It's the start of week three of our house refurbishment and we're still mostly calm and collected. And talking to each other. (Weekends away in London help).All the work we'd put in organising our nightly exile to the sauna cottage has paid off. We're surprisingly well settled there living out of a … [Read more...]

Yesterday started with an amazing and utterly delightful discovery. The world-famed blogger, LibertyLondonGirl (French Vogue calls her blog 'Une Bible') had selected me - me! - as one of her ten most popular blogs to read in 2010.Then, out of the blue, yesterday morning another wonderful surprise, … [Read more...]

I was reading a post by the incredibly talented Thatgirl39 (talented because she wrote a post when feeling under the weather which inspired me to write this one, some people...) which mentioned obsessions, clothing ones in particular.In the face of the impending move from our house in the sticks, … [Read more...]

There's one thing I value more than anything: a good dry cleaners. When we relocated our business premises some years ago, we stumbled upon a great place on the High Street. A shiny star amongst the ramshackle newsagents, charity shops and general tumble weed. And I got to know the man who owns … [Read more...]

Every time we go down to Portsmouth to see our friends we decide that we're going to sell up in the sticks and move down there. This lasts for a week or so, until we realise that it's completely impractical from job/children's schools/family point of view. And we remember that what we really want is … [Read more...]

Just a quick note to say I've started a new site where the story of 'How I came to be in England' is published in proper order.I know how difficult it is to follow the chapters in reverse, and as this blog is also littered with my other thoughts about haircuts, holidays and theatre reviews I thought … [Read more...]

I have nicked (OK borrowed with permission) this idea from a fellow lovely ex-pat blogger Expat Mum. She wrote about things she hasn't embraced in her host country,USA, whereas I (she takes a deep breath) am going to write about the UK...here goes:1. Strong, milky tea. How can you drink that stuff? … [Read more...]

Where to start on this? Honesty? OK I'll try that. In the past few years I've become very close to my daughter. We've become good friends. I know this is not unusual. Besides, she is my only daughter and as you know we live in the middle of nowhere, where making and retaining friends isn't the … [Read more...]

Not quite. But I had this done for my holiday in Rome. I've had long hair for ages now I thought it was time for a change. Last time I took this bold step was about three years ago, and regretted it for a year at least afterwards. This time I decided not to go so short, and my new lovely … [Read more...]

Just a quick post to say that daughter got the results she wanted. I wasn't surprised at all, call it mother's intuition, but I sort of knew she'd do well. But she wasn't at all confident, and how ever much I tried to reassure her during the last two months, she was convinced she'd do badly. You may … [Read more...]