Some Very Good Things

It’s not that I’ve been away…

In fact, I’ve been at home. I just don’t do very well in persistent hot weather. It feels like I’m hanging from a precipice by my fingernails, all attempts at self-rescue failed, waiting to be saved. It takes all my strength and fortitude just to hang on. Doing simple things is difficult. I sit inside my boiling skin, and try very hard not to scream.

It’s not just the heat; it’s the glare of the heat. The need for cool is equalled, if not eclipsed by the need for darkness. How strange. Am I Gollum?

Anyway, it has now rained in the most torrential, marvellous, life-giving way, and to celebrate, I’m writing about things that I love (apart from rain, which is the thing I MOST love).

This sparkly top (sorry terribly fuzzy photo…it’s not your eyesight)

…which I bought for my teenager. I made her try on so many things which I was longing for her to love, because I think they suit her, but the only thing she actually did love, was this sparkly top that her little sister picked out for her. She put it on, and her face sparkled just like the top. It was far, far too expensive, but a sparkly face is a sparkly face.

V&A necklace (see link for pic…quality of photo is really bad)

I took my jewellery-obsessed ten-year-old to see the Cartier exhibition (every bit as fantastical as you can possibly imagine…go straight to the tiaras and work backwards…and also it’s positively chilly in there, so, yes, perfection) and I tried on this necklace and it was very very good…very long and can be shortened to desired length. Extra points because the act of changing length has very good feel-appeal; the metal loop has been coated with some sort of invisible rubber which makes gives it tension and means that the thing doesn’t slip, but playing with it is irresistible. I’m not explaining it very well. Apparently the ‘pearl’ is made from paper. Anyway, very chic and I will probably get it if I still can’t wrest it from my mind over the next few days.

Long floaty cotton dresses

There is a lady called Antonia Graham who lives near me and her house is filled with things she’s found on her travels; not just clothes, but quilts and tablecloths and bags and rugs and loads of jewellery. She is one of these people who are brilliant and utterly adept at selling things. She started that shop, Graham and Green. Anyway, you go to her house and try to act chilled out when actually you are slightly panicking that you’ve missed something marvellous tucked away in a corner and it puts you into a sort of purchasing frenzy and you buy too much. She has long caftan type dresses. They are the best thing for hot days and nights because you can look sort of put-together even when you really are NOT. You can only go to the house when she’s having a home sale and I’m afraid there’s no website but she sometimes updates her instagram and she sells a few things here at the Old Cinema on King St which is re-stocked pretty regularly.

F1

Not a purchase as such but bloody hell I adored this movie. Brad Pitt is now, I think, what Robert Redford was for my mother’s generation. And the person he plays in this film is just so incredibly attractive, and I know that, because how else could I possibly become interested in motor-racing? I now obviously want to go to a race. Obsessed with the physics of all of it….all the tiny things they do to make the car go faster…all the tactics. Fascinating, exciting, exhilarating. Hard recommend. We went to Wahaca afterwards and the food is really just utterly delicious - lots of heavenly tiny plates of yummy things. Properly good food.

Oliver Bonas glasses

I decided I needed some punchy sunglasses, so I got these and I adore them. They are from Oliver Bonas and we were in there because we were early for the dentist. I do think they are clever curators at Oliver Bonas…everything together looks so very desirable…apart, not so much perhaps, but well done them; they’ve completely nailed the impulse purchase market, particularly mothers with tweens. Smallest was literally braying for everything…my son on the other hand just looked around and clutched his head and looked at me and said, forlornly “Mum, everything here is just…POINTLESS”.

Good Tuesday day rippers

I’ve been using a day planner pad for a while now but it’s not perfect because it doesn’t have space for misc. I need space for misc items I need to write down so I don’t forget them. This one has that space. I know I could use a notebook, but I don’t want to, so there. I also like this because it makes me choose three top things I need get done. Here is link. I also have their wall planner, and I bought some habit trackers for my children which have been, predictably, ignored. I can but dream.

Creeping thyme

Finally, something for the garden (which I tend to be pulling things out of at this time of year)…more of which soon. If you’ve been following my sporadic accounts chronicalling the first year of our new garden, you’ll know that we have large gaps to fill between paving slabs on the terrace. I am using a mixture of soleirolia soleirolii (which is forming beautiful soft hummocks but which nobody can quite bear to step on) and creeping thyme which is slightly tougher and of course releases its wonderful scent underfoot. These two plants, plus various self-seeded stuff is covering it all slowly but surely, and every time I pass a creeping thyme at the garden centre, I bring it home and plant it in a gap. I’m hoping that next year there’ll be no sharp gravel and we can hang out barefoot out here.

There is more but this is too long. I want to talk about the book I’ve just read, and the fact that I am paying my teenager to clear out her own room. I’m pretty sure that’s terrible parenting and I can’t quite remember the twists and turns that got us here, but, well, we are, nevertheless, HERE.