long mornings

'June came in with fields of white clover, and Catherine spent long mornings in the open, reading to Audrey whilst Adam slept and the sunny countryside slept too, mile after undistinguished mile, all about them. Swifts swung overhead, blue church spires pricked the distance, the scent of clover was solid on the windless air.' Elizabeth Cambridge Hostages to Fortune

reading

In the blissful ignorance before TT is born I like to imagine sitting under our apple tree reading whilst TT sleeps or plays. If I manage it once with our current weather then I shall be content.

The Month of May

May started with glorious blue skies, blossom appearing on the apple tree in our garden, green shoots appearing everywhere, wearing shoes without socks.
Painted toe nails - one of the advantages of being 30+ weeks pregnant is that I have to have a pedicure, there is no way I can reach my toes to paint them!
A delightful christening of godchild number six and catching up with dear friends.
Mother and Pops coming up for the day. First time cooking summer food, pottering in the garden together and enjoying the sunshine.
My last week at work before maternity leave - all happening at just the right time. The final day, cards from different classes and being sung to by the different classes in my team. Receiving some lovely gifts, including a nappy cake and then to Canary Wharf for pizza. Home very tired.
Off to Twin and the Blessings for a lovely day. A BBQ in the garden and practising putting on a baby sling with a doll.
Cooking Warmth the meal I cooked on the weekend we became engaged as a celebration for first day of maternity leave.
Mother and Pops coming up for what should have been a day of gardening, but the persistent rain meant we sorted out the linen for TT.
Meeting up with a dear friend for lunch at Peter Jones and then on to try to get ahead by buying cards and gifts for all the summer birthdays.
Days having a gentle rhythm of reading, eating, napping, preparing for TT, pottering in the garden, doing small jobs.
A very belated birthday pamper day with Twin and Mother at Eastwell Manor. So lovely to have a facial, laze in the rest room, float in the deserted pool, have a foot massage, chat and catch up.
Off into town for friend's birthday meal at Bambou. I was determined to stay for supper and not just the drinks part. This will probably be the last time we go out on a Saturday night together with no babysitter.
Meeting up with new NCT friends for lunch at The Station, then after a brief afternoon nap out to Dalys Wine Bar to catch up with old friends.
A very wet day in Sloane Square, hoping to enjoy looking at Chelsea in Bloom shop windows, instead hiding in Patisserie Valerie with a dear friend and then hopping to The Saatchi Gallery and stumbling across Festival des Metiers a Hermes exhibition.
A final pre baby hair cut and lunch with Mama and Papa Warmth.
Good friends for a takeaway curry - we've finally found a good local takeaway Indian.
Pops' 70th birthday celebrations. Nieces, nephews, great nieces and nephews, aunts and immediate family. Thirty in all and the sun shone so magnificently that we spent the whole day outside, suntan lotions necessary.
A lovely Bank Holiday Monday - eating supper outside. Then the next day it rained and rained...
Quickly, or as quickly as I move at the moment, popping to Lambs Conduit Street to Persephone to buy Twin's birthday gift and then deciding I did have time to pop in Ben Penreath, even though I was then late meeting up with dear old colleagues at our favourite restaurant The National Portrait Gallery Restaurant. Lovely to see the views of London in daylight.

Finally finished Restoration by Rose Tremain - quite unlike her other books I've read.  It was a long slow slog. Speeded through Cocktails under the tree of forgetfulness by Alexandra Fuller and The Rain before it Falls by Jonathon Coe. Baked this lemon drizzle cake for NCT ladies day, Hummingbird's Peanut butter and chocolate biscuits. A Ricotta and Lemon Cake, to use up left over ricotta, for Twin and Blessings.

The last day in May Twin and the blessings up and this also means the last month without a bundle of baby in our lives...

pearl-blue clouds

It started Friday morning and then continued on and off all weekend...

'The snow fell all night. It fell without a sound and covered the frozen ground, and the dead leaves beneath the maple tree, and bowed the limbs of the evergreens, and sifted out of the high, pearl-blue clouds hour after hour. Mrs Bridge was awakened by the immense silence and she lay in bed listening.' Evan S. Connell Mrs Bridge

bed

Lying in a warm bed with gorgeous blankets knowing it's snowing outside is one of the 

loveliest things.

life flows tranquilly

Mother and I had a delightful day in Bath during the holidays. I'll post about it later but first of all this to put us in the mood

'Deltenham, the country town to which colonels and admirals retire on their pensions, stands in a bowl whose sides are green hills. When a visitor gets out of the train at Deltenham he notices at once the difference in the air: it is fresh and cold, and so it should be, blowing down as it does from those flat summits padded with ancient turf.
The town cannot be said to have fallen asleep in 1760, when most of it was built, because, even then, it was not fully awake. To-day , its life flows tranquilly through wide streets, past pale square Anne and Georgian houses, and pastry-cooks' shops, where the ageing daughters of very old generals sit eating eclairs from silver forks, quietly dying into the background of England's history.' Stella Gibbons Golden Vanity in Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm

silver forks

We didn't see any ageing daughters of very old generals but did have a lovely tea and cake to revive us.

Abou Ben Adhem

Today is National Poetry Day and what better way to celebrate it than with one of my favourite  poems.

Abou Ben Adhem

Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)

Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,

And saw, within the moonlight in his room,

Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,

An angel writing in a book of gold:

Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,

And to the presence in the room he said.

'What writest thou?' The vision raised its head,

And with a look made of all sweet accord,

Answered, 'The names of those who love the Lord.'

'And is mine one?' said Abou. 'Nay, not so,'

Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low,

But cheerily still; and said, 'I pray thee, then,

Write me as one who loves his fellow men.'

The angel wrote, and vanished. The next night 

It came again with a great wakening light,

And showed the names whom love of God had blest,

And lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest.

Leigh Hunt

An alarum clock

"That's not an alarum clock going off upstairs?" she cried. "It must be late! I can't bear to think of people getting up already; I need to recruit a lot of energy before I can even think of a new day." Margaret Kennedy The Ladies of Lyndon

clocks

Do you need an alarm or do your have your own internal alarm clock? I need an alarm clock and a cuddle from Warmth to wake me...

The Month of November

It started with The Ofsted Telephone Call. So the first week was lost with school.
As a Friday end of Ofsted treat I bought this lovely perfume bottle. Mooched in Selfridges and then met a friend for supper at The Waterloo Bar and Kitchen.
Saturday a day of epic sleeping. Sunday a gentle mooch around Greenwich.
Thankfully we had a day off for Eid on the Monday. Meeting a dear friend for lunch at Peter Jones. I'd quite like to work a four day week.
Meeting my dear dear old colleagues at Royal Festival Hall Bar for drinks and more importantly catch up and friendship.
Supper with Warmth's old school friends at Browns.
A day trip to Margate to visit Turner Contemporary. Lunch in the cafe. Stunning sea views. A mooch around old town in the shops and then tea and teacakes at The MadHatters Tea Place. It was truly mad.
Book Club meet and discuss of Snowdrops and the chance to walk and admire Fortnum & Mason Christmas windows.
A coffee meet at The Albion with Anna. It turned into a little bit of a Carol Ann Duffy appreciation society.
Purchasing a new beret and scarf. Both grey with tiny flecks of silver in them. My take on the glitter theme this season.
A Friday evening shop in Liberty's and Paperchase - getting our Christmas card pieces together for a weekend of making.
An evening with Warmth's eldest brother and wife. Wandering the streets of Hither Green for Lee Open Studio. How lovely to mooch knowing that if we had seen something we do have a litttle 'need' to buy. Alas all our favourite prints and paintings had already been sold. The evening finished with a warming curry.
Starting to find a church to call home in our new area.
An afternoon wrapping up the garden for winter.
Meeting a dear friend for an early supper along Bermondsey Street and eating at Zucca.
A Friday evening cinema trip to see The Help.
A perfect Saturday. First stop to The Book Club for Patchwork Harmony's Merry Magpie Christmas Boutique. Should have been buying gifts for others. Alas two things for me, a lovely tote and bird trays for my dressing table. Then I hopped on the bus and stopping off at Bea's of Bloomsbury for a coffee before meeting a friend for a trip along Lambs Conduit Street, a pop into Ben Penreath, Something and of course Persephone for Persephone Secret Santa. We had a lovely chat about PSS too. Then finally onto Cockpit Arts where it felt a little like one gift for others, one gift for me. After all that we needed cocktails and food. Hurrah for The Zetter and Morito.
A very festive Sunday. Coffee from a Starbucks red cup, a Pret turkey sandwich, Christmas shopping in John Lewis and then an Advent Carol service.
The month ended with this.
An delicious orange, plum and almond cake from River Cafe made easy. I had said that November was a no entertaining month and it shows in the cooking.
Books read The Ladies of Lyndon by Margaret Kennedy. That's all I've read in November? I am finding it a alow book. Has anyone else read it?
Wow it's been a long month. How was your November?

Awakened

We're off to Berlin for a few nights. Here's Mrs Tim's thoughts on sleeping in a hotel bedroom.

"How many hundreds and thousands of people have awakened in this room; awakened to their sorrows and joys, their hopes and their fears? Strange that I should have slept so well, untroubled by the haunting of their thoughts!" D.E.Stevenson Mrs Tim and the regiment

Some day dream bedrooms to dream of lazing in...

bed

First Signs of Spring

It's coming... We can feel it in our bones...

'First signs of spring. Thaw. The sleepy air smells of buttered pancakes and vodka as at shrovetide. A sleepy, oily sun blinking in the forest, sleepy pines blinking their needles like eyelashes, oily puddles shining at noon. The countryside yawns, stretches turns over and goes back to sleep.' Boris Pasternak Dr. Zhivago

springtime

Hope you enjoy the first signs of spring this weekend.

Eleven in the Morning

Oh I had such a wonderful sleep last weekend. I awoke at 10ish and about 11 Warmth made a comment about still being in bed. I promptly read him this.


'And so you're phoning me now from your bedroom?'
'I certainly am. And from my bed as well.'
It was eleven in the morning.
'You're not exactly an early bird.'
'....Do you know what time yours truly got up, my dear boy? At seven. And you dare to wonder that I'm back in bed again at eleven! Besides, it's not as though I were sleeping - I've been reading, scribbling some notes for my thesis, and looking out of the window. I always do a whole lot of things when I'm in bed. The warmth of the blankets undoubtedly spurs me into activity.' The Garden of the Finzi-Continis Giorgio Bassani

warmth of the blankets

I'm hoping for the same this weekend.

22nd August 2009

And so it continues today...

Jose Saramago - Warmth's favourite author
The man and woman over there...you can see that they like each other, that they're fond of each other, that they love each other, you can see that they're happy, look they just smiled.' Jose Saramago Seeing

I Love sleeping...
'At night they slept curled together like two cashews' Anne Tyler Digging to America

We'd watched Life is Beautiful and both loved it. Warmth wrote this in my valentine's card that year.
'Last night, I dreamt about you all night' Life is Beautiful

Old Possoms book of practical cats we both have strong childhood memories of this and it connects to our London life.
The cottagers of Rotherhithe knew something of his fame;
At Hammersmith and Putney people shuddered at his name.
They would fortify the hen-house, lock up the silly goose,
When the rumour ran along the shore:
GROWLTIGER'S ON THE LOOSE!
T.S. Eliot Growltiger's Last Stand

Charles Dickens - my favourite author
'A heart well worth winning, and well won. A heart that, once won, goes through fire and water for the winner, and never changes, and is never daunted.' Charles Dickens Our Mutual Friend

Anna Karenina - Warmth's Valentines day gift to me after we'd been dating a few weeks - I knew he liked me when I received this.
'In their conversationeverything had been said; it had been said that she loved him, and that she would tell her father and mother that he would come tomorrow morning.'

'There were no other eyes like those in the world. There was only one creature in the world who would concentrate for him all the brightness and meaning of life. It was she.'
Leo Tolstoy Anna Karenina

Our first dance
'And when you smile the world is brighter
You touch my hand and I'm a king
Your kiss to me is worth a fortune
Your love for me is everything
Elvis Presley The wonder of You

Madness It Must Be Love for old school friends of Warmth.
As soon as I wake up
Every night, every day
I know that it's you I need
To take the blues away

It must be love, love love...

I read Adam Bede for this passage. It was nearly going to be in our service.

'What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined together to strengthen each other in all sorrow, to share with each other in al gladness, to be one with each other in the silent unspoken memories.' George Eliot Adam Bede

Birdsong

'No child or future generation will ever know what this was like. They will never understand. When it is over we will go quietly among the living and we will not tell them. We will talk and sleep and go about our business like human beings. We will seal what we have seen in the silence of our hearts and no words will reach us.' Sebastian Faulks Birdsong

@
It doesn't seem quite right to be celebrating all the great literature about France without mentioning the wars. This passage spoke to me years ago when I read Birdsong. It speaks even more having been to Ypres on a freezing November weekend.

That Mad Ache

I knew from this opening paragraph that I would love this novel. I devoured it.

'She opened her eyes. A brisk little breeze had impudently slipped into the bedroom. Already it had turned the curtain into a sail and bent the flowers in their tall vase on the floor, and now it had set its sights on her sleep. It was a spring wind, the very first one, and it smelled of thickets, forests and soil; it had swept unchallenged through the faubourgs of Paris, through their streets choked with traffic fumes, and now it was arriving softly but brashly at dawn in her bedroom, intent on reminding her, even before she emerged from her drowsy state, of the pleasure of being alive.' Francoise Sagan That Mad Ache

It was the perfect warm summer's read. It's about love. It's about fear. It's about passion. It's about convention. It's about not wanting to grow up.

This is how I imagine Lucile to be.

@
This would be her bedroom.

@

Have you read it? How did it make you feel?

And if you haven't read it but like the opening passage? Do treat yourself.

Escape into another world.

Midsummer's Day

For some reason I thought the longest day of the year was the 24th June - do not ask me why so I'd scheduled this post for today. Then on the 21st June I realised.... Oh dear it's too late to change it all around - so here it is a few days late - but it still stays light late.

@

In winter I get up by night
And dress by yellow candle-light
In summer, quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day.

I have to go to bed and see

The birds still hopping in the tree,

Or hear the grown-up people's feet
Still going past me in the street

And does it not seem hard to you,

When all the sky is clear and blue,
And I should like so much to play,

To have to go to bed by day?

Robert Louis Stevenson

My mother loves poetry and so as children we would be read it. Due to an early wake up, and my love of sleep, I go to bed early. This poem often comes to mind as I draw the blinds. Epecially since living in a city where one 'hears the grown-up people's feet/Still going past me in the street.'

@

Happy 'Belated' Midsummer's Night

My Hair Hurts

I can't quote this exactly but it's in Plum Sykes' book 'Bergdorf Blondes', and goes to prove that we gain something from the trashiest books we read. She wakes up one morning with a hangover and proclaims 'My hair hurts, my nails hurt.' I often think of this the morning after a 'should have drunk more water/eaten/ just said no to that last drink or two' good night out.
This is how I feel this morning....
I think I'll just go back and lie down before cleaning the flat and baking Dad's birthday cake...
.

@

Post script: Here is the actual quote.

'Oooo-www!!! My head was hurting. My nails were agony. Even my hair was hurting.'

Sleeping

As it's Sunday afternoon I thought this would be a good quotation to post and it also tells you a little more about me...

'As my cat would say all hours are good for sleeping..'

Jose Saramago Seeing

This would be a lovely bed to sleep on...