right ear. A hole!Â
I have never understood stress before now. I simply didn’t know how physical it is. How your heart booms and your head aches. How shaky yo
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 Well heckity pie, just when it seemed life was finally settling in to something lovely, I find myself almost homeless.
No really. Homeless. Not quite on the streets. But one week away from completion on my little house and a few weeks away from eviction here in the bungalow because the landlord has finally confirmed that he wants to move a relative in. And oh how very, very stressful it is to suddenly not have the certainty of home anymor
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As the sophisticated doyenne of all things domestic, it goes without saying that I never make mistakes. I don’t burn things, forget things, slip over things or find myself locked in the laundry room in my nightie. And I never, ever, ever tell lies.
So never mind that for every cake I bake there is one that goes in the bin. That Mark is learning to love charcoal toast, and that Finley only tells me my food is stinky once or twice a week now…
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