Don’t  you love quiet weekends in London? If you are anything like me you anticipated the snowfall last night with a little hint of childlike excitement. Is it, perhaps, the muffled silence of the city under a blanket of snow that we enjoy? Or maybe the white, bright simplicity of the streets and pavements? But needless to say, this morning, when I woke up… Great Ormond Street was under inches of wet muddy slush. The story of our lives, I wonder?

We had a fun evening last night, with some local friends and a breezily cute fellow over from New York from the Paul Smith store; drinks and a lot of laughter around the fire; and today brunch at The Delaunay, which I have to admit I would rather recommend. It was very nice to see David Collins there and to be able to say how much we loved the room, which is particularly beautifully done. But of all the things I enjoyed watching, over delicious plates of kedgeree and eggs benedict, was a wonderful, happy, elderly couple having lunch with their extended family; the grandfather as smart as could be, in suit and blossom pink tie, and his face permanently wreathed in smiles and laughter. I wouldn’t mind being that happy person in forty years time.

Oh dear, then it was back to captions. Who knew how many ways there were to write about bedrooms, for instance? (If you are a little confused, all will be explained in due course; but basically, yes, I’m talking about my book).  I’m beginning to understand what it’s like being an Eskimo describing snow.

Well, the final piece of news I have to confirm is that the chest of drawers is settling in nicely. Sometimes it takes a few days’ absence in the Mountains to come back and know what is right. You can imagine that I was rather surprised, and in a sense happy, to see quite what a controversy that particular chest has caused. What global financial crisis? What Euro meltdown?! Thank goodness for the important things, like a Fornasetti Palladiana chest of drawers.

Here it is this morning, with some rather handsome flame orange tulips that I bought at John and Paul Dawson’s, our friendly Lambs Conduit Street florists, on Friday morning. Don’t they make you dream of spring? Well, they make me long for the Maytime borders at the Old Parsonage. For now, I hope you like the combination with Marianna Kennedy’s blue resin lamp. Available, I should add, from a rather tasteful little shop near you.

“A few people are worried you’re working too hard” said the text message from my friend Ben. Hmmmm, I thought. Okay. They have a point. Except that if you’re quite as busy as we’ve been in the office for the last few weeks, it kind of doesn’t help to be told you’re working too hard; it’s easier just to get on and do the work.

The fact is, I’ve probably been working too hard for most of my life. Haven’t you? Every six weeks or so, it’s time to go and get a haircut. Isn’t there something a bit strange about taking an hour off in the middle of the day, sitting completely still and handing your life over to someone (right now, to lovely Tom at Frankie Cochrane on Lambs Conduit Street, just down the road from the office)? And every time I have my haircut, which is almost, let’s face it, an alternative form of therapy, I find myself saying “We’ve never ever been so busy… how nice is this to step outside life, for a minute, and relax?”.

And that has been the story for a very long time indeed. So isn’t it all the more important, every now and again, to stop; reflect; spend a bit of time with friends, and go some where complete different and new?

It was therefore with happy heart that yesterday morning bright and early I found my way to Heathrow airport to meet my great friend Valentina off her flight from New York, and head to Italy. Meanwhile our friends Adam and Sarah were making their own way across from NYC, and we all met up—exactly as planned, a few hours later—in the beautiful little town of San Cassiano in the Dolomites. Where we are having a few days off… Down Time.

It’s not entirely days off. I will be honest. I’m finishing up captions. For what? For the book that I’m writing at the moment, and which will be published this autumn… but more about that another day.  For now, let’s enjoy the fact that the sun has been shining, we’ve had a fantastic day skiing, and I slept all afternoon, and we’ve just eaten a delicious supper, and now, incredibly early, it’s time for bed.

I was thinking about this little trip and realised that pretty much every year, for a long time now, I’ve gone away for a quick escape in January. Partly this is because my great friend Will has a birthday at the end of January, which for ages has been the best excuse for travel that I’ve known. But whatever the reason, I do think as the year shifts subtly from winter to hesitant spring, there is nothing at all that is better for the soul than to spend a little time away. One can reflect on the year to come; think about the year that has passed; and above all drink far too much wine.

Here is a little snapshot of Januaries away, past. Happy memories, and fantastic inspiration.

No prizes for guessing the location of all these places; although if someone got all of them—well, I would be seriously impressed. The names of each city would be enough to impress me. Apart from Venice.  I should point out that the final two photos are the impossible ones.
And for now – please don’t expect me to return your call or reply to your email immediately. Happy Down Time.

One of the advantages of living in the tiniest flat in London is that you don’t have to go very far for things. I tumble out of bed early and in two footsteps I am making a cup of tea. Having previously walked two steps into the bathroom to run my bath. People don’t really believe me when I say I live in 350 square feet (especially, I have noticed, estate agents), but I do (this dimension, incidentally, includes the wardrobe space), and I love it… let’s face it I will have been here on Great Ormond Street for 8 years this summer.

I think it is fair to say that I might have moved from my flat if I hadn’t rented the Old Parsonage a few years ago – I mean, I feel that by the time you turn 40 you need a little bit of space in your life somewhere, and I’ve chosen to find my space in West Dorset (where it is a bit more restful to the soul, a little more expansive – and, let’s not forget, rather cheaper per square foot than WC1).

But returning to London, for a moment. One of the disadvantages of living in the smallest flat in London, if you are a person like me, is that it’s getting a bit full up.  As I am sure you can tell, one of the reasons I had to rent a whole new house in Dorset was just to find space for stuff. Which is all very well, but can still present a bit of a problem up here in my 35 square metres (for continental readers).

Do you remember an advert, by Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, for a mortgage company in the late 1980s… with Fry describing to Laurie his one room bedsit as ‘compact and bijou,  Mostyn, compact and bijou’ ? You do? You are revealing your age.  For those who are not in the know, you can watch below on youtube, making sure to scroll to 3 minutes and 6 seconds in. (Or, for a trip down memory lane on this Monday morning, start at the beginning, and feel glad that the 80s revival is not quite the same as the real thing).

I digress. My only fear is that this may be what’s happening to my flat.  Most recently, I have gone a bit mad and bought a Palladiana Chest of Drawers, by Fornasetti.

This is something I’ve coveted for a very long time. It must have been 20 years ago that the V&A put on a great Fornasetti exhibition, which is when I first really discovered how much I loved his extraordinary, surreal, engraved and lacquered world. I think I’ve been thinking about Fornasetti ever since. So when, a little while ago, my friend Maria interviewed me for the FT How to Spend It, and ’What are you eyeing next?’ was one of her penetrating questions, I confessed about Fornasetti. I thought nothing of this until a few weeks later the sharp-eyed girls at Themes and Variations sent me an email, just checking I wasn’t serious.

Oh dear. That was that. Destined for my bedroom, I made the move, and shipped out my old mahogany chest of drawers to the Parsonage. The day came a week or two ago when the new chest of drawers was to arrive.

Oh dear again.

It just didn’t work in my little panelled bedroom (maximum dimensions, 8′-0″ x 9-0″).  It didn’t work at all. It was curiously a lot smaller than the handsome piece of plain old Georgian mahogany that had rather comfortably settled into place all these years. And yet, because you couldn’t really get very far away, it wasn’t really possible to have a good look. It needed more space. Unsettling.

So this morning, I moved it through to my little pink sitting room. It’s what you might call rather neatly tucked in the corner, with about a quarter of an inch to spare all round. It feels very at home with the pink walls, and with the Josef Frank armchair, and Peter Hone leaves, and with one of Marianna Kennedy’s lamps. I particularly like the way when the sun shines in, the engraved shadow of the portico responds perfectly to the light.

And I adore it. But I have to be honest. I am not quite sure there is space. It feels very happy in this room, but if I listen very carefuly I am wondering if the chest of drawers is also quietly asking: ‘do I look big in this (corner)?’ (in Italian).

I would be interested to know what you think.  I suspect time will tell. If I have made  a bit of a mistake, then I wonder if you can guess what will be appearing the window of a little shop around the corner? You can.

But not just yet. We’ve got to try and make room for our dreams. And this evening it feels, well, right.

This last image shows the book that I bought at the V&A exhibition 20 years ago. A little easier to house than the real thing. But not quite so amazing.

Did you see their animated bookshop posted by Simon Lewis over at all things considered? If not, I think you might love these films.  The third really made me smile!

The Joy of Books:

Organising the Bookcase (which feels like the precursor to the first):

My Anniversary Gift to Lisa:

Have a Happy Friday!

I’ve been travelling a little this week—two days in Scotland, on the Moray Firth, at the fantastic project we’re about to get going on up there. As we were driving from local town to town, visiting the best places for inspiration for the new development, I was struck by how mutable, and yet simultaneously how unchanging, the landscape is. I am thinking of small, perfect towns like Cromarty, in the Black Isle, which hardly feel touched by the twentieth century (and are perhaps the better for it).

Somehow, in this mood, I wanted to spend some time this weekend looking at my four beautiful volumes of Recording Britain – that extraordinary second world war programme to record in thousands of watercolours this land and her towns and buildings. The brainchild of Kenneth Clark, the project employed hundreds of distinguished artists to paint scenes that were felt to be under threat—initially from bombing, but later extended to include places threatened by ‘progress’, and by a changing way of life.

A long, long time ago – perhaps when I was about 18 or 19, I remember going to the V&A (as it happens, with my Mum) and coming across the watercolours on exhibition. Or had she planned the visit? I can’t remember. You can read more about the collection here (and note the V&A symposium on 20th April 2012). Many of them have stuck in my mind ever since. So it was quite a pleasure, browsing in a small bookshop in beautiful Lewes, a few years ago, to come across the four volumes that I’ve photographed here.

A small, random selection of some of my favourite images. Some are examples of wonderful topographical record. Others transcend this to become works of art in their own right. Is it time for a new Recording Britain, please? I feel a St. Judes production starring Emily Sutton, Ed Kluz, Mark Hearld, Chris Brown and Alan Powers coming on…!

I heard on the radio yesterday morning that unless we have some serious rainfall, a drought is to be declared within weeks. You see? It doesn’t rain nearly as much as we think it does. And I have been taking advantage of this dry, warm new year to get ahead – again.

It was another weekend of beautiful sunshine in Dorset. Last night was a bit of a remarkable wipe-out, dinner with Edward and Jane Hurst, with whom it is impossible not to have a fun time, and which ended up with me having an unexpected sleepover, and only returning to the Old Parsonage this morning—blinking at the brilliance of the extraordinary day, and finding it a little strange to return home to find the curtains drawn and the lights burning.

Was it penance or pleasure to spend the day working hard in the garden? A fine line between the two perhaps. I am wondering if Gardens are in fact like a Communist gulag.  They require you to work, hard, from dawn until dusk. Occasionally you are allowed out for other activities – intermittent travel abroad, or a weekend with friends, but all this basically makes you feel guilty. You spend your hours digging, sifting stones, planting. There is no rest. All the while you are doing this in order to feed other people. I once thought of writing a little book on the subject, which might be called ‘The Berlin Yew Hedge’.

Yet as much as we are trapped by our gardens, is there anything nicer than that feeling, at the end of the day, of knowing that things are in order, waiting for spring; the potato bed is dug, and mulched with well rotted manure; the last tulip bulbs that I discovered hiding in a corner are planted, obviously late but probably just in time; the asparagus bed has been cleared and raked, the artichokes have been cleared, and cloches cleaned? No, there is not; combined with that happy, tired, feeling of having taken a lot of exercise—but doing something, so without the futility of exercise for its own sake, which always feels a bit of a waste of time to me. It is feelings that like that promise a good night’s sleep.

A little while ago, I wrote about garden pinks. In fact, looking back, about the bunch of flowers that Jane & Edward, who I had stayed with last night, brought over to me. I hadn’t forgotten those pinks. And so a week or so ago, I made an order with Whetman Pinks Nursery, which shipped this week. They arrived in perfect condition.  Oh dear, far more than I had expected. It was time to pot them all up. Having no greenhouse, the cold dining room bay window is having to suffice this year. In their trays, they somehow reminded me of a moment from a Ravilious watercolour. I will plant out the pinks in the vegetable garden this spring. I have good feelings about these pinks.

I was going to be helping Robin in the shop this weekend. We’ve been taking it all apart and putting everything back – repainting, fresh carpet, and a good New Year change-around – as well as getting everything ready to open the interior decoration studio later in the spring.

Anyway, as I say, I was meant to be helping. But Robin said he was very happy doing the new display himself (in fact, I got the feeling he meant happier). I’m endlessly being told to get better at delegating – so what could be better than jumping in the car and driving straight down to Dorset?

Nothing, that’s what. The weather was beautiful – spring-like, almost. The valley was filled with the sound of birdsong and I spent the whole day in the garden; again this morning. There is something innately satisfying about a long hard day’s work in the garden. And, for once in my life, of that slight feeling of getting ahead. I’ve cleared the borders, and we’re mulching it all from the great pile of compost that has magically, mysteriously, made itself from a years’ worth of veg peelings and garden waste. I’ve moved the cloches in place to get patches of soil a little warmer, ready for sowing next month.

And today I sowed my broad beans. Getting ahead!

Last night I went over for supper with some friends – and picked this little bunch of flowers from the garden for them. That was inspiration, indeed.

I came back this evening to London. Robin has done a truly brilliant job in the shop. But that is another story. Visit when we open in the morning, and we will post some pictures very soon!

In this morning’s Guardian, a beautiful series of drawings by Ronald Searle, who died last week, which he produced for his wife Monica in the 1970s while she suffered from a rare and virulent form of cancer.

Searle made a drawing each time his wife underwent treatment, ‘to cheer every dreaded chemotherapy session and evoke the blissful future ahead’. They depict the dilapidated house the Searles had bought together in the south of France a few months before Monica’s diagnosis, and which they restored over the next five years.

She survived, and as the Guardian writes, ‘the intimate drawings stand as a moving testament to love and hope’.

A few months ago, Searle published all 47 drawings in a little book called Les Très Riches Heures de Mrs Mole. Bridie read my blog and ordered lots of copies. So you can now buy the book here.

I’m not a great one for New Year’s resolutions. But I would like to start this New Year with a story.

Many years ago, when I lived in the States, but was beginning to feel… well, homesick… and I was deeply, deeply uncertain as to what to do next. The sort of uncertainly where your whole life feels like it is crumbling. A kind, wonderful client of mine took me out for lunch.

“IF, just if, you were going to win the lottery—how much would you need to win in order never to work again?” she asked.

It’s a tricky question, isn’t it? For a start, it implies that one actually buys a lottery ticket, which I think I’ve done twice in my life. And then, the small matter that we don’t like to talk about money, do we; and then… the flat in London, the house in the country, the place in Italy, the apartment in New York, the pied-a-terre in Paris (anywhere else?); the running costs, the cost of living, enough to make a donation or three; hmm. Well, I won’t embarrass everyone by mentioning details, but my choice was probably north of $10 million. Right?   A few years later I was amused and chastised when a 22 year old intern in my office demanded (in answer to the same question) £27 million.  Cool.

The point is, its a question that needs a bit of serious thought, isn’t it?

“And, let us just imagine”, she continued, “that I am your fairy godmother and on Saturday you are going to win $xx,000,000″.  She was so convincing, I almost believed it.  Fun!!!

“And, let us just assume”, she carried on, “that you spend time buying the perfect house in the country, and your flat in London, and your New York pad and Paris pied-a-terre. The bricks and mortar are all sorted…

…Then what do you do next?”

Before you read on, you may want to answer that question yourself.

Weirdly, this time, it needed no thought at all. The answer just flowed. “I would move back to England”, I said. “I would set up a small architecture practice in London, with a bit of interior decoration, maybe open a little shop. Have a lot of fun working on interesting projects with nice people and, well, seeing if I can make the world a better place in very small ways one stage at a time”.

The trick, of course, is that whatever you answer to Ann’s brilliant question is what you should be trying to do in your life.

So, on New Year’s Eve, in the middle of a great and hectic party down here in the village, I found myself chatting to a fantastic man who we will call John, the stepfather of my host. Three months ago, aged 58, he had been made redundant from a small firm of specialist stainless steel engineers. I guess a story we are all coming across. Too early to retire, or to collect the pension, he was frankly fearful of (or at best resigned to) the year ahead. It was time to ask him Ann’s question. “I wouldn’t need much, honestly. £100K would be excessive”.

And what would you do…?

His face lit up. “When I was sixteen, I worked for a few years for a traditional wrought iron blacksmith. I would love to do that again. It was such a passion of mine.  I could have a small workshop at the back of the garden… I wouldn’t need a lot of kit… that really is something I could make a living from”.

I think that was the answer. I told him this tale. And John could not, I mean, could not, stop grinning.

Resolutions come and go, mainly go (I saw my brother today, whose giving up alcohol for January had lasted for… a mere 8 hours. Well done Jonny!).  But the important question is this? Are we reaching the best of our potential?  A good question, I sometimes wonder, to think about on the 1st January.

I did so yesterday while I worked—for the first time in ages—in the garden. Green shoots are appearing everywhere. Spring is around the corner.

Happy New Year. And enough of the self help lecture already – I hope you woke up with a crap hangover.

….And the winners are:

Caroline Boileau (Caroline was first past the line with all the correct answers, but she did submit, of her own volition, two new answers for an O and a P, having first entered looking at the screen of an i-phone)

Followed shortly by Chris Yeo, who was the first to submit a completely correct answer sheet.

Mr Tim Rolph gets a very special mention for being the first to notice that the M was not merely a Marrow but contained a Mochaware Mug.

I know I had said up until next week, but it seems like the entries are all in at Ben P towers, and we have winners enough.

The full answers are as follows:

A is for Auricula, B is for Bookroom, C is for Candlelight (and claret), D is for Dusk, E is for Enamelware, F is for Fig, G is for Glasshouse (Greenhouse would also do); H is for Haws watering can; I is for Ivy; J is for Jug; K is for Kettle; L is for Levens Hall; M is for Marrow and Mochaware Mug; N is for Nash; O is for Orchard; P is for Path (potentially through a Potager); S is for Stamp; T is for Tea (and also, for the very sharp sighted, for Thread); U is for Uppark; V is for a View of a Valley; W is for Wheelbarrow; X is for Crossing; Y is for Yew, and Z is for Zest!

Happy Christmas.