Tales from a suburban housewife part one.

Well Autumn has clearly arrived and my brief romance with summertime has come to an abrupt end,the flimsy dresses packed away in my rather fetching leopard print suitcase under the bed,along with all the plans that I never actually carried out,such is life. Lucy has started high school and hates it.More stress.I continue to juggle my lot with the dexterity of a Billy Smarts clown,the days are racing by,cooler days,we have had a freakishly mish mash of weather here,one minute terrential rainfall,next sunshine,often followed by the most magical of rainbows,which is a rather apt analogy of life at the moment,nature continues to astound me and confound me in equal measures. Life seems to be teaching me some big lessons these days,I travel this road one step at a time and am strangely excited for the future.

I have had some truly heart warming experiences of late, I rediscovered an old schoolfriend on facebook( I simply love facebook for this kind of thing) and then perhaps only a week later bumped into the same friend in a supermarket! how amazing,serendipity,I love it.

I can almost feel a shift in my mood as the seasons change,spring and summertime are my favourites,all that new life in the garden coupled with sunshine and lighter evenings,I confess makes me completely giddy,but as Autumn sneaks in through the back gate,I become qiueter,my nesting instincts kick in and making life as comfy and cosy as possible becomes my religion.When the rain is pouring down outside,how utterly blissful it is to be alone in the candle lit kitchen which becomes my haven,cooking,baking,listening to Ella Fitzgerald and dreaming........

Are you embracing Autumn as much as I am?

The last days of Summer...............

It is the end of August and already Summer seems like a lifetime away.It has for the best part been a good one,I am of course comparing it to last Summer,when you will all remember I lost my Dad,the summer of hot tears and bearing up,but here I am a whole year on and I have survived.This Summer has been the Summer of hope,the Summer of dreams,I have made some lovely new friends,I have partied perhaps a little too hard with old ones! I have worked hard and relaxed too little,I didnt have as many barbeques as I planned,I did not get to spend as much time at my allotment as I would have liked,but I have awoke each day with hope in my heart and a feeling that something good is just around the corner.I have loved my garden this Summer,it has been a beautiful secret fairytale world,I have loved the School holidays despite being so busy,I love the lazy mornings and my sleepy girls.I have rediscovered Donna Summer and she is my chosen soundtrack in the car just now,I have loved reading A streetcar named Desire and watching 'medium' late at night.Only a week left and its back to School and soon Autumn will be here.I am sort of excited!

Wish list............

It is a dull rainy day today,I do hope we see some more sunshine in August.The day did not start well,I awoke with a headache and a grumpy disposition,shouldn't have had that last glass of wine last night.Went out to the car thinking a little jaunt to Sainsburys would cheer me up,only to discover I had a flat tyre,waited an hour for the breakdown service to come and change it and then tootled off to the aforementioned supermarket and bought lots of unnecessary items,returned home only to be plunged into a power cut for another hour,however Hubby had very decently tidied up whilst I was out so its not all bad.We all sat around like helpless fools whilst the electricity was off,the children completely dumbfounded without the television or computers,Thank God it was only off an hour otherwise I suspect they would have slipped into boredom induced comas.Myself,I relished the peace and quiet and to amuse myself,I made a mental wish list.....................here goes;

1. I wish (obviously) this headache would go away.

2.I wish my life was easier/less complicated/without drama(or are these all the same?)

3.I wish most of my shoes didn't hurt my feet.

4.I wish I was fabulously wealthy/beautiful/thin.Yes I am very shallow.

5.I wish that Saturday night TV was better.

6.I wish I had a warm chocolate brownie with vanilla ice cream .

7.I wish Hello magazine would put some decent celebs in instead of Z Lister's like Katie Price and Kerry Katona.

8.I wish I had a real Birkin bag.

9.I wish it was a hot sunny day.

10.I wish I could have stayed in bed all day.

Had enough yet? yes me too all this wishing has left me weak and craving chocolate......wish I didn't like chocolate.

Distractions!

I am,by neccesity,a fairly organised person.I plan ahead,I mark my calender with forthcoming appointments and events.I am a working gal and so meals are planned,chores are attended to.................sometimes. However, whilst I can juggle my responsibilities with the best of them,Oh Lordy I am easily distracted! I appreciate it is important not to live our lives without ever stopping to smell the roses,but Hell,there are times when I am not merely stopping to smell the roses,but am picking them,de-thorning them,hunting out a suitable vessel to put them in and sprinkling a few rose petals on the bed!( I am of course speaking in metaphors here!) But you get the gist? I wander off very easily,I start to do something,for example tidy the Enid Blyton bookshelf I recently created,easy task,but no, five minutes in and I am lying on the sofa with the Rilloby fair Mystery! Or when I periodically decide to have a clothing cull( all day job this one) I end up trying on dresses I either forgot I had or bought in a sale...yaddah,yaddah.re organising the cocktail cabinet,oh dear that was a lost afternoon, Updating my ipod with tracks from cd's?checking facebook? lets not even go there.

So you see my friends I am very easily distracted......what was I doing again?

Those lazy hazy days of summer.................

"Summer Afternoon............the two most beautiful words in the English language" (Henry James)

Summertime is my very favourite of all the seasons and I totally agree with the above quotation,the very idea of a summer afternoon conjures up all manner of lovely sunny images.

For me at the moment,life is busy,a crazy roundabout of work and play, but also about making time for lazy lemon coloured mornings drinking tea in the garden, catching up on reading a little at a time.School events! goodness but they cram a lot into these last couple of weeks! listening to Elvis singing 'kentucky rain' in the car and Oh bliss! strawberries picked early morning in the garden! Balmy nights spent lying on top of the bed as opposed to in it,and dreams.....always the dreams,writing in my journal,devouring 'love letters of great men' because my inner Carrie Bradshaw has been resurrected with the release of Sex and the city 2! crying quietly in my car now and then because I miss my Dad,pulling myself together and buying spinach and pine nuts,because life goes on and dinner must be made.Looking forward.....not sure what to,but coveting a feeling that something good is just around the corner, supper in town with the girls, a glass of wine in the garden of a very dear friend,lunching on ceasar salad and the Sunday Times.Treasuring my Daughters chatter every single day,loving growing my own produce at the allotment................these are good days.

I am blessed.

happy summertime friends!

Vintage housekeeping.....the Brocante way.

I am my friends an addict. It's official.I cannot go through the day without checking in to my favourite site www.brocantehome.net If you are already a Brocante affecionado,then you will no doubt be familiar with the delightful Alison and her Lavender scented world,I have been visiting for around four years now,it remains my favourite ever place to be online.There is very little in my life that has not been Brocanted,if you are puzzled by this statement,then take a look,learn ,if you please how to brocante your handbag,your fridge...........your life. Wallow in a world made just for us,Vintage girls who love our homes,our children,our back gardens,sit back and read about Alisons daily dramas,nod your head in agreement or wipe away a tear at her searing honesty,delight in her puttery treats which indeed make life that little bit lovelier,trail through the archives at your leisure and discover a whole new world,a world which can only be described by a favourite word of Alisons as...............................Scrumptious!

Text

I am a huge poetry fan as you know and you may have noticed I have posted a few poems by the contemporary poet Carol Ann Duffy,who is of course Poet Laureate,she writes of life and of love in a language that is simple yet profound and often her poems deeply resonate with me.This week after a little splurge on Amazon,I became the owner of 'Rapture' by the delightful Ms Duffy,it is a collection of love poems,described by 'The Times' as "Brilliant,beautiful and heart-aching" I couldnt put it better myself! and my choice to share with you today? for its simplistic beauty............Text.

Text.

I tend the mobile now

like an injured bird.

We text,text,text

our significant words.

I re-read your first

your second,your third.

look for your small xx

feeling absurd.

The codes we send

arrive with a broken chord.

I try to picture your hands,

their image is blurred.

Nothing my thumbs press

will ever be heard.