Happy Friday, peeps!

We've been battling to make teddy bears - and not teddy mice. It's been a challenge, but we're getting there.

This was the outlook across the dining room table yesterday afternoon as the sunlight filtered in through the half-open shutters.  Emi was writing an essay about three birds in a nest, and battling to get the punctuation right, whilst I persevered with my teddies, battling to get the eyes sufficiently far apart. A nice bottle of red beckoned with the necessary promise to get me through until dinner.

Bed time bunnies ...

One of our favourite things to do when we're down in Devon is to pull some lawn chairs just round the gable wall of the house so that we can sit quietly and watch the rabbits play in the meadow. They seem to come out just before darkness falls to graze and chase each other in the cool of the evening.

TGI Friday ...

And what a  week it's been. We've had a heatwave in Ireland. In Ireland! A heatwave! Who'd have thought? We showed up and brought the summer weather with us. It was brilliant. We had glorious afternoons of blue skies and sunshine as we walked our dogs. Being further north the days are so much longer at this time of the year, giving us lots of opportunities to enjoy the great out-of-doors into the late evenings.

TGI Friday ...

And TGI the holidays!

Finally school's out for summer ... and we're already on the road! We're bombing up the motorway to Holyhead to catch the fast boat to Dublin. The weather doesn't look entirely congenial to sightseeing, and, as I'm incapable of not turning up 8 hours early for the ferry, we may have a soggy time exploring another epic Welsh castle. I'm really grateful to Edward I, back in the 13th century, for giving me so many stonking stop-off castles to kill the time until the Dublin Swift weighs anchor.

TGI Friday ...

... and the last Friday of the school term at that.

Boy I'm glad we're almost done, but kind of sad all at the same time. It always feels the same as we trudge towards the last day of term. Back in God's Own Country we wound up for the school holidays at the end of June, so this business of plodding on to the middle of July is a bit of a faff in my book, and by now it feels like the end is long overdue.

Reasons to be cheerful ...

My goodness these last few days in the UK have been a volatile, roller-coaster ride. I can't quite believe what's happened, and, whilst I don't blog about politics, I have to say it's all a bit unsettling. The old certainties seem to have gone, and we're facing a whole new ball game for which they've still got to write the rules.

So I've been casting around for a few every-day gems that rock my world, and make me smile regardless of the maelstrom outside caused by the Neverendum. If I focus on the small and the familiar I'm sure everything else will be okay.

Just keep breathing

We've got the builders in today, and everything's upside down. I hate it when everything's upside down. 😳

I'm up early (very early) being ineffective. 

Note to self: Just keep breathing, and drink lots of tea! 

Wheelie Bin Stencils

Over here in leafy Ealing we're in the throes of a revolution. Big changes are afoot ... and not everyone is totally chuffed about what's in the pipeline.

The local council has abandoned the weekly black bin-bag collections, and, having given us all not one - but two - HUGE wheelie bins, is now planning on collecting our rubbish on a fortnightly basis. We'll have recyclables carried off one week and non-recyclables the next.

On the school run this morning we came upon this graveyard for our old recycling bins.

Ealing Council's new wheelie bin project swings into motion

Step into my office ...

I love, love, love the month of May - especially when the sun puts in an appearance. My kitchen door is thrown open, and I live on the terrace. How do you like my office? Please do step outside ...

I come out here on sunny days during the rest of the year - often wrapped up warm with coats and scarves against the elements. I leave the parasol in situ all year round - just on the off-chance,  although it's sometimes more of a rainy day umbrella. It feels fabulous to be able to take up my al fresco lifestyle every time the sun comes out and there's just a smidgeon of blue sky.

Ham House ...

They say it's haunted ... very, very haunted ... .

Ham House, Richmond viewed from the Duchess's Garden

And I guess if a house's been standing since 1610, just playing the statistics there's got to have been one or two residents over that length of time who were reluctant to move on - especially when the setting's as splendid as this one. So if you're going to go looking for spooks and ghosts and things that go bump in the night ... then this house is probably a pretty good place to start.

Ode to the Costa Brava poppy ...

If there's one flower that really makes my heart sing it's the wild field poppy. Here on the Costa Brava there are millions of them, all over the shop, dancing in the breeze, and looking splendid in the warm spring sunshine. To me they represent pure joy.

April Fool ...

Happy April Fool's Day!

Has anyone caught you yet?

I played a joke on Emi and Mr B yesterday afternoon. The WonderDog and I had gone off on a little saunter over the cliff so that he could attend to his afternoon toilet business. Such jaunts are commonly referred to here in Talk-a-Lot-Towers as Pooh Patrol, and we've even got a ridiculous little song we sing about going on Po-o-o-oh Patrol. The WonderDog, who is clearly a connoisseur of fine music, always recognises the opening bars of the song (as distinct from all the other silly songs we've made up) and gets himself ready at the door for the off.

Anyway, I digress. After our jaunt over the cliffs I came in clutching one of the WonderDog's pooh bags, that was bursting, absolutely full to capacity. It looked as though I'd been picking up after a bull elephant who'd spent the last fortnight with an intestinal blockage that had only been released that very afternoon.

Look what Maxi did! I said, holding my trophy aloft.

They looked at me ashen-faced. How could such a small dog produce such a huge quantity of poop?

And then Emi asked me to show him the contents ...

Well, the game was up. I'd filled it full of pine cones for lighting the fire. When it gets cold of an evening we like to have a fire in the sitting room, and the dried pine cones from those lovely Costa Brava pine trees, are the prefect things to get the flames started. And then, once it's going, they give out a lovely fresh pine fragrance that's become the very smell of home.

Still, my ruse was good while it lasted.

All the best for now,

Bonny x

The joy of reading ... when you're 10

We're having some very strange weather here in (usually) sunny Sant Feliu de Guíxols. Our early mornings are foggy with strange, dense mists blowing in from the sea. They burn off as the day goes on, but every morning when I open my shutters I find myself staring out into a real pea souper. It appeals to my inner sense of drama, and makes me wonder what mysteries might be concealed behind that wall of white ...

And during those foggy mornings, when he can't go out exploring with his faithful hound, young Emi has been spending his time reading this wonderful book, One dog and his boy, by Eva Ibbotson. It's a great tale of derring do, about one boy's battle with his over-bearing parents to keep a little dog called Fleck.

Red Letter Paella Day ...

Today was a Red Letter Paella Day. Back home in sunny Sant Feliu de Guíxols there's nothing quite like paella de mariscos to keep the troops happy. It's the very taste of home.

And while I was working away in the kitchen I listened to a really interesting podcast by Jerry Brotton for the BBC History Magazine. He's just published a book This Orient Isle about the influence of Islam on Elizabethan England, focussing on how Elizabeth forged alliances with the great Islamic Empires of the day after she was excommunicated by the Pope, and how this, in turn, impacted upon English society. I've not yet read the book, but he wrote a great article on the subject for the March edition of the BBC History Magazine, and the podcast (link attached: Muslims and Jews in 16th Century England) is well worth listening to. It's such an interesting angle on a fascinating period of history.

All the best for now,

Bonny x

Gravity-defying trees ... and the myth of life-long fidelity in mandarin ducks ...

Trees are poems that the earth writes upon the sky, Khalil Gibran

Fantastic Mr Fox ...

I got a surprise this morning when I looked out the kitchen window. There, larger than life and full of vigour, sat Fantastic Mr Fox on my garden wall, and he carried on sitting there staring in at me for at least half an hour. I was transfixed ... watching him ... watching me. He wasn't in the least bit timid. In fact he looked like the Lord of the Manor, surveying his domain.

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd, 

A host of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Okay, okay, I may be gilding the lily - or should that be the daffodil? -  a bit. In truth it's hard to do the lonely as a cloud thing on Ealing Common with the traffic thundering by on the Uxbridge Road, but it is just a little bit glorious out there at the moment with the wonderful mini-daffodils that are exploding with cheerful colour all over the grass. 

w.i.p. ...

Spring feels a bit like a work-in-progress at the moment. It's cold and chilly outside, but there are all the wonderful spring bulbs and seasonal flowers giving us a hint of better days to come.

I had to go into town last Thursday, and chose to follow the alleyway along the allotments that skirts the back of the churchyard. I walked under this amazing magnolia tree. And then I stopped, turned around and went back the way I'd come - just to have the thrill of walking under it again. Those big waxy flowers were so freakishly glorious against the perfect blue sky behind. I say freakish because they come before the leaves, and to my way of thinking that's just a little bit weird.

Think invisible ... be invisible ...

When the Wonderdog doesn’t want to do something, he’s got a sneaky habit of disappearing. Sometimes it works, but other times it doesn't ...

Have a wonderful Wednesday!

Bonny x

Happy St. David's Day ...

... to all my friends in Wales!

And a very happy first day of meteorological Springtime to everyone else! Although here in deepest, darkest, greyest Ealing you could be forgiven for believing that Spring had missed its cue.

Still I'm looking forward to sunny days ahead, when I can spread my work onto the terrace, and throw my doors and windows open after all this closed-up-indoors winter living. Today may be a bit of a let-down on the sunshine front, but I'm sure there's plenty in the pipeline that's been specially earmarked for us by the weather gods.

So, for now, I'm grateful for the hellebores ...