Re-set Days Heavens its been a heck of a month. First came Covid and then I scraped (SCRAPED!!) an eye-pencil across my waterline and did myself a terrible damage, resulting…
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The Covid Bunny In all fairness I would have been happy with a Thorntons egg with my name piped on it, but no, this year the Easter bunny went the extra…
Housekeeper’s Diary Well now, it’s as though I was ambling through a quiet Winter apparently destined to last forever and then boom, Spring arrived and life started running amok. AMOK…
Housekeeper’s Diary The flowers are wilting now but they were beautiful while they lasted. (How true that is of too many things). A hand-painted glass jug Mum and I found…
Brocante Mercantile You know how when I go quiet it is usually because I am up to something? Yup, apart from turning fifty-one yesterday, I have indeed been up to…
Friday Night Friday night. My plans are cancelled and my eyes tired and dry. So after lying rather dramatically across the sofa with a hot flannel on my face in…
The Social Butterfly If I was a butterfly I would be the kind who spends most of her days tight in her cocoon, only occasionally popping out to flutter her wings…
Housekeeper’s Diary There is I think a kind of pregnant pause peculiar to the end of February. All of us, runners crouched at Spring’s starting line, eager and somewhat quietly…
Reasons to be Grateful I got myself in a muddle yesterday. Dwelling on what the world is becoming. How frightening everything seems. How much anger there seems to be bubbling under the…
The Renaissance Journal Oh hello, there you are! I’m just popping in to say that today sees the launch of the first of my new collection of hardback blank journals, this…
BrocanteHome Loves Well now I’m having an odd and somewhat sad week, and so rather than dwell on it, as always creating even more Brocante ease and joy is the…
Introducing Renaissance Lifestyle One of the things I value most highly here at BrocanteHome is that so many of us have reached today together. Eighteen lovely years of knowing and growing…
A Fallowing One of the biggest lessons I am taking away from my fiftieth year is that the years we spend in fallow, or indeed Wintering are just as important…
Housekeeper’s Diary I had quite forgotten how long winter lasts. How interminable the nights can seem and how January rolls into February and there still seems so very much of…
My Big, Fat, Wild Idea Last week I dreamt that I needed to see under everything. So I was crawling under trains and insisting people stand on their heads so I could inspect…
Women’s Weekly: The Pantry Today I bring you the next in my series of little domestic ditties from the oh so lovely 1935 edition of The Woman’s Weekly Bedside Book, this one…
Suspended Animation The sky is a creamy blue and the rooves dusted with icing sugar. And in here, in the flocked walls of home, I have been quite certain that…
Waiting I have lost my voice again. I open my mouth and nothing comes out, though the words exist fully formed and spoken. I have lost my voice and…
The (New) tiny Joy List Is Here Well heavens to Betsy I haven’t been this excited since I accidentally tripped a member of Take That up and bashed him on the head with a roll…
Woman’s Weekly: Homely Tasks My sister gave me a walnut box for Christmas, filled with tiny little somethings: fortunes cookies and teeny golden shoes, Lady Macbeth’s soap (out damned spot) and a…
Hi Ren One of the things that I am committed to seeking is awe. That mysterious emotion we cannot chase but have to happen across. An emotion that stops us…