Good morning and I am SO BEHIND with this post due to two days of intermittent power cuts on my street. I don’t know how it happened, but it started with the Big Storm that happened at the weekend which blew all the sockets in my kitchen and I had to call British Gas Homecare to come to the rescue. And then last night, I went to meet my friend for an early evening drink and catch up chat and when I returned, all the power had gone completely. We have a student house next door to us and last year, it was four Spanish boys who did a lot of cooking and weed smoking but were very nice and polite. This year, it’s girls and last night, one of them was home alone in the pitch dark with no phone charge so Max and I gave her my rechargeable lights to save the day.
The power cut lasted until this morning but now it is all back up and running thanks to the workmen who dug literally through the night at the end of the road to fix it. It kind of reminded me of the miners strikes; although I was only three, I can remember my Mum lighting candles all over our house in Somerset which was probably a huge health and safety risk, and my Dad grabbing the massive black rubber torch so that we weren’t entirely in the dark. On the plus side, I slept quite well last night after closing the windows to the noise as all the street lights were off and it was absolutely pitch.
Am also rushing as my brother and his family are arriving this afternoon on the way back from a mini break in Glasgow and not only that, today is his birthday. I’ve booked a restaurant for dinner and if I can get my act in gear, am intending to make him a cake but have no time to leave the house so will be entirely restricted to what I have in the cupboard which means Utterly Butterly is the way to go. I’m sure he won’t even notice. Ha.
But back to my List Of Joie and there has been much to talk about these past weeks, including a run down of my dinner party recipes AND, excitingly, a giveaway to win a £250 FatFace voucher to celebrate their new Autumn Anthologies collection, plus a £230 Curtis Brown writing course voucher, perfect for any of you who fancy setting up your own Substack or would like to learn more about writing for yourself. It’s just for paid subscribers so don’t forget to enter! Anyway, here’s a little run down of what I’ve watched, bought, worn, read, eaten and lusted after in the last fortnight.
This post is for paid subscribers but you can upgrade for the price of a coffee! You’ll get an eight extra posts every month plus my entire archive including tonnes of recipes and travel write ups. Plus all my plans, moodboards and inspiration for my new home renovation. I would thoroughly recommend!